Deep in the Tartous mountains, a small group of Sunni and Alawi men have found innovate systems of building trust between the new government’s security forces and the local Alawi community. Today, the Brummanet al-Mashayekh subdistrict is a calm, quiet place where security forces joke easily with locals and join families for afternoon tea, men with taswiya move around freely, and arrests and security operations are conducted in close coordination with community leaders. But achieving this peace took months of hard work from a small group of young former revolutionaries from Idlib.

“We worked hard to break the wall of fear,” one of the security officials tells me earlier this year, “People used to run away from us, so we had to force ourselves on them in a friendly way for five or six months until the foundation of trust was built.” The two most senior official in the subdistrict were both veteran members of the General Security Services, having first joined the security force several years ago in its original iteration under the HTS-run government in Idlib. Both men, barely over 30-years old, had fought in opposition factions since their late teenage years.

Yet the training they received in Idlib Police Academy after 2020 would prove pivotal to their work after the fall of Assad. “Trust relies on how we treat people,” the official continues, “and we must treat civilians like civilians. I learned this in Idlib in the academy, they called it ‘merciful treatment,’ it was emphasized throughout the entire training.” The men began by reaching out to the area’s mukhtars and sheikhs first, meeting with them and establishing a basic relationship. From there, they expanded to the regular people, engaging them directly in order to both enhance their own understanding of the area and to counter misconceptions the residents had about them.

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Empowering Locals

Two specific approaches have played a large role in breaking the wall of fear. First, one of the officials, a former HTS fighter and veteran GSS officer, re-established the area’s hunting club. “I grew up hunting,” he says, “and when I arrived here, I wanted to continue hunting, so I asked some local men to show me the hunting trails.” Bird hunting has been a hugely popular hobby in rural Syria, but it has come to a near complete halt in Alawi areas since the regime fell due to the danger of being seen walking in the mountains with a gun. At first only one local man was willing to take the officer hunting. “Afterwards he told his friends about the experience, and when I returned the next week there was a larger group of men who wanted to join me.” Through these efforts, Alawi men in Brummanet have been able to continue hunting in their mountains, an important step in normalizing their lives and building bonds with the local security members.

Building on these initial bonds, the officers pursued their second approach in March 2025: creating a neighborhood watch. Young men were selected to take shifts at village entrances, watching out for suspicious vehicles and serving as a trusted point of contact for anyone who needs to speak with the security office but might be afraid to do so directly. The network includes civilians, but also many men who had served in the regime’s forces and had taswiya. By 2026, around 200 men were part of this network. A few dozen core members receive small stipends from donations raised locally. In order to ensure none of the men abuse their positions, the officers selected one man from each prominent family in every village. This places familial and community reputation on the actions of the men – a strong motivation against betraying the trust of the officers and the village.

The neighborhood watch system, which the officers call a “Popular Committee,” is more than decoration. There appears to be a real sense of empowerment and community buy-in to it that has helped invest residents in the security goals of the new state. When thousands of Alawi insurgents rose up across the coast on March 6, 2025, no cells formed in Brummanet al-Mashayekh. Instead, around 200 insurgents arrived from Hama’s Wadi Ayoun region 20 minutes to the east. The insurgents quickly captured the small security detachment, but some young men and mukhtars – members of the original iteration of the committee – were able to negotiate with the Wadi Ayoun men, preventing them from executing the officers. Local Alawi youth then smuggled the officers out of the area under the cover of night. Today, the committee members take their jobs seriously, even stopping Ministry of Defense vehicles passing through their villages to ensure they are real government forces and not armed civilians.

The inclusion of taswiya holders in this network underscores a core principle of the officers’ approach to trust building: addressing the additional layer of fear among former soldiers. These officers understand that unchecked fear among ex-soldiers can push some of them to join insurgent groups. Ensuring that those who are not wanted by the state feel safe enough to return to normal life is therefore an important aspect of securing the area. As one officer explains it, “The General Security should be more active in reducing the fear among those with taswiya.”

The popular committee and direct outreach to taswiya holders are part of this engagement in Brummanet, but the officers have gone even further. Last autumn, when the Ministry of Defense still operated many checkpoints in rural Tartous, most taswiya holders were too scared to leave their villages. One of the Brummanet officers learned of a former soldier recently released from prison who had been offered a part-time job in Tartous city but was too scared to commute. So, for one month he drove the man to work each week, helping him become comfortable with the process of passing through checkpoints. Since then, the man has continued commuting to his new job on his own.

All of these trust-building efforts have had tangible security results. Late last summer, locals informed the officers of a villa deep in the mountains where more than a dozen men had gathered with weapons. The tip-off triggered a three-month surveillance operation. On November 12, 2025, two of the security officers raided the compound, capturing 13 ex-regime insurgents.

Effective Communication

A third official was transferred to the office following the March 6 events. The youngest of the three, he comes from a small town outside of Maarat al-Numan where he had joined the local opposition faction as a young teen. When he arrived in Brummanet he met with the community leaders and discovered, in an incredible coincidence, that the area’s most prominent mukhtar had known his father decades prior. “My father knew Kamal and told me he was an honorable man, and Kamal knew that my father was honorable,” the officer tells me over tea at his home, “because of this we knew we could trust each other.” “These men are like our own sons,” the mukhtar, Kamal Ayoub, tells me, “Our villages are like theirs in Jabal Zawiyah, so it is easy for us all to interact.” We are sitting in Kamal’s living room discussing the situation in Brummanet while the officers sit with his sons, talking together as if long-time friends.

The ease with which these men communicate with locals is an important aspect of their trust building approach. Activities like the hunting club and the popular committee are important, but they would not be sustainable without consistently effective communication between the two sides. “There is a way to learn how to talk to people,” explains the youngest of the three officers, “for example, if someone complains to be about the price of electricity, I just listen, and maybe later I will tell them about the situation in Idlib to help them understand, but I don’t confront or argue with them.”

All three officers had been IDPs for more than five years prior to the fall of the regime. When they and their families returned home in December 2024, they found their entire towns destroyed, not a single building left intact. The people of southern Idlib have been left to rebuild from scratch alone, without the support of Damascus or international organizations. Each family has lost someone to the war, or has a survivor of the regime’s torture centers. Despite this, they have dedicated themselves to supporting the communities now under their charge. For them, security in the coast can only be achieved through the cooperation of the locals.

The Need for Institutionalization

This mentality stands in stark contrast with recent events in Latakia’s Beit Yashout subdistrict, where a long serving well-liked security official was replaced in February. The new official was extremely aggressive, telling every Alawi, including the town mayors, “every one of you are targets,” and deploying large convoys for simple arrests. The new official was transferred out of the coast in early May after locals lodged complaints against him, but the damage was done. “He destroyed the state of security built by the previous official,” one prominent community leader told me a few days after his removal, “it will take a long time to rebuild that now.”

The freedom security officials have in how they pursue their assigned mandates has allowed for innovative approaches to community policing, as pursued in Brummanet, but it also builds fragility into the system. A routine transfer of personnel can see a year’s worth of relationship building overturned in a day. This impermanence undermines the Ministry of Interior’s efforts at building trust and calming restless areas.

The officers in Brummanet, as well as those in some other parts of the coast, have developed effective security approaches built on an open and patient mindset. Of course, this is easier in some areas than others. “Trust building really depends on the nature of the people,” explains one of the officers. Building relationships and communication lines requires both open minded officers and community leaders. The Ministry of Interior has control over the first of these factors, however, and should now work to institutionalize these innovative local approaches to community policing across all parts of Syria.

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One key new structure is the Reconciliation Council. These councils have existed in Syria for decades, but under the new government they have been given an elevated and more official role. They are almost exclusively formed in all-Sunni towns, with a particular focus on communities with a significant number of IDPs.

These councils work closely with one of the key pre-existing local governance structures: the area director. In my 2025 report, I highlighted the important hybrid role that District Directors were playing in the first months after liberation. These hybrid roles have since evolved, becoming more standardized and purely administrative. However, there has also been a significant expansion of Sub-district Directors - administrative officials who oversee the component sub-districts of each district.

Earlier this month I met with a member of the Talbiseh Reconciliation Council and the Talbiseh Sub-district Director in order to better understand the roles of these two bodies. Below is a transcript of both interviews.

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كانت تلك المرة الأولى التي تطأ فيها قدم حسن أرض مسقط رأسه منذ عشر سنوات. كان قد عاش في مدينة تلكلخ المجاورة خلال عقد النزوح هذا، وهي مدينة شهدت بدورها نزوحًا جماعيًا ونهبًا لمنازل السُنّة في وقت سابق من الحرب. ورغم أنه كان يسكن على بُعد دقائق معدودة بالسيارة من منزله الحقيقي، إلا أنه لم يجرؤ على عبور نقطة تفتيش النظام على مشارف المدينة. ففي أغلب الأحيان، كان أي رجل يُعثَر على كلمة “الزارة” مكتوبة على هويته يُزجّ به في سجون النظام.

لم يتمكن حسن وآلاف السكان الآخرين من الزارة من العودة إلى ديارهم إلا بعد تحرير سوريا في 8 ديسمبر/كانون الأول 2024. جاء معظمهم من لبنان وتركيا، بينما قدم آخرون من مخيمات اللاجئين المترامية الأطراف في شمال سوريا. الزارة، هذه البلدة السنية النائية والمعزولة، التي طغت عليها أحداث الحصن و تلكلخ المجاورتين، طُمِست قصتها لفترة طويلة وسط عقد ونصف من الفظائع التي شهدتها البلاد. ومع ذلك، فإن تاريخها الحافل بالاحتجاجات والحصار والمعاناة، والذي ترسخت فيه الانقسامات الطائفية بشكل لا ينفصم، قد شكّل تجاربها في فترة ما بعد الحرب. تُجسّد قصة الزارة التحديات المشتركة للعودة والمصالحة التي تواجهها مئات البلدات التي لا تزال فيها مظالم الحرب متجذرة، وتُعدّ إعادة الإعمار فيها عملية بطيئة ومؤلمة. وقد ساهمت الروابط الاقتصادية والاجتماعية بين الزارة والمنطقة المحيطة بها في الحفاظ على قدر من السلام، إلا أن غياب الدعم الاقتصادي والاجتماعي الجاد قد أضعف قدرة البلدة على التعافي.

