How horror returned to Syria

Once again there is horror on the Syrian coast. The fighting began on Thursday, in the new government’s telling, after a broad uprising was launched by remnants of the old regime and allied militias. In a coordinated series of moves along Syria’s coastal areas and inland, dozens of checkpoints and bases of the new authorities were attacked all at once. Some coastal towns were set ablaze.

Overexcited commentators said this was the revenge of Bashar al-Assad, that a counter-revolution was in full swing, and that a new civil war, this time with a different outcome, was beginning.

The Syrian coast has a significant Alawi population — the sect from which much of the old regime, and the Assad family, hail. For years the Alawi have feared a massacre if the regime fell. Many young men from the coast used to be part of the old regime’s armed forces. When the old armies collapsed without a fight, they were sent home.