The complex social and geographic divisions of the governorate would come to define Latakia’s experiences throughout the war. The city experienced some of the first protests in March 2011, with tens of thousands of residents taking to the streets to demonstrate against the regime. But the sensitivity of the region and the concentrated pro-regime presence in the governorate resulted in a rapid backlash. The scars of the regime’s suppression here are still fresh, fueling recurrent cycles of inter-communal violence even after Assad’s fall.

Syria’s coast saw some of the regime’s first serious military operations in 2011, beginning with the storming of Bayda village, outside Baniyas, in early April and escalating further with the siege and storming of Latakia’s Raml neighborhood in August. These early events shaped the revolution’s trajectory in the coast. From Raml to Kabineh, there is a direct line connecting the history of revolution and defiance against the regime in the Latakia. The rapid and brutal crackdown on dissidents in the urban heart of Latakia resulted in a concentration of opposition armed movements in the northern mountains of the governorate which would persist until the fall of Assad.

While these mountains would become the heart of Latakia’s armed revolution, their complete story cannot be told without also telling the story of Raml and the defectors who emerged from Latakia city in 2011; men who would go on to become household names like Malik al-Kurdi, the future Deputy Commander of the Free Syrian Army, and Mohamad Hamdou, the future founder of Liwa Ahrar Sahel. I met with Hamdou in Latakia in December 2025 for an extensive interview about the revolution in Raml and the origins of the Free Syrian Army in rural Latakia. I also received access to an extensive unpublished interview conducted by the Syrian Memory Project with Colonel al-Kurdi several years ago in which he discusses these same events. These interviews, combined with archival footage of the battle, provide a unique insight into Latakia’s early revolution and the regime’s assault on Raml.

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Protests and Massacres

“On June 10, 2011, a Friday that would forever be etched in my memory as ‘Tribes’ Friday,’ my city of Latakia transformed into a battlefield. Since the first sparks of protests began to appear on the horizon, we had been hearing news of sporadic clashes between the regime forces and civilians, but I had never witnessed any of them directly; I was always far from the center of events.

However, that Friday was different. The intensity of the confrontations escalated unprecedentedly. The protesters went out bare-chested, facing the machinery of oppression with stones, firecrackers, and homemade Molotov cocktails. The regime’s response was brutal, devoid of any consideration for the presence of civilians in the area. Bullets and shells began to rain down from every direction, especially on our neighborhood, as our house was located directly opposite a military barracks. The shelling was indiscriminate, piercing walls and windows without distinction.

I vividly remember the sound of bullets shattering the living room window, and how fear drove us to take shelter in the kitchen, which seemed to us then the safest place in the universe. But even the kitchen walls could not block out the continuous sound of gunfire, which lasted for more than twelve terrifying hours. I felt as if my nerves were tearing apart with every shot, and my whole body trembled hysterically whenever I heard the sound of bullets piercing the walls of our house. It was a never-ending night, a night where we knew no sleep or rest, but remained awake, our bodies stiff and our hearts pounding with indescribable terror, until that auditory nightmare finally stopped.

The following morning, my father decided to get us out of that hell, to flee in search of a safer place. As we walked through the streets, I saw something I never wished to see: men and women washing the streets of blood. In that moment, I grasped the horror of what had happened that night; I knew that innocent lives had been lost. And since that ominous day, the sound of gunfire has triggered a deep fear within me, and I am completely unable to bear seeing any weapon or armed person, even in a picture or a fleeting scene. That night left a scar on my soul that will never be erased.”

- An account of the siege of Raml by a young Palestinian college student, shared with me following Syria’s liberation.

On March 25, 2011, demonstrators from across the city gathered for a march to the Sheikh Daher Square where a statue of Hafez al-Assad stood. Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Hamdou remembers these first days well. He had been forced to retire from the army in 2008 after he and nine other officers were detained and investigated for anti-regime sentiments. For three years he had lived in his home in the Southern Raml neighborhood. As soon as the protests in Dara’a began in 2011, he started organizing his community in Latakia. “We all agreed we would pray at Khaled Ibn Walid Mosque that Friday then go out to the city center at Sheikh Daher where there is a statue of Hafez Assad,” he tells me during a meeting in now-liberated Latakia, “We wanted to destroy the statue, but as we arrived the regime started to shoot at us, and this was when the first martyr fell.” Two protestors were shot to death by Air Force Intelligence members hiding in a nearby school and police station that day, according to both Hamdou and al-Kurdi and shown in videos published by protestors at the time.

Protestors begin chanting anti-Assad slogans at the Khaled Ibn Walid Mosque, March 25, 2011.

