That ultimately will have a longer-term effect: It will be difficult for Assad's government to carve out an Alawite bastion, as some critics suggest he is doing — and which government officials deny.
It also highlights the fact that Sunnis, who form the country's majority faith group, form Assad's chief power base, even as the rebellion is dominated by Sunnis. Minorities, like the Alawites, Shiites and Christians, mostly support the government or have remained neutral.
The displaced include a Muslim preacher, Mustafa Sobhi and his wife, Faten Shaar, who fled to a town in Tartous province after rebels burned down their pharmaceutical factory. Sobhi says the rebels in his hometown in the northern city of Aleppo punished him because his son, Majed, was in the army. Majed was killed in March last year.
Sobhi's other son now sells sandwiches outside a local university. The upper-middle-class family's fortunes were destroyed in the war, but they were safe in Tartous, Sobhi says.
"We have to be one hand," he says, sitting beside his wife on a thin mattress on the floor, the apartment's only furniture. A large poster of their slain son in his army uniform and another praising Assad hangs on the wall.
