Syria reveals army deaths from militant campaign

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Syria reveals army deaths from militant campaign


Syrian army troops parade during a farewell ceremony at Riyyak airbase in the Bekaa valley, April 26, 2005. Syria is facing a violent campaign by Islamist militants and six border soldiers died after attacks from inside Iraq, a senior Syrian security official said on Thursday. (Jack Dabaghian/Reuters)

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria is facing a violent campaign by Islamist militants and six border soldiers died after attacks from inside Iraq, a senior Syrian security official said on Thursday.

This is the first time Syria has disclosed publicly details of the fight against militants, which intensified this year.

"We are conducting operations against terrorist cells and we have taken martyrs," Mohammad Mansoura, head of the Political Security branch of Syria's intelligence apparatus, told a closed door session of an international security conference on Iraq.
"Raids have yielded arsenals of weapons including suicide explosive belts.
"Our border forces have come under 100 attacks from inside Iraq. Six soldiers died and 17 where injured," Mansoura said.

A translation of Mansoura's speech was obtained by Reuters.
Mansoura said security forces had foiled several attacks in addition to the few known ones, such as the failed attempt to blow up the U.S. embassy in Damascus last year.
Mansoura dismissed U.S. accusations that Syria is letting militants cross into Iraq to fight U.S. forces there and repeated the official line that Islamist militants were as much a threat to Syria as to Iraq.

Syria is ruled by the secular Baath Party, which crushed a revolt led by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s.

Western diplomats have questioned whether Syria has softened its stance against militants as a way of countering U.S. pressure and showing that its secular system is the only guarantor of stability.

Mansoura said Syria was resolutely against the spread of militant Islamist influence in the region.

"We view the attacks that have spared nothing in Iraq as an attempt to destroy the Iraqi people and a threat that could expand to the region," Mansoura told the meeting.
Officials from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Britain and the United States are in the second day of closed talks aimed at coming up with security cooperation measures to help stop the violence in Iraq and attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Syria recently condemned attacks against Iraqi forces as "terrorism" and backed explicitly the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad for the first time.

Syria reveals army deaths from militant campaign - Yahoo! News

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Syria's ruling elite is mainly composed of the Alawites, which is a small and odd Islamic sect, while the majority of the population are Sunni Muslims, along with some Christians of different churches.

Hafez al Assad was an Alawite, his son Bashar as well, and the same goes for the majority of top officials of the Baath party.

Alawites:

Islamic sect, stemming from the Twelver Shi\'is. They live in Syria, mainly in the mountains near the city of Latakia, but many also live in the cities of Hama and Homs, and in recent decades there has been a migration to Damascus.

Alawites are often referred to as Nusayris.

Their exact number is not known, but estimated to be between 1.5 and 2.5 million. Most of them live from agriculture, but the Alawites are also central in the leadership of Syria, President Bashar al-Assad being an Alawite (similar to his late father, Hafez).

The Alawites are not Alevi, another religion, which usually is classified as a Shi'i-originated branch of Islam, with some 21 million adherents, mainly in Turkey.

Their name is a recent one — earlier they were known as Nusairis, Namiriya or Ansariyya. The names 'Nusairi' and 'Namiriya' came from their first theologian, Muhammadu bni Nusairi n-Namiri. The name 'Ansariyya' came from the mountain region in Syria where this sect lived.

TEACHINGS

In their view, Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, is the bearer of divine essence, and he is the second most elevated prophet (next to Muhammad).

The Alawites have 7 pillars in their religion. Five of these are similar to those of other Muslims, (the creed, the prayers, alms, pilgrimage to Mecca and fasting during the month of Ramadan), but the Alawites consider these as symbols, and therefore they do not practice what other Muslims consider as duties. The other 2 pillars are jihad, holy struggle, and waliya (devotion to Ali, and struggle against his enemies).

The Alawites celebrate the same festivals as most other Shi'is, like Id al-Fitr, Id al-Kabir and Ashura. But they also celebrate some of the same festivals as the Christians, like Christmas and Epiphany, as well as Nawruz, which originally is the Zoroastrian New Year.

Through their history, the Alawites have often been in conflict with the rulers as well as other Muslims, who often have claimed that they are not Muslims. The Alawites consider themselves to be moderate Shi'i Muslims.

HISTORY


857: Muhammadu bni Nusair claims to be the gate (Bab) or representative to the 10th imam among the Shi'is, Ali al Hadi.


10th century: The sect is firmly established by Husayn ibn Hamdan al-Khasibi, during the Shi'i Hamdanid dynasty of Aleppo.


1004: The Hamdanid dynasty falls, and the Alawites are driven out of Aleppo, and centuries of hardship begin.


12th century: The Alawites are badly treated by Crusaders.


1971: The Alawite Hafez al-Assad becomes president of Syria. This brought an end to the Alawites being outcasts in Syrian society. Since then their status has significantly improved, as have their living standards.


1974: The Lebanese leader of the Twelver Shi'is, Imam Musa al-Sadr, issues a legal decision saying that the Alawites are Shi'i Muslims.