Syria, three years on: Revolution, narratives, and solidarity
“It was a miracle” – Yassin-Kassab insisted on the issue of sectarianism – “that, in a country in which sectarianism was kept alive to divide and rule for so many years, a non-sectarian freedom movement was born in 2011. The regime has an interest in the Alawi minority being scared of a sectarian conflict in order to secure their loyalty.” Talking about the situation he had witnessed on the ground, Yassin-Kassab then described what in his view has now become the day-to-day “normality” for the Syrian people: “as a journalist, you don’t need a fixer to find you an ‘interesting’ story: every single woman, child or man has a traumatising story of repression to tell. Torture, death, house burnings, people killed in front of their relatives, bombs falling on schools, hospitals and crops: it’s not special, it’s the normality.”