بلدة تحت الحصار

لا تزال الحقول المحيطة بالزارة مليئة بشظايا القذائف والقنابل. من عام ٢٠١٢ حتى عام ٢٠١٤، ظلت الزارة محاصرة، معزولة عن بقية البلاد. يصطحبني حسن وشقيقه أسامة عبر الخنادق التي أصبحت نصف مدفونة، والتي كانت تُشكل خطوط المواجهة. يقول أسامة، مشيرًا إلى نتوء صغير من الخندق: “وجدت جثة صديقي هنا ذات صباح. كنت قد تركته الليلة الماضية بينما كان ينام على الرباط ، وفي الصباح وجدته ميتًا برصاص قناص”. ينظر إلى أعلى فوق الساتر الترابي المغطى بالأشجار. تمتد أمامنا التلال المنخفضة وحقول قرى العلويين التي تُحيط بالزارة من جهتين.

نقف على الجناح الغربي لخط الدفاع القديم للمدينة. شبكة من الخنادق تلتف على شكل حرف C حول أعلى تل خارج المدينة، يعلوه برج بيزنطي قديم. مبنى صغير بجوار البرج لا يزال يحوي علمًا كبيرًا مرسومًا للنظام. إنه تذكير دائم بمصير الزارة.

كغيرها من معظم البلدات السُنيًة، انضم سكان الزارة إلى حركة الاحتجاج المناهضة للأسد في أوائل عام ٢٠١١. إلا أن البلدة معزولة في أقصى غرب حمص، حيث تقع سلسلة صغيرة من التجمعات السنية محاطة ببلدات علوية موالية للأسد. وكانت جميعها أهدافًا مبكرة للجيش والشبيحة التابعين للنظام. قُتل أول ضحايا هذه الحركة، البالغ عددهم ٥٢٠ ضحية، في ١٤ مايو/أيار ٢٠١١. وكانت وحدات الجيش، مدعومة بميليشيات محلية، قد أقامت سلسلة من نقاط التفتيش حول الزارة و تلكلخ عقب احتجاجات اليوم السابق. حاول أحسن حمشو ، وهو محامٍ من تلكلخ، زيارة عائلة زوجته في الزارة في ذلك اليوم، لكن الشبيحة احتجزوه خارج قرية حجر أبيض. قام الشبيحة بضربه وتعذيبه قبل تسليمه للجيش، الذي أرسله إلى السجن حيث توفي تحت التعذيب. أُعيد جثمانه إلى عائلته بعد شهرين .

في الخامس عشر من مايو/أيار، شنّ النظام عملية عسكرية على تلكلخ. وبعد ثلاثة أيام من القتال العنيف، تمّ إخضاع تلكلخ. ونزح ما يقرب من 4000 من سكانها إلى لبنان، واعتقلت قوات النظام أكثر من 1000 آخرين، وفقًا لمنظمة هيومن رايتس ووتش. ومع ازدياد عزلتها عن المدن الأخرى المؤيدة للثورة، أصبحت الزارة محاصرة تدريجيًا.

كان حسن و أسامة يعملان مُدرسين قبل الحرب. بعد اندلاع الثورة، انتقل حسن إلى مكتب التعليم التابع للمجلس المحلي المُنشأ حديثًا. عندما حاصر النظام الزارة عام 2012، حمل أسامة البندقية للدفاع عن مدينته. يوضح أسامة قائلًا: “كان لدينا العديد من المنشقين الذين دعمونا وساعدونا في تنظيم وتدريب قواتنا”. تاريخيًا، عانت بلدات ريف تلكلخ، سواء كانوا علويين أو سُنّة، من محدودية فرص العمل؛ فكانت الزراعة أو التهريب أو الانضمام إلى الجيش هي السبل الحقيقية الوحيدة أمام الشباب. وفقًا للإحصاء السكاني للنظام لعام 2004، ورغم أن الزارة كانت أكبر مدينة في شمال تلكلخ، وتضمّ أعلى نسبة من موظفي الحكومة (30%)، إلا أنها كانت في النصف الأدنى من حيث مؤشرات التعليم والاقتصاد في المنطقة. دفعت الصعوبات الاقتصادية العديد من رجال المدينة إلى الانضمام للجيش أو التهريب عبر الحدود، بينما اعتمدت عائلات أخرى على تحويلات أبنائها المُرسلين إلى الخارج. بحلول عام 2011، بلغ عدد الضباط في المدينة حوالي 200 ضابط، وعدد المجندين 1000 مجند.

على عكس القرى العلوية المجاورة التي كانت تضم أعدادًا كبيرة من جنود النظام، انشقّ جميع رجال الزارة تقريبًا في وقت مبكر من الحرب. وشكّل هؤلاء المنشقون نواة فصائل المعارضة التي سرعان ما حشدت صفوفها في المدينة، ما أضفى عليها خبرةً وتنسيقًا عاليين حالا دون وقوع اقتتال داخلي كبير، ومكّن المدينة من الصمود أمام الحصار المتزايد. ويوضح حسن و أسامة : “حمل الجميع السلاح للدفاع عن المدينة، ونظّم الضباط المنشقون المقاتلين وقادوا الدفاعات”.

“أحضر بعض المنشقين معهم شاحنات من الذخيرة والأسلحة عندما فروا من النظام، وتم الاستيلاء على أسلحة أخرى خلال المعارك، كما قام مهربو الأسلحة الذين يعملون عبر الحدود ومن داخل النظام ببيع الأسلحة أيضاً.”

لقي أكثر من 120 مقاتلاً، كثير منهم منشقون، حتفهم خلال الحصار. واليوم، يفخر أهالي الزارة أيما فخر بهؤلاء الرجال. وتُغطي صفحات الفيسبوك المخصصة لأخبار المدينة بانتظام أخبار عودة الضباط المنشقين بعد لجوئهم إلى أوروبا. وفي الوقت نفسه، وبحلول نهاية عام 2025، انضم 150 شاباً من المجندين المنشقين إلى الجيش السوري الجديد، مما رسّخ مكانة المدينة في تاريخ الثورة السورية.

عند سقوط النظام، لم يكن سوى 10% من سكان البلدة لا يزالون يعيشون في سوريا. سكن قلة منهم، مثل حسن، في تلكلخ، بينما حوصر الباقون في مخيمات اللاجئين المترامية الأطراف في الشمال. تسلل معظم السكان إلى لبنان خلال الحصار ويوم سقوط البلدة. ومع ذلك، ورغم قربها من الحدود (أقل من 6 كيلومترات)، كان الوصول إلى لبنان بحد ذاته معركة أخرى.

دخل النظام مدينة الزارة في 8 مارس/آذار 2014، مما أدى إلى موجة نزوح جماعية بين المقاتلين والمدنيين على حد سواء. على مدى شهرين، شنت وحدات جيش النظام، بدعم من ميليشيات علوية من مختلف أنحاء الساحل، هجومًا على المدينة فيما أطلق عليه السكان اسم “معركة الزارة الكبرى”. فرّ معظم سكان المدينة عندما تمكن النظام أخيرًا من اختراق دفاعاته. لجأ بعضهم إلى الجبل المجاور للحصن، وهي مدينة تركمانية سنية أخرى محاصرة. حاول نحو 800 شخص دخول لبنان. ومع ذلك، وكما يصف حسن و أسامة، “رأت القرى العلوية الناس يفرون، فأقامت نقاط تفتيش للقبض عليهم. وتعرض آخرون لإطلاق نار أو قصف من مواقع النظام وقوات الدفاع الوطني المنتشرة حول الوادي”. قُبض على ما يصل إلى 200 شخص أو قُتلوا أثناء محاولتهم الوصول إلى الحدود.

يتذكر أسامة قائلاً: “في ذلك الوقت، كان متوسط ​​وزننا يتراوح بين 40 و50 كيلوغراماً، وكنا نقتات على العشب. اضطر المقاتلون إلى شق الطريق، فخاضوا أولاً نقطة تفتيش قرب الحصن، ثم رافقوا المدنيين تحت وابل من النيران”. كان بعض كبار السن والأطفال يعلمون أنهم لا يستطيعون القيام بهذه الرحلة، واعتقدوا أنهم، بصفتهم مدنيين، يمكنهم البقاء عندما يدخل النظام المدينة. وبحسب الدكتور نادر الخليل، فقد أعدمت قوات النظام والميليشيات المحلية أكثر من 120 شخصاً في ذلك اليوم، ولا تزال الجثث تُعثر عليها. كما اعتُقل 200 شخص آخر في الأسابيع التالية، كثير منهم بعد أن وعدهم النظام بالعفو. ثم جُنّد الشبان قسراً في قوات النظام، بينما اختفى المنشقون في سجن صيدنايا. يقول حسن: “أطلق النظام على ذلك اليوم اسم يوم النصر، لكنه كان يوماً أسود بالنسبة لنا”.

فخر بلا مأوى

عندما سقط نظام الأسد، لم يبقَ لأهل الزارة من بلدتهم سوى هذا التاريخ العريق. حتى في ذروة الشتاء، تبقى التلال المحيطة بالزارة جرداءً وبنية اللون. تنبت الأعشاب الضارة وجذوع الأشجار حيث كانت تزدهر آلاف أشجار الزيتون. إن النظر إلى الريف أشبه برؤية ملتقى محيطين - تلال الزارة الجرداء محاطة ببساتين كثيفة لقرى علوية. لقد اجتاحت ميليشيات النظام من هذه البلدات الزارة بعد طرد جميع سكانها ودنسوا حقولها. كانت محاولة صريحة لتهجير السكان السنة تهجيراً نهائياً.

