After the bloodshed, can Syria’s president unite his country?

The bloodbath that terrified Syrians expected after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December came at last. Responding to calls for jihad from mosques across the country on March 6th, thousands of Sunni fighters descended on the coast and slaughtered hundreds of Alawites, a small sect many Sunnis deem heretical and blame for propping up the Assads, Syria’s Alawite dictators, for half a century. In villages near the coastal city of Latakia, they filmed themselves climbing on the backs of men, making them bark like dogs before shooting them dead. Eyewitnesses describe streets strewn with bodies and rows of burnt-out homes. Hundreds of thousands fled to the woods, hills and to neighbouring Lebanon. More than 800 are thought to have been killed, including hundreds of civilians. “It’s a disaster zone,” says an observer who travelled from Damascus to Latakia.