Security in Alawite regions in post-Assad Syria

Syria’s first post-Assad protests broke out on Dec. 25 after a video claiming to show the destruction of an Alawite shrine spread rapidly across Facebook. The video was quickly debunked as several weeks old, the shrine only partially damaged, and the damage occurring during the capture of Aleppo city rather than in an act of sectarian vandalism. But those first hours were enough to stir up the widespread fears lingering just below the surface among Syria’s Alawite minority, bringing many Alawites (as well as Sunnis) to the streets to denounce sectarianism. Rumors of apparently sectarian-motivated violations by Syria’s new security forces against minorities have been widespread since Dec. 9, the day after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad — rumors fueled by both pro-Assad fake news campaigns and the very real violations that had occurred within these communities. Many of these rumors are impossible to verify, while others are quickly disproven by fact-checking organizations like Verify-Sy. But the new government’s apparent use of extra-judicial executions of local ex-regime criminals has only cemented fears that innocent civilians are being targeted purely over their religion, while the lack of transparency has enabled others to impersonate security forces and carry out their own crimes. 

Tensions escalated further on the afternoon of Dec. 25 when ex-regime militia fighters ambushed security forces in the Tartous countryside. This was the second ambush of security forces in southern Tartous, but this time Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) responded much more forcefully, deploying units of its “Red Bands” special forces to begin a comprehensive operation against the suspect villages. The main target was Khirbet Maazah, home to both many ex-regime militia members and a prominent prison officer implicated in the murder of hundreds of detainees. As a man from the town adjacent to Maazah described it, “it is a village full of shabiha,” referring to armed gangs that supported the former regime. Security forces began a three-day operation there and in the bordering villages of Yahmour and Zarqat that saw shoot-outs in the streets, homes raided, and checkpoints erected at the entrances and exits. According to several local sources, Red Bands fighters raided homes where they suspected armed insurgents had sought refuge, seizing all electronic devices and in one case allegedly stealing valuables. Several civilians were wounded in the fighting, all of whom were quickly transported to Tartous’ hospital by the local HTS commander.

Despite the intensity of the fighting and reports from locals of the use of sectarian language and intimidation by Red Bands soldiers within Khirbet Maazah, Alawites living in the surrounding villages said that the security forces stationed there were polite and respectful. This dichotomy extends across the former regime strongholds of Tartous, Latakia, Homs, and Hama governorates. This author’s initial visit to the region in December, and subsequent interviews with Alawites and Ismailis across Tartous, Homs, and Hama in January, have reinforced this notion. Locals’ experiences between and within these regions have not been universal, with many of the confirmed violations appearing to stem more from a lack of professionalism when detaining wanted people than from explicitly sectarian motivations. Many crimes are being committed by gangs and civilians not affiliated with the new government, while some rank-and-file soldiers and local commanders have engaged in sectarian-based harassment and kidnappings of Alawite civilians.

The mosaic of security forces deployed across minority regions has contributed to the wide variance in experiences across these areas. According to both local testimonies and what is being reported online, Latakia governorate seems to be doing the best, with the major cities of Latakia and Jableh in particular experiencing both decent security and inter-faith reconciliation efforts. Tartous and Hama are next, with some flare-ups in villages home to particular ex-regime criminals, while Homs governorate appears to be the only region with some truly concerning developments and more overtly sectarian crimes. Understanding the patchwork of security forces deployed across the regions and the specific types of violations being reported is critical for any nuanced analysis of the challenges ahead.

Evolving Security Forces

HTS has relied on its own units and those of close allies to secure the four minority-dominated governorates. Central among these are the General Security units of the former Syrian Salvation Government’s Ministry of Interior. These forces are essentially more heavily armed police who have stepped in to provide support while new local police forces are still being formed. The Department of Military Operations (DMO) — the new umbrella command center that conducted the final offensive against the regime — has also deployed units across the country to assist the overstretched General Security and further plug gaps in security. DMO units conduct specific raids on armed cells, initially helped with patrolling cities, and at times man checkpoints. However, by late December many of these units were pulled out of coastal cities and confined to checkpoints and bases, replaced by growing local police forces. Most troublesome have been the foreign fighter groups within the DMO and HTS’s elite “Red Bands” unit, which leads many of the new government’s raids. Both of these groups are regularly accused of committing violations (usually harassment and intimidation, and rarely murders) against Alawites in the communities in which they are operating.