Heavy gunfire erupts when protestors reach the Sheikh Daher Square

The next day, the first convoy of Alawi shabiha from Qardaha was mobilized. Colonel Malik al-Kurdi, still serving in the regime’s Navy at the time, was driving to his home in Haffah that afternoon. “I turned right to head towards the Haffah road, and there was a convoy of cars,” he recalls in his 2021 interview with the Syrian Memory Project, “some people were carrying sticks, others were brandishing weapons, and some had machine guns. I slowed down to observe the convoy, and by the time I reached the bridge, more than 60 cars had passed in front of me.” Latakia’s governor, Riad al-Hijab, a Sunni from Deir Ez Zor, was able to stop the convoy at the edge of the city while the Syrian Navy mobilized forces to establish checkpoints at the city’s entrances. It was too early in the revolution to allow what would have been a massive massacre of Sunnis.

Yet later that evening the Agriculture Director of Latakia, Hussam Badour, gathered and armed around 50 members of his office to attack Sunni shops in the al-Qaala Project area. According to Colonel al-Kurdi, Badour would gain power from here, establishing himself as a central militia figure in Latakia and turning his Agriculture office into a detention and torture center for Sunni residents. Far from individual acts, these Alawi militias were directly organized and controlled by regime intelligence and Baath officials. It was part of a broader system of violence and oppression directed from the very top of the Assad regime since the emergence of the very first protests, as documented by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability.

From this moment the protesters in Latakia faced increasing violence. Three weeks later, on April 17, huge crowds gathered again for peaceful demonstrations across the city. That evening the army and intelligence forces moved in and opened fire on the remaining demonstrators in the Al-Olabi Square. “When we arrived, I saw the snipers on the roofs, but despite warning the people everyone insisted on protesting,” says Hamdou, “Thirty-two people were killed that day by the snipers.” The next day, regime forces fired surrounded and fired on a peaceful sit-in at Homs’ Clock Square. killing at least 30 demonstrators.

The Olabi Square massacre marked the end of the ‘leniency’ the regime had shown Latakia’s protestors. Checkpoints were spread across the city to monitor and prevent movement and gatherings, forcing activists into an increasingly isolated area. “We chose Southern Raml as a protest place as it was easier to keep the regime out of the neighborhood due to its geography,” explains Hamdou. Raml was among the poorest areas of Latakia. Originally formed as a refugee camp for Palestinians, it had expanded with the migration of poor rural Sunnis from Haffeh and parts of Idlib governorate like Jisr Shoughur. These social connections to the mountainous north would prove crucial in a few months time.

On June 4, 2011, protestors and armed locals in Jisr Shoughur rose up, besieging and capturing the two Military Intelligence offices in the city and killing more than 100 intelligence members. The regime responded swiftly, sending columns of tanks and special forces units into Idlib. Many residents from Jisr fled, arriving in Latakia city and making their way to Southern Raml. The demography and poverty of the neighborhood and the arrival of newly displaced Sunnis fueled the intensity of the protests here, even as other parts of the city went underground out of fear.

The Siege of Raml

Throughout this period and the next year, Hamdou would receive intelligence from a Sunni officer from Homs serving in the Latakia Military Intelligence Branch, Adnan Nahili. “At this point, Adnan told me that the regime had given instructions to the mukhabarat that 50 protestors were allowed to be killed a day,” Hamdou tells me, “With this we knew we had to be even more careful with our protests.”

That summer, the regime established seven checkpoints covering each entrance into Southern Raml and tried repeatedly to break into the neighborhood to disrupt the protestors. Both Hamdou and al-Kurdi remember the regime spreading rumors as early as that spring that, “the Alawis would be coming down from the mountains to kill the Sunnis in Raml, and that the Sunnis in Raml were going to the mountains to kill the Alawis.” Initially, the governor of Latakia, Riad Hijab, was able to deescalate the situation, standing between the two communities and preventing serious bouts of inter-communal violence. Yet he was replaced in mid-April, and from there the situation continued to deteriorate.

A driver films one of the checkpoints at the entrance to Raml neighborhood shortly before the regime’s attack. Originally posted on August 13, 2011 by the now-removed Latakia Coordination Youtube channel.

Around mid-June 2011 the regime began trying to undermine the protests by sending some military rifles into the neighborhood through its agents. “Again, I warned everyone not to fall for the regime’s tricks and not to use these weapons to attack regime forces,” says Hamdou. “At the same time, one of my friends put me on contact with Hussein Harmoush through skype and we formed the Free Officers Movement. It was just five of us at this time, but then Harmoush started to invite other officers to defect, and bit by bit it grew.” Colonel Riad al-Assad formed the Free Syrian Army shortly afterwards, with both groups encouraging the defection of military officers amid the surge in violence from the regime. Yet both of these groups were small and concentrated in Idlib, far from Raml. “Still,” says Hamdou, “these movements had no effect on us.”

Throughout the late summer, Latakia’s protestors shifted to a new type of “rapid protest,” going out in small groups of 50 or 60 people before returning home. These were common in the Sleibah, Bustan Qasr, and Qarmines neighborhoods. Nonetheless, the heart of the protest movement and the regime’s violence remained concentrated in Raml.

