By Timour Azhari
DAMASCUS (Reuters) – The Sunni-led Islamist rebels who toppled Syria’s Bashar al-Assad met elders in the former president’s Alawite hometown on Monday and received their support, in what residents said was an encouraging sign of tolerance from the country’s new rulers.
How the rebels treat the sizeable Alawite population, who widely backed Assad and from whom he drew his personal presidential guards, is seen in Syria as a lithmus test of whether the takeover of Damascus on Sunday leads to violent revenge against former loyalists of a hated five-decade regime.
The rebel delegation visited Assad’s hometown of Qardaha in the mountains of Latakia province in northwest Syria, meeting with dozens of religious men, elders and others at the town hall for a discussion, before the Alawite notables signed a statement of support, three residents said.
The residents said the delegation contained members of both Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Free Syrian Army, Sunni groups that led the rebellion 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, make up about 10% of the country’s population and are centred in Latakia province close to the Mediterranean Sea and the border with Turkey.
Sunni Muslims are about 70 percent of the population, and there are substantial communities of Christians, Kurds, Druze and other groups.
The document, seen by Reuters, underscored Syria’s religious and cultural diversity. It also called for state police and services to be restored as quickly as possible under the new rulers, and agreed that any weapons held by Qardaha residents would be handed over.
The acquiescence of the elders was striking sign of regime change in a town that, locals told Reuters this week, for many years hosted continuous funerals due to the numbers of loyalist fighters who were dying to defend Assad in the country’s 13 year civil war.
“We affirm the unity of the Syrian Arab Republic’s territory and religious and cultural diversity and diversity of thought,” said the statement signed by around 30 of the town’s notables. It was not signed by the rebels.
A spokesperson for the rebels did not immediately respond to a text message asking for more details.
One resident, who declined to be named out of fears of retribution in a still-volatile situation, said the discussion had helped to assuage the fears of the local population, building on statements by the rebels that they would respect minority groups.
“It’s another good step,” said the resident.
The statement affirmed Qardaha’s “support for the new path and a patriotic free Syria and our complete cooperation” with HTS and Free Syrian Army.
The apparently cordial nature of the meeting is in line with a message of moderation communicated by the rebels, led by former Al-Qaeda offshoot HTS, in cities such as Aleppo as they swept toward Damascus last week.
HTS has governed the Syrian city of Idlib and surrounding areas for several years and has tried to distance itself from more radical jihadist movements.
Many members of Syria’s sizeable minority religions fear becoming second-class citizens or facing persecution under HTS, who are designated as terrorists by the United States and other world powers.
The HTS leader and mastermind of the rebel offensive, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, said in a 2021 interview with PBS that the terror designation was unfair and that his movement posed no threat outside Syria.
A British minister on Monday said the country was examining whether or not to remove HTS’ terrorist designation.
The residents said locals dismantled a statue of Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad before the rebels arrived in Qardaha.
Later, some people from the area, which is among Syria’s most impoverished regions, descended on Hafez al-Assad’s grand mausoleum in Qardaha and looted it, taking everything from tables and chairs to air conditioning units, the residents said.
(Reporting by Timour Azhari; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
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