On 8 December 2024, the government of Bashar al-Assad collapsed as the army of the former al-Qaeda leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa entered Damascus and seized the institutions of the Syrian state. The Syrian Arab Army, which had remained loyal to the al-Assad government, appeared to dissolve. Rebel forces took over military functions, rebranding themselves as the General Security forces (after 20 December). Between December 2024 and January 2025, leading figures from the former al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham took over the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Interior. Many of the rebel forces remained independent but operated alongside the General Security forces.

As in 2003 when the United States occupied Iraq and the Iraqi armed forces disappeared to regroup as a resistance force, many of the Syrian Arab Army personnel decamped to their homes where they formed militia groups. Within weeks, these groups reconstituted themselves as defensive forces for their villages and towns. This was particularly the case in the largely Alawite and Christian towns and villages in the Qalamoun region and in coastal Latakia. But unlike in Iraq, these former Syrian Arab Army groups did not begin a well-organised insurgency against the al-Sharaa government, they remained a defensive force with only a few recorded attacks conducted against the new rulers of the state.

The General Security forces and their associates in the former militia groups, however, used their power to strike quickly against those who tried to regroup a resistance. For instance, on 23 January, General Security members raided the villages of Fahel and Mreimin in search of —those they claimed were— al-Assad government military officers. The General Security forces raided homes and detained large numbers of people. According to the report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, in Mreimin, the General Security troops “beat and tortured residents, looted multiple houses, and killed two civilians”. During these “combing campaigns”, the General Security forces used such terms as nusayri (a derogatory term for Alawites), “Alawi pig”’, “kuffar”, and whores to describe those whom they beat, tortured, and detained. The crackdown against these defensive militias quickly took on a sectarian form. The point, it appeared, was to demoralise any resistance and to do so on strictly sectarian lines.

Between January and March 2025, these General Security forces rode rampant across the country, particularly in the coastal regions of the country. There is no proper account of how many people had been killed, tortured, or detained. But there is a very clear indication of the kind of violence experienced in the country by those who had either been part of the al-Assad government in even the most modest capacity and to those communities (Alawites, Christians) seen to have benefited by it. When al-Assad left Syria in December, Alawi residents from the village of Anz rushed to safety elsewhere and waited to see what might happen. Anz is in Eastern Hama, on the edge of Salamiye. When these residents returned to their village, they found that their homes had been occupied, and their belongings destroyed. On 27 January, at 4am, four cars filled with masked men who identified themselves as General Security entered the village and began to search the homes of Alawi families. The Independent Commission’s report tells the story clearly:

The masked men gathered women and children in one room and forced them to hand over all valuables at gunpoint. The gunmen also stole the keys of a truck in which they put 40 sheep belonging to one of the families whose house was raided. At least 10 men were dragged outside at gunpoint and lined up in a square at the entrance of the village, their hands tied behind their backs. The armed men opened fire on them, killing five men, including one boy and an elderly person, and injuring five others. The attack was conducted in around 30 minutes.

The dead had to be buried in Tal Salhab, fifty kilometres from Anz, because the families did not feel safe returning to their village.

In March, gangs of fighters descended upon the villages in Latakia. They included men from the Ministry of Defence, the General Security, the Syrian National Army’s Suleiman Shah Brigade, the Syrian National Army’s al-Hamza Division, the Sultan Murad Brigade, Ahrar al-Sham, and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. These fighters detained men and boys, shouted derogatory names at them, tortured them, and then shot them in the head or chest. The majority of those killed were civilians and not former military men, and in many cases all the men in a family home were killed. Between March and May, 40,000 people fled these villages for the relative safety of Lebanon. At around the same time, men with Damascene accents, wearing black uniforms and masks, and calling themselves General Security raided the homes of Alawi families in the al-Qadam area of Damascus. They detained civilians, such as teachers and doctors, threatening families that if they make any complaints “we will send him back to you in a coffin”.

Conversations with people in Syria makes it very clear that the attacks did not take place only in Western Syria, along the coastline, but also in interior towns in northwest Syria (the towns of al-Qardaha and Masyaf), in Western Syria (parts of the cities of Aleppo and Homs), and in Eastern Syria (in Deir-ez-Zor and in the Euphrates River Valley). These attacks follow a careful pattern: almost a pogrom not only against minorities, as they have been reported, but against any leaders of resistance to the new regime who have been trying to spark an insurgency. This was a counterinsurgency operation carried through with efficiency and with brutal force, outside the eyes of the international media. Equally quietly, the new government suppressed the key logistical routes of the Alawi mountain villages to Lebanon, which had allowed them to rearm themselves in case of the breakout of a larger insurgency. Harsh raids by the former al-Qaeda groups into villages such as Deir al-Bishl, Harf Banmarah, and Talkalakh resulted in execution of civilians, detention and disappearance of key leaders, and ethnic cleansing of some of the villages (such as Balghonas). Some of this was documented by Human Rights Watchand by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, but received little international attention.

The Independent Commission showed that the perpetrators of this violence came from the rebel groups who now hold power in Damascus. Nonetheless, al-Sharaa’s government had other ideas. His National Committee for Investigation and Fact-Finding argued that they had identified 265 suspects, all of whom “are members of outlawed rebel groups linked to the Assad regime”. They do not accept the view of the Independent Commission, nor do they offer any tangible evidence why their findings are diametrically opposed to that of the United Nations. The UN investigators called the attacks “war crimes”, a phrase that has been rejected by the Syrian government. Furthermore, rights groups urge the government to enact hate speech legislation to prevent the use of the kind of language used to frighten and target the Alawi community, but the government has rejected this as well.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government has been keen to deepen its normalisation process with Israel. Talks via the United Arab Emirates resulted in the returnof the archive of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen (who had been executed in Damascus in 1965). Al-Sharaa told the media that “chances are high” that his government will conduct a security pact with Israel, the first open statement about normalisation (although he has said that Syria cannot join the Abraham Accords as long as the Golan Heights are under occupation). The excuse given for these “security talk”’ is the protection of the Druze, although it is clear —as we have previously show — that the Israeli and Jordanian attacks on southern Syria have mostly to do with the drug trade and with the attempt to put down any insurgency against Damascus. There is no conversation anywhere about protection of the Alawi and Christian minorities, who have taken the brunt of the attacks by the government-led forces. But, in sum, these are not only attacks along sectarian lines; the key issue here is that the Damascus government has been given carte blanche to use maximum force against any threat to its continued rule.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. 

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