![]() ![]() Maybe in 10 years we will all be bored with fighting and learn how to coexist.” He paused, then added: “In 10 years maybe, not now.” “There will be either Alawites or Sunnis. Meanwhile, the killings and massacres will continue, until sectarian cleansing has been carried out in all of Syria’s cities and regions, he added. At least then we might end up with three states rather than 10,” he said. “Maybe if the regime lasts for a few more years we can agree on the shape of the new Syria. We’ll be massacring each other – tribes, Islamists and battalions. ![]() “It would be a disaster if the regime fell now: we would split into mini-states that would fight among each other. “I need Bashar to last for two more years,” said the businessman. ![]() On a cold autumn evening he sat in the courtyard of a newly built concrete house on the Turkish side of the Syrian border – the latest in a string of temporary homes since his house was razed by the Syrian government in the early days of the revolution. What remains of his wealth is being slowly drained by the families of his dead, injured and missing relatives, many of them languishing in refugee camps. A devout Salafi, he was once a rich man in Homs, but after two and half years of war, most of his fortune has been spent on arms and ammunition. The businessman is the shrewdest: a tall, wide-shouldered man with a square head and thinning hair. They are a businessman, a smuggler and an army defector who became respectively the political officer, treasurer and military commander of a once-formidable battalion in northern Syria. Their allies are at best unreliable, and at worst actively conspiring against them. Their villages and farm lands are lost to regime militias. Their resources are dwindling their families are shattered. The regime is far away, the jihadis are near – and seem unstoppable. Their alliances – and their goals – are shifting. Like many others, the three men are bewildered at what has become of their war. ![]()
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