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Mostly Turkestan... Foreign Fighters Assume Security Tasks in Rural Homs
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The arrival of foreign elements to an area of community sensitivity points to major challenges that may face the model of sectarian coexistence in Syria, necessitating the adoption of a model that gua
Reliable sources for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in Homs revealed the arrival of a new group of foreign armed men supporting the new Syrian administration to the Radar Battalion site in the strategically important Dahr al-Qusayr area in western rural Homs, a few days ago, coinciding with the issuance of directives imposing the withdrawal of General Security elements from the area and handing over their responsibilities to the incoming forces.
The Syrian Observatory activists emphasized the arrival of about 30 elements of various nationalities, mostly Turkestan, to the Radar Hill in Dahr al-Qusayr, amid reports of them taking on the task of securing the area, following violations by General Security elements (from new affiliates) against members of the Alawite sect in the adjacent surroundings.
Meanwhile, it is difficult to adapt to the presence of nationalities that do not speak Arabic, in addition to the religious extremism known among Chechen and Turkestan fighters, and their hostility toward members of other components.
It should be noted that the majority of the Alawite component residing in the mountains of western rural Homs have their daily living confined to their villages only, with most of them unable to move as usual between the countryside and the city, which has led to an economic and living crisis for them, especially in light of their continued disconnection from their jobs from which their services were terminated by an official decision from the Syrian Interim Caretaker Government.
These developments confirm the importance of adopting a governance model that guarantees the rights of all community components and protects their specificity, away from the policies of exclusion and marginalization that were prevalent under the previous regime headed by Bashar al-Assad.
Analysts point out that the continuation of policies restricting freedoms and movement for different community components reproduces the same mistakes committed by the previous regime, which led to the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a limited group at the expense of the rest of the components of Syrian society.