لم تسلم المدينة نفسها من هذا الدمار الممنهج. فبين عامي 2014 و2019، جُرِّدت جميع المنازل تقريبًا من محتوياتها، وأسلاكها الكهربائية، وقضبانها الحديدية، وأسقفها. وسُرق كل ما يمكن بيعه كخردة. ولم ينتظر مقاتلو النظام حتى انقشاع الدخان قبل أن يبدأوا بالنهب، كما يُظهر مقطع فيديو نشره السكان المحليون مؤخرًا.

قام مسلحان تابعان للنظام بنهب منزل في الزارة بينما لا تزال أصوات إطلاق النار تُسمع من بعيد. وسخر الرجلان من السكان النازحين بالصراخ بسخرية “الله أكبر” وقولهما “نحن شبيحة الأسد”.

عندما سُمح لبعض السكان بالعودة أخيرًا عام ٢٠١٩، هاجم هؤلاء الشبيح المحليون البلدة مجددًا. ووفقًا للصحفي، بدأ مزارعون علويون بإشعال حرائق موسمية في الأراضي التي كان سكان الزارة يحاولون إعادة زراعتها، بينما استولى آخرون ببساطة على أراضٍ تابعة لعائلات الزارة النازحة. وقد وثّق صحفي محلي تدمير بلدته بالتفصيل. وفي سلسلة منشورات على فيسبوك في أوائل عام ٢٠٢٥، كتب:

منذ أن سيطر النظام على بلدة الزارة في مارس 2014، حاول وجهاء البلدة الحصول على موافقات أمنية لعودة السكان. إلا أن رد النظام كان أن القرى المجاورة “لا ترغب في عودتهم”، وخاصة الشبيحة المعروفين باسم “غوار خانات”، الذين لم يكملوا بعد سرقة الممتلكات.

إعادة بناء المدينة والعلاقات

تأثرت تجارب الزارة خلال الحرب ببيئتها المحلية. اعتمد النظام بشكل كبير على ميليشيات غير رسمية جُندت من البلدات والقرى العلوية المحيطة بالزارة. استهدفت غارات مقاتلي المعارضة نقاطًا أمنية في هذه البلدات، والتي وصفتها وسائل الإعلام الموالية للنظام بأنها تستهدف “المدنيين”، مما زاد من تطرف المجتمعات العلوية المحلية ضد السنة في الزارة. وُضعت بطاريات المدفعية والدبابات ومواقع القناصة داخل هذه القرى وحولها، وكثيرًا ما كان أفراد من قوات الدفاع الوطني المحلية يتولون إدارة نقاط التفتيش. كل هذا خلق صلة وثيقة بين جيران الزارة وجرائم النظام، حتى قبل عمليات النهب الممنهجة التي شهدتها السنوات اللاحقة.

مقطع فيديو صوره أنصار النظام في قرية هاجر أبيض المجاورة يظهر السكان وهم يتجمعون لمشاهدة قصف النظام المدفعي للزارة في اليوم الأخير من الحصار، 8 مارس 2014.

يضطر سكان الزارة الآن إلى الاعتماد على نظام قضائي معقد وضعيف لتحقيق أي أمل في العدالة والمساءلة. والبديل هو خطر العنف الانتقامي الجماعي. يُعد التمييز بين القرى بأكملها وبين من شاركوا في الجرائم المرتكبة ضد الزارة أمرًا بالغ الأهمية، ولكن حتى الآن لم يُقبض على أحد. يزعم حسن وأسامة أن هناك حوالي 400 مقاتل رسمي من قوات الدفاع الوطني وكتائب البعث من القرى المجاورة، بالإضافة إلى 2000 من الشبيحة. ومع ذلك، يعتقد الشقيقان أن “معظم المجرمين فروا إلى لبنان، والباقون مختبئون”. وهو ادعاء شائع استُخدم خلال العام الماضي للتخفيف من خطر العنف الانتقامي العشوائي.

يقول أسامة، مشيرًا إلى المخاوف الواسعة النطاق بين العلويين من أن يسعى المنتصرون السنة إلى الانتقام: “بعد التحرير، كانت المناطق المحيطة تنتظر المذبحة. لكننا نلتزم بالقوانين وندعم العدالة الانتقالية، لا عمليات القتل الانتقامية”. مطلب الرجلين الوحيد هو محاسبة المجرمين وإعادة الممتلكات المسروقة. يرفضان الدعوات إلى القصاص الجماعي أو محاسبة قرى علوية بأكملها، بل ويرفضان حتى الحاجة إلى تعويضات مالية. يقول حسن: “الزارة لا تحتاج إلى اعتذار أو اعتراف بالجرائم”. من غير الواضح ما إذا كانت البلدة بأكملها تشاركه الرأي.

لم تُبذل أي محاولات رسمية لتحقيق السلام المدني أو مبادرات التماسك الاجتماعي في الزارة. وقد هجرت معظم المنظمات غير الحكومية ومنظمات المجتمع المدني المنطقة، لكن السكان المحليين سعوا إلى بناء علاقات غير رسمية بطريقتهم الخاصة. ويؤكد أسامة مرارًا وتكرارًا عندما سألته عن الحاجة إلى لجنة للسلام المدني: “لم يطالب أحد هنا بالسلام المدني لأننا نعيشه بالفعل”. ويضيف: “لقد أوضحنا أن قتل جيراننا العلويين ليس نصرًا ولا عدلًا”. ومع ذلك، فبينما يدّعي الرجلان أن سكان الزارة لا توجد لديهم مشاكل مع جيرانهم، “إلا أن بعضهم حساس تجاهنا”.

يجري الآن إعادة بناء الروابط المجتمعية على ثلاثة مستويات. يتواصل قادة المجتمع في الزارة مع قادة القرى العلوية، مما يضمن وجود قناة اتصال مفتوحة لحل أي مشكلات بين سكان المدينة. إضافةً إلى ذلك، يعمل الآن معلمون علويون في الزارة، ويُوظَّف شبان من القرى العلوية كعمال بناء للمساعدة في إعادة بناء منازل السكان. وأخيرًا، أصبحت المدارس جزءًا أساسيًا من الترابط بين المجتمعات. وتجمع الفعاليات الفنية والرياضية بانتظام الطلاب وعائلاتهم من مدارس الزارة والمدارس العلوية المجاورة.

على الرغم من ذلك، لا يزال الغضب متأججًا بين البلدات، إذ ينظر سكان الزارة إلى البلدات العلوية على أنها من بدأت الهجمات ضدهم عام ٢٠١١. وفي يونيو/حزيران ٢٠٢٥، انفجر هذا الغضب وانعدام الثقة في ليلة من العنف ، عندما أدى مقتل ضابط أمن في ظروف غامضة في قرية علوية مجاورة إلى هجوم شنه حشد غاضب استهدف عائلة علوية في تلك القرية. وقد غذّت شائعات وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي هذا الحراك، ولا تزال المعلومات المضللة وخطاب الكراهية على الإنترنت تقوّض الروابط الشخصية والاقتصادية التي تُبقي السلام الهش قائمًا.

“لا يزال هناك الكثير مما يجب فعله لربط القرى ببعضها، وخاصةً على الصعيد الاقتصادي”، يناشد أسامة. لقد دُمّر اقتصاد الزارة وبنيتها التحتية جراء عمليات النهب الممنهجة التي مارسها النظام. تعيش الآن عائلات عديدة في منازل مكتظة أنفقت مدخراتها لإعادة بنائها، ولا تزال فرص العمل شحيحة. وبينما نتجول في مركز المدينة، نجد مجموعة صغيرة من الرجال يتجمعون عند محطة فرعية للكهرباء، يصرخون بغضب في وجه موظف كهرباء البلدية بسبب انقطاع التيار الكهربائي المتكرر في المدينة. يحاول بعض المزارعين إعادة زراعة حقولهم، لكن بساتين الزيتون التي اعتمدوا عليها تاريخيًا ستستغرق سنوات لتنمو من جديد. يوضح حسن: “كان القطاع الصناعي ضعيفًا للغاية حتى قبل الحرب. قبل جيلين، كانت المدينة تشتهر بصناعة السجاد، لكن هذا توقف منذ زمن طويل”.

احتياجات الزارة هائلة. يوجد الآن ما يقارب ألف طالب يرتادون مدارس دُمرت بالكامل، مكتظين في فصول دراسية بناها السكان المحليون على عجل مطلع العام الماضي. أما السكان الـ 12 ألف الذين عادوا، فلا يملكون سوى بئر واحدة، مولداتها ضعيفة للغاية بحيث لا تستطيع ضخ المياه إلى أجزاء من البلدة. اضطرت كل عائلة إلى استخدام أموالها الخاصة لإعادة بناء منازلها، مما أجبر البعض على البقاء نازحين في الخارج، والبعض الآخر على تهريب أنفسهم عائدين إلى لبنان بحثًا عن عمل. يقول أسامة إن المشاريع الرامية إلى تخفيف الأعباء الاقتصادية في الزارة يمكن أن تُسهم أيضًا في تعزيز العلاقات المتصدعة بين المجتمعات المحلية. ويضيف: “نحن بحاجة إلى مشاريع صناعية وتنموية جديدة تربط اقتصاداتنا جميعًا، أشياء بسيطة مثل البيوت الزجاجية ومتاجر المواد الغذائية، أو ربما بعض مصانع تجهيز الأغذية لتستفيد منها جميع بلداتنا”.

الزارة ليست سوى واحدة من مئات المدن السنية التي واجهت اعتداءات ممنهجة وطائفية من قبل نظام الأسد وحلفائه خلال الثورة. تحمل المدينة قصتها الفريدة، لكن أنواع الجرائم - من اعتقالات وإعدامات وتفجيرات عشوائية ونهب ممنهج - كانت جزءًا من سياسة عنف شاملة على مستوى البلاد انتهجها النظام. مع ذلك، لم تقتصر الجرائم على العمليات العسكرية الرسمية، بل غالبًا ما تداخلت فيها الخطوط الفاصلة بين جرائم النظام والعنف الطائفي بين المجتمعات.

