Shock and outrage are appropriate, but no one really has an excuse for being surprised at the dreadful scenes that have emerged from Syria’s western coastal region in recent days. The civilian death toll is now thought to be somewhere above 750, with over 1,000 people killed in total (Alawi sources place the number much higher). Around 125 members of the Damascus regime’s security forces have also died. Video clips, many of them filmed by the perpetrators, show people in civilian clothes being summarily executed by Islamist gunmen; the humiliation of Syrian Alawi men and women; and the inevitable Sunni jihadi battle cries of ‘Allahu Akbar.’
The specifics of the situation are important (more on that in a moment), but the non-specifics are no less crucial. What has just happened in western Syria is what happens when Sunni jihadi fighters encounter a non-Muslim civilian population which they have defined as an enemy. It is what Islamic State did to the Yazidi people of the Nineveh plains in the summer of 2014. It is what happened to Israeli Jews near Gaza in October 2023.
The fact that western governments have chosen to believe in recent months that the current Islamist rulers in Damascus exist somehow outside of the known patterns and practices of Sunni jihadi organisations should not obscure the simple, and terrible, truth: the massacre of civilians is an inherent element of the Sunni Islamist way of war.
A number of Syrian sources have told me in recent days that the present Islamist regime in Damascus harbours a particular hatred for Syria’s Alawis, who they habitually refer to by the insulting name of ‘Nusayris.’
The fact that western governments have chosen to believe in recent months that the current Islamist rulers in Damascus exist somehow outside of the known patterns and practices of Sunni jihadi organisations should not obscure the simple, and terrible, truth: the massacre of civilians is an inherent element of the Sunni Islamist way of war.
The present de facto President of Syria, Ahmed Sheraa, said in an interview in 2015 that in order to receive protection from the future Islamic regime that he and his comrades wished to establish, it would not be sufficient for Syria’s Alawis to renounce their support for the Assads. Rather, he said, they would need to ‘correct their doctrinal mistakes and embrace Islam.’ After which they would ‘become our brothers and we shall protect them as we protect ourselves.’ It is worth bearing this ominous warning in mind when considering the events of recent days.
The Alawis are a sect that emerged from Twelver Shia Islam in the ninth century, but which adopted beliefs which led to them being considered non-Muslims by both Sunni and Shia mainstream theology. Hafez Assad, Bashar’s father, and his closest colleagues emerged from this sect, and as a result, Syria was dominated by a core Alawi group for the half century of the Assad’s rule.
The majority of Alawis saw limited benefit from the rule of the Assads. But the fall of the dictator has placed them in a uniquely vulnerable situation. Unlike Syria’s Druze and Kurds, they do not possess defence organisations. And unlike the Christians of the country, they do not enjoy the concern and attention of elements in the West. Fifty years of Assad rule was sufficient time for a long litany of individual acts of humiliation and disregard to take place and to remain in the minds of many Syrian Sunnis as good justification for revenge. All this, coupled with the undoubted efforts of former regime elements to mobilise resistance to the new government, led to the events of recent days.
Regarding the specifics, the situation in Syria’s west had been building up to this point for some time. T, a Syrian Alawi woman now in Europe and hailing from a village in the Al-Ghab area of Syria’s Hama province, described to me a gradual increase of tensions beginning immediately after the fall of the Assads.
‘The attitude of this government towards Alawis is beyond any political orientation,’ she told me. ‘It’s ideological. Rooted in their thinking.’
T says there were widespread arrests of individual Alawis in the weeks preceding the latest events, and firings from workplaces. ‘But until now it wasn’t systematic,’ she said.
The trigger for the massacre was an attack on security forces loyal to the new regime, in the Jableh area of Latakia province, on 6 March. Thirteen members of the Damascus security forces were killed. Following this, troops and gunmen loyal to Damascus descended on the coastal area, and the killing commenced. The government’s response appears to have consisted of a number of discrete elements, namely a heavy-handed assault using heavy weapons on areas considered loyal to counter regime forces, attacks by jihadi gunmen on individuals they deem to be connected to forces loyal to the former regime, and straightforward sectarian attacks on Alawi civilians, including women and children.
What should be learned from all this? Firstly, and most importantly, that it is mistaken to regard HTS as the undisputed, legitimate rulers of Syria.
While it is not yet clear who was responsible for the incident in the Jableh area, it is likely to indeed have been the work of elements loyal to the former regime. There is considerable evidence that a nascent structure intent on insurgency has been assembled in Syria’s west. Voices favourable to the current authorities in Damascus maintain that this structure is controlled from outside Syria, specifically by Iran-linked elements in Iraq, and is headed by one General Ghaith Dalla, formerly of the Assad regime’s notorious Fourth Division.
Such claims are plausible. Iran lost heavily from the fall of Assad. Tehran remains the most skilled user of proxy military forces as a tool of policy in the Middle East. A group calling itself the ‘Syrian Islamic Resistance Front’ and professing loyalty to Iran announced itself earlier this month. It is not yet clear if this group had any connection to the attacks in Jableh. The existence of such a structure of course in no way contextualises, explains or justifies the massacres of civilians of recent days. But it should be borne in mind.
What should be learned from all this? Firstly, and most importantly, that it is mistaken to regard HTS as the undisputed, legitimate rulers of Syria. They are better seen as a Sunni jihadi group currently dominant in Damascus, but facing determined opposition from a variety of quarters and locations.
Secondly, that the practices of the ruling group and their evident attitudes towards non-Sunnis have not been transformed, and remain those of the Islamist and jihadi milieu from which they come. And lastly, and most tragically for the people of Syria of all sects, the situation in the country has not been resolved, and further strife almost certainly lies ahead.
