Alawites

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Portrait of a Backstabbing Pasha

Erdoğan began his ascent to power as a social reformer in opposition to the power elite; he was a rabble-rouser for popular Islam and social welfare. Once he takes political power he enriches his family and the business elite and purges adversaries and rivals.
With political power and economic connections, he amasses personal wealth through illicit business transactions.

Is Saudi Arabia Regretting Its Support for Terrorism?

 
by PATRICK COCKBURN                           Counterpunch
It is a chilling five-minute film made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), showing its fighters stopping three large trucks on what looks like the main highway linking Syria and Iraq. A burly bearded gunmen takes the ID cards of the drivers who stand nervously in front of him.
“You are all Shia,” he says threateningly.

Syrian ‘rebels’ publicly execute Alawites in al-Raqqa

On March 4, 2013, ‘rebel’ groups overran government forces in al-Raqqa city, the first provincial capital and only urban center to fall to the armed groups since the start of the Western-backed insurgency in Syria. According to the Institute for the Study of War, “al-Raqqa serves as an important test case for how the opposition […]