تحررت الزارة، لكنها تُركت مرة أخرى من قِبل المجتمع الدولي. اضطر سكانها إلى إعادة بناء منازلهم وحياتهم دون أي دعم خارجي، ويواجهون الآن مهمة شاقة تتمثل في إعادة بناء العلاقات مع جيرانهم بعد 14 عامًا من الحصار والتهجير. هذه ليست تحديات يمكن لمجتمع صغير التغلب عليها بمفرده. كلما طالت فترة انقطاع الدعم عن الزارة، ازداد خطر عدم تعافي المدينة بشكل كامل وعودة العنف إلى المنطقة.

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By 2015, the residents of several Sunni villages along what was once the frontline between regime and rebel forces were expelled and their houses razed. Some of the perpetrators had come from bordering Alawi villages where young men had joined regime militias. Displaced residents began to return following the fall of the Assad regime, and with them came a resumption of the inter-communal conflicts started during the war.

I recently visited one of these destroyed villages, Ramleh, and met with a school teacher who returned from the IDP camps in the north in March 2025. The village today is dotted with shattered homes, small new structures, and tents. Most the roadside is empty and overgrown, hiding the foundations of what once were scores of homes.

Ramleh sits just south of a Murshdi village named Rasif and an Alawi town called Aziziyah. Below is an edited transcript of our meeting, discussing the history of Jamleh and complex inter-sect relations with its two neighboring towns, one Alawi and one Murshdi.

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The fall of Assad opened the door to the return of the region’s displaced Sunni population. With it came vigilante violence and housing and land disputes. The cities of Talkalakh and Zara themselves were severely damaged by regime militias and required extensive repairs, while many young Alawi men fled to Lebanon in fear of arrest or retributive violence.

The security situation improved gradually over the course of 2025. The district is home to nearly every sect in Syria and many communities had long-standing relations. These old networks reformed and cross-communal economic activity recovered. In early February 2026, however, a drive-by shooting in the Alawi village of Ain al-Khadra left two men dead and seven injured. It was the first attack in several months and raised questions about the stability of the area.

I visited Talkalakh in February 2026, observing a civil peace workshop for young people from the city and countryside and meeting with several participants and community leaders. I returned in mid-May 2026 and met with five Alawi professionals from the western countryside as well as two Sunni community leaders. Below is an edited transcript of the May meeting, discussing the current status of inter-communal relations and security in Talkalakh. The responses from participants are combined below each question and there was near universal agreement on each topic.

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I have previously profiled the somewhat unique relationships that formed between the Ministry of Interior and Beit Yashout’s local leaders and activists, and how these lines of communications were effective in trust building and stability.

Yet these relationships and trust are entirely reliant on the personalities of the local government officials and community leaders; if one changes, the entire system risks collapse. I returned to Beit Yashout on May 7, 2026, to check in on the situation with some community leaders and activists. The following interview covers the significant changes that have occurred over the past three months and underscore the fragility of stability in Syria as well as the impact the current arrest campaign against regime criminals is having in rural Alawi communities.

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Rastan would be the epicenter of several more battles throughout 2011 and 2012 before the opposition eventually carved out a swathe of liberated territory across the countryside. In May 2018, the Assad regime fully recaptured the city following a multi-year siege and “reconciliation agreement.” Most of the city’s residents fled to Idlib or out of the country at this time. Rastan was not liberated again until the regime’s collapse in December 2024.

The fall of the Assad regime has ushered in a new period of intense transition for Rastan. The city has suffered significant material and economic damage, and pre-war and even war-time social structures have been broken and built anew (Dr. Aymen al-Dassouky has an excellent report on the evolution of local social structures following the regime’s takeover).

Following is a detailed assessment of Rastan’s conditions post-Assad. I have combined two interviews that I conducted in March 2026, one with a former Free Syrian Army commander from Rastan and the other with a former opposition fighter from Talbiseh who now does aid work across northern Homs. The topics include post-Assad social divisions in the city, local actors involved in mediation, and challenges facing the economic and education sectors.

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His arrest is just one of a long string of otherwise unannounced arrests targeting former military doctors. This is one of the most contentious files within the already extremely divisive transitional justice topic. Many former military doctors have, since ending their service or since the regime’s fall, opened private civilian practices. The arrests of these men – done without public announcements and often by masked armed security forces – has fueled misinformation within Alawi social media networks of kidnappings against “doctors”. Doctors are almost always framed as civilians, with no mention of their past employment.

There are two commonly understood roles of the military medical sector in the detainment system: senior doctors who signed fake death certificates claiming those murdered under torture or execution died of natural causes, and nurses and lower-level doctors who worked directly inside the prisons. A 2023 investigation by the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya Prison into the Tishreen Military Hospital provides a detailed looked into the complex web of doctors, nurses, military police and intelligence members involved in abusing and murdering detainees within the hospital. According to the report:

When asked about the military doctors, many Alawis do not understand why they would be targeted for arrest. The intricacies of the Assad-era detention and torture network are more foreign to the Alawi community, compared to Sunnis, and it is difficult for even some anti-Assad Alawis to accept the idea that respected local doctors could have been involved. Even if people know what some doctors did in these hospitals, their relatives and friends who served there would always describe themselves as the exceptions – doctors who treated detainees well and stood up for their rights.

These divergent narratives came to a head in early February 2026, when at least seven former Tishreen doctors were arrested in Damascus, Homs, and Tartous. The rapid arrest of five doctors in Homs city alone caused viral Facebook posts about the “kidnapping” of Alawi doctors. Families of the arrested men often struggle to find information about their whereabouts or the charges against them, further fueling misinformation and fear that these are sect-based kidnappings or arrests.

I asked two Ministry of Interior investigators about these arrests later that month. They confirmed that a list of several hundred people affiliated with the military hospitals had been created throughout 2025, based on documents and witness testimonies, and disseminated to local security offices. This list included men wanted for questioning, and men wanted for crimes with which the government had strong evidence of their involvement. This campaign has clearly increased in intensity throughout the spring.

Last December I met with a former military doctor who worked throughout the war in Tishreen Military Hospital. We spoke among other topics about the treatment of Alawi military doctors after liberation and his perceptions of Tishreen and treating detainees. The doctor was arrested in February. I have edited this interview to remove any potentially identifying information about him. It is particularly interesting to note how he describes the role of Sunni doctors and the perception that they are not being targeted for arrest, and also how his descriptions of Sunni doctors changes throughout the interview.

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• Northeast

• Aleppo and Idlib

• Damascus

• Coast

• Homs

• Hama

This week saw an increase in vigilante and sectarian killings after a multi-week lull. A rare vigilante killing was conducted in al-Ghab, likely a result of the increased tensions in the region following the arrest of Amjad Yusuf there last week. Several Alawi men were killed in Homs city and its countryside. Some of the murders appear to have been linked to war-time events given their targeted nature. Sunnis victims were also killed in murders and disputes in Hama, Damascus, and Latakia. An MoD member was also reportedly arrested this week by the Military Police for conducting a vigilante killing in Hama.

Security forces have arrested many ex-regime criminals throughout April, detaining men at a far greater rate than previously seen. This week saw at least 11 such arrest operations, some targeting more than one man. Most of these targeted men linked to the regime’s intelligence services, but high profile officers were also arrested. Security forces in Raqqa also conducted three arrests at the end of the week against ex-SDF intelligence and military officials in the governorate.

At the same time, the government continues to release regime POWs from prison this month, generally 1-2 batches per week. This week was no exception, and the trend suggests an accelerated effort by Damascus to process and release ex-soldiers with clean records.

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It was the first time Hamad had stepped foot in his hometown in ten years. He had lived in the nearby city of Talkalakh during that decade of displacement, a city which itself had seen mass displacement and looting of Sunni homes earlier in the war. Yet while he lived only a few minutes’ drive from his true home, he didn’t dare cross the regime checkpoint at the edge of the city. Any man found with “Zara” written on his I.D. was more often than not disappeared into the regime’s prison network.

It was only with Syria’s liberation on December 8, 2024, that Hamad and thousands of other residents of Zara were able to return home. Most came from Lebanon and Turkey, others from the sprawling refugee camps in northern Syria. A remote and isolated Sunni town, overshadowed by the events in neighboring Hosn and Talkalakh, Zara’s story has long been lost amid a decade and a half of atrocities across the country. Yet its history of protest, siege, and suffering, all inexorably underpinned by sectarian divisions, have shaped its post-war experiences. The story of Zara illustrates the common challenges of return and reconciliation felt in hundreds of towns in which wartime grievances fester and reconstruction is a slow, painful process. Economic and social ties between Zara and the surrounding area have helped to maintain a semblance of peace, but a lack of serious economic and social support has undermined the town’s ability to recover.

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A Town Under Siege

The fields outside Zara are still littered with the shrapnel of shells and bombs. From 2012 until 2014 Zara remained besieged, cut off from the rest of the country. Hamad and his brother, Omar, walk me through the now half buried trenches which once marked the frontlines. “I found my friend’s body here one morning,” Omar tells me, pointing to a small outcropping of trench. “I had left him the night before while he was on ribat, in the morning I found him dead from a sniper.” He looks up over the bush-covered berm. Stretching out before us are the low hills and fields of the Alawi villages which surround Zara on two sides.

We are standing on the western flank of the town’s old defensive line. A network of trenches wraps in a C pattern around the tallest hill outside of town, atop which sits an ancient Byzantine tower. A small building next to the tower still contains a large painted regime flag. It is a constant reminder of Zara’s fate.

Like most Sunni towns, Zara’s residents had joined the anti-Assad protest movement in early 2011. However, the town is isolated in far western Homs, where a small string of Sunni communities sit surrounded by pro-Assad Alawi towns. They were all early targets for the regime’s military and shabiha. The first of 520 victims was murdered on May 14, 2011. Army units backed by local militiamen had just established a series of checkpoints around Zara and Talkalakh following protests the day before. Ahmed Hamsho, a lawyer from Talkalakh, tried to visit his wife’s family in Zara that day but was detained by shabiha outside the village of Hajar Abyad. The shabiha beat and tortured him before handing him over to the army, who sent him to prison where he died under torture. His body was returned to his family two months later.

