Members of security forces loyal to the interim Syrian government pose together with their firearms as they stand along a rocky beach by the Mediterranean sea coast in Syria's western city of Latakia on March 9, 2025. Photo by
There was a depressing sense of inevitability to the deadly violence which gripped Syria’s coastal region earlier this month as hundreds of Alawite Syrians were murdered in revenge killings. Ever since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December, a series of complex tensions – sectarian, ethnic, tribal, and ideological – have threatened to plunge the country into a renewed cycle of death and chaos.
Syria’s western coast along the Mediterranean, where the cities of Latakia and Tartus lie, is the Alawite heartland of the country from where the Assad regime traditionally drew its support. The army’s notorious fourth division, regarded by Assad as his most trusted and loyal unit, was overwhelmingly Alawite in composition and was presided over by Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s brother. It was regularly deployed in the most contentious and fraught areas of the conflict, committing some of the civil war’s worst atrocities. They played a direct role, for example, in the government’s policy of besieging rebel-held areas such as in Daraya or Aleppo, and starving civilians inside until they surrendered. They were also linked to the government’s use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta.
These areas have been restless ever since Assad’s ouster. When Syria’s transition leader Ahmed al-Sharaa deployed his revolutionary forces to the Alawite heartland earlier this month to assert control, they were ambushed by pro-Assad loyalists, sparking several days of furious and frenzied violence in which at least 1,084 people were killed according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. The overwhelming majority were civilian Alawites, killed in a senseless act of sectarian bloodletting. Although a semblance of calm has returned for now, the episode brings into sharp relief a paradox at the heart of how al-Sharaa is governing the country and, in the process, inadvertently exacerbating the very resentments he seeks to extinguish.
Since taking power, the militant group al-Sharaa previously presided over, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has spoken in broadly conciliatory terms about accommodating Syria’s minorities and building a country for all. Yet, it was only ever a modest force of around 15,000 to 20,000 fighters and had to rely on the participation of other armed factions to support the November Offensive which finally unseated Assad.
That effort was supported by two Turkish-backed factions – the Syrian National Army and the National Front for Liberation – which allowed HTS to capture the whole of Aleppo within days. Unruly factions, including Jaysh al-Izza (“the army of glory”) and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki movement – both of whom have committed war crimes such as conducting extra-judicial killings, targeting civilians, and kidnapping people for ransom – also joined the fight. Elsewhere, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) used the opportunity to make gains of their own, advancing into parts of the broader Aleppo governorate, and across the Deir ez-Zour province in eastern Syria.
As these forces surged towards the outskirts of Damascus in December, a “Southern Operations Room” was also launched, bringing together a mix of Islamist, nationalist, and ethnically based militant movements from the south. They pushed northwards towards Damascus helping encircle the capital in a fatal pincer movement.
In total, more than 50 different groups participated in the final assault which led to Assad’s fall. The only thing uniting them – a shared desire to overthrow the regime – is gone now, and even that was only a threadbare unifier. Consider that, while rebel forces fought against Assad’s soldiers in Aleppo last November, Abdurrahman Mustafa, who led the Turkish-backed Syrian Interim Government, an umbrella opposition group, announced that his troops would also “proudly” fight the SDF while simultaneously assisting the charge against Assad too. It underscores the nature of the Syrian conflict, which has been subject to a series of sectarian, ethnic, and confessional tensions. Elsewhere, entirely new groups have formed to protect the specific interests of a particular ethnicity or sect, such as the Suwayda Military Council, which was forged after Assad’s fall to both protect, and advocate for, Druze rights.
To assert his control over the frayed and fractured country he’s inherited, al-Sharaa has spoken of building a truly civic state in which all of Syria’s diverse communities are represented in a meaningful national settlement. Such statements aren’t mere lip service. In February, for example, a broad cross-section of Druze leaders met al-Sharaa in Damascus to discuss how the overwhelmingly Druze governorate of Suwayda would arrange its relationship with Damascus, having formed a militia in the aftermath of Assad’s demise to protect their communal interests. The new agreement includes provisions such as allowing the province to form a locally recruited security force. The meeting took place against the backdrop of Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to co-opt the Druze cause as his own, casting Israel as the guarantor of their rights – a move almost universally rejected across Syria.
Days later, al-Sharaa also announced a deal with the SDF who enjoy significant support from the US and other Western powers. Meeting with the group’s commander-in-chief, Mazloum Abdi, al-Sharaa announced that the SDF would be incorporated into the armed forces of the Syrian state, allowing Damascus to further exert control over greater stretches of the country. The deal also sees the central government take control of border crossings, and oil and gas fields, returning important sources of income back into the state’s hands.
