Syria's new leaders struggle to rein in once-loyal militias

Hundreds of civilians murdered by militant groups as government calls for discipline go unheeded

- William Christou

When armed men entered Hayan's house last Friday, he thought he was going to be killed like his neighbours before him. Militants dragged him outside, threw him to the ground and started shooting right above his head, making it so he could no longer hear the insults they lobbed at him for being a member of the country's minority Islamic Alawite sect.

Hayan was lucky they chose merely to scare him - but by the time the rampage ended, 25 residents of the Alawite town of Salhab, north-west Syria, were dead. They included a 90-year-old local religious figure whom militants killed after forcing him to watch them murder his son.

Such massacres had become a feature of Syria's 14-year civil war, but Salhab's violence last week took place during some of the country's deadliest days since the beginning of the war itself. Besides the high death toll, what marked these killings as different and a dark omen for the country's future is that many were carried out by militants nominally a part of the new Syrian army created by the country's new president.

The massacres brought into question the ability of Syria's government to control its ranks and the challenges of reining in the patchwork of militias that currently control the country.