On May 15, the regime launched a military operation against Talkalakh. Three days of intense fighting later, Talkalakh had been subdued. Nearly 4,000 residents had been displaced to Lebanon and more than 1,000 detained by regime forces, according to Human Rights Watch. Increasingly isolated from other pro-revolution towns, Zara would gradually come under siege.

Hamad and Omar had been teachers before the war. After the revolution began, Hamad moved to the newly established local council’s education office. When the regime besieged Zara in 2012, Omar took up a rifle to defend his city. “We had many defectors who supported us and helped to organize and train our forces,” Omar explains. Whether Alawi or Sunni, the towns of the Talkalakh countryside have historically had limited job opportunities; farming, smuggling, or joining the army were the only real paths forward for young men. According to the regime’s 2004 census, while Zara was the largest town in northern Talkalakh and had among the highest percentage of government employees (30%), it was in the lower half of education and economic indicators for the area. Economic hardship had pushed many of the town’s men into the army or cross-border smuggling, with other families relying on remittances from children sent abroad. By 2011 the town boasted around 200 officers and 1,000 conscripts.

Unlike the nearby Alawi villages who also contained significant numbers of regime soldiers, almost all of Zara’s men defected early in the war. These defectors formed the core of the opposition factions that soon mobilized in the town, lending a high degree of experience and coordination which prevented major infighting and allowed the town to withstand the tightening siege. “Everyone took up arms to defend the town, and the defected officers organized the fighters and led the defenses,” explain Hamad and Omar.

More than 120 fighters, many of them defectors, died during the siege. Today, the people of Zara hold immense pride in these men. Facebook pages dedicated to covering news in the town regularly report on the return of defected officers following their exile in Europe. Meanwhile, by the end of 2025, 150 of the young conscript defectors had re-joined the new Syrian army, cementing the town’s position within the revolutionary story of Syria.

By the time the regime fell, only 10% of the town’s population were still living in Syria. A few, like Hamad, lived in Talkalakh while the rest were trapped in the sprawling refugee camps in the north. Most residents had smuggled themselves to Lebanon throughout the siege and the day the town was captured. Yet despite being less than 4 miles from the border, getting to Lebanon was itself another battle.

The regime entered Zara on March 8, 2014, triggering a mass wave of displacement among fighters and civilians alike. For two months regime army units, supported by Alawi militias from across the coast, assaulted the town in what residents called “The Great Battle of Zara.” Nearly the entire town fled when the regime finally broke through. Some went up the nearby mountain to Hosn, another besieged Sunni Turkmen town. Around 800 people tried to enter Lebanon. However, as Hamad and Omar describe it, “Alawi villages saw the people fleeing and set up checkpoints to capture them. Others were shot at or shelled by regime and NDF positions around the valley.” As many as 200 people were caught or killed trying to reach the border.

“At this point the average weight was 40-50kg and most of us were eating grass,” recalls Omar, “Fighters had to open the road, first breaking through a checkpoint near Hosn then escorting the civilians under a hail of fire.” Some elderly residents and children knew they could not make this journey and believed that, as clear non-combatants, they could remain behind when the regime entered the town. More than 120 executed by regime forces and local militias that day, according to Dr. Nadir al-Halil, with bodies still being found. Another 200 people were detained in the following weeks, many after being promised amnesty by the regime. Young men were then forcibly conscripted into the regime’s forces, while defectors disappeared into Sednaya Prison. “The regime called it victory day,” says Hamad, “but for us it was a black day.”

Pride Without Homes

When the Assad regime fell, this proud history was all the people of Zara had left of their town. Even in the heart of winter, the hills around Zara remain brown and empty. Weeds and stumps protrude where thousands of olive trees once flourished. Looking out over the countryside is like seeing where two oceans meet – the empty hills of Zara ringed in by the dense orchards of Alawi villages. It was regime militiamen from these towns who had swept through Zara after expelling every resident and desecrated its fields. It was an explicit attempt to permanently displace the Sunni population.

The town itself did not escape this systematic destruction either. Between 2014 and 2019, nearly every house was stripped of its contents, wiring, rebar, and roofs. Anything that could be sold for scrap was taken. Regime fighters did not even wait for the smoke to settled before beginning their looting, as one video recently shared by locals shows:

Two regime militiamen loot a home in Zara while the sounds of shooting can still be heard in the distance. The two men mock the now displaced residents by sarcastically yelling “Allahu Akbar” and saying “We are Shabihah of Assad”.

When some residents were finally allowed to return in 2019, these local shabiha attacked the town again. According to the journalist, Alawi farmers began setting seasonal fires to the land Zara’s residents were attempting to regrow, while others simply seized land belonging to displaced Zara families. A local journalist has documented the destruction of his town in detail. In a series of Facebook posts in early 2025 he wrote:

Rebuilding a Town and Relationships

Zara’s experiences during the war were shaped by their local environment. The regime relied heavily on informal militias recruited from the Alawi towns and villages surrounding Zara. Raids by opposition fighters targeted security points in these towns, which were then described by pro-regime media as targeting “civilians”, further radicalizing local Alawi communities against the Sunnis in Zara. Artillery batteries, tanks, and sniper positions were all placed in and around these villages, and checkpoints were often manned by local National Defense Forces (NDF) personnel. All of this created an inexorable link between Zara’s neighbors and the regime’s crimes, even before the systematic looting of later years.

A video filmed by regime supporters in the nearby village of Hajar Abyad showing residents gathering to watch regime artillery shell Zara on the final day of the siege, March 8, 2014.

The people of Zara now have to rely on a complicated and weak justice system for any hope of justice and accountability. The alternative is risking mass retributive violence. Differentiating between entire villages and just those who participated in the crimes against Zara is key, but so far no one has been arrested. Hamad and Omar claim there were around 400 formal NDF and Baath Battalion fighters from the neighboring villages, along with another 2000 “shabiha.” Yet the two brothers believe that, “most of the criminals fled to Lebanon and the rest are in hiding.” It is a common claim used over the past year to mitigate the risk of vigilante and indiscriminate retributive violence.

“After liberation, the surrounding areas were waiting to be slaughtered,” Omar says, referring to the widespread fears among Alawis that the Sunni victors would come seeking revenge, “But we are abiding by the laws and support transitional justice, not revenge killings.” The two mens’ only demands are that the criminals be held accountable and stolen property returned. They reject calls for communal retribution or accountability against entire Alawi villages and even dismiss the need for financial compensation. “Zara doesn’t need an apology or acknowledgement of the crimes,” says Hamad. It is unclear if the entire town shares his opinion.

There have been no formal attempts at civil peace or social cohesion initiatives in Zara. The area has been abandoned by most NGOs and civil society organizations, but locals have pursued their own form of informal relationship building. “No one here demanded civil peace because we already have civil peace,” Omar emphasizes repeatedly when I ask about the need for a Civil Peace Committee. “We have made it clear that killing our Alawi neighbors is neither victory nor justice,” he adds. However, while both men claim that the people of Zara have no problems towards their neighbors, “some of them are sensitive towards us.”

Rebuilding communal ties now occurs on three levels. Community leaders in Zara talk with the leaders of the Alawi villages, ensuing there is an open communication channel for any issues between town residents. Additionally, Alawi teachers now work in Zara, and young men from the Alawi villages are employed as construction workers helping to rebuild residents’ homes. Lastly, schools have become a central part of intercommunal bonding. Arts and sports events now regularly bring together students and families from Zara’s schools and the nearby Alawi schools.

Despite this, there is still deep anger between the towns, as Zara’s residents view the Alawi towns as having initiated the attacks against them in 2011. In June 2025 this anger and distrust erupted in a night of violence, when the death of a security officer under unclear circumstances in a nearby Alawi village resulted in a mob attack targeting an Alawi family in that village. Social media rumors had fueled that mobilization, and online misinformation and hate speech continues to undermine the personal and economic ties holding the the fragile peace.

“More needs to be done though to tie the villages together, especially economically,” Omar implores. Zara’s economy and infrastructure was decimated by the regime’s systematic looting. Multiple families are now cramped into single homes they have spent their saving on to rebuild, and job opportunities remain scarce. Walking through the town center we find a small group of men gathering at an electrical substation angrily yelling at a municipal electrical employee over the ongoing power outages in the town. Some farmers are attempting to replant their fields, but the olive groves they had historically relied on will takes years to regrow. “The industrial sector was very weak even before the war,” explains Hamad, “Two generations ago the town was known for carpet making, but this has long stopped.”

Zara’s needs are immense. There are now nearly 1,000 students attending schools which had all been destroyed, crammed into classrooms hastily shored up by locals early last year. The 12,000 residents who have returned have only a single well whose generators are too weak to pump water to parts of the town. Every family has had to use their own money to rebuild their homes, forcing some to remain displaced abroad and others to smuggle themselves back to Lebanon in search of work. Projects to alleviate the economic strains in Zara could help strengthen the frayed inter-communal relations here as well, says Omar. “We need new industrial and development projects that link all of our economies together,” he tells me, “simple things like greenhouses and food stores, or maybe some food processing factories for all of our towns to use.”

Zara is just one of hundreds of Sunni towns to face systematic and sectarian assaults by the Assad regime and its supporters during the revolution. The town harbors its own unique story, but the types of crimes - the detentions, executions, indiscriminate bombings and systematic looting - were part of a nation-wide policy of violence employed by the regime. Yet crimes were not limited to formal military operations and often blurred the lines between the crimes of the regime and sect-based intercommunal violence.

Zara has been liberated, but it has once again been abandoned by the international community. Its people have had to rebuild their homes and their lives with no outside support, and now face the monumental task of rebuilding relations with their neighbors after 14 years of siege and displacement. These are not challenges one small community can defeat alone. The longer Zara goes without support, the greater the risk the town will never fully recover and violence could return to the area.

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Violent incidents continued to reduce this week. An off-duty army member was found killed at the Blue Beach Chalet in Latakia, following several days of complaints by locals that tourists were bringing weapons to the beach. Inter-tribal disputes also erupted in Hama, where a large firefight at the sheep market resulted in the MoI shutting the market down, and in Homs, where a Bedouin man was stabbed in a fight with another man, resulting in online misinformation campaigns blaming Alawis and Bedouin mobilization.

