DEIR SHMAYEL, Syria – In the mountains east of Syria's Mediterranean coast, armed patrols are tracking down Assad supporters, masked gunmen are monitoring checkpoints, and residents fear that any strange face could be an informant.
“See those guys over there? I think they are watching me,” said Alaa Al-Rahy, watching from his balcony a trio of workers tending to a neighboring garden.
Al-Rahy, a landscape worker and Alawite activist, repaired damage to his brother's home in this village after it was looted in the days following the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. There was little sign of chaos now, but Al-Rahy still seemed uneasy. Several Alawite activists had been arrested in the area, he said, and he didn't trust the checkpoints at either end of the village to stop vigilantes. “They can come for you at any moment,” he said.
A man looks at products for sale in front of a Syrian government tank abandoned on a street in an Alawite neighborhood in Homs on December 26, 2024.
(Leo Correa/Associated Press)
Assad's fall sparked joy among many Syrians but also sparked distrust among his religious sect, the Alawites, a Shiite offshoot that makes up about 10% of the population. Alawites served as the backbone of the former government's military and intelligence command, but as a new Syria takes shape, the country's largest minority is struggling with its ties and past support for the hated dictator.
The Alawites have become a beleaguered community that will be excluded – if not persecuted – by the now-rising Sunni political class. It represents a stunning overthrow of a sect that had been at the forefront of Syria's ruling class and its ruthless security services for more than five decades.
Many Syrians accuse the Alawites of actively participating in the Assad government's atrocities and view them as the face of a war machine that has led to the killing and torture of hundreds of thousands of people.
Alawites now whisper of vigilante attacks and of neighbors forced to flee their homes at gunpoint. Activist groups have emerged on social media claiming to be documenting sectarian reckonings – kidnappings, killings, expulsions, robberies – that they fear have been carried out by factions colluding with the new ruling authorities.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group set up during the war to document violations, has counted 137 revenge killings since the start of the year, most of them in provinces with Alawites.
Children view an abandoned Syrian government tank in the Alawite neighborhood of Homs on December 26, 2024.
(Leo Correa/Associated Press)
Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the Islamist group that now runs the country, has vowed to protect Alawites and other minorities. They insist that incidents against Alawites are not a matter of official policy but are the fault of undisciplined individuals or factions and that the interim government will punish the perpetrators. Still, critics say there is little accountability as victims remain in limbo between the kaleidoscope of jihadist groups working with the new government and Hayat Tahrir al Sham's inability to monitor everywhere.
“The problem is that everyone speaks in the name of the Hayat, but if someone comes to your house or arrests you, there is no way to verify their identity,” said Ghadeer Al-Khayer, an Alawite who works for the Health Ministry .
Al-Khayer, a cheerful man with a serious voice, lives in Qardaha, the ancestral city of the Assad family, which is also home to the mausoleum of the deposed president's predecessor and father, Hafez. In recent weeks, Al-Khayer has observed groups of militants periodically attacking the mausoleum for vandalism; The building's walls are now covered with graffiti cursing Hafez Assad's soul and a bevy of revolutionary slogans. The interior shows signs of scorching; The coffin is nowhere to be found.
As a community leader here, Al-Khayer has taken a conciliatory stance toward the new Islamist government. He curses Assad as openly as any other rebel, dismissing the former dictator as an incompetent coward who implicated his Alawite compatriots in war crimes before abandoning them. He rejects the sectarian perspective that he says unfairly portrays Alawites as the sole or primary beneficiaries of Assad's rule.
“There was an Assad sect; it included Sunnis, Alawites, Christians and Druze. Those were the ones who benefited,” he said.
Alawite religious leader Sheikh Deeb Dayoub attends a community meeting in Qardaha, Syria, in December. February 17, 2024, to discuss local issues following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad's government.
(Leo Correa/Associated Press)
Al-Khayer pointed out that most Alawites are grindingly poor and that civil service or military service is the only path to financial security for them. And the Alawites, as a minority, at times found themselves exposed to attacks and persecution, particularly from Sunni jihadist rebels.
