In the western mountains of Syria, part of the ancestral homeland of President Bashar al-Assad and his minority Alawite sect, not a day goes by without a funeral. The casualties are the fallen footsoldiers of the president's army. The mourners are the friends, family members and true believers of a regime that they see as the best protector of their country and their minority sect.
Alawites, or "the followers of Ali," are a small, little-known religious community that make up about 12 percent of the Syria's population but control the government of this Sunni-majority country. An offshoot of Shia Islam, Alawites are sometimes treated as heretics by Sunni Muslims.
The BBC's Lyse Doucet reports on the Syrian conflict from the perspective of the Alawite heartland.
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