'We fear new oppression' Alawites worry over rebel rule

To prepare khubeiza, the leaves of the kale-like plant must be roughly chopped and sauteed with onions, garlic and a dash of salt. According to folklore, 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 in Ottoman times, the story goes, that the only food they could find to eat was khubeiza, which sprouts like a stubborn weed every spring.

- William Christou

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

Fifty-four years later, the streets of the town of Qardaha, the birthplace of Assad, 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 [Assad] 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.

Instead, he said the space for dissent under the despotic Syrian regime was even more narrow for Alawites. Al-Kheir had been arrested for expressing opposition views.

"Threats that come from within the family are much more dangerous than those outside it," he said.