Deadly violence in Syria’s Alawite heartland is the worst since rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad in December.
Syrian bloodshed heaps pressure on Sharaa and exposes deep fractures
EPAThe violence of the last four days in Syria is the worst in the country since an Islamist-led rebel offensive toppled Bashar al-Assad in December, and the most serious challenge to the efforts of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa to consolidate his power.
The post-Assad era started with high hopes and relative calm but, as Syria remains deeply fractured, many feared that an explosion of tensions was almost inevitable.
With the regime gone, putting an end of more than five decades of Assad family rule, rebels arrived in Damascus from Idlib, a region in Syria’s north-west that for years was the only opposition-controlled province in the country.
The rebels were catapulted into positions once controlled by hand-picked Assad supporters and, led by al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), were in charge of a country devastated by 13 years of civil war.
The dismantling of the security apparatus behind the oppressive machine of the Assads, including the country’s army and the ruling Baath party, meant the sacking of hundreds of thousands of people.
Among them were large numbers of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam to which the Assad family belong. Under the Assads, they held prominent positions.
Now, under Sunni Muslim-led authorities, they have lost their power and privilege, and say they have been under attack and discrimination, despite Sharaa’s pledges to respect different religious sects.
In January, just over a month after Assad’s fall, I met a rebel around 30 years old who had recently been appointed as a high-profile security official.
In the nearly empty interior ministry headquarters in Damascus, he welcomed me to a room where any sign of the old regime had been removed.
Tall and shy, the official made notes on his iPad while acknowledging that the new rulers faced enormous challenges, including resistance by Assad loyalists. He requested anonymity to be able to discuss sensitive issues.
“There are Assad-affiliated people who haven’t engaged with the reconciliation process,” he said, citing the new authorities’ call for former members of the security forces to surrender their weapons and ties to the old government.
“Our eyes are on everyone, but we don’t want to give the impression that we’re after them. That’s why there haven’t been massive raids.”
He also mentioned the threat from Sharaa’s more radical supporters, who were frustrated with the pragmatic and conciliatory tone of a man who led al-Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate.
Syria’s new leader has tried to convince everyone, especially in the West, that he is a reformed man and that his jihadist ideologies remain in the past.
“We recognise that this is a problem,” the official said, adding: “we’re going to [have to] deal with it.”
For weeks, violence against government forces was on the rise, particularly in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartous – the Alawite heartland and a stronghold for Assad supporters. An insurgency seemed to be growing but the clashes were relatively contained. Until Thursday.
As forces linked to the government carried out an operation in the countryside of Latakia, targeting a former Assad official, they were ambushed by gunmen in Jableh. A regional official described it as a well-planned attack carried out by “remnants of the Assad militias”, with reports that about 4,000 men were involved.
To curb the rebellion, the authorities sent reinforcements, who were also joined by militias who were not necessarily responding to the orders from Damascus. The operation turned into revenge killings of a sectarian nature: after decades of brutality under the Assads in the mainly Sunni country, many associate Alawites with the old regime.
A widely shared video showed the bodies of at least two dozen men in civilian clothing, piled in the yard of a house, in the Alawite town of Mukhtareyah. Elsewhere, accounts emerged of fighters searching for Alawite members and killing entire families on the spot.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, more than 1,300 people have been killed in Latakia, Tartous, Hama and Homs provinces, a number that includes 973 civilians and hundreds of members of the Syrian security forces and Assad loyalists. The information could not be independently verified.
EPASharaa’s office announced the creation of an independent committee to investigate the clashes and killings by both sides, saying that he would hold to account anyone who overstepped their authority. “No-one will be above the law,” he said in a video speech.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, said former Assad regime members were likely to form the most effective insurgent cells against Syria’s new rulers with the ability to co-ordinate attacks.
“[They] already have pre-existing networks that they can leverage to rapidly organise insurgent cells. These networks are military, intelligence, and political networks and criminal syndicates who were regime supporters and lost significant economic and political influence in the aftermath of Assad’s fall,” a report said.
The bloodshed will add to the pressure on Sharaa, whose forces do not control the whole of Syria, and where myriad factions – supported by different countries – exercise power over different regions.
Turkish-backed groups are clashing with Kurdish forces that control large areas in north-east, while Israeli troops are occupying parts of the country’s south-west. The authorities have also faced resistance from Druze forces in the south, although a deal was reached last week.
However, Sharaa’s challenges go beyond the task of trying to keep the country safe. As Western suspicions over his intentions continue, the authorities are struggling to get crippling sanctions imposed on Syria under the former regime lifted, a vital move to revive the economy of a country where nine in every 10 people are in poverty. The recent violence will make those efforts even harder.