Although the new government appears willing to listen to Alawite concerns, resentment remains, with many pointing to the community's complicity in torture and war crimes – whether in the security services or in so-called thug gangs Picture – in the 14 years of conflict.
“The things that the people of this area did to us Sunnis would make you cry,” said Abu Stayf, a 37-year-old member of Hayat Tahrir al Sham in Latakia, who gave his nom de guerre for the following reasons: Security. He spoke of Alawite police officers beheading Sunni victims in the past in Idlib, his home province. “We should step on their heads for what they did, but Allah is Forgiving – and so are we.”
The reconciliation center in Jableh, Syria, where people can hand in their weapons and receive temporary ID cards so they can move freely.
(Nabih Bulos / Los Angeles Times)
The interim government has promised amnesty to those who served in the Syrian army and opened so-called reconciliation centers where soldiers and police can hand in their weapons. At the same time, it said that those involved in the “shedding of Syrian blood” would be held accountable.
In Jableh, a mixed Alawite-Sunni city known as a bastion of Assad support, thousands of men pushed and jostled to line up outside a government building. Once inside, they took a number, had their photo taken and registered. They would then surrender any weapons or other military equipment in their custody and receive a temporary card allowing them free movement within the country until they can be investigated and confiscated again.
“Look, we treat them better than they ever treated us,” said Moaz Abu Ahmad, a 27-year-old employee who records soldiers’ information for the new authorities. A Sunni like him, he added, would have quickly received a bullet in the head in any of Assad's gulags.
“But anyone involved in bloodshed and violence will be held accountable – but legally,” the employee said.
Yet there is little clarity about what that means. A few weeks later, a prominent Alawite general involved in the defense of the city of Aleppo, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, went to the reconciliation center in Jableh.
Syrians hand in their military equipment and weapons and register for ID cards at the reconciliation center in Jableh, Syria.
(Nabih Bulos / Los Angeles Times)
He was treated well, he said, but when he and other officers returned weeks later to demand identification, they were told to wait for instructions. He has gone into hiding, limited contact with his family and frequently moves from one friend's couch to another.
“I don’t have a passport or an ID card. I can not move. Every one of us officers feels lost. We just have no idea what they will do to us,” he said. He added that no one in the military establishment receives salaries, including retired veterans. “For many people here that means starvation,” he said.
Hayat Tahrir al Sham has deployed dragnets to capture those unwilling to surrender. According to a government statement, authorities arrested nearly 2,000 people in a five-day campaign in the city of Homs this month targeting “criminals who have harmed the Syrian people for 13 years and failed to hand in their weapons at (reconciliation) centers.”
“A number of suspects were arrested, we handed over those who were proven to have committed crimes to justice and released a number of others,” it said.
Some Alawites justify withholding weapons for protection, particularly as Hayat Tahrir al Sham suffers from a labor shortage that forces it to rely on more extreme groups within its coalition. The new rulers also refused to arm trusted Alawites with weapons to defend their own territories.
Employees of the new authorities in Syria photograph people who come to the center in Jableh to register for ID cards.
(Nabih Bulos / Los Angeles Times)
As unrest grows and Assad-era security personnel are sidelined, many fear a repeat of the Iraq scenario, when the mass removal of military personnel by U.S. officials after the invasion of Iraq sparked an armed insurgency.
There are signs that it may have already begun. On Wednesday, gunmen attacked a checkpoint near Jableh, killing two members of the new government's security forces. A group calling itself the People's Syrian Resistance, which rejects the new government, has called for dozens of attacks, including the killing of Hayat Tahrir al Sham members and ambushes of security convoys.
The insecurity has led many Alawites to conclude that the best solution is a complete secession of their areas into a separate territory and placing it under the care of a Western country such as France.
“If the state protects us, we have no problem with them. But that’s not happening,” said Al-Rahy, the Alawite activist. “These people are slaughtering us in the middle of our homes. We’re already divided – so let’s just cause division.”