By contrast, the Syrian National Army (SNA) has been largely absent from Alawite regions, perhaps reflecting HTS’s desire to try to reduce the risk of violations against minorities. Only one SNA faction is known to have gone to the coast: on Dec. 25 a unit of Fursan Sharqiyah fighters operating within the General Security Directorate arrived in Tartous as part of a larger convoy helping to replace some DMO units. In the first weeks after the fall of the Assad regime, HTS also relied on some local factions to help secure their old hometowns across the country. This practice can be clearly seen in Salamiyah, Talkalakh, Qusayr, and Homs city.
 

In Salamiyah several HTS and HTS-allied opposition commanders from the region were assigned to oversee security in the newly liberated areas. Among these was the commander of the HTS-allied National Liberation Front’s 60th Division, Fadi Zouba, a well-respected secular Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander who oversaw one of the city’s first factions in 2012. In the eastern Salamiyah countryside, HTS’s Abu Sadam al-Hamawi manages security operations in the Berri Sharqi region, and like Fadi is reportedly well-liked by the Ismaili and Alawi population, according to an Ismaili civil society activist. Both of these commanders have been fully integrated into the new Salamiyah General Security detachments.

In Talkalakh, this process was less smooth. Two local SNA factions within the HTS-allied “Joint Forces” were initially sent to provide security to the Sunni-majority city, where they opened the first settlement center on Dec. 17. However, late on Dec. 19 a group of fighters was ambushed along the Lebanese border while responding to a fake distress call, leaving the commander of the Talkalakh Martyrs Battalion wounded and several men dead. In response, HTS sent a unit of General Security forces to Talkalakh to establish a joint operations center on Dec. 21. These forces then launched combing operations in the Alawite-dominated countryside for several days, during which time locals claimed the Talkalakh Martyrs Battalion harassed and threatened civilians.

In an apparent effort to address these violations, HTS first merged the battalion into one of its own brigades on Dec. 23, theoretically placing its commander, Hammoud Layla, under direct HTS control. Then, on Dec. 26, HTS went one step further, raiding the battalion’s headquarters and seizing their weapons, killing several men in the process. Abu Abbas al-Battar, the General Security head of the Talkalakh region, then met with the battalion’s leaders and local representatives from Talkalakh, after which he ordered the dissolution of the battalion as well as the complete disarmament of its members, and banned the formation of any faction in the area. However, it is clear that both the commander of the defunct battalion and at least some of his fighters have rejoined the General Security forces in the days since, and some social media pages that monitor violations accuse Layla of renewed attacks against Alawite civilians in the countryside. Most recently, a group of local forces reportedly under Layla’s command raided four villages along the Talkalakh-Tartous border on Jan. 17. Local Facebook pages claimed that, while some homes were searched “respectfully,” others were looted, men beaten, and 21 detained. During the raid some locals made calls to the Tartous General Security, which sent several trucks of their own members and forced the Talkalakh unit to leave. Most of the detained men were then released two days later.

Parts of Homs city seem to be on a similar path. Nasser al-Nahar, a former FSA commander in Homs’ Baba Amr neighborhood, had served as a long-time commander in the SNA’s Sultan Murad Division before being assigned security control in his neighborhood. Locals have repeatedly accused him and several other ex-SNA commanders in recent weeks of being behind many sectarian crimes inside the city. Similarly — though less contentious — the SNA’s Col. Basil Idris, another army defector and early founder of a Qusayr FSA faction, was assigned as the director of the Qusayr region. In this role, Col. Idris has repeatedly met with Christian leaders in the area. It seems that these men are not operating in their respective areas as part of their former SNA factions (the 242nd and 112th Brigades, respectively) but rather as a new faction of local opposition fighters. However, it is unclear if they have been formally folded into HTS or the General Security Directorate yet.
 

