By Nicolas Pelham
One summer morning in 2021 a debonair-looking man approached the crossing point into rebel-held Syria. As he left Turkey behind, Khaled al-Ahmed felt his chest tighten. He was a member of the Alawite sect, a minority group from which the Assad dynasty, which had ruled Syria for 50 years, was drawn. Until 2018 he had been a close adviser to Bashar al-Assad, the country’s president. Now he was about to enter territory controlled by Sunni Islamist rebels, many of whom would have been happy to see people like him executed.
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