The regime’s noose continued to tighten. By early August the revolutionaries in Raml learned that the regime had gathered its forces in the Tala’a Camp, along the coast on the southeast edge of Raml, and were preparing to storm the neighborhood. These forces included tanks and BMPs and two naval ships which had arrived in the bay. The revolutionaries in Raml were armed with less than 200 rifles, mostly hunting rifles and shotguns, and had only two medium machines guns and two RPGs to defend themselves.

Regime armored vehicles gathering to advance into Raml, August 13, 2011. Originally posted by the now-removed Latakia Coordination Youtube channel.

Hamdou described those final tense weeks:

“In August, we would hold protests every day. My members, the men who carried hunting rifles, formed checkpoints across the neighborhood’s entrances to try and monitor who was entering and leaving. The regime’s forces were stationed along the southern corniche and along the railroad tracks [forming the neighborhood’s northern border] which gave them a good view of the neighborhood. They also had snipers deployed around the camp, and every day two or three people would be shot, whether protestors or our armed men. We had no hospitals or medical points in the neighborhood which made treating the wounded very difficult and increased the fatalities a lot.”

The Battle for Raml

It was clear the regime would storm the neighborhood soon. More forces had gathered around Raml and sympathetic officers, like al-Kurdi and Nahili, were keeping the residents updated with the latest plans. Colonel al-Kurdi had first-hand knowledge of the operation’s planning thanks to his position in the Navy:

“Brigadier General Fouad Reda was tasked with reconnaissance and planning for the assault operation,” al-Kurdi says in his 2021 interview, “Brigadier General Malik Deeb assisted him in this planning, and I was present. Brigadier General Malik invited me to his office for some reason, I think for breakfast. Brigadier General Fouad arrived and placed the plans in front of me. He had drawn the entire Raml neighborhood on a map and colored it. There was a color indicating those loyal to the regime, another indicating those who were neutral, and a third indicating those who supported the revolution. It was then that I realized the time was drawing near.”

“Adnan Nahili informed us the regime was preparing to storm the neighborhood,” Hamdou tells me, “So we, the senior men of Raml, decided we would fight back.” The neighborhood was famous for its small fishing explosives made from nitrogen fertilizers. Revolutionaries had begun turning these into IEDs and bombs to use against the regime. Malik al-Kurdi, his brother, and a Navy 1^st Lieutenant named Abdullah Idris had also been using their vehicles to smuggle additional explosives into the neighborhood to help prepare its defenses.

On August 11, 2011, the heads of the Latakia intelligence and Baath Party branches arrived at the naval headquarters; the operation was only a few days away. Al-Kurdi immediately contacted Lieutenant Abdullah, who had family in the neighborhood, and told him to inform the men of Raml that the camp would be stormed that weekend. He also advised the fighters to move all of their mines to new positions along the camp entrances. “Some of the people who lived there, including some navy assistants, were leaking information,” says al-Kurdi, “They were all tasked with relaying information to the regime, and they assigned people to monitor everything. So, when the young men planted a mine, they would see them, and they would immediately cut the wires at night.”

On August 14, 2011, the regime began storming the Southern Raml neighborhood. Special forces and naval units entered by land, infantry following behind tanks and BMPs, while Navy warships shelled the area from the sea. Most of the mines’ wires had indeed been cut by internal saboteurs, the fighters unable to move them the day prior. The neighborhood was defended by around 300 fighters, according to Hamdou, but they were still loosely organized by the time of the attack and operating mostly as independent cells.

Video filmed from outside the neighborhood showing the intensity of clashes. Originally posted on August 14, 2011 by the now-removed Latakia Coordination Youtube channel.

Infantry and armor firing on Raml from the southern edge of the neighborhood. Originally posted on August 14, 2011 by the now-removed Latakia Coordination Youtube channel.

The battle lasted only one day. “We were able to destroy one BMP and killed and wounded some soldiers, but 30 revolutionaries were also killed,” recalls Hamdou, “We then attacked part of the front, the Ain al-Tamrah checkpoint, destroyed it with explosives and were able to break through and escape.” From here, most of the fighters and the wanted activists fled into Latakia city, moving through their own personal networks to avoid regime capture.

A convoy of regime soldiers withdrawing from Raml Neighborhood, being cheered on by some residents as they pass through the Alawi Az-Ziraa’ Neighborhood. Originally posted on August 16, 2011 by the now-removed Latakia Coordination Youtube channel.

With the battle over, the regime began a widespread detention campaign across the neighborhood, searching and destroying homes in multi-day operation. According to international reporting at the time, at least 36 people were killed by regime forces and hundreds detained. Al-Kurdi and a few other pro-revolution officers used their military vehicle to transport some families out of the neighborhood and remove a weapons cache from someone’s home. But the regime mukhabarat were detaining anyone they found suspicious. The Raml Police Station was turned into a detention and torture center as the mukhabarat attempted to uncover the remaining opposition networks.