Tracking Violations

There have been explicitly sectarian violations — such as the destruction of a shrine in rural Hama by two Sunni civilians and cases of harassment at checkpoints — but the bulk of violations committed by security forces across Syria seem to be directed toward specific ex-regime elements. Of course, these attacks have sectarian undercurrents, with anti-Alawi slurs being directed at detained men, while other Alawite civilians even in the same village are left alone. There are multiple examples of this in Tartous, such as the aforementioned operation around Khirbet Maazah on Dec. 27. A few days later, security forces raided another nearby village, Beit Nour al-Deen, where locals reported that HTS fighters vandalized some homes and shouted sectarian slurs at their occupants, yet, as one local told the author, “in spite of all the terror at first, the HTS individuals are all remembered by their good manners and consideration when it comes to most civilians.”

Similarly, conditions in the cities of Latakia and Jableh are by all accounts good, with locals describing security forces as polite and well-behaved, while the HTS-assigned officials (many of whom are from these cities) have been deeply engaged in interfaith efforts since day one. Of course, street crime continues to occur on a near-daily basis, often in the form of thefts and extortion. “There are almost daily robberies and shop break-ins that I have heard of in Tartous,” one local told the author earlier this month. “I don't know if it's still considered a normal amount when you consider the dramatic shift in the country, but it is worrying.” Most of these crimes occur at night; as another local points out, “during the day everything is fine and nice, city life is normal, it’s just at night now that things can become dangerous.”

Of course, robberies and murders are not a new occurrence. Such crimes happened regularly under the Assad regime, often committed by shabiha and security forces against both Sunni and Alawi civilians, and were rarely punished given the perpetrators’ close ties to local security forces. Both of the men from Tartous who spoke of a rise in crime in the city also highlighted the quick response of security forces in dealing with criminals. Similar stories have been shared online in Latakia and rural Hama, where men kidnapped or extorted by criminals were able to quickly engage the support of the General Security Department. Rural east Hama in particular has suffered from repeated attempted thefts by criminals operating out of the desert, but the response by local forces has reportedly been quick and diligent. Locals in this area, a mix of Sunni, Ismaili, and Alawi, have consistently spoken highly of their new security officers and their rapid response and kind treatment of minorities. Videos and statements have been shared online showing local commanders scolding detained thieves for targeting minorities and those who “steal under the pretext of sectarianism” (e.g. claiming the victims are regime criminals).

Criminal gangs and individuals continue to look for security and governance gaps to exploit in this new era, resulting in many violations that clearly have no sectarian motivation. For example, at least four murders in Tartous city and its countryside in the past weeks were committed by Alawites, men either engaged in family disputes or trying to steal from others. In Hama, a woman was found murdered in the city of Salamiyah on Jan. 13, suspected of being killed by her husband who she was in the process of divorcing. Other crimes are being committed by Sunnis against other Sunnis, such as a significant case of extortion and violent threats that occurred between men from two neighboring villages in northern Homs in early January, which was ultimately arbitrated by security officials. Other reported crimes are not actually crimes, such as a case the author was told of involving an Alawite man who rented a home from another Alawite in Talkalakh, only to be evicted by a returning Sunni family, who, it turned out, were the actual owners of the house and had themselves been forcibly thrown out by local shabiha years earlier. There have also been cases of ex-shabiha trying to fuel sectarian tensions, such as the Dec. 25 kidnapping of a Sunni in Latakia city. The kidnappers were stopped by other local Alawites as they attempted to execute the man and dump his body on the edge of an Alawite neighborhood. It is not clear that these incitements are coordinated, although Syria’s new foreign minister warned Iran against using social media for sectarian incitement that same day.

Other more sectarian-oriented crimes by both individuals and security forces appear to have different underlying motivations. Cases of local retribution have been a serious issue in Homs and parts of Hama, where local Sunnis from towns that suffered massacres at the hands of neighboring Alawite militias have undertaken revenge killings. One significant case occurred on Jan. 8 in Tasnin, Homs, almost exactly 12 years after a major massacre in the town. Security forces responded by imposing a curfew on both Tasnin and the neighboring Alawite village where the victims were from, apparently in an effort to prevent any further escalation. For security forces, beating detainees and chanting sectarian slurs at former regime elements appear to be the most prevalent violations. However, both Sunnis and even detained opposition fighters have been filmed being beaten while being arrested. The ubiquitousness of the practice suggests it is less an issue of sectarianism and more a lack of professionalism among parts of the police.

