Syria’s New Rulers Tortured Me. Now They Are Targeting My Friends.
Syrian Alawite refugees cross the Nahr al-Kabir river into the Lebanese village of Hekr El Dahri. (Marwan Naamani via Getty Images)
My captors dreamed of total rule. Now, the Alawites and the Christians live under their nightmare.
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My friend Ali, who lives in the coastal mountains of Syria, is currently confronting a version of the dilemma Jews in Eastern Europe would have confronted in the spring of 1939, as the German tanks rolled into Prague.
It is clear he and the some three million Alawites who live in those mountains are in mortal danger because of the Islamist terrorists who now rule Syria. That the threat is worsening by the day. But his family—Alawites who have lived there for centuries, long before the Assad family assumed power—know no other home.
Should he run?
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