Regime security forces, including armed civilians, patrolling the Sleibeh Neighborhood following residents’ attempted demonstrations in support of Raml. Originally posted on August 14, 2011 by the now-removed Latakia Coordination Youtube channel.

Hamdou found himself moving between relatives houses for the next 20 hours, searching for a way out of the city:

“From the Ain al-Tarmeh checkpoint I went to my brother’s house close to the southern corniche train station. I was already wanted by the regime, so I hid at my brother’s house for 17 hours, then moved to Sheikh Daher where my sister had a house. From her house I moved to my uncle’s house, who was one of the respected elders of the city. He told me I was too wanted to remain in the city. My uncle gave me sunglasses and a formal suit to change my appearance and an ID he had borrowed from one of the men in his shop who looked like me. Then he drove me out of the city. To reach Jabal Akrad we had to pass three checkpoints, but they each knew him personally and he was waved through. My uncle left me in a house in Jabal Akrad and returned home.”

Ten days later, Lieutenant Abdullah was arrested by the mukhabarat. Forty-eight hours after that, on August 26, al-Kurdi and another close colleague, an assistant named Othman, got in the vehicle of one of the weapons smugglers who had helped supply Raml Neighborhood and drove to Turkey. Colonel al-Kurdi had spent the past five months attempting to organizing a coup within the Naval Forces alongside a small group of Sunni officers. Abdullah’s arrest not put an end to those plans, and al-Kurdi was forced to officially defect from the regime. Abdullah Idris remains missing to this day.

Regrouping Along the Border

The revolutionaries of Southern Raml had dispersed across the governorate. “Some of the fighters from Raml went to Turkey,” Hamdou says from the café in Latakia, “but I went to Jabal Akrad and Khirbet Jawz.” Hamdou was the only man from Raml there at first, but the area was an attractive place for hiding. Khirbet Jawz sits between the Turkish border and the Latakia-Idlib highway. It is a remote, mountainous area dotted with small Sunni villages and rough roads. “I did know that some men from Raml who had defected were hiding in Jabal Akrad, but I had no contact with them yet,” says Hamdou. Like Colonel al-Kurdi, most of Raml’s fighters had gone to Turkey.

While Hamdou had been living in Raml, his family was from the village of Hanboushiyah, adjacent to Khirbet Jawz. When he arrived, his cousins introduced him to a small group of 16 men already carrying weapons. “They knew my background and welcomed me to join and appointed me as their commander. We then chose an area along the border to base ourselves.” From here, Hamdou contacted Riad al-Assad, who had been building his Free Syrian Army network for two months, and after providing his background began to receive small amounts of money from al-Assad to buy ammunition and weapons.

It was a slow process of rebuilding. “From the time of leaving Raml and connecting with the men in Hanboushiyah and planning the first operations, everything took 4 months, so we didn’t start fighting until December 2011,” Hamdou explains, “Sometimes buying one rifle took 15 days. We were buying these from corrupt regime members and weapons smugglers which were growing at the time. Many regime officers would steal things from the bases and sell them illegally, like rifles and ammo. Each Kalashnikov back then was $1000. This period of time was so difficult because we started from scratch, no guns or ammunition or food. We were hunting birds for food.”

During these four months of rebuilding, Hamdou’s small group made a base close to the Turkish border, including digging some trenches and fortifications. They chose a nearby regime checkpoint close to a chicken farm as their first target. In December they began their attack. The checkpoint had a tank which quickly engaged the fighters. Hamdou described the skirmish:

“The tank fired at us but missed and hit the Turkish side of the border. The Turkish army then moved units to the border, essentially protecting our backs. The tank moved further and got stuck in the winter mud. A regime truck winch came and got stuck, too. At this point the soldiers abandoned the whole checkpoint.”

Liberating the checkpoint further secured the group’s new base. But winter was setting in and the snow became too deep to do any further operations. Hamdou and his small group used the enforced pause to go to Turkey and visit the camps where the men from Raml had arrived. They then moved to the defected officers camp, where Riad al-Assad and Malik al-Kurdi were organizing the FSA. “I told Riad, ‘I am going back to Jabal Akrad to fight and I want you to support me.’”

Two months later, Muhammad Hamdou would return to northern Latakia where he would mobilize dozens of villages into the first united armed faction in Jabal Akrad.

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It was April 1, 2011 when Lieutenant Colonel Feras Bayoush returned to his hometown of Kafr Nabl in southern Idlib. It was his first visit since the Arab Spring had begun in Tunisia three and half months earlier. “When the uprisings broke out in Tunisia, followed by Egypt and Libya, we were sitting in my office and began to talk cautiously about these revolutions,” he recalls, “we still didn't know the officers' political affiliations, regardless of their sectarian affiliation. I looked at their faces to determine who supported these revolutions and the right of peoples to self-determination.”