The most significant security developments this week occurred in the transitional justice file. Amjad Yousef, the infamous perpetrator of the Tadamon massacre, was captured in his home in rural Hama. His arrest and his family’s protection of him has led to significant online threats against the village, and local Sunnis attempted to storm the village late this week. At the same time, the first trial of a former regime official began in Damascus on Sunday. Meanwhile, the government continues to release ex-regime POWs captured during the 2024 offensive.

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Violent incidents reduced this week, with no sectarian killings reported in Homs city. An Alawi man was killed in his home in Baniyas in what was reported as an attack linked to online gambling disputes.

Security forces conducted several large operations this week, targeting significant narcotics and weapons shipments as well as insurgent cells. This includes a three-man Hezbollah cell captured in Qunietra along with mobile rocket launchers. At least five regime-era criminals were also detained by security forces, while a well-known Sunni informant was executed in Homs City. Meanwhile, the government continues near-weekly releases of former regime soldiers from prisons across the country.

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This week saw a slight increase in violence, with five murders in Homs city in particular. Among the dead was a family of three Alawis who were targeted by gunmen reportedly after the wife had shared old photos on Facebook showing that her husband had served in the regime’s forces. At least two kidnapping executions also took place this week, one each in Homs and Damascus.

Meanwhile, security forces arrested at least five regime-era criminals, continuing a recent trend this year. Major counter-narcotics operations were also conducted in border regions including two joint busts alongside the Iraqi and Jordanian governments. Lastly, late in the week government forces prevented a Hezbollah operation attempting to kill a senior Syrian Rabbi in Damascus, detaining the five-person cell.

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Violence remained at a lower, though still consistent, level this week than the first two months of the year. For the fifth week in a row there was only one reported murder in Homs City, and violence in the Homs countryside also remained minimal. However, there has been growing anger by some Sunni residents in Talkalakh over alleged corruption and abuses by the security official in the area.

The most significant incidents this week came in Hama governorate, following the prior week’s events in Suqaylabiyah. Two Alawi men were murdered in Masyaf, a string of robberies were reported in al-Ghab, and Sunni ex-regime fighters attacked a local MoD member in northwest Hama, triggering a multi-day military operation in the town.

Meanwhile security operations continue across the country, still largely focused on regular crime. A large kidnapping ring was dismantled in Aleppo and three men responsible for killing a taxi driver outside Homs recently were arrested. At the same time, at least six ex-regime criminals were arrested in Homs and Hama.

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On March 27, hundreds of men rioted through the streets of Suqaylabiyah, a Christian town in northwest Hama, vandalizing and burning hundreds of shops and cars. The mob formed following a personal dispute a few hours earlier, fueled by misinformation and a decades-long complicated relationship between Suqaylabiyah and the nearby Sunni town of Qalaat al-Mudiq. The attack quickly gained national and international attention, becoming another piece of the wider debate over the new Syrian government and minority safety after Assad. Yet the attack was rooted in local dynamics, part of a wider pattern of deeply local inter-communal conflicts across the country. These conflicts require locally-rooted solutions, and should serve as a warning for Damascus regarding the fragility of much of Syria’s countryside.

Complex Historic Relations

Small-scale personal disputes between these two towns date back to before 2011. Suqaylabiyah is the commercial hub of the region, its main café street a lively place on weekend nights hosting people from the surrounding area. Men from Qalaat al-Mudiq, for example, have frequently visited here for years before the war, and at times gotten into disputes and brawls with local men. These incidents are not new and not sectarian in nature, and they have occurred amidst the existence of close personal and commercial ties between the two towns.

The relationship was strained, however, by the Syrian War. Each town became a strategic point on the frontline between the regime and opposition. Regime, and later Russian, forces established positions in and around Suqaylabiyah from which they indiscriminately shelled Qalaat al-Mudiq. The regime and Russian militaries also formed a militia from some of the Christian men in the town. This militia was involved in every battle against Qalaat, with its members looting homes and detaining and killing men from the other town.

Despite this, Suqaylabiyah also contains pro-revolution residents, and these men have formed the nucleus of a key civil peace network in the wider northwest Hama region. This network includes Amjad Hadad, a Christian opposition fighter who founded the Martyrs of St. George Battalion which fought for several years alongside Free Syrian Army factions in Qalaat. The network is led by several priests who had remained distant from the regime, and incorporates social dignitaries and activists from Sunni and Alawi villages across the area.

This network first began to take shape when the regime fell, its founders recognizing the need to rebuild relations between Suqaylabiyah and the destroyed Sunni villages. It has grown since then, particularly during the summer of 2025, thanks in part to support and guidance from a small international mediation organization. The network has been closely supported by the district Security Director, who has provided it with the support and autonomy to gain local legitimacy. This network and its coordination with the local security office was key for minimizing the damage last week.

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The Friday Riot

On March 27, a small group of men from the two towns fought on the main street over accusations of harassment. This is a not-uncommon occurrence that has happened several times already this year and frequently before 2011. One of the men from Qalaat, an off-duty General Security member, was stabbed and taken to the hospital. The others returned home and rumors quickly spread on WhatsApp that he had been killed. Soon around 200 men had mobilized to get revenge.

However, other members of these WhatsApp groups quickly informed the civil peace network about what was happening. The network then circulated messages for residents in Suqaylabiyah to leave the streets and return home. As the mob mobilized in Qalaat and moved towards the city, it passed through security checkpoint which did not stop them. It remains unclear if the checkpoint was unwilling or unable to stop the crowd of men of motorcycles, but these are usually only staffed by a small number of personnel. The checkpoint immediately contacted the district security official, who deployed his 20 police officers from the city’s station and helped ensure the streets were cleared.

The police escorted three members of the civil peace network to confront the mob and attempt to calm them down. Other officers rushed to put out the fires started by rioters, but there were far too few of them to contain the group. The mob moved through the main streets, vandalizing cars and shops while in Hama city, a 45-minute drive away, security reinforcements mobilized. At the same time, a small civil peace network in nearby Masyaf – established by the same NGO which supports the Suqaylabiyah network – contacted their district security director and urged him to send additional units to Suqaylabiyah. They were joined one hour after the attack began by 100 security members from Hama. Together, they moved into the mob, firing guns in the air to try and push the group off the main street, but this resulted in them dispersing into side streets and continuing the vandalism until they were eventually pushed out of the town. The units from Masyaf remained in the town on March 28 and were crucial for preventing a second mob from entering Suqaylabiyah that day.

Urgent Lessons

In the days since, local officials have engaged closely with community leaders from across the area and there are ongoing dialogues between the two towns. Current efforts are focused on resolving the immediate dispute that resulted in the escalation and on restitution for the destroyed shops and vehicles. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior has arrested the off-duty officer who participated in the brawl, and he remains in custody today. This is standard practice.

Government officials and community leaders insist that, “the problem is now solved.” It may be true that this specific incident’s causes - revenge over the brawl and misinformation – have been addressed, but the decades-long tensions between the cities are not, and neither is the severe loss in trust Christian residents now feel towards the security forces and government.

Preventing this from happening again requires locally-rooted solutions and a unified approach by social actors, political officials, and security leaders supported by third party experts.

First, the government’s approach to these types of communal mobilizations lacks any deterrence effect. Damascus has adopted a restorative justice-oriented approach to these forms of inter-communal violence, opting for dialogue between community leaders and financial restitution rather than prison sentences for every participant. This approach reduces the risk of fomenting new vendettas, but does little to deter future participation in riots. Furthermore, financial restitution can exacerbate post-war intercommunal conflict when there are significant economic disparities between the two towns. In this case, Suqaylabiyah is a relatively wealthy town with strong diaspora financial networks that largely escaped damage during the war, while Qalaat al-Mudiq is physically devasted, with nearly every home having been systematically looted by the regime during the war and most residents unemployed. Ordering Qalaat’s residents to pay for the damage they caused will likely only deepen resentment, even if it is the fair thing to do.

The Syrian government should therefore find an alternative approach to accountability and deterrence, something more than financial restitution but less than prison time. Lifetime bans on government employment for anyone who participates in an armed mob could be one avenue. Increased pressure and engagement within Sunni communities by veteran opposition leaders and by officials from Damascus could also help shape social norms against such actions and make it clear that these types of local events do not escape the notice of national leadership.

Second, the attacks highlighted the Interior Ministry’s ongoing personnel problem. Checkpoints in rural are too weak to prevent mobs from passing. These checkpoints used to be run by the army, but the MoI has taken over most of these in recent months with army units confined to bases. This is part of the government’s wider security reforms attempting to separate the army from civil policing. As such, nearby army units did not respond to residents’ requests to deploy during the hour prior to the arrival of the general security reinforcements. However, given the MoI’s resource deficit and inability to rapidly respond to such large incidents, some temporary system should be made which would allow the army to support cutting roads and preventing mob movement in coordination with area security directors.

Third, while these tensions go back decades, the war has exacerbated them. The presence of ex-militia members inside Suqaylabiyah has been manipulated online to frame the entire town as “regime remnants,” with some prominent pro-government media pages framing the initial dispute as a regime insurgent attack against the off-duty officer. Residents of Qalaat al-Mudiq have the right to be angry over the lack of transitional justice in the area, particularly when the government has been so opaque about its approach. Damascus must therefore own its decision to adopt near-universal amnesty for former regime members and realize the impact this decision has on Sunni populations. The Syrian government cannot simply demand Sunnis stay patient for justice without explaining its policies or addressing their consequences on the ground and on social media.

Lastly, the civil peace committee’s network worked well as an early warning system, ensuring that no civilians were harmed during the attack. This model should be expanded to other areas, and the networks in Suqaylabiyah and Masyaf given increased support from the government. At the same time, senior government officials should be more involved in engaging both communities beyond pleasantries, hosting their own dialogue sessions with residents on topics related to personal freedoms, transitional justice, and civil peace.

