{"id":17896,"date":"2013-05-21T02:38:09","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T06:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=17896"},"modified":"2013-05-21T02:38:09","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T06:38:09","slug":"syria-rebels-threaten-to-wipe-out-shiite-alawite-towns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/05\/syria-rebels-threaten-to-wipe-out-shiite-alawite-towns\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria Rebels Threaten to Wipe Out Shiite, Alawite Towns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Syrian uprising began with peaceful protests that evolved into a civil war after the government began attacking the demonstrators. Photographer: Dimitar Dilkoff\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By\u00a0Dana El Baltaji<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Alawite minority will be \u201cwiped off the map\u201d if the strategic city of Al-Qusair in central\u00a0Syria\u00a0falls to government troops, rebel forces said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,\u201d Colonel Abdel-Hamid Zakaria, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in\u00a0Turkey, told Al-Arabiya television yesterday. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Fighter planes and heavy artillery pounded the city today, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail. It said two people were killed during clashes between rebels and government troops backed by Hezbollah fighters, bringing the death toll from clashes at Al-Qusair in the last three days to more than 90.<\/span><\/p>\n

Al-Qusair is close to the highway linking Damascus to the coast and has been a conduit for weapons from Lebanon to the rebels. The government offensive began with attacks on villages on the city\u2019s outskirts last month.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bassam al-Dada, a political adviser to the Free Syrian Army, said from Istanbul yesterday that Assad\u2019s forces were still at the outskirts of the city. \u201cOur people are still fighting inside and very strongly, but it\u2019s not an easy situation,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Major Setback\u2019<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cFailure to hold the town would be a major setback for opposition forces, impacting their ability to maintain clear lines of supply between safe havens in Lebanon and combat units in Syria,\u201d said David Hartwell, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Jane\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, is increasingly dividing the country and the surrounding region along religious lines.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Shiite-led Iran have been key allies of the Assad government, whose upper ranks come from the Alawite sect, derived from Shiite Islam. Leaders of the rebel army and political opposition are mostly Sunni, and they are backed by key Sunni powers including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Salman Bin Abdul Aziz is in Turkey to meet President Abdullah Gul and Foreign Minister\u00a0Ahmet Davutoglu\u00a0today, according to Turkey\u2019s state-run Anatolia news agency. The trip comes days after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met U.S. President\u00a0Barack Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emergency Meeting<\/span><\/h2>\n

The Arab League will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss Syria at the request of Qatar, Egypt\u2019s state-run Middle East News Agency reported. Talks will focus on Al-Qusair and the participation of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the fighting, the agency cited an unidentified league official as saying. Hezbollah is backed by Iran and is classified as a terrorist group by Israel and the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hezbollah\u2019s open involvement in the Syrian crisis is worrying because it pits the militia against Sunni extremist groups, according to Hartwell.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it may suit states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even the United States to see this type of sectarian conflict develop as a means of retarding the regional influence of\u00a0Iran\u00a0(via Hezbollah) and al-Qaeda, the results in terms of long-term regional instability could be dramatic,\u201d Hartwell said in an e-mailed note.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is returning to the Middle East this week and is seeking to promote peace talks. Syrian opposition leaders, due to meet May 23 in Istanbul to choose a new leader, have rejected attendance at any peace conference that includes Assad or his inner circle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Syrian uprising began with peaceful protests that evolved into a civil war after the government began attacking the demonstrators. Radical Islamists, some with ties to al-Qaeda, have since joined the fight against Assad.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fuente<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Dana El Baltaji Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s Alawite minority will be \u201cwiped off the map\u201d if the strategic city of..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[228,197,226,199,201,265,269,277,284],"class_list":["post-17896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-colonialism","tag-imperialism","tag-imperialist-war","tag-iran","tag-lebanon","tag-qatar","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-syria","tag-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ied5iafdzrim.jpg?fit=640%2C426&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}