Sectarianism, or a Trap by Assad? | The Weekly Standard

Sectarianism, or a Trap by Assad? | The Weekly Standard

clipped from article:
“Sectarian violence in Syria raises fears,” screamed the headline of a Washington Post article on the murder Tuesday of 16 Syrians in the city of Homs, which lies 100 miles north of Damascus. Admitting that "confirming details" of what happened are hard to come by in a city under siege, the Post's Beirut-based correspondent Liz Sly nonetheless gives a dire reading of an impending civil war:

[B]ased on interviews with witnesses on both sides of the divide and a medical worker who tracked the violence and collected the bodies, it appears that the tensions soared after a crowd of Alawites armed with sticks surrounded a mosque in a Sunni neighborhood shortly before the noontime prayers on Friday and began chanting anti-Sunni slogans.

Sunnis responded by abducting three Alawites and on Saturday, their bullet-ridden bodies were found dumped in a Sunni neighborhood of the city. Alawites went on a rampage, looting and burning Sunni shops. In the melee, at least three Sunnis were killed, including a 27-year-old woman who was gunned down when she stepped outside her home in a majority Alawite neighborhood. One activist said that six Sunnis were killed, bringing the total number of deaths in the tit-for-tat killings to nine, though the medical worker who saw the bodies could only confirm a total of six.”

Radwan Ziadeh, a prominent Syrian dissident, has been in touch with five residents in Homs. What kick-started the wave of violence, he says, was the following:" read more...