Premonition or threat? A month before rogue militias massacred a large number of members of the Alawite minority to which the deposed president Bashar al-Assad belonged, community tensions were already palpable in Syria's coastal region, long considered a stronghold of the former regime. "If nothing changes, it's going to end up in a civil war, and the locals will take up arms," said an angry 40-something Alawite in Baniyas in early February. In this port city 280 kilometers northwest of Damascus, two communities live side by side but never mix. The Sunnis live in the southern districts, while the Alawites are in the north. About 50,000 inhabitants are divided by a roundabout, between a power station and an oil refinery that mark the two ends of the town.

The man, "employed in the energy sector," condemned the purges carried out by members of the new administration, which, according to him, were aimed exclusively at members of his community. He railed against the disbanding of al-Assad's army, "which is plunging tens of thousands of families into poverty," he said, as former soldiers are now deprived of a living. He feared the introduction of Sharia law by the country's new Islamist masters and "massive reprisals" against Syrians of the Alawite faith, a dissident branch of Shiite Islam.

He swore that he had never collaborated with the deposed president's security services, which had been responsible for thousands of deaths – mainly Sunni – in the region, during the suppression of the 2011 uprising and in the years of civil war that followed. "The only thing I can be blamed for," he said, "is keeping quiet. But then who didn't keep their mouth shut at that time?"

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