When demonstrations began in Syria in early March, Feras met with two other officers he knew he could trust, Major Saleh and First Lieutenant Talal. “The three of us spoke frankly about what we could do as soldiers if the demonstrations spread.” Major Saleh joined Feras on the short visit to Kafr Nabl, intending to just pay their respects for a friend’s recently deceased father before returning to the office in the Deir Ez Zor Military Airport. The visit would set all three men upon an irreversible path.

“Upon arriving at the entrance to Kafr Nabl, we were surprised to find a demonstration of 150-200 demonstrators chanting "God - Syria - Freedom - That's it!" We looked at each other with a look that held many words. I told him [Saleh] that since Kafr Nabl had participated in the demonstrations, he could be confident that the demonstrations would spread throughout Syria.” Rural southern Idlib, a hilly farming region known as Jabal Zawiyah, had just erupted in protest. This day would mark the start of unending months of protests from the smallest village to Idlib’s largest cities.

Feras and Saleh returned to Deir Ez Zor that evening and immediately went to work. “We met at my house and decided to carry out a military operation at Deir ez-Zor Airport,” says Feras, “We would coordinate with the other formations in the area. Each officer was tasked with communicating with his fellow officers from the brigades stationed in Deir ez-Zor.” Across Syria, many of the military officers who would go on to defect and lead Free Syrian Army units were embarking on a similar process, attempting to coordinate internal coups within their formations to bring down the regime without a large war.

“The idea was to make Deir ez-Zor a city safe from the regime, similar to Benghazi at the time, as it was remote from the center and had excellent facilities.” Yet, as with all other attempts, the regime’s intelligence directorates, the mukhabarat, had uncovered the conspiracy. Lieutenant Talal was arrested while in Dara’a, forcing Feras, Saleh, and the others to abandon their plans and lay low. Yet by June nothing had happened to them, Talal had not betrayed their plans to his torturers, and so the officers renewed their work.

By the end of the month Feras knew he had to evacuate his family from the military housing in Deir Ez Zor or risk the regime using them as hostages should he be uncovered. On June 30 Feras arrived back in Kafr Nabl, his family in tow, in what would be his last visit for more than a year.

This situation in the town had changes significantly since April. On June 5, locals in the nearby city of Jisr Shoughur stormed the city’s two Military Intelligence headquarters, killing all 120 regime personnel. The unit had increasingly been killing and detaining protestors in the city in recent weeks. The regime responded harshly, sending huge numbers of military units to the governorate.

“On the second day of my vacation, regime forces began entering Kafr Nabl, shooting their guns in the air. They began deploying at the entrances to Kafr Nabl, set up checkpoints, and declared a curfew in the city from 8:00 PM to 7:00 AM. Every day at sunset, they began shooting in the air. So, I went to the command center, where a brigadier general, a colonel, and a lieutenant colonel were present. I asked them about the reason for the curfew and the reason for the gunfire. The brigadier general responded that day and lifted the curfew. That day they respected that I was an officer like them and that what I was saying was true.”

Withe the army’s deployment, many of the revolutionaries in Kafr Nabl began to seriously debate the need for armed action. Feras met with them over the ensuing days, though, and warned them against military action. “The forces were unbalanced and the regime's response would be extremely violent,” he remembers telling them, “I advised them to continue peaceful demonstrations and that the right time for military action would come when there were significant defections within the army.”

The men took his advice, and the city settled into a period of frequent protests. However, as the regime’s forces increased their violence against civilians and detentions and killings of protest leaders, Kafr Nabl’s revolutionaries began to skirmish with the local regime garrison, particularly in early 2012 as defectors returned to the town and brought with them their expertise.

Feras witnessed none of this. On July 20 his leave ended and he returned to Deir Ez Zor. Four days later, he was arrested by the Air Force Intelligence.

Prison, and Jabal Zawiyah’s Revolution

What Feras saw in Kafr Nabl on July 1, 2011 was just one small part of a much larger operation being conducted by the Assad regime. The regime’s 46th Special Forces Regiment had already been fully deployed in the governorate, using a newly established base in Mastoumeh. Now, throughout June and early July, elements of two additional Special Forces regiments and two army brigades joined them. Units of the 45th Regiment left Dara’a, where it had deployed to suppress protests on March 30, 2011, and arrived in Jisr Shoughur, supported by the 10th Division’s 85th Brigade. To the east the 14th Special Forces Division’s 556th Regiment moved from the Homs countryside to the area between Maarat al-Numan and Khan Sheikhoun. The 17th Division’s 93rd Brigade deployed to Jisr Shoughur and Jabal Zawiyah at the same time

The regime’s military deployments and operations immediately following the June Jisr Shoughur battle put significant pressure on the nascent armed opposition in Idlib. Two new organizations had just announced their formation: The Free Officers Movement on June 9, and the Free Syrian Army on July 29. These groups, based out of Jabal Zawiyah and southern Turkey, respectively, became hubs for regime defectors and helped to foster coordination between local armed factions across Idlib and rural Aleppo.