One of the most pressing problems is not sectarian-motivated attacks, but rather the opaque process of targeting men who served in regime forces in general (most of whom, by the nature of the regime, are Alawite). In general, security force violations are targeted against men who are believed to have committed crimes (whether or not this is proven) rather than any Alawite that soldiers come across. The most egregious cases, and the ones that have fueled the most fear, are the kidnappings and executions of ex-regime members. Alawite and anti-HTS social media pages make no efforts to distinguish between genuine civilian victims and men who committed crimes under the regime, and HTS’s refusal to follow a transparent legal process where these victims are clearly identified and tried leaves the truth to be debated in the comments of social media posts.
 

The more serious crimes are generally occurring in the countryside where there is a more limited security presence and a higher concentration of ex-shabiha. On Jan. 8, three Alawite men were murdered in their farm outside the village of Ain Sharqiyeh, close to the old 107th Brigade base, now housing DMO fighters. Locals blamed “foreign fighters” in the base for the murders. A prominent local figure named Sheikh Saleh Mansour quickly met with the region’s General Security and DMO directors and reported back to the village with claims he was promised a thorough investigation and that the perpetrators would be brought to the village for justice. Perhaps a sign of how rare such a blatant murder of civilians is in this region, the crime triggered days of protests and unrest, with Sheikh Mansour publishing increasingly hostile rhetoric online. On Jan. 12, the governor of Latakia, Ahrar al-Sham’s Hassan Soufan, spent several hours in the village meeting with Mansour and locals. The next night a car fired on a security patrol in a nearby village, triggering a chase and calls from local Facebook pages for ex-militiamen to turn in their guns. On Jan. 14, a former regime militia commander ambushed a group of General Security members nearby, killing two and threatening to behead seven others who had been taken captive. HTS forces quickly intervened, freeing the prisoners and killing the militia leader.

The incident highlights the complex reality of security in the countryside, where men formerly close to regime forces — like Saleh Mansour himself and the former militia commander Bassem Hossam al-Din — have loudly voiced their support for the new government until they were challenged to actually mediate local conflicts. These ex-shabiha are desperate to present themselves as the only legitimate representatives of rural Alawites in a bid to ensure their own security from both the new government and the locals who they abused for so many years. However, there has been fierce debate on local Alawi community Facebook pages about why these men should be chosen to represent the community, with more urban professional Alawites calling for members of the educated class to have a say, rather than pseudo-religious sheikhs. Others have accused Saleh Mansour of being a “fake sheikh,” saying that he was a long-time army officer so deeply involved in corruption and theft from his soldiers that he was twice dismissed from his post during the war, until he was finally forced to retire in 2018, at which point he “rebranded” himself as a local sheikh in his hometown. Nevertheless, much of these problems would be avoided if the new government simply did more to prevent local security forces from kidnapping, killing, or harassing Alawites.

Priority Improvements

There are both positive and worrying signs around the current security situation and HTS’s approach to minority regions. Latakia seems to be doing quite well, with Tartous close behind, while Homs has by far the most cases of violations. However, this is a far cry from the massacres of minorities that many have predicted since 2011 if an Islamist opposition claimed victory. HTS officials have embarked on extensive outreach campaigns with representatives from all religious sects, and the Christian and Druze communities across western Syria appear overwhelmingly at peace. It is only in the Alawite communities where the hunt for criminals has resulted in recurring violations against civilians. Yet as one Alawite in Tartous told the author, “We are documenting individual cases when we expected massacres.” Still, there are three clear steps HTS can take in the short term to address the real violations being committed and alleviate the widespread fear and rumors among minorities and international observers:

1. HTS leaders need to seriously consider the long-term impacts of empowering SNA commanders, whose unchecked actions risk destabilizing local communities and hindering the removal of Western sanctions. The use of local commanders from the SNA in Homs seems to be a large factor in that governorate’s noticeably worse security situation. Unlike the ex-FSA commanders now operating in Salamiyah, the ex-SNA commanders listed above are all accused by locals of committing crimes against Alawite civilians (or in the case of Basil Idris, accused of not removing one of his officers who is responsible for a string of abuses). With the new security forces overstretched, HTS’s decision to rely on some SNA commanders with local ties to assist in managing their areas is understandable. But many of these men have been directly implicated in crimes against civilians — both Sunni Arab and Kurdish — in northern Aleppo. Empowering these men may help the state expand its reach in the short term, but their continued violations will destabilize these communities in the long run.
    

