Sectarian killings of civilians this month have exposed the government's weak control over both its own forces and the militants it allies with, experts say.
Syria's new president has frequently spoken of the urgent need to unite the many armed groups fighting to overthrow authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad into a single national army.
But the violence that erupted in northwest Syria this month, killing hundreds of civilians, has made clear how far that goal is. Instead, it has exposed the government’s lack of control over the forces nominally under its command and its inability to control other armed groups, experts say.
The outbreak began when rebels allied with Assad's ousted dictatorship attacked government forces on March 6 in separate locations in two coastal provinces that are the heartland of Syria's Alawite minority. The government responded with a broad mobilization of its security forces, joined by other armed groups and armed civilians, according to witnesses, rights groups and analysts who have monitored the violence.
Groups of these fighters — some nominally under government control, others outside it — fanned out across Tartus and Latakia provinces, killing suspected rebels opposed to the new government, rights groups said. But they also shelled residential areas, burned and looted homes, and carried out sectarian killings of Alawite civilians, rights groups said.
The new government’s leaders and the fighters who now serve in its security forces are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims in Syria, while the civilian victims of this wave of violence have been overwhelmingly Alawites, a minority sect affiliated with Shia Islam. The Assad family is Alawite, and during its five decades of rule in Syria, it has often prioritized members of the minority community for security and military positions, meaning that many Sunnis associate Alawites with the old regime and its brutal attacks on their communities during the country’s 13-year civil war.