Still, successful attacks against regime forces in Idlib over the next months were rare, and mostly focused in Jabal Zawiyah. Only fifteen security forces were reported killed between June 10 and the end of August 2011. However, on August 17 members of the Free Officers Movement released a statement announcing the formation of “deterrence groups” which would actively protect so-called “safe” villages from regime raids. In the announcement, the officers claimed to have conducted their first operations against security forces who were attempting to raid villages in Jabal Zawiyah that morning:

This attack resulted in the death of a regime Lieutenant Colonel, the first senior officer killed in Idlib.

Many of these attacks targeted checkpoints and patrols, killing everyone from police, to mukhabarat, to soldiers. Regime “martyrdom” biographies provide an interesting insight into some of the units clashing with the revolutionaries at this time. For example, on August 23 two military intelligence members were killed on the road south of Kafr Naboudeh after their unit conducted a raid in the town, which sits on the southern edge of Jabal Zawiyah. In just the five months between the start of the revolution and their deaths, this unit had deployed to the Damascus countryside, Idlib, Hama, and Jisr Shoughur. Similarly, a unit belonging to the State Security that was ambushed while conducting a raid in Binnish in October had previously participated in operations in Douma (Damascus) and Baniyas (Tartous).

These specialized mukhabarat units moved across the country deploying to hotspots as support for the local branches. This includes the Military Intelligence’s “Raid Company” (Branch 215), the State Security Anti-Terrorism Branch (295), and the “Special Tasks Battalion” of the Ministry of Interior’s Internal Security Forces - all of which suffered casualties during the 2011 Idlib insurgency.

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As these attacks continued, the regime deployed additional reinforcements to the governorate. By Fall 2011, elements of four more army brigades (the 1st Division’s 58th Brigade, the 3rd Division’s 47th Brigade, the 11th Division’s 87th Brigade, and the 18th Tank Division’s 134th Brigade) and two more special forces regiments (the 54th and 47th Special Forces Regiments) had arrived.

Despite the significant deployment of military units, the regime’s general strategy in Idlib during the first year of the war ultimately provided crucial breathing room for defectors and locals to organize into armed groups. Rather than occupy every village across the countryside, security and military forces concentrated themselves in three main military camps in central and southern Idlib, and established secondary headquarters inside the major cities like Idlib and Jisr Shoughur. The vast majority of the governorate, however, was controlled via “checkpoints” on the outskirts of towns and along the major roads. These were not checkpoints in the normal sense, but more akin to small military bases. These positions appear to have always had at least one armored vehicle such as a BMP - and in later months increasingly had tanks - and usually had around at least twenty soldiers and mukhabarat officers.

This approach meant that many villages in the governorate were effectively free already by the second half of 2011. Captain Ammar al-Wawi recalls the atmosphere in Jabal Zawiyah when he arrived in the area following his defection in early August:

“The brothers [the Free Officers Movement] received us in Jabal al-Zawiya, and they honored us, but there was no complete [military] organization. The demonstrations were peaceful, and the revolutionaries carried weapons and protected the roads. All the roads were monitored by the rebels for any movement of an intelligence patrol from Maarat al-Numan, for example.”

According to al-Wawi, the Free Officer’s Movement was able to secure and liberate the core of Jabal Zawiyah by that August. Activists regularly posted videos throughout 2011 and 2012 from many of the smaller villages in central Jabal Zawiyah showing weekly protests against the regime and in support of the revolutionaries. These liberated villages were connected by a string of opposition checkpoints, manned by locals usually armed with simple hunting rifles or nothing at all whose main duty was to check IDs for anyone who was a known or suspected regime spy, mukhabarat agent, or member of the pro-regime shabiha militias trying to infiltrate their towns.

This checkpoint system was also used to alert communities and armed groups when the regime’s military forces began to move. Large bases had been established in Kafr Nabl and in the Marayan school complex, on the south and east sides of Jabal Zawiyah, as well as a string of smaller bases along the M4 Highway between Ariha and Muhambal to the north. While many of Jabal Zawiyah’s villages were never occupied by the regime, security forces would deploy from these positions in columns of armored vehicles and transport trucks to intermittently raid the rural area. The opposition’s checkpoint system gave locals enough time to hide wanted people, dismantle their checkpoints, and prepare ambushes. Meanwhile the Free Officers Movement decided in August to direct all defectors from the surrounding regions to Jabal Zawiyah. This quickly bolstered the small group of original FOM officers and allowed the group to begin conducting its own operations against regime positions resulting in the capture of soldiers, weapons, and equipment.

However, as more security forces deployed to the governorate, regime raids increased and checkpoints spread, putting new pressure on these communities and on the growing armed opposition. Armed activity increased in September – still centered in Jabal Zawiyah but now once again emerging in the Jisr Shoughur countryside and expanding for the first time to the countryside east of Idlib city. At least 17 security forces were killed during this month – more than the previous two and a half months combined.

