“There was blood everywhere. Sectarian murders ravage Syrian villages

Al -Sanobar, Syria – Mayada underlined a divot selected outside the road in front of her parents’ house – the hole left by the ball when armed men threw his 85 -year -old father on the ground and shot him on the style of the execution.

“Her skull was completely divided … all in pieces,” she said, her impassive face. Inside the house, she found her mother and sister, also from a hail of bullets fired by the windows.

“There was blood everywhere.”

A few weeks later, the blood was swept away, but the consequences of the bleeding linger here in the coastal village of Al-Sanobar and in northwestern Syria.

The massacres of the beginning of March who killed members of the Mayada family (she only gave her first name to avoid reprisals) left hundreds – perhaps thousands – dead civilians. It was the worst epidemic of violence since a rebellious Islamist coalition ousted the former President Bashar Assad in December and took control of the country.

The killings, which started with clashes between the Loyalists of Assad and the pro-government forces, have turned into a total sectarian pogrom targeting the Allawites, members of an Islamic sect which dominate the coastal regions of Syria and are considered by some Muslims as apostats. Assad is a Allawite.

Al-Sanobar, a well-appointed village named after its abundant pines, is
A ghost town, with many house fronts blackened with burn marks.

Only the woman or the occasional old man appears in the streets, doing furtive bread races before going quickly to the house; Young men are not found. Inside the Mayada house, the living room has a frieze of shell splashes covering a wall.

“After killing all those they killed, the government told us that we should go home. But most men are still hidden,” said Mayada, his eyes floating between a visiting journalist and the direction of a security check -up held by government soldiers at a few dozen yards from his house.

Mayada began to count the dead she had found in the nearby houses before stopping at the idea of ​​one of her neighbors, a 15 -year -old boy.

“Her mother begged them to leave him alone, saying he was a child and that she would give them money or gold that she had to save her life,” she said. They took the money and killed him anyway, she said.

For the new Syrian government, violence has fractured the honeymoon period which has followed the departure of a dictator for a long time, and has threw serious doubts as to whether the government can correct armed factions, it will form the backbone of a new national army.

Abroad, the murders landed the hopes of the new authorities to legitimize their reign in front of the international community and to end the sanctions against a country ravaged by almost 14 years of civil war.

The United States, the United Kingdom and Europe have demanded responsibility for violence. On March 31, the spokesperson for the State Department, Tammy Bruce, said that any adjustment of the American policy on Syria would be subject to the actions of the government, in particular by guaranteeing the rights of minorities.

To appease these fears, Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa trained a seven-person investigation committee, which began to interview families and witnesses of victims last month while analyzing dozens of massacres videos, many of them taken and downloaded on social networks by the authors themselves.

Until now, said the Yasser Farhan committee spokesman, the panel has only investigated the province of Lataquié, but will soon move to the neighboring provinces. The Committee will also interview pro-government armed men and Loyalists Assad in the care of the authorities. The results of the survey should be published in about two months.

“Peace remains fragile if justice is not obtained,” said Farhan, adding that he understood the skepticism of the Syrians of the investigation committees. During the Assad diet, such panels were used to hide crimes committed by the security forces.

“We have to go ahead with fast measures and just for responsibility if we want to stop culture to take your rights with your own hand,” he said.

But even with all this, attributing the blame will not be an easy task. To master what Al-Sharaa says, there is an attempted coup by Assad’s loyalists, he rallied not only his fighters from the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, but also dozens of other factions, including online militant groups with a variable loyalty to the new leaders of the country.

Thousands of people also have thousands of people wishing to take revenge on the Alawites, a minority which they blame for having empowered the brutal rule of Assad, even if most did not benefit from the old regime. Alawites follow a synchretic religion which is a branching of Shiite Islam. Iran has joined the Syrian civil war on the side of the government of Assad, overlying the sectarian tensions with the population of the Sunni mastery of Syria.

A full accounting of the victims has not yet been completed, but surveillance groups say that more than 1,300 people have been killed, including 211 members of the Syrian security forces and 228 civilians killed by the Loyalists of Assad.

Analysts say that punishing anyone who fought alongside the government could trigger a large -scale insurrection – a potentially fatal blow to an emerging government on these groups to guarantee its grip of the country. Others point out that the queue for justice in Syria is long: although the former executors of the regime have been captured, most of them remain free and have been authorized to live openly among the communities they have victims.

Among the Alawites, little believe that anyone will be taken into account – in particular with sectarian violence still in progress. On March 31, the first day of the Aid Al-Fitr holidays marking the end of Ramadan, two armed men masked by the military factions affiliated with the Syrian army executed six Alawites in the village of Haref Benemra, including the mayor and a child, the authorities announced.

Meanwhile, social media is flooded with factions reports entering the villages for looting, or kidnapping and killing local notables, including in Al-Sanobar.

“A faction kills and another steals … They all cover each other,” said Mayada.

A journey through the Syrian coast and the neighboring mountains reveals a chain of shocked communities, the electric tension of potential violence felt at each control point.

In the Allawite predominantly districts in the cities of Jableh and Banias, where some of the worst massacres took place, the residents hid inside and refused to speak to a visit journalist. The windows were either closed, degraded or both, the burned car envelopes bordering the side of the road. Other vehicles were abandoned, their windshields adorned with cobwebs revealing ball holes.

It was roughly the same along the highway that was heading for the coast, where the village after village showed signs of violence.

“I hid all this time. This is the only reason I survived. I only returned a few days, “said Yasser, a 35 -year -old car who survived damage to his store in the village of Barmaya. On the walls, someone had painted graffiti calling allawite dogs and apostates. Others have sworn: “By Allah, we will fight you.”

“There is a martyr in all the places you pass on the road here,” said Yasser, shaking your head.

During the killings in early March, around 8,000 people – most of them from Alaounite families – sought a shelter in the Khmeimim air base in Russia, six miles south of Al -Sanobar, according to the Russian authorities.

Many remain there, living in a tent camp but with few supplies. The Russians, on the other hand, clearly indicated that the residents had to leave. But many refused to do so without security guarantees or authorization so that the inhabitants take up arms and defend their communities.

“How can this government protect us? They can’t even protect the abandoned villages from looting,” said Nawras, a 38-year-old commercial ship who had taken her mother, sister and brother’s family to air base while staying with her own wife on the outskirts of the base. He gave his first name to avoid reprisals against his family.

“You cannot impose control, and you don’t allow me to defend myself,” he said. “So you tell me to come and be killed. It’s as if you were doing me. “

Although Mayada stays at home, the feeling of security has disappeared. She and her family were alert of each sound, fearing that any time could bring pro-government armed men at home. She spoke in a tone tired of how no one in the village was authorized to bury their dead.

“They just took all the corpses and put them in a pit near the village sanctuary,” she said.

“There is not even a sign.”