Syria’s Sectarian Strife Woven with Twisted Fortunes and Cruel Ironies

 

What occurred on March 6 off the Syrian coast has long been anticipated following the downfall of the Assad regime. However, it unfolded several weeks later. The accurate prediction of violence on the Syrian coast did not require exceptional foresight but was tragically Pavlovian. The defeat of Assad's forces, primarily supported by the Alawites, at the hands of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Muslim-dominated group, had set the conditions for a sectarian conflict. "Syria: Fear vs. Fear,"* a blogpost by Fadwa Abboud published in Al Modon, translates sectarian fear into personal and individual narratives. 

 

Various narratives explain why violence erupted on the Syrian coast, resulting in the loss of 500 young men from the General Security Forces and over 2,000 civilians. Different reports describe the background against which the violence unfolded and the brutality the victims endured before their deaths, citing "the aftermath of that fateful night revealed horrific scenes of children and women murdered in their beds." There were also reports of "bloodthirsty criminals and bandits who have taken advantage of General Security's focus on combating the remnants of the old regime and infiltrated civilians' homes."

 

Fadwa Abboud depicts a profoundly moving human experience through images and scenes familiar to Syrians: a mother sits beside the bodies of her three children, covering them as she once did during their childhood after they completed their homework and went to sleep. Fadwa recalls another evocative scene: a deceased mother in Daraya surrounded by her children while the insensitive broadcaster Micheline Azar reports on the event. A third image depicts a different mother who watches over the bodies of her two sons and her grandson throughout the night.

 

Historical narratives often contain “twisted ironies” and cruel “reversed fortunes.” Abboud describes one such instance with her neighbor, who knocked on the door with his wife and two daughters. She writes, “In his eyes was a plea for protection, as I now belong to the strongest blood type! Before, in 2012, I sought refuge from my Alawite neighbor, who defended me. I calmed myself, struggling to hide my fear.” Not missing the irony, Abboud muses that she, previously considered vulnerable due to her Sunni background, has now traded positions with the Alawaite neighbor from whom she had sought protection. As for how she feels about this changed dynamic: "Shame on me and my neighbor." 

 

Abboud questions the origins of hatred, from how it developed and where it began. She envisions Syria as a bird whose wings had been clipped and severed, making each flap go in a different direction until the bird fell, broken, on March 6. She asks, “How can history repeat itself as a tragedy, the first time in 2011 and the second time in 2025?” Perhaps she subconsciously echoes the words of Karl Marx, who famously posited, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

 

Abboud also delves into her personal experiences shaped by the war, revisiting her time as a teacher and the journeys of two former students, one Sunni and the other Alawaite, who grew up to be preachers and regime loyalists, respectively. Similar to the tale of the two neighbors whose fortunes were reversed by war, Abboud’s two former students also had their roles ironically switched by the forces of fate and politics.

 

In the first encounter, Abboud ran into one of her former students, who approached her and greeted her, saying, "I know you."  Abboud recognized him as one of her former students from 2004 to 2008. He informed her that he had failed his studies. He congratulated her on the liberation and said the time had come to spread a divine message. Then, with eyes full of astonishment, he continued, "The sword in one hand and the Quran in the other." Her disappointment could not have come sooner: “Two days after that coincidence, I watched a short video of him in a da'wah car, touring a neighborhood in Damascus and urging people to seek guidance through a loudspeaker.”

 

When Abboud’s teaching location shifted from Ghouta, which had been reduced to rubble and had become a bleak part of Syria, she recalled another student telling her he was willing to kill himself for Bashar and another boasting he would "loot" the homes of these "terrorist agents." In her view, this student, who spoke enthusiastically, was not so different from the student who wanted to “carry a sword in one hand and a Quran in the other.” Both had an “absent outlook,” seemingly connected by something “alien to their lives, and their existence remained anchored in this fear.”

 

In the end, these two students’ roles were reversed, leaving “one with his hands bound, the other with a gun pointed at his head,” writes Abboud.  “Here they are, facing each other without any prior acquaintance. Each views the other through the eyes of Assad. Only a change of positions has occurred. The first was displaced and tortured because he was presumed to be a terrorist, while the second was killed due to assumptions about his affiliation with the Assad sect. Only the fear, confusion, and distorted perceptions they held of each other can explain much of what transpired that night on the Syrian coast, the day the two wings approached, when fate decreed that the encounter would be bloody for both.”