In Syria’s terrorized Alawite region, competing narratives, mutual suspicions

The woman played dead as gunmen terrorized, robbed, and killed her Alawite kin in their village in western Syria.

Lying with a gunshot wound to her face, Lama looked dead; she says she even heard one fighter tell that to another. But then she felt fingers on her neck, checking for a pulse.

“Kill her,” a voice said, followed by the crack of a single shot fired at her chest.

Remarkably, Lama survived. (Her full name and those of some others interviewed are being withheld for their privacy and safety.) She is now in the hospital, cared for by her daughter and female relatives. All are mourning unarmed husbands, sons, and brothers, executed in a hail of bullets under a lemon tree.

March 7, the day Lama and her relatives were shot, is considered by members of the minority Alawite community to have been the start of a campaign of genocide. In the eyes of the Sunni community, it marked the start of security operations to quash a treacherous coup attempt.

The violence that swept Syria’s coast in early March took many forms and had multiple motives. It aggravated sectarian divides and inflamed dehumanizing narratives, claiming hundreds, possibly thousands, of lives in Syria’s bloodiest episode since the toppling of Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, in December.

Syria’s Sunni Islamist authorities have since sought to calm the situation and restore order, but regaining trust will not be easy. Many in the Alawite community equate the new government’s security forces with murderous jihadis.

Complicated search for justice

Providing justice and preventing further killings will pose a key test for the new Syrian authorities. President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government has formed a seven-person committee to investigate the killings and abuses against civilians but has yet to release any findings. Its teams are analyzing digital and physical evidence.

“We are still listening to witness testimonies,” reports lawyer Yasser Farhan, a member of the committee.

Untangling responsibility for atrocities will be hugely complex, because the security forces are made up of diverse factions. Since the massacres, government restrictions have hindered access to the coast for journalists and others seeking to understand the events.

Some victims are too traumatized to speak of their ordeal. Others share their experiences in a torrent of tears. A recurring theme: unarmed individuals killed in a mix of extrajudicial executions and vindictive, sectarian violence.

Many in the Alawite community are mulling leaving the country or have already done so. Few expect anyone to be held to account for the violence, though many allow that security has improved in recent days.

“Assad created investigative committees to look into the massacres he committed,” says one bereaved mother. “Now it will be the same theater.”

Sudden carnage

The scale of the violence is clear in the predominantly Alawite villages near Syria’s Mediterranean coast, linked by winding roads that are ideal for ambushes.

The spark on the night of March 6 came from Alawite remnants of the Assad regime, who, from their coastal strongholds, launched attacks on Sunni security forces, reportedly killing 180 men in two hours.

The Assad loyalists “set up ambushes ... and took control of many areas and villages on the coast,” says a Damascus-based security official. Amid the sudden carnage, hospitals became battlegrounds.

In response, Syria’s new security forces mounted a vengeful crackdown that spun out of control, jeopardizing Mr. Sharaa’s efforts to encourage national reconciliation among his people’s many sects and factions.

The victims appear to have been primarily Alawite men of fighting age, but, according to the United Nations, entire families, women, and children also died. Thousands fled across the border to Lebanon.

Many villages in Latakia and Hama provinces remain littered with ammunition. Others were spared. Fresh graves mark the hillsides – some occupied, others serving as placeholders for the presumed dead.

Video footage filmed in the region shows unarmed men being executed, beaten, and even forced to howl like dogs. Witnesses say the perpetrators were mostly Syrians, sometimes locals, and in some cases foreign jihadis.

Alawite shrines were desecrated, and Qurans burned during the chaotic coastal crackdown.

“We live in terror”

Residents of mainly Alawite areas say they are living in fear. The sight of strangers or unexpected knocks on the door trigger panic and tears, out of fear that death will follow. Many stay off the roads, to avoid sectarian kidnappings and killings.

“We live in terror,” says a lawyer in the Hammam Square neighborhood of the port city of Latakia. He says his son, Ali, a former soldier, was pulled out of their apartment and shot dead on the street on March 7.

“They took him and kneeled him down in the street and asked him, ‘What is your name?’” recalls the father, pointing out from his balcony the spot where the scene unfolded below. “He said, ‘Ali.’ They said, ‘You are Alawite?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ They shot and killed him.”

Syria’s authorities say they crushed an uprising by remnants of the Assad regime, which ruled Syria with an iron grip for 52 years. The regime relied on the Alawite minority to control the army and security services, which were known for their brutality.

In December, that army disbanded. Soldiers abandoned their uniforms and weapons as Mr. Assad fled to Russia. The large-scale revenge killings many had feared did not materialize.

But the March events changed the security equation. On hilltops along the Mediterranean coast, Syria’s new General Security forces faced ambushes and attacks. Civilians believed to be linked to the new authorities were also targeted.

Revenge for civil war

Security sources say the regime remnants were disgruntled at their loss of privileges, and hoping to benefit from Iranian and Lebanese backing to create a breakaway region similar to the Kurds’ autonomous area in northeast Syria.

In response, hundreds of thousands of armed Sunni men, nominally under the authority of the defense ministry, rushed to Hama, Latakia, and Tartus ready to fight.

Part of the animus was revenge for 14 years of civil war that took a particularly heavy toll on Sunnis.

“It is two faces of the same coin – Assad and Sharaa,” says Sally, an Alawite woman in her 20s who fled to Latakia.

“The victims are from all sects. But for 14 years, who mainly died? The Sunnis,” she says. “Now it is the Alawites. They are unleashing their anger on us.”

President Sharaa, who has sought to present a moderate image to the West, despite his past links to Al Qaeda, described the brutal killings as “individual violations.”

As the Assad regime fell, Mr. Sharaa struck inclusive tones toward ethnic and religious minorities but also vowed to pursue those with “blood on their hands.” Questions remain about his level of control over radical factions and his ability to ensure security for all Syrians.

In some areas, his black-uniformed General Security units restored order and protected civilians, but not everywhere.

“We are all farmers, we have lemon and tomato nurseries, and our children were not in the army,” says Samia, grieving her son.

“Our village wanted no part of this”

The village of Al-Rusafa, near the silk-making, mixed-faith city of Masyaf, lost 63 residents. Regime remnants – one local called them “saboteurs” – first ambushed a convoy outside the village, spilling oil on the road to make vehicles hard to steer.

“They had been forming armed groups secretly,” says a former Assad soldier who is now a shopkeeper. “They had leaders and everything. Our village wanted no part of this.”

One father says his son was executed and his body mutilated. Another breaks down in sobs describing how security forces dragged his four sons from their home and shot them by the barn.

Witnesses reported hearing calls to “jihad” and vows to slaughter Alawite “pigs.”

“The person beating me yelled, ‘We gave you safety. Why did you betray us?’” recalls a young survivor. He blames hardened criminals and supporters of the former regime who rejected reconciliation in favor of the attacks that sparked the fighting.

Abu Ahmed, using a pseudonym, says he was among fighters deployed to the coast as government reinforcements. Video that he shot on his phone shows acts of violence by both sides.

“There was a huge amount of killing,” he says, estimating that Assad loyalists killed some 400 government security officials. In revenge, “Anyone who was found with ID cards linking them to the former army ... was killed,” he says. “Some [were] just killed out of hatred.”

Abu Ahmed says he witnessed field executions and even intervened to save lives. Yet he downplays the possibility that Syria will descend into the sectarian bloodshed seen in neighboring Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003.

“This needs to be solved politically or by force,” he says, but because Alawites are a minority, “If it’s force, none of them will be left.”