By BILL SPINDLE LATAKIA, Syria—Flag-draped coffins depart from the drab military hospital here each morning these days, carrying the dead soldiers of the Syrian regime along winding rural roads to ancestral villages in the surrounding hill country. All along the way, women come out to the roadside to throw rice and rose petals at the passing caravan. Cheering men shoot machine guns in the air. Children shout, "God! Bashar! Syria!" in homage of President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian nation. They believe their native sons have sacrificed their lives to become "martyrs." These are Syria's Alawites, one of the more peculiar and least-known sects in the Middle East. Here in a country...
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