'We fear a new oppression' Alawites worry as uncertain future unfolds

To prepare khubeiza, the leaves of the kale-like plant must be roughly chopped and sauteed with onions, garlic and a dash of salt.

- William Christou

To prepare khubeiza, the leaves of the kale-like plant must be roughly chopped and sauteed with onions, garlic and a dash of salt. Folklore says the recipe originated among the Alawite communities who lived in Syria's mountainous coastline where the fibrous, wild-growing plant can be found in abundance. So poor were the Alawites during Ottoman times, the story goes, that the only food they could find to eat was khubeiza, which sprouts like a stubborn weed every spring.

When Hafez al-Assad, a member of the minority Islamic Alawite sect, seized the reins of power in 1971, he promised to lift the neglected community out of its poverty and end its hunger.

But 54 years later, the streets of Qardaha, Assad's birthplace, tell a story of a promise unfulfilled. The town is dotted with shabby blocks of flats, where families huddled around diesel-fed stoves complain of constant blackouts and how the municipal water supply only comes for half an hour, once a week.

"The only section of the Alawites who were enriched were those who cooperated with the regime. The rest of us are the lowest of all the Syrian people," said Mazen al-Kheir, an anaesthetist from Qardaha. He said the religious minority was among the poorest in Syria and, contrary to the Assad regime's rhetoric, received no favours from Alawite rule.