It was only a matter of time until the Haya’t Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) gunmen of Syria’s post-Assad interim government resorted to violence against non-Sunni Muslims.
Reports emerged early on 9 March about large-scale round-ups, home invasions and subsequent street executions of Alawite Syrians. On 6 and 7 March, more than 800 members of the former ruling Alawite sect (a schismatic branch of Shia Islam) were, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, executed by HTS fighters and associated Sunni Muslim gunmen including foreign fighters. This took place in the Alawi heartland of Syria’s Latakia and Tartous governorates. The International Committee of the Red Cross has called for access to allow medical and humanitarian relief to be given to the survivors. The United Nations has decried the wave of attacks.
The scale and nature of the execution of Alawites are reminiscent of the large-scale murders carried out by Islamic State during its insurgency in Iraq and Syria. Witness reports say that the HTS-led executions were carried out by both Syrian militiamen and foreign fighters who are again revealing their religious extremism.
Looting of homes, workplaces and shops added to the violent mayhem which Syria’s de facto leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now known as Ahmed al-Sharaa, has to stop and punish in order to be able to say that his path is towards peace and inclusion. He and his cabinet have yet to take material measures to discipline and disarm those persons and groups who perpetrated the killings. But he has urged fighters not to abuse people. Notably, he has blamed former regime fighters for starting the incident which spread over a wide area, along with HTS-leaning fighters “unaffiliated” with the Syrian interim government. Several governments support the Syrian regime and blame pro-Assad elements while others declared shock at the killing of civilian Alawites.
The post-2011 Libyan revolution situation is being repeated in Syria.
The Syrian civil war may have begun with public discontent with the Bashar al-Assad regime, its corruption and egotistic violence of those military, police and other officials allowed to carry it out. It was not long until Sunni jihadists in Iraq turned towards Syria bringing to the country weapons and a religious war against the Alawite regime. There is little doubt that Sunni Muslim fighters wanted to crush the Alawites and command the country. The post-2004 Iraq insurgency, except for a bare few cases of inter-sectarian Muslim cooperation against foreign forces, over time increasingly split along sectarian lines. Attacks against civilians, shrines, notables and the formation of self-defence and aggressive militias were almost all Sunni Muslims against Shia Muslims. Shia Muslims responded in kind. Sharaa was part of this Iraqi insurgency, went to gaol, and then to Syria to continue the war against non-Sunnis.
The post-2011 Libyan revolution situation is being repeated in Syria. Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration faces a grave and likely violent path. Most of Syria’s 60 to 70 armed groups will want enrichment from the barrel of a gun before even considering loss of independence and bargaining power by agreeing with Sharaa to merge into what will be a factionalised and unsettled new Syrian army.
Any national reconciliation process cannot advance while non-Sunni Muslim religious sects face terror and extortion. Post-conquest retribution and expropriation, that is, murder, theft of property and kidnapping and enslavement in Syria will surely follow what now is the expected path just as it did in Yemen, Libya, regions of Iraq, Sudan and under Iraqi direction in Kuwait and Iraq’s Kurdish areas.
The West is in a bind. Early remarks to Syria’s leadership by several European Union leaders conditioned aid assistance on adherence to and implementation of a long list of governance principles. This included respect for and inclusion of minorities, unity of Syria, commitments against terrorism and neighbourly peacefulness. From early January, there were calls to remove global terrorist listings against HTS and its leaders to assist aid delivery and political interaction. Such de-listings cannot reasonably go ahead unless Syria’s leaders start steps to make transparent the internal situation and work against violence.
The United States has stalled aid, which reduces the West’s internal and external leverage over Syrian regime management and progressive emergence of civil society.
The US aid freeze and possibly permanent cuts also threaten the ability of Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to maintain guard over dozens of camps holding among displaced persons, Islamic State captives and their civilian supporters. HTS fighters may well try to storm camps to release former colleagues and their families. Such attacks took place in 2022. The SDF itself faces pressure from Turkey and now also the HTS regime in Damascus, which appears to see Syria’s Kurds as an obstacle to its state control rather than a social component with which a durable modus vivendi must be reached.
Sharaa moved quickly on the idea of a national dialogue, using terms which are well known to these processes. This rushed move was botched. It had relatively wide but shallow, rapid, unprepared consultations prior to a National Dialogue Conference of 600 delegates over a single two-day session ending on 25 February. This pace and depth were not adequate for a split and damaged society to find a path ahead after 14 years of violent civil war. Views on its effectiveness were also divided. The dialogue process will need to be revisited and continued even after the somewhat delayed announcement of a new interim government is made in March this year.
Sharaa, the former al-Qaeda extremist, now sees real evidence he exists in a jungle and its predators, his own armed groups, need to be controlled. He may not be able to do this by disarming his militant fighters still keen to extract revenge. His main path is to outrun these groups by use of real inclusion of all Syrians in the steps to a safer and secure future. He must now demonstrate that he can suppress violence by previously useful militants but now carried out by the same but so-called “unaffiliated” Sunni extremists.