Moronic Killing Goons

"Shabah" is Arabic for ghosts.  This is what Syria's President Bashar al-Assad's close kin called their black-windowed Mercedes S class cars.  Which came equipped with an arsenal of weapons.  The name was eventually adopted by the gunmen in reference to themselves, as Shabiha, known as fearful death squad militias.


To them go the kudos of having committed the worst atrocities during the more current episodes of the regime's efforts to hold back the tide of growing anger among the country's majority Sunni population.  The Shabiha are comprised of mostly Alawites, loyal to the Baath government of President al-Assad.  During this past year they have achieved the status of a state-endorsed militia.


They are financially recompensed for their fierce loyalty to the regime.  Money and loyalty do have a habit of going hand-in-hand.  At rallies in Damascus and other cities known to be loyal to the regime, the Shabiya hold up banners with familiar legends: "Assad: We are your Shabiha forever", and "Assad: your name is etched on our AK-47s".


"They were like monsters.  They had huge muscles, big bellies, big beards.  They were all very tall and frightening, and took steroids to pump up their bodies."  Wouldn't one expect that such terrifying thugs would be described by frightened Sunni villagers, speaking of the people who inhabit towns and villages close to their own, ascribing to them physical characteristics of fearful dimensions?


But this was no mere urban legend.  Those descriptive words were spoken by Dr. Mousab Azzawi, who operated a clinic in Latakia, and who treated some of the Shabiha.  "I had to talk to them like children, because the Shabiha likes people with low intelligence.  But that is what makes them so terrifying - the combination of brute strength and blind allegiance to the regime."


Dr. Azzawi no longer treats the Shabiha.  He no longer resides in Latakia.  He now lives in London, operating the Syrian Network for Human Rights.  He plays a video, where a posturing Shabiha militiaman boasts: "Bashar, do not be sad.  You have men who drink blood."


Those blood-suckers were out in full force in the last several weeks, cleansing villages of their inhabitants.  In their zeal to do duty to their dictator they did not hesitate to slit the throats of women and children, or alternately, hack them to death.  On occasion they take the mutilated bodies with them to bury the evidence of the massacre they have indulged in.


They have been described as killers on steroids.  As a "spare muscle clutching a gun.  They are the criminal class, smugglers of drugs, weapons and electronics.  Criminal class, business class, Syrian-style.  They entered the Sunni village of Qubair on Wednesday, following the government tanks that shelled houses, and cut telephone lines.


The military forcefully stopped members of the UN monitoring mission from entering the town.  No one stopped the Shabiha.