A clear shift in operations began in October, with attacks becoming more frequent, widespread, and deadly. As military expert Joseph Holliday wrote at the time:

“Starting in late October 2011, a capable rebel group conducted a series of effective ambushes and raids along the roads and highways that bordered the mountainous Jebel al-Zawiya region of northern Idlib province.”

What Holliday missed, and is more evident thanks to release of regime funeral notices in later years, is the growing attacks in the first half of October across new parts of Idlib. While Jabal Zawiyah remained the core of armed activity, deadly attacks were now being conducted in the countryside east and west of Idlib city, particularly in the Binnish-Saraqib-Taftanaz triangle.

Meanwhile violence in Jabal Zawiyah continued to increase in October and November 2011, including successful IED attacks on regime officers. Opposition armed groups also began to successfully kill security forces inside Idlib city during this month.

Attack lethality and sophistication also appears to have noticeably improved during the period. Opposition groups were now killing multiple soldiers in each attack at a far higher rate than in previous months. As Joseph Holliday described the fall of 2011:

“By the end of November, rebels operating out of the isolated mountain range [Jabal Zawiyah] averaged an attack each day, descending from their high ground to conduct raids and ambushes near Syria’s primary north-south highway and near the key east-west highway that connects Aleppo to Syria’s coast.”

Armed attacks continued to grow through December, though with a renewed emphasis on Jabal Zawiyah as compared to elsewhere in the governorate. At least sixty soldiers were killed this month, nearly twice as many as in November. On December 17 alone at least 17 soldiers were killed across Jabal Zawiyah. Jospeh Holiday’s report from early 2012 highlights that “In December, a series of videos showed increasingly large and confident groups of armed men demonstrating in towns that seemed entirely beyond the regime’s reach.”

At the same time, anti-regime insurgents significantly escalated their attacks in Idlib city. Between December 2011 and the end of January 2012, nearly all of the city was liberated, the remaining regime forces isolated to the major government office blocks and checkpoints outside the city.

This increased attack tempo paralleled a surge in armed group formations across Idlib in November and December, joined by ever increasing anti-regime demonstrations. At least nine new armed factions published videos announcing their formations between mid-November and mid-December, according to data collected by the Syria Memory Institute and shared with the author. These groups were often founded and led by defectors but heavily staffed by locals, increasingly arming themselves with battlefield captures. Meanwhile, on December 30 an estimated 250,000 people took to the streets across the governorate in mass protests against Assad.

It was clear by the end of the year that armed groups had made drastic improvements to their supply lines and coordination. Attack sophistication and lethality continued to increase, with ever-growing competency and manpower opening new possibilities for insurgent-style activity, especially targeted assassinations. The local nature of the armed groups, as well as the fact that many of the FSA and FOM leaders had roots in Jabal Zawiyah, resulted in decent levels of coordination between the factions during this time.

The Regime’s Offensive

The intensification of fighting across Idlib, combined with the regime’s appointment of the head of its Special Forces Command, Maj Gen Fouad Hammouda, as the overall commander of Idlib operations at the end of November, resulted in a further expansion of military forces deployed to Idlib in early 2012. Many of these units arrived from Homs, where the regime had conducted a major offensive against rebel forces inside the city in February and March 2012. These units first participated in a March 2012 operation to retake Idlib city before establishing themselves alongside the pre-existing units based in Mastoumeh, Wadi Deif, and Jisr Shoughur. Many of the core areas of operations remained the same as in 2011, but there now appeared to be a particular emphasis on reinforcing the border areas from Jisr Shoughur to Bab al-Hawa, as this had become a critical weapons and human smuggling node for the broader northwest Syria insurgency.

Three more special forces regiments arrived in Idlib by early 2012, bringing the total operating in the governorate to six. The new units belonged to the 15^th Division’s 35^th Regiment, the 14th Division’s 36th Regiment, and the independent 48^th Special Forces Regiment, all of whom established positions along the Turkish border.

These special forces regiments were supported by three new army brigades, including the 3^rd Division’s 21^st Brigade and the 7th Division’s 88^th Brigade which deployed to Jabal Zawiyah. The 1st Divisions’ 76th “Death” Brigade, meanwhile, was tasked with raiding dozens of towns across the governorate in February 2012, leaving a bloody trail of victims and disappeared people in its wake.

By the time the regime had recaptured Idlib city in March 2012 it had lost around 500 soldiers, police, and intelligence members in the governorate. The next half-year would see a marked escalation in fighting, the regime suffering more than three times as many dead and huge numbers of captured soldiers. The fighting would fall particularly hard on the special forces units.

