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Brice's avatar

Very good piece, thank you. I wonder if the security forces also treated them better due to their poverty, VS the percieved wealth of some other alawite areas compared to the rest of the country.

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Gregory Waters's avatar

This could definitely be a part of it. There were a lot of Facebook posts by opposition fighters in those first weeks after liberations talking about how surprised they were by the poverty in the coast. It's also not a region where very many senior officers came from, so I don't think it really had the post-December Assadist undercurrent you saw in a lot of other places that tainted the whole population. But this question of why is something I intent to ask about when I return in November.

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