As information of the rebels’ victory in Syria unfold at daybreak on Sunday, folks in seaside cities lengthy often called bastions of loyalty to the Assad regime took to the streets to have a good time.
By the point rebels themselves rolled into the northwestern coastal heartland of Bashar al-Assad after lunchtime, statues of Assad’s father had already been torn down from city squares, stated Samer Abbas, a researcher from the countryside close to the port metropolis of Tartus.
“I used to be shocked by how rapidly folks rose up,” stated Abbas, who for greater than a decade had labored below a pseudonym, which he hid even from his spouse, to keep away from being arrested for his anti-regime writing.
“As quickly as information got here that Bashar al-Assad had left Syria, folks began to curse him — and his father, which is deeply symbolic as a result of they used to worship [his father] virtually religiously. Immediately, Alawites had been cursing his father!”
Video from #Latakia metropolis with the statue of the late Hafez al-Assad in #Syria pic.twitter.com/jgWX0PV8sc
— Qusay Noor (@QUSAY_NOOR_) December 8, 2024
The Assad regime lengthy drew loyalty from Syria’s coastal area, the birthplace of Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad. Latakia and Tartus provinces are majority-populated by members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, to which the Assads belong. Alawites, one in every of Syria’s minority communities, have dominated the regime equipment and safety forces since Hafez seized energy in a army coup over 50 years in the past. Abbas, the researcher, can be Alawite.
Because the rebels superior, led by the Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham faction, many individuals loyal to the federal government fled the cities of Homs and Hama to the coast, believing the realm to be extra firmly within the regime’s grip.
However regardless of the Assads’ networks of patronage and cronyism within the area, discontent had run deep by the point of the dictator’s fall. Residents endured worsening poverty and misplaced massive numbers of males combating for a regime that brutally crushed opposition forces throughout the devastating civil warfare.
Whereas former loyalists set hearth to regime buildings and altered their Fb profile footage to the flag of the Syrian revolution, rebels organised conferences to reassure on a regular basis Alawites they’d nothing to concern. For these deemed complicit in Assad’s rule, nonetheless, the reckoning was nonetheless to come back.
From his laboratory in a personal hospital throughout the road from the regime’s Ba’ath social gathering headquarters within the seaside metropolis of Latakia, X-ray technician Alaa watched on Monday as insurgent fighters entered the looted constructing, looking it for weapons left behind by fleeing social gathering officers and their guards.
Throughout him the outdated patronage system — by which associates and members of the Assad clan would profit from contracts, tenders and authorities positions — was unravelling. The cronies, businesspeople and bureaucrats who had hitched their fates to the ruling household had been immediately nowhere to be seen.
“It was a closed circle,” he stated. “The cut price was: authority in alternate for safety.”
The area, which can be dwelling to massive Sunni and Christian populations, didn’t see the worst of the combating throughout the civil warfare, nevertheless it nonetheless bears the scars of the battle. Alawite residents despatched huge numbers of troopers to battle for the regime, and resentment mounted as they died en masse.
Bitterness grew in the direction of the federal government “for not giving anybody something in alternate for what they sacrificed”, stated Alex Simon, cofounder of Synaps, a Beirut-based analysis centre.
The area can be dwelling to Russia’s Syrian bases, used to assist prop up the Assad regime within the civil warfare and to offer Moscow a strategic toehold within the southern Mediterranean: its Hmeimim air base is close to the town of Latakia and its naval base in Tartus.
Locals stated the Assad clan labored like a “mafia” within the coastal area, shaking down companies for royalties or safety charges. They stated Bashar’s spouse Asma, a former banker who ran Syria’s secretive financial council, had overseen a lot of the draining of the area’s monetary assets.
“Folks had been getting poorer and we had been uninterested in all of it. We paid taxes however they simply went into the pockets of the regime. There have been no companies,” stated Alaa.
“Authorities employees had been paid subsequent to nothing so a part of the deal was they had been owed the appropriate to embezzle. You couldn’t query anybody with hyperlinks to the regime.”
