What reconciliation? What forgiveness?': Syria's deadly reckoning

"They huddled together in a small bedroom in their apartment as government troops and militiamen entered their neighbourhood of Qusour in the coastal city of Baniyas and went from house to house. The fighters seemed to be moving through the streets with little coordination. One house might get raided by five separate groups, while others were left untouched. There was no plan, Munir said, just violence and looting."

"The first question the fighters were asking when they stormed into an apartment was: Are you a Sunni or an Alawite? The answer decided the fate of the residents. Sunnis were spared although in some cases their apartments were looted. When the raiders found an Alawite home, some stole what they could carry and left; others had come for revenge and would steal first and then shoot. If one didn't kill you, the next one might, Munir said."

"Munir, a committed Marxist, had spent more than a decade as a prisoner in Bashar al-Assad's brutal prison system. When the regime ended in December last year, he was jubilant. But Munir is from an Alawite family, the sect that had been associated with the Assad regime since the 1970s. Members of the community had been involved in some of the worst atrocities of the civil war that broke out in 2011, including disappearances, imprisonment and torture."

Government troops and militiamen conducted uncoordinated house-to-house raids in Qusour, Baniyas, creating chaos, looting and selective violence. Fighters asked residents' sect before deciding fate; Sunnis were often spared while Alawite homes suffered theft, revenge shootings and killings. Munir, an Alawite and former political prisoner, experienced fear despite earlier jubilation at the regime's fall. The Alawite community's association with the Assad regime and involvement in wartime abuses fueled reprisals. Around Homs, Hama and mountain villages, arbitrary arrests, humiliations at checkpoints, kidnappings, killings and land disputes produced a climate of fear for returning and remaining civilians.

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