Sectarian kidnappings shake north Syria

BEIRUT -- A rural patch of north Syria has been shaken by a series of tit-for-tat, sectarian kidnappings, anti-regime activists said yesterday, highlighting how much the country's civil war has inflamed tensions between different religious groups.

While all activists agreed that kidnappings had spiked in recent days between armed men in neighboring Shia and Sunni Muslim villages, reports of the numbers kidnapped by both sides ranged from a few dozen to more than 300.

The kidnappings and the raw feelings they have provoked bode ill for the chances of reconciliation among Syrians, many of whom have come to see the civil war as either a sacred battle to advance their faith or a mortal struggle for the survival of their sect.

Since Syria's crisis began with protests calling for political reforms in March 2011, it has gradually grown more sectarian. Most of the rebels who have taken up arms to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad are from Syria's Sunni majority.

Assad himself is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam, and has heavily stocked his security forces with fellow Alawites and Shias.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalists among the rebels makes many among Syria's minorities -- including Alawites, Shias, Christians, Armenians and others -- fear that a rebel victory could leave them with no place in Syria.

The spate of kidnappings in recent days in the northern Idlib province, which lies along the border with Turkey, provides one example of how Syria's crisis has raised the specter of increasingly sectarian violence.

Local activists said Sunni-Shia tensions were rare in the area before Syria's crisis began, and that residents of the only two Shia villages, Fua and Kifarya.

Tensions rose, however, after the crisis began and opposition members armed themselves to fight back against Assad's harsh crackdown on dissent. Most of the Sunni villages embraced the uprising, while the Shias stood by the regime. Many say the government armed its supporters to help fight the rebels.

Kidnappings grew common last year, as rebels set up checkpoints to catch Shia they accused of being "shabiha," or pro-government militiamen, and Shia gunmen did the same to capture rebels they considered terrorists.

Most agree that the recent kidnappings started when unknown gunmen stopped a bus carrying Shia civilians and kidnapped all its passengers on Thursday. Many of the passengers were women and children and their kidnapping was seen as a harsh escalation, especially in the conservative culture of north Syria.