Ahmed Al Sharaa Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

In Latakia, the stronghold of the Alawites, jihadists belonging to Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s government and unaffiliated Sunni gunmen as well have been fighting with the locals, and so far have murdered 340 Alawite civilians. These civilians are being held collectively responsible for the atrocities carried out by Bashar Assad, who is himself an Alawite and relied on his Alawite-officered army to suppress the Sunnis during Syria’s long civil war, that lasted from 2011 to the end of 2024. More on the fighting in Latakia can be found here: “Over 340 civilians killed by Syrian government-linked gunmen – report,” Reuters, March 8, 2025:

Syrian security forces and affiliated gunmen killed more than 340 civilians, the vast majority of them from the Alawite minority, over the last two days, Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters on Saturday.

Other Syrian sources have reported casualties somewhere between 180-200.

The state media, now run by the victorious Sunni rebels, headed by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose rule has replaced that of Assad, is claiming that the Alawite civilians were killed not by the government’s security services, but by “individuals” who, it did not need to be said, were exacting revenge for relatives murdered by the Alawite-dominated Assad regime.

Syrian state media on Thursday cited an interior ministry source as saying “individual violations” had occurred during a government operation to crack down on terrorists linked to the ousted Assad regime and said it was working to address the incidents….

Ever since the 1930s, when the French, then holders of the League of Nations Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, favored the Alawites as enforcers of government decrees, for they were deemed less hostile to the French than the Sunnis i helped to make them a military caste, the Alawites have been the backbone of the Syrian army. Now the Alawites are bottled up in Latakia, but many still have their weapons from their army days, and have been ambushing the new government’s jihadist military, that has arrived in Latakia to crush them. And those forces, as well as individual Sunnis, have responded with massacres of Alawite civilians. More than 340 Alawite civilians are reported to have been killed by March 8, and the killing in Latakia continues. Other reports claim that 1,800 civilians, mostly Alawites but including some Greek Orthodox and Melkites, have now been killed by the security services of Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Sunni security services.

They included at least two dozen male residents of the Alawite town of Al Mukhtareyah killed by gunmen on Friday, the Observatory and two Alawite activists said, citing contacts in the region and video footage from the scene.

In his first comments on the violence, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said government forces would pursue “remnants” of the ousted Bashar al Assad government and bring them to trial. He also said that those who assaulted civilians would be held accountable.

Ahmed al-Sharaa is himself a Sunni jihadist, though he presents himself to the world as a “moderate” who long ago ended his earlier connections to both ISIS and Al-Qaeda. He will do little to stop, or to punish, members of his own security services, or Sunni individuals who have been massacring Alawite civilians.

“We will continue to pursue the remnants of the fallen regime .. . We will bring them to a fair court, and we will continue to restrict weapons to the state, and no loose weapons will remain in Syria,” Sharaa added in a pre-recorded speech.

Syrian authorities said the violence began when remnants loyal to Assad launched a deadly and well-planned attack on their forces on Thursday.

Perhaps Assad loyalists were the first to launch attacks in this latest phase of the fighting. Ot it may have been the army of Sunni jihadists sent by Al-Sharaa’s government to quell an incipient Alawite rebellion. It’s not possible to know for certain who started the fighting. But it is known that among those killed have been at least 340 Alawite civilians. Some Christians — Greek Orthodox — have also been murdered by the security services, and they had at no time attacked the Sunni military. They have been murdered by the jihadists simply for being Christians.

The violence has shaken Sharaa’s efforts to consolidate control as his administration struggles to get US sanctions lifted and grapples with wider security challenges, notably in the southwest, where Israel has said it will prevent Damascus from deploying forces.

The IDF is now on the Syrian side both of Mt. Hermon, and the Golan Heights, and has no intention of leaving. The Syrians are not able to go to war against Israel, given that the IDF has destroyed a great amount of the weaponry that had been left behind by the Syrian army when it suddenly collapsed after the rebels, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took Damascus, and Assad decamped to Moscow.

The oil-rich northeast of the country also remains outside state control, held by a US-backed Kurdish-led group….

About 30% of Syria remains under Kurdish control. This is the part of Syria where the country’s oilfields are located. The Kurds are under military threat, not from the fellow Syrians in Damascus, but from the Turkish troops that have seized an enclave in the Kurdish-held territory and threaten to push the Kurds further south. Meanwhile, the American base is one source of security for the local Kurds, who collaborated with the Americans on wiping out ISIS in eastern Syria and remain solidly pro-American. The American military, in turn, knows it can count on the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), to fight jihadists, not just ISIS as it has done in the past, but now including those now trying to consolidate their rule in Syria.

Iran, formerly Assad’s closest ally, said it “strongly opposes insecurity, violence, killing and harming innocent Syrians from every group and tribe.”…

Iran was always a strong supporter of the Assad regime, and of their fellow Shiites, the Alawites, and now the Iranians must watch in horror as their Alawite allies, including mostly their civilians, are under ferocious attack by the government’s Sunni, even jihadist, military.

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