The Opposition Spreads

The regime’s security approach in Idlib during this time still relied heavily on checkpoints and bases along major highways, but with an increased reliance on using large armored columns to raid towns and respond to attacks. The regime had effectively ceded much of the urban space across the governorate, forced to actively deploy to and clear towns if it wanted to establish more concrete control. This resulted in the increasingly frequent event of armor columns storming towns, with rebel fighters either withdrawing entirely or engaging in short clashes against their more powerful opponents. These operations were rife with war crimes. Human Rights Watch documented dozens of cases of summary executions, mass arrests, and the torching of homes in just five towns the army entered in late March.

Areas of control during these first half of 2012 are therefore difficult to assess. This period marked the slow shift from insurgency to more conventional war, and with that the presence of armed forces from both sides fluctuated greatly. Nonetheless, the main north-south and east-west highways running through the heart of the governorate remained largely under regime control.

As larger cities lying on less strategic roads, such as Saraqib and Sarmin, were largely liberated, regime forces reverted to a surround-and-shell approach. Incursions became rarer, and usually only lasted for one or two days. This was part of a new nationwide strategy adopted by the regime following its initial victory in Homs city in February and March 2012. Joseph Holliday described this approach as:

“The regime began to employ artillery decoupled from ground force operations by periodically shelling towns and neighborhoods without ever mounting operations to clear them. This evolution was largely a result of Assad’s lack of available ground forces, particularly in northern Syria where troops became pinned down in strongpoints across the countryside. By shelling opposition areas from a distance, the military was able to limit casualties and defections among its already overstretched forces.”

An International Crisis Group report from later in 2012 described the strategic evolution as one moving “From strict counterinsurgency … into collective punishment and verged on wholesale scorched earth policy.”

In late February the army stepped up offensive operations across the governorate, seeking to stamp out the growing armed opposition. First, on February 19 security forces cut off the highway leading into Jisr Shoughur, preventing civilians from entering or leaving, and set up cordons around two nearby villages. Two days later, the regime initiated a two-and-a-half week long campaign across the Idlib countryside that would culminate with the March 10 offensive to re-capture Idlib city. Regime forces stormed more than a dozen towns and villages across all parts of Idlib, ostensibly in search of armed opposition fighters, anti-regime activists, and journalists. Houses were burnt down, locals were executed, and many were arrested. Meanwhile tank and artillery units enacted partial sieges around other towns, such as Binnish and Saraqib.

The regime’s operations and widespread abuses fueled the growth of new armed opposition groups in Idlib in February and March. A Carter Center chart estimating the number of opposition fighters in Idlib during this period – based on video announcements of armed groups – shows the first significant jump occurring in the second half of February 2012.

Likewise, data collected by the Syria Memory Project and shared with the author shows at least 14 armed group formation announcements in Idlib between February 9 and February 28. Most of these announcements were for groups operating in Jabal Zawiyah, but also some in Khan Sheikhoun, Sarmin, and north of Idlib city. This trend continued throughout the spring, with at least 21 new groups announced in March, and 28 more in April.

However, the rapid expansion of the armed opposition did not immediately translate into effective resistance against the regime. The factions still lacked heavy weaponry to deal with the regime’s biggest advantage: its armored vehicles, and in particular tanks. Opposition groups largely relied on IEDs to damage to this equipment, suffering from a lack on RPGs and especially ATGMs, which would become ubiquitous in northwest Syria in later years.

The difficulty the regime faced was the sheer geographic space that it needed to occupy. Unlike Homs and Damascus, whose cities and countrysides were pockmarked by loyalist communities and large military bases, the regime was facing a near-governorate wide rebellion in Idlib and had very little pre-war infrastructure to utilize. Every large town needed multiple checkpoints, each one staffed with multiple armored vehicles, every supply and patrol convoy needed to be large enough to dissuade ambushes, and key roads needed to be held by strings of well defended positions. This inherently forced security forces to confine themselves to checkpoints and bases spread across the governorate, limiting the usefulness of their armor advantage.

Security forces were further hamstrung by widespread paranoia over defectors and deserters. Idlib’s proximity to the Turkish border and overwhelmingly anti-regime population made defection much more enticing – though still incredibly dangerous – compared to other parts of Syria. In response, regime commanders had already begun sidelining significant contingents of the deployed regiments and brigades, confining those thought untrustworthy to the large bases in central Idlib like Mastoumeh and Wadi Deif – or simply detaining them – and therefore limiting the manpower available to spread to rural checkpoints and send on raids.

Thus, despite this growth, the regime’s raids had a clear dampening effect on the opposition’s operations in late spring. April saw a drop in regime deaths for the first time since July 2011. Attacks in Jabal Zawiya were less deadly during this period, with most activity occurring in and around Idlib city, where the opposition had launched an insurgency following the city’s capture.

Taking Ground Against Assad

A clear shift in the armed opposition’s operations began in May. The opposition began conducting both more serious ambushes and more frequent attacks around the region’s outskirts, forcing the regime out of parts of Jabal Zawiyah. Sixