'Democracy' coming to Syria: "He was found killed & his head was chopped off"

"...Here it is not so much a fight between armed defectors and government security forces, or protesters defying a crackdown. Rather, the struggle in Homs has dragged the communities themselves into a battle that residents fear, even as they accuse the government of trying to incite it as a way to divide and rule the diverse country.
Fear has become so pronounced that, residents say, Alawites wear Christian crosses to avoid being abducted or killed when passing through the most restive Sunni neighborhoods, where garbage has piled up in a sign of the city’s dysfunction.
“It is so sad that we reached this point,” said a Syrian priest who lives in Lebanon but maintains close relations with people in Homs, in particular the Christian community...
Even as the death toll has dropped in Homs in recent days, the sectarian strife seems to have gathered a relentless momentum that has defied the attempts of both Sunni and Alawite residents to stanch it. One prominent Sunni activist, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, used the term shabeeha — an Arabic word that refers to government paramilitaries — to describe the situation evolving inside Homs. “There are shabeeha on both sides now,” he said. He blamed the government for fomenting the sectarian tension, but added, “I feel disgusted at what’s happening in Syria, and I am afraid of what might happen next.”... ... ...
“I’m against the regime,” he said. But, he added: “Now I am being critical of some of the revolutionaries. We are against the regime and we want it to fall, but the revolutionaries need to present a better and more beautiful alternative. And if the opposition is going to be similar to the regime, it’s going to be dangerous.”...
“My cousin was kidnapped, and he was a civilian Alawite,” said a dissident activist from the Alawite neighborhood of Al Zahra in Homs, where locales are often largely segregated by sect. “He was found killed and his head was chopped off.”
Christians in Homs seem to have tried to stay neutral, an admittedly difficult task.
“We’d rather emigrate than hold weapons and be part of a civil war,” said a Christian in a telephone interview who gave his name as Hisham and whose mother-in-law had already fled Homs...“There is no room for us, or for the educated Sunnis, in a civil war,” said his wife, who gave her name as Hiyam, also speaking by telephone. “A civil war means emigrating.”