These deals with Kurdish and Druze factions are more symbolic than anything at the moment, but underscore al-Sharaa’s desire to mark a dramatic break from the way Assad governed the country. Like his father before him, Assad controlled Syria by dividing and persecuting its different groups. The Kurdish language was never recognised, for example, and for years many members of its community could not vote, own property, or run businesses. Although the Druze were not persecuted outright, Assad nonetheless waged a campaign of informal oppression against them by blocking them from holding sensitive government and military positions and neglecting their areas for investment.
There have been notable shifts in areas beyond security matters too. During Nowruz – a festival marking the Persian new year, which is marked by Syrian Kurds – large celebrations took place across Syria on 20 March, including in Damascus. “Seeing the Syrian independence flag and the Kurdish flag dancing together in Damascus on Nowruz is surreal,” Ibrahim al-Assil, a Syrian lecturer at Georgetown, wrote on X. “In Assad’s Syria, possessing either flag would lead to imprisonment, torture, or disappearance.” The fact such celebrations took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is all the more notable.
Yet while al-Sharaa has been quick to address minority concerns, there is a sense that he is neglecting those who suffered the most under Assad: the Sunnis. Military control over cities like Homs, Hama, and Aleppo has been outsourced to local groups originally from those areas; some of these groups are uneasy about what they regard as either a lack of action against remnants of the former regime or concrete steps being taken towards transitional justice. For example, Syria’s former Grand Mufti, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, was not arrested until 25 March, despite being a deeply controversial figure who was closely aligned to Assad and who personally signed the death warrants of tens of thousands held at Sednaya prison, Syria’s most brutal torture chamber. He has praised the regime’s use of barrel bombs – crude improvised explosives tossed indiscriminately from helicopters onto rebel-held civilian areas. In the event, Hassoun was only detained as he attempted to board a flight at Damascus International Airport.
From al-Sharaa’s perspective, the approach makes perfect sense. First and foremost, he wants to consolidate control by asserting the primacy of the state, expanding its sphere of influence, establishing its monopoly on violence, and removing weapons from the hands of potential foes. The rest can come later. While that message has been largely embraced by HTS members, it is coming unstuck elsewhere.
Consider that two predominantly Sunni towns in the region, Bayda and Baniyas, were the sites of serious massacres by the regime in 2013, which left residual scars on the region. That is what explains the eruption of violence in the coastal areas earlier this month. When fighting did break out, the worst excesses did not come directly from HTS. This is not to absolve the group from responsibility entirely: clearly, some of its members did partake in the sectarian bloodletting. However, a number of groups not directly under al-Sharaa’s control also swarmed the area, extracting revenge on the Alawite population for crimes of the past. Groups such as the Hamza Division and the Sultan Suleiman Shah Division, both factions within the Syrian National Army, were amongst the most bloodthirsty.
For these groups, it is not al-Sharaa’s place to offer pardons for those accused of perpetuating the regime’s crimes. Yet, in his pursuit of stability, that is precisely what he has done. Within days of the regime’s collapse, he offered former remnants of the regime, including soldiers and police officers, an opportunity to appear at so-called “reconciliation centres” where they could exchange their weapons for a civilian ID card. Tens of thousands flocked to such centres across the country. During an interview with a Syrian social media influencer earlier this year, al-Sharaa argued people should simply be grateful Assad is gone and that, in essence, they should now forget about his crimes (at least for now).
According to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), however, up to 250,000 Syrians were disappeared during the conflict. The majority vanished into the regime’s labyrinthine web of subterraneous torture chambers and were killed before being disappeared again, this time into an anonymous network of mass graves. Demands for justice have been growing, punctuated by sporadic bursts of street justice meted out by locals who have chanced upon former officials who served as prison guards, soldiers, or judges in Assad’s murderous regime.
Al-Sharaa has already launched a commission to investigate the sectarian violence in Latakia and elsewhere, promising swift justice and accountability for those who killed civilians. A number of those involved have already been detained. These are positive actions – but they underscore the perception that the administration is prioritising the prosecution of new excesses while ignoring much grander historic crimes. Indeed, it would seem that al-Sharaa is misreading the room and overlooking the very real tensions growing within his own constituency.
One of his most prominent and vocal supporters, Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi foreign fighter who participated in the revolution for over a decade, is appealing to Syria’s Sunnis to give the new president more time. “Taking responsibility for an entire nation is not an easy task,” he wrote on X. “[This is a] unique experience that needs your support, before your criticism!” It’s not yet clear whether they’ll heed his appeal.
[See also: The Syrian crucible]
Topics in this article : Bashar al-Assad, Syria