Alaa used to hold out X-rays for a distinguished cousin of Bashar al-Assad. Usually, the cousin wouldn’t even pay. Now, he stated, the cousin had disappeared, possible fleeing together with many different regime cronies to the inland mountain villages which might be the historic dwelling of Alawite communities.
On the primary day of insurgent rule, the widespread celebration was tempered with concern. Alawites took down pictures of the Assad household hanging on their partitions and hid their spiritual texts after rumours unfold that rebels would search properties, stated Abbas.
Mohamad Salah Shalati, a dealer and former Sunni sheikh, or spiritual chief, from Latakia, stated that on Sunday morning he was overwhelmed with calls from Alawites and Christians petrified of the destiny awaiting them by the hands of Sunni Islamist rebels. Shalati himself was faraway from his sheikhdom and briefly imprisoned by the regime throughout the preliminary Syrian rebellion in opposition to the Assads in 2011.
Alawites concern that “they [will] be persecuted as an imputed enemy of the brand new state,” stated Natasha Corridor, senior fellow on the Center East Program on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research.
“The Assad regime has stoked sectarianism within the nation, particularly among the many Alawites, so as to preserve their loyalty — to make them imagine their existence as a sect in Syria relies on the Assad clan’s rule.”
Within the chaotic fast aftermath of the regime’s fall, some score-settling befell, with remoted situations of killing in Latakia and Tartus, in response to locals.
However residents that spoke to the Monetary Instances stated they didn’t know of public executions or official retribution campaigns by the rebels. By Monday, they stated, the state of affairs had stabilised.
Shalati stated he had reassured the fearful callers who contacted him. He had spoken to a number of insurgent leaders in Latakia, he stated, and sought ensures that Alawites and Christians wouldn’t face retribution.
Within the early years of the civil warfare, the area was the scene of bloody tit-for-tat sectarian massacres, with regime forces finishing up mass executions in majority-Sunni cities and Islamist rebels slaughtering lots of in Alawite villages.
Throughout its lightning offensive throughout the nation over the previous two weeks, the principle insurgent faction HTS issued a press release calling on Alawites to “detach” themselves from the regime, and saying there was a spot within the revolution for them.
“It’s the regime that divided us,” Shalati stated.
Incoming insurgent leaders rapidly organised conferences with native Sunni, Christian and Alawite spiritual leaders in a number of locations across the coast, locals stated. Alawite sheikhs have publicly requested for normal clemency and ensures of security to forestall the displacement of members of their sect.
Media from villages within the coastal Alawite heartland posted movies of insurgent commanders sitting with native leaders and providing them assurances.
“It’s very clear they [the rebels] have extraordinarily exact details about the communities they’re getting into. They’ve particulars — I used to be shocked. They know all of the Alawite sheikhs, they usually talked to all of them,” Abbas stated. Most of the rebels had been from the close by space, locals stated.
The rebels additionally appeared to know the names of businessmen, social gathering bigwigs and regime officers, asking residents for the deal with of this dealer’s workplace or that crony’s residence, Alaa recounted.
There have been experiences of “reconciliation centres” being arrange for 1000’s of standard troopers from the coast to normalise their standing or hand over weapons.
However those that had been on the prime of the regime’s safety and army equipment confronted a special destiny.
The rebels issued a national amnesty for conscripted troopers, however as Syrians witnessed scenes of horror from the previous regime’s newly unlocked detention centres, the rebels stated on Tuesday that they’d “maintain to account the criminals, murderers, and armed forces and safety officers concerned in torture”.
Lots of these tied to the previous regime had fled to the hills or melted into their properties, residents stated. However there was nonetheless a reckoning to come back.
“The intelligence and army officers, primarily Alawites, the criminals who used to torture — they hid of their villages,” Abbas stated. “They’re now needed, pursued, even by the folks.”
Cartography by Steven Bernard
