MENA Minorities

During a talk show on Qatari channel Al Jazeera the host Faisal al-Qasim asked the suggestive question, whether if it's permissible to kill Alawite civilians. The irony: al-Qasim himself is not Sunni, he is a Druze native of Suwaida'. On the same subject (but a bit more suffisticated) read an interesting posting by Sam Heller at Jihadology .

Over the last weekend Islamist forces led by Jabhat an-Nusra and the Islamic Front attacked and finally conquered the town of Kasab, which lays in the north of Syria's Latakia province on the Turkish border. It is a strategically important town, not only because it had been the only border crossing to Turkey left controlled by the regime - but also because it's capture enables a further penetration of the Alawite heartland from the North. Tempered hope in renewed Latakia offensive by Maya Gebeily, Now. Assassination of Hilal al-Assad During the capture of the town Hilal al-Assad,  a second cousin of  Bashar   al -Assad,  was killed.   Hilal al -Assad himself was the leader of the National Defence Forces in Latakia province . He was the grandchild of Ahmad al -Assad, the older half-brother of Hafiz al -Assad. This branch of the family has a long established reputation for it's criminal activities and Hilal al -Assad was like the proto...