The issue facing Damascus now is not in reassuring Christians that the they are with them, but to prove to them that the government takes seriously the fact there is a problem within its own constituency and is willing to deal with it. The MoI’s failure to effectively intervene early on, even if out of a lack of capability, has significantly undermined its trust among locals and fueled perceptions of intentional leniency towards Sunni criminals. Dialogues between the two towns are important, but serious security reforms that could prevent future mobilizations and attacks against the city should also be made. As one activist involved in establishing civil peace networks in Homs explained to the author:

“What has transpired constitutes a clear test of the state’s authority. Through continued observation, we will gauge its capacity to maintain a monopoly on force, rein in uncontrolled weaponry, and enforce the law upon all parties without exception. Any laxity in this regard will inevitably lead to a recurrence of such incidents, albeit on a larger and more organized scale.”

This riot was a local event that risked triggering national repercussions had it not been mitigated by the strong civil peace network and presence of police forces. This should serve as a warning about the delicate state of northwest Hama, where most Alawi villages do not have police stations or civil peace committees. Damascus must take seriously the fragility of these mixed-sect zones and re-prioritize expanding police forces, including through the recruitment of locals, and establishing similar civil peace networks in these areas in order to help prevent any future outbreaks of intercommunal violence.

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Violent events remained minimal this week, but the social fragility of some areas was also highlighted. Attacks in Homs city continue to drop with only one murder reported, and of a Sunni resident. However, a rare murder in rural Latakia and a violent armed robbery in rural Tartous underscore the ongoing dangers in these areas. Furthermore, a small personal conflict in rural Hama erupted into a large mob attack against the Christian village of Suqaylabiyah.

Security forces conducted numerous arrests of criminals throughout the week. These including kidnapping gangs, drug smugglers, and thieves. Interestingly, five regime-era criminals were arrested across the country, and the commander of another regime insurgent faction was killed in a security operation in Latakia.

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Khaled’s phone buzzed the day Aleppo was liberated. On the other end was an old friend from college who he had not seen since the revolution began in 2011. After college, Khaled (not his real name), an Alawi from rural Masyaf, had gone on to work as a computer engineer at a local office of a global telecommunications company. His friend had joined al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, Jabhat al-Nusra. In 2014, amid widespread anger by Syrian government employees over stagnating wages, Khaled posted a single line on Facebook in which he indirectly called President Bashar al-Assad a “dog.” He would spend the next ten years wanted by the regime, forced to smuggle himself through checkpoints any time he left his town. Meanwhile, his friend was rising through Nusra’s ranks, eventually becoming a respected commander in the group’s final iteration, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

With the unexpected ease of HTS’s advance into Aleppo city on November 29, the group realized they had a chance to seize far more territory than they initially expected. HTS leaders began contacting important minority communities in Hama, quickly identifying HTS officers who had personal or familial contacts in these towns. In Salamiyah, for example, HTS political officers quickly negotiated a deal with the head of the Syrian Ismaili Council, but HTS field commanders from rural Salamiyah were also calling their families and negotiating directly with town mayors to ensure there would be no fighting.

The same was happening in Masyaf. At the same time Khaled was contacted in his town of Jubb Ramleh, two of his friends in nearby Salhab and Muhrahdeh received messages from their own childhood friends who had gone on to join HTS. Before HTS had even liberated Hama city, the group was already negotiating the surrender of the Masyaf countryside, the regime’s manpower basin in Hama governorate. Khaled and the other men initially contacted then messaged men in other villages who they knew held similarly anti-Assad views and could be trusted to help prepare the ground for the rebels’ entrance. A spiderweb of communication rapidly grew across dozens of towns and villages in Masyaf.

On December 8, at 7am, Khaled’s old friend entered Jubb Ramleh. Despite Khaled’s best efforts, most of the town’s residents had fled to the nearby mountains, fearing the Sunni rebel fighters would massacre them. Khaled and a small group of men stayed behind, however, welcoming the HTS unit and sending videos of themselves with the armed men to the rest of the townspeople to try and assuage them of their fears. After a while the unit moved on, heading towards the city of Masyaf, and some residents returned.

At 9:30am another armed rebel faction entered the town. Khaled did not know them, but a larger group of residents gathered to welcome them this time. According to Khaled, the faction questioned whether Jubb Ramleh was a Sunni or Alawi town, and then executed one of the men who had welcomed their entrance. The faction then left for Masyaf.

Community Initiatives in the State’s Absence

“When the regime collapsed, everything collapsed,” Khaled tells me over tea on his rooftop. There were no services, salaries, or basic goods, even the bakery had stopped receiving flour. Despite the murder committed by the faction, Khaled knew he had to try and keep these basic necessities moving.

The Masyaf countryside became synonymous with pro-regime militias during the war, resulting in widespread demonization of the entire area by the Syrian opposition. The city of Masyaf is itself majority Ismaili with Sunni, Christian, and Alawi communities and had risen up against Assad in 2011. But the countryside is nearly entirely Alawi, and it was from these villages that the regime drew both soldiers and militia fighters. Warlordism grew rampant in rural Masyaf, fueled by wealthy regime-linked businessmen and a few prominent families who turned their wealth and regime-connections into networks of armed groups. These groups were used extensively in military operations against the opposition across the country. But as the regime recaptured most of the country and the availability of new Sunni communities to plunder evaporated, these militias turned inward. Beginning around 2018, these armed networks became increasingly predatory against Alawis in the Masyaf countryside, kidnapping, murdering, and stealing from the Alawi and Sunni communities alike.

Jubb Ramleh had long stood apart from this dynamic. Unlike nearby towns like Asilah, Salhab, and Rabia, few of Jubb Ramleh’s men joined regime militias. As the capital of Masyaf’s largest subdistrict, the town has a high education rate and more expansive government employment. Of the 7,500 residents of the town, roughly 70% worked in government jobs, with less than 11% serving in the military. This difference is starkly reflected in the publicly reported funeral records of the towns during the first years of the war. Between 2011 and 2013, for example, only 15 men from Jubb Ramleh died while fighting in the regime’s army, while in the same period 39 men from Asilah and 161 men from Rabiah were killed in the regime’s ranks.

The collapse of the regime’s security services on December 8 meant that thousands of men across Masyaf had lost their paychecks overnight. Subsequent government restructuring campaigns in early 2025 saw waves of municipal and national-level employees fired from their jobs. Due to the over-representation of Alawis among government agencies, these campaigns had an disproportionate impact on Alawis. The combined effect was a sudden, massive economic collapse within Alawi communities. In Jubb Ramleh, only around 10% of the town remains employed in the government today, and there is little to no natural local economy for newly unemployed college graduates to move into.

Khaled urged the town’s residents to return from the mountains throughout December 2024. At the same time, he established a small council in the town in order to address this sudden crisis, encouraging other towns to do the same. These councils worked to provide food, medicine, and flour to their communities, using both local fundraisers and personal funds from the council members themselves. Many of the men have gone into debt trying to support these initiatives, borrowing from wealthy Alawi businessmen. “When you form something like this, a small council to manage daily matters, you need resources and so it’s a huge problem that money is not available,” explains Khaled.

For seven months these councils and local charities raised money and supported local families. Economic stress was worsened by the arrival of families from the village who had been living in the military housing in Damascus and Homs. Now unemployed and facing uncertain stability in these housing blocks technically owned by the government, many of these families have returned to their villages across the coast. But by mid-summer the money had run out.

In mid-February, these informal community councils merged with the original network of interlocutors who had communicated with HTS prior to the group’s entry to the region. What emerged came to call itself the Higher Alawi Islamic Council of Hama and Homs. The organization’s initial focus was on filling the services gap left by the collapse of the regime, but it was also able to leverage the individuals’ ties to security officers to serve as community interlocutors. Khaled explains the philosophy behind the council:

“There is a proverb: ‘a small problem needs a small guy to resolve it, a big problem needs a big guy.’ All the other sects have a central structure to solve these matters, except the Alawis. So how do you collect all of the Alawis without a head religious man? You begin calling the friends from university or work, and you form a network. So, we created a 50-person network in Hama and Homs. We had the first meeting in Salhab with the knowledge of the new government in January 2025. We wanted to understand the new government and its principles. Previously we knew nothing about these rebel groups, how they lived or perceived us. All people were afraid of the new government. We wanted to create a bridge between the government and the people. The main goal was to return services.”

The council continues working today, though in a highly decentralized manner. Each member works individually within his community, with the council forms a sort of support network he can refer to if needed.

Building Security out of Chaos

The trust the council’s members had established with officials early on, as well as the clean backgrounds of Khaled and the other local interlocutors, enabled the men to engage in a more collaborative dynamic with security officials. Khaled organized weapon handovers and the peaceful surrender of wanted men, avoiding security raids like those seen in rural Homs which at that time frequently resulted in deaths and violations against Alawi residents.

When Alawi insurgents rose up in the coast on March 6, Masyaf remained largely peaceful. “The Alawis in the coast and Hama are a different class,” explains Khaled, “We knew nothing about the insurgency in the coast, because they did not trust us.” Insurgents had not expanded or activated their networks beyond the most westward edge of Masyaf, around Wadi Ayoun, Resafa, and Salhab, thus leaving security forces in the rest of Masyaf relatively untouched. Yet the insurgency undermined the progress Masyaf’s leaders had made with local officials, spurring renewed distrust towards men like Khaled. Khaled and the council were barely able to prevent new security raids in their towns in the days after, but intense dialogue eventually prevailed.

The success of this dialogue was rooted in the network’s attitdues towards security officials in the preceding months. Khaled had engaged HTS officers early on, encouraging them to establish a security point in the town’s former police station. “They brought a force and began doing patrols and dealing with criminals,” recalls Khaled:

“They gradually expanded security from here, but the turning point came when they brought in defected police officers in July and handed over control of the station to them. They were very relaxed and easy to work with, and the mindset here shifted from a military one to a police mindset.”

Many communities in the Masyaf region were similarly eager to have HTS establish security positions in the countryside, an attitude that was not as common at this time in rural Tartous or Latakia. For the residents in Masyaf, these police stations and checkpoints were seen as a form of protection from extremist and criminal elements of the security forces and from local communities. Due to Masyaf’s reputation for hardcore Assadist militias and its proximity to strategic areas of Hama and Idlib, many of the most hardened opposition factions were initially sent to the region on December 8. Among these were Ansar Tawheed and the Turkistani Islamic Party (TIP). It was likely the former of these that executed the man in Jubb Ramleh on December 8.

According to revolutionary activists from Masyaf city who I spoke with last summer, it was these two factions which immediately caused problems in the area. “They entered the city expecting us all to be shabiha,” said one man, an Ismaili media activist who had previously worked with the Free Syrian Army, “we had to sit down with them and show them videos of us protesting in 2011 to prove to them that we were with the revolution.” Only then did the factions begin to relax.

Ansar Tawheed was then assigned to help oversee security in the Masyaf region, working alongside units belonging to HTS and the local Free Syrian Army faction Jaish al-Izza. It was in this context that Khaled and other local notables had called on HTS specifically to erect new security points, hoping the group would help keep out the more extremist Ansar Tawheed while also addressing intercommunal criminality coming from some of the nearby Sunni towns. Jaish al-Izza was soon assigned as the primary army faction in the area, and its leader, Brigadier Jamil Saleh, has built a close relationship with the Alawi communities.

While Ansar Tawheed was withdrawn from Masyaf by the spring of 2025, the inter-communal violence remained. Revenge attacks, both directly against regime criminals but also against perceived communal culpability, became an increasing problem. “Before the regime fell it was a complete government,” says Khaled, “it had state branches, security and military, and Baath employees. Now having been in any of these jobs has become an accusation.” As the security forces in Masyaf improved and violations from the government units ended, it was the Sunni communities in rural Hama which became the primary threat to Masyaf’s villages. “They are threatening the farmers, sometimes using weapons other times going out and damaging farming equipment or bringing shepherds to graze on the Alawi farms,” Khaled explains.

Most of the tensions have come from one of the few Sunni villages in Masyaf district, Dimo. Dimo is less than a third of a mile east of Jubb Ramleh. Most of the tensions between the towns have centered around agricultural land and grazing rights. However, there have been incidents of theft, harassment, and murder. The most significant violence in recent months came on December 29, when two Alawi farm workers were killed near Jubb Ramleh. Residents accuse men in Dimo of being behind the murders. As we spoke that afternoon, Khaled received a phone call from a local shop owner. Two men from Dimo had shoplifted some goods and fled on motorbike.

An Uncertain Future

Khaled’s collaborative mentality is borne from years of opposing the Assad regime; dodging the compulsory conscription and hiding from arrest warrants for more than 10 years. His focus has been on rebuilding his community and working with the state, an approach which necessitates prioritizing civil peace over justice. Reflecting on the December 8 murder by the opposition faction, Khaled says, through a pained face, “We have to consider this a natural part of these kinds of huge transitions if we want to move forward and build something.” Yet the revenge killings that continued after December 2024 have undermined trust from the Alawi community for the new authorities, and the ongoing economic collapse has fueled perceptions of intentional marginalization of the Alawi countryside.

According to Khaled, the December 29 killings were a type of thievery against farmers. However, he is optimistic that the new Security Director for Masyaf will be able to improve security. Masyaf District has undergone a series of leadership changes since December 8 which have had serious impacts on security and trust building among all sects. The HTS officer who knew Khaled from before the war served as the military official for the district until late Spring 2025 and did a good job establishing basic security services. However, as part of the new government’s restructuring he was later replaced by a new District Director, an administrative official named Muhammad Taraa, who quickly began consolidating power in the district. Taraa sidelined and at times directly attacked the Sunni and Ismaili community while surrounding himself with wealthy Alawi shabiha, according to several activists from Masyaf city. At one point Taraa even ordered the imprisonment of the city’s most prominent Ismaili and Sunni businessmen over a verbal dispute.

By late 2025 Taraa was removed from his position and a new District Director and Security Director was assigned to the district. Both men quickly began to rebuild relations with each of Masyaf’s varied communities. The Security Director, a defector from Rastan, had served for nearly a year in Salamiyah, where he had a strong track record of working with that district’s Sunni, Ismaili, and Alawi communities and building effective local dispute resolution systems.

“We met with the director and introduced ourselves,” says Khaled, “He is a good guy on security issues and responsive.” When the double murder occurred on December 29, Khaled and his council met with Security Director to explain the problems the farmers were facing. The General Security subsequently established a series of patrols and new checkpoints in the area. “Maybe in 6 months the security situation will be settled and the social problems between the sects will be better,” Khaled hopes, “But the major problem of the economy remains and this will continue to exacerbate the social situations.”

Despite the security improvements, little has been done to address the roots of the inter-communal conflict in the region. Locals have held meetings and attempted dialogue sessions between village representatives, all supported by and coordinated through the new District Director. He had previously been in charge of engaging with and supporting Hama’s Alawi community from the governor’s office, and through this work had already built relations with many of Masyaf’s Alawi leaders, including Khaled. “He is a very good man,” Khaled says, “he engages closely with all communities and holds many meetings.” Yet there has been no recent engagement from the governor’s office or the Political Affairs Directorate, both of which would have more weight within the Sunni towns. Nor has there been any support from national or international NGOs.

Meanwhile, the economic crisis has become the dominant issue in the district. Khaled and his network have fostered close relationships with local security officials as well as some political leaders in Hama, but economic and service support to the area is still non-existent. Many activists and community leaders, like Khaled himself, have gone into debt in their attempts to fill the services gap left by the collapsed state and the absent INGOs. Debts are generally in the range of a few thousand dollars – nothing for the aid organizations that never arrived, but huge for communities where a government salary is less than $100 a month. Now the money lenders are threatening to take people like Khaled to court to get their money back.

Like every Alawi area I have visited since late 2025, Khaled and the residents of Jubb Ramleh believe their community has been intentionally marginalized by the new Syrian government. They see the lack of NGO activity and economic investment as a result of explicit orders by Damascus banning such work in Alawi areas. Yet this is the case across all of rural Syria, Sunni or Alawi. Just a few dozen miles north, in Idlib’s Jabal Zawiya region, scores of towns have been left to rebuild on their own. This area was the heart of Idlib’s revolutionaries, as Masyaf was for the regime, and yet its communities have also received no government or INGO support. When asked about this, government officials often point to the scale of economic and infrastructure crises facing the entire country. Their priorities, and those of international donors, are with the cities, the economic and social heart of Syria.

This reality does nothing to dissuade perceptions of abandonment and marginalization. For Alawis, it is just another indicator that they are not part of this new government. For many rural Sunnis, there is an unhappy acceptance of the countryside’s isolation. Every discussion about the lack of support ends with the phrase, “but we must be patient, the government has too many problems to address.” It remains to be seen how long this patience will last. Meanwhile, in rural Masyaf, there is only so much that the District and Security Directors can achieve on their own. Security can be improved through the efforts of the General Security forces, but this only addresses the symptoms of instability. Continued economic strife and unaddressed inter-communal grievances remain the heart of Masyaf’s fragile peace, and resolving these requires a holistic and unified approach – more than what Khaled can achieve on his own.

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• Northeast

• Aleppo and Idlib

• Damascus

• Coast

• Homs

• Hama

This week saw continued protests and tensions across the northeast related to the ongoing integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces. A video showing a Kurdish man removing the Syrian flag during a Newroz celebration in Kobani triggered a wave of protests in Arab areas, as well as mob violence against Kurdish civilians in Afrin. This in turn resulted in mob attacks against ISC offices in Qamishli and Hasakah and resulted in a series of statements by government and Kurdish leaders condemning all of the actions.

Meanwhile, low-level but persistent violence continued with several murders reported in Homs, Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia. Some of the murders were the result of family disputes, others random sectarian killings, and at least one potentially linked to vigilantism. An Alawi shrine was also attacked in rural Masyaf, the first violent incident in the district since late December.

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Syria’s Christians have long adopted a stance of general neutrality throughout the country’s fraught history, largely as a survival mechanism. Most Christian communities were therefore able to avoid significant involvement within the Assad regime’s security apparatus (particularly its militias, unlike other minority groups who became the backbone of the regime’s forces during the war). After the country’s liberation, Christians have asked for little, wanting only for their rights to be conditionally protected and to be kept safe from attacks.

One exception to this trend is the large Christian area of Wadi Nasara in western Homs. This valley contains more than two dozen Christian villages nestled on the northern and eastern sides of a mountain atop which sits the famous Crusader fortress Krak des Chevaliers and Hosn, a Sunni Turkmen town. Hosn and the neighboring Sunni Turkmen town of Zara had risen against the Assad regime early in the war and were quickly besieged. Given its geographic position, the regime used Wadi Nasara to maintain the siege and attack Hosn, including through the establishment of a Christian militia under the National Defense Forces (NDF) umbrella.

There are now decade-old grievances between Hosn and Wadi Nasara as a result of these battles, as outlined in one of my previous pieces:

Last month I visited Wadi Nasara, following a visit to Zara and Hosn in December, and met with a local priest involved in civil peace efforts between the communities. The following is an edited transcript of our meeting. This long interview covers the core problems between Hosn and Wadi Nasara and recent attempts at civil peace dialogues between the two communities, as well as topics on government relations and social issues within the community.

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• Northeast

• Aleppo and Idlib

• Damascus

• Coast

• Homs

• Hama

Violent incidents in Syria continue to be centered in the Homs governorate, though still not to the degree seen earlier this year. This week saw tensions rise in western Homs, where security operations targeting Sunni smuggling and criminal groups triggered an attack against the local security station. A vigilante killing was also conducted in rural Hama, the first in a long time.

Meanwhile, significant steps were taken this week in the northeast integration deal, including the deployment of Ministry of Interior forces to half a dozen new checkpoints in Hasakah. The new Assistant Minister of Defense for the Eastern Regions was also appointed this week, triggering widespread protests across Raqqa, Hasakah, and Aleppo.

The Ministry of Interior continued to expand this week, with new cadet graduations in both Idlib and Latakia and the opening of the Women’s Police Institute in Damascus.

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