UM HAYAN, a 48-year-old mother, used to travel the 30 kilometres (19 miles) from her home in the wooded hills of Jebel Turkman to Latakia city to buy clothes. There she gossiped with friends, stopping off for tea in various villages on the way back up. “Now the road has checkpoints and there is no contact between us,” she says. Her friends are members of an esoteric Shia sect known as the Alawites who make up 12% of the Syrian population, including President Bashar Assad.

Seen by many Syrians as a driving force behind the regime’s harsh tactics in the civil war, Alawites have come to feel unwelcome in much of the country. Now that is so even in Latakia, their home region along the Mediterranean, which had been relatively calm until recently. Some senior security chiefs have sent their families to the province. It could be where the regime plans to make its last stand, but it is looking less like a refuge these days. The rebels have made headway in the ethnically mixed province since they gathered local forces several months ago. “On a clear day you can see Latakia city,” says Abu Adnan, whose Hateen brigade has taken up position in an abandoned house. “And these are the Alawite villages,” he says, gesturing to settlements nestled just a few hundred metres away. Though the insurgent groups are small, poorly armed and not united, their knowledge of the mountainous terrain has helped them to take over eight Alawite villages. As the death toll on both sides rises and front lines divide Sunni and Alawite settlements, one-time neighbours become enemies. Animosity is likely to worsen. The majority of the local Alawites see the war as an Islamist uprising that presents a threat to their very existence. The situation is made worse by the growing religiosity of the fighters, says a lawyer from the region. Men in Alawite villages are forming armed popular committees. Some appear disillusioned with Mr Assad, angered by what they perceive as a lack of protection for their homes and the death of many sons in the armed forces.

Some rebel fighters have quietly set their sights on taking control of Qardaha, the home village of the Assad family, and, eventually, the city of Latakia. “We want to live together today, tomorrow and in the future,” says Abu Rayan, a leader of Hijra ila Allah, a moderately Islamist rebel group. “But with so many of our relatives dead, tortured and detained, few people feel the same.”

Many residents are rattled. Hassan, a father whose house lies in ruin at the front line, worries that local villages will see massacres like that in Houla, a small town near Homs where regime thugs murdered over 100 people in June. Another man says he fears revenge killings by the rebels. Sunnis in the area have long resented Alawite privileges doled out by the regime, including better public services and schools. Ill will goes back four decades to when Hafez Assad, the father of the current president, won power.

Sectarian tensions are still low compared with the neighbouring provinces of Idleb and Aleppo, where vicious fighting has raged for months. Many rebels in Latakia are also relatively liberal in outlook. “Our fight is with the regime, not the Alawites,” says Abu Adnan, the clean-shaven leader of Hateen, sitting with his fighters close to the front line as a helicopter circles overhead. “We understand there is a lot of pressure on them from Bashar.”