BASSEM MROUE | ASP
Sunday 17 February 2013
BEIRUT: Pro-government gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 people in northwestern Syria in retaliation for the abduction of 42 Shiite Muslims this week, a move that could fuel more sectarian violence in the country, an activist group said Saturday.
The tit-for-tat kidnappings point to the dark sectarian overtones of Syria’s civil war, which pits a predominantly Sunni Muslim rebellion against a regime dominated by President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The country is also home to Christian, Kurdish, Armenian and Shiite communities, all of whom have been swept up in the conflict.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the spate of kidnappings this week took place in the northern province of Idlib, which borders Turkey. (Editor: This ‘Observatory’ is an anti-government outfit and ‘observes’ ‘one-sided’ views).
While many of the details remain murky, the abductions appeared to have a sectarian bent. Kidnapping for ransom has been widespread across Syria since the crisis began in March 2011, but sectarian and political abductions have been rare.
The Observatory said the 42 Shiites, mainly women and children, were snatched Thursday from a bus that was traveling from the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya to the capital Damascus. Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman, said it was not clear who took them, adding that Shiites have refused to give the names of those kidnapped or details about the bus.
Idlib-based activist Fadi Al-Yassin Al-Yassin said Foua and Kfarya are being used by the regime to bombard nearby villages and towns, saying the regime has turned them into “castles of shabiha,” referring to pro-government gunmen.
In retaliation for the bus kidnappings, members of the pro-government Popular Committees set up a checkpoint around the two Shiite villages and on Thursday and Friday were taking people from cars they stopped, the Observatory said. It added that most of the people abducted were from the Sunni villages of Saraqeb, Binnish, Sarmin, Qimnas, Maaret Al-Numan and Maaret Musreen.
Al-Yassin confirmed the kidnappings on both sides but added that the 300 figure is high. He said few dozens of people have been abducted in the area.
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Syria
I spoke with a survivor of an Iraqi kidnapping. He told me that at first the kidnappers (Sunnis) said: “You Shiah, if you want to live you have to pay us 25’000$.” When he told them that he was a Sunni brother, the kidnappers said: “Brother, please donate 25’000$ to our cause and we will set you free”.
Therefore the majority of kidnappings are purely criminal.