By Mustapha Ajbaili
The latest series of assassinations in Syria, including the recent murder of the son of the grand mufti, reveals a muddled and complex picture of the state of the uprising in the country. The killings could lead Syria spiraling down the path of a bloody civil war, with sectarian vendettas likely to characterize the next chapter of the revolution. If, however, it turns out that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is behind the targeted murders, these acts will likely backfire and unite religious sects against the regime.
The flashpoint city of Homs was last week the scene of several targeted assassinations. On Sept. 25, a surgeon at Homs’ general hospital, Hassan Eid, was shot dead as he got into his car. Aws Abdel Karim Khalil, a nuclear engineering specialist and charge d’affaires at al-Baath University, was gunned down as his wife drove him to work. Mohammad Ali Aqil, deputy dean of the architecture faculty, and Nael Dakhil, director of the military petrochemical school, were also killed last week, both the Syrian official news agency and activists reported.
Khalil and Eid are said to belong to the Alawite sect of Islam, to which Assad is also affiliated, while Aqil was a Shiite Muslim and Dakhil a Christian.
It is possible that armed dissidents were targeting suspected regime informants and collaborators. But it is equally possible that the regime was carrying out targeted killings against leading members of minority Shiite, Alawite and Christian sects to create tensions between them and the majority Sunni Muslims. If the revolution develops into a sectarian war, the regime will likely present itself as an independent party seeking to unite a divided nation and thus emerge as victorious in the mayhem.
Anti-government activists have repeatedly accused the regime of attempting to derail the revolution by pitting religious sects against each other. A statement posted on Syria’s Youth Forum (shababsyria.org) on Monday denied any knowledge of the person(s) behind the murder of the grand mufti’s son. Although the forum described the mufti as a “heretic apostate” who collaborates with the regime, it said Salafist Islamists and armed dissidents were unlikely to be behind his son’s death because these groups do not want to be seen as inciting sectarianism. Al-Ghad, a coalition of dissidents, has held the regime responsible for the targeted assassinations in Homs, according to AFP. The coalition said that these have “failed to provoke confessional discord in Homs and is again trying to arouse it by targeting these scientific personalities.”
But a statement by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggested that “extremists” possibly among dissidents could be responsible for the murders. The group called on “everyone to denounce and stop extremists from committing such acts of violence.”
Anti-government activists have repeatedly accused the regime of attempting to derail the revolution by pitting religious sects against each other. A statement posted on Syria’s Youth Forum (shababsyria.org) on Monday denied any knowledge of the person(s) behind the murder of the grand mufti’s son. Although the forum described the mufti as a “heretic apostate” who collaborates with the regime, it said Salafist Islamists and armed dissidents were unlikely to be behind his son’s death because these groups do not want to be seen as inciting sectarianism. Al-Ghad, a coalition of dissidents, has held the regime responsible for the targeted assassinations in Homs, according to AFP. The coalition said that these have “failed to provoke confessional discord in Homs and is again trying to arouse it by targeting these scientific personalities.”
But a statement by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggested that “extremists” possibly among dissidents could be responsible for the murders. The group called on “everyone to denounce and stop extremists from committing such acts of violence.”
(Published in http://english.alarabiya.net on Oct. 3, 2011.)
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