2. Similarly, the new Ministry of Defense must dedicate more resources toward monitoring local commanders and rank-and-file soldiers in minority regions. If the new leadership truly does want to avoid violations against civilians — as it appears they do — they must ensure that individual members and units are abiding by these guidelines. When security force members do commit violations, be it hitting a detainee or killing a civilian, they need to be publicly held accountable. Given the generally positive view of HTS forces by locals across many minority communities, this should not be a difficult task. Reining in the actions of Red Bands units during raids and confining foreign fighters to bases should alleviate most of these issues.

3. HTS needs to create a transparent judicial process including announcing who they have detained and why, and release these statements through an easily accessible official outlet. The new government is fully in the right to go after former regime elements who committed crimes, but this process must be done transparently, via courts, and without extrajudicial killings. In addition to the ethical issues with HTS’s current approach, the practice of killing these men in the shadows has opened the door for criminals to impersonate security personnel and to level false accusations against innocent men, creating widespread fear among minority communities. These fears have a real impact on how HTS is perceived domestically, but also on the international stage, where foreign governments will give increased weight to the voice of diaspora minority activists. It is already difficult for those within Syria to parse real events from rumors, and doubly so for those outside the country. Publicly announcing arrests and even executions through official channels would go a long way toward alleviating the rapid spread of rumors and fear among local populations.

This variance in experiences across Alawi regions is by itself strong evidence that the new government is not pursuing a blanket policy of sectarian revenge or punishment against Alawites. As the man from outside Khirbet Maazah described the situation, “cases of violations are followed up by intense outreach via HTS authorities, indicating that these are individual actions. … If they really wanted to kill us Alawites, why didn’t they kill civilians in Maazah?” Yet these individual violations themselves are unacceptable and detrimental to Syria’s future and must be urgently addressed, while the positive work of security forces against criminals must also be acknowledged.

The reality is that the Assad regime itself was built on a deeply sectarian structure extending across all facets of the Syrian security, political, social and economic state, privileging Alawites over others. Dismantling the regime also means dismantling these unequal structures of privilege that many (though not all) Alawites have benefited from for years. This dynamic is even playing out within the reforms of government ministries in the dismissal of “ghost employees” — the bloated payrolls that saw tens of thousands of mostly Alawite civilians granted government wages without actually holding a job. Meanwhile, the lack of a legitimate legal accountability process risks expanding persecution from Alawites affiliated with regime security forces to innocent Alawites. The challenge now is to not allow anti-regime sentiment to manifest into punitively anti-Alawite actions.

When assessing both the current security situation and the conduct of the new security forces, foreign officials would benefit from first differentiating security force behavior across regions, and secondly from distinguishing between violations committed by security forces and those carried out by criminals or locals. Robberies, murders, and extortion all occurred regularly under Assad’s rule, and no one should expect these crimes to evaporate two months after his sudden fall. Rather, assessments should be based on the professionalism (or lack thereof) of security forces, the speed at which they respond to reported crimes, and the transparency of their legal and justice systems. For their part, HTS must understand the importance foreign countries have placed on security and safety, especially for minorities, and the necessity of ensuring local commanders are actually enforcing the more professional guidelines set in Damascus while punishing anyone who engages in criminal activities.

Gregory Waters is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, a consultant for the International Crisis Group, and a research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project. His research focuses on the Syrian regime’s security forces, primarily utilizing open-source research to assess the capabilities and structure of the Syrian Arab Army and allied militias. You can follow him on Twitter @GregoryPWaters.

Main photo by Hassan Ridha on X, Jan. 3, 2025