The Sunni-led Islamist rebels who toppled Syria’s Bashar al-Assad met elders within the frail president’s Alawite native land on Monday and obtained their beef up, in what residents said changed into an encouraging signal of tolerance from the nation’s novel rulers.
How the rebels take care of the sizeable Alawite inhabitants, who broadly backed Assad and from whom he drew his private presidential guards, is considered in Syria as a lithmus take a look at of whether or now now not the takeover of Damascus on Sunday ends in violent revenge in opposition to frail loyalists of a hated 5-decade regime.
The riot delegation visited Assad’s native land of Qardaha within the mountains of Latakia province in northwest Syria, meeting with dozens of religious males, elders and others on the metropolis corridor for a discussion, earlier than the Alawite notables signed a assertion of beef up, three residents said.
The residents said the delegation contained contributors of both Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Free Syrian Navy, Sunni groups that led the riot and that Assad had long said were terrorists who would massacre Alawites if he fell.
Syrians from the Alawite religion, an offshoot of Shi-ite Islam, assemble up about 10% of the nation’s inhabitants and are centred in Latakia province shut to the Mediterranean Sea and the border with Turkey.
Sunni Muslims are about 70 p.c of the inhabitants, and there are mammoth communities of Christians, Kurds, Druze and other groups.
The doc, considered by Reuters, underscored Syria’s religious and cultural selection. It additionally referred to as for inform police and companies to be restored as swiftly as that that it’s likely you’ll additionally bear in mind below the novel rulers, and agreed that any weapons held by Qardaha residents would be handed over.
The acquiescence of the elders changed into inserting signal of regime alternate in a metropolis that, locals rapid Reuters this week, for a long time hosted real funerals attributable to the numbers of loyalist opponents who were dying to defend Assad within the nation’s 13 year civil struggle.
“We verify the solidarity of the Syrian Arab Republic’s territory and religious and cultural selection and selection of belief,” said the assertion signed by around 30 of the metropolis’s notables. It changed into now now not signed by the rebels.
A spokesperson for the rebels did now now not right away acknowledge to a textual allege message soliciting for added crucial factors.
One resident, who declined to be named out of fears of retribution in a peaceable-hazardous discipline, said the discussion had helped to assuage the fears of the local inhabitants, constructing on statements by the rebels that they’d respect minority groups.
“It be one more actual step,” said the resident.
The assertion affirmed Qardaha’s “beef up for the novel route and a patriotic free Syria and our total cooperation” with HTS and Free Syrian Navy.
The it sounds as if cordial nature of the meeting is per a message of moderation communicated by the rebels, led by frail Al-Qaeda offshoot HTS, in cities equivalent to Aleppo as they swept toward Damascus remaining week.
HTS has governed the Syrian metropolis of Idlib and surrounding areas for plenty of years and has tried to distance itself from extra radical jihadist movements.
Many contributors of Syria’s sizeable minority religions fear turning into 2nd-class residents or going thru persecution below HTS, who are designated as terrorists by america and other world powers.
The HTS leader and mastermind of the riot offensive, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, said in an interview with PBS two years ago that the apprehension designation changed into unfair and that his movement posed no threat outside Syria.
A British minister on Monday said the nation changed into inspecting whether or now now not or now to now not remove HTS’ terrorist designation.
The residents said locals dismantled a statue of Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad earlier than the rebels arrived in Qardaha.
Later, some of us from the house, which is amongst Syria’s most impoverished areas, descended on Hafez al-Assad’s gigantic mausoleum in Qardaha and looted it, taking the total lot from tables and chairs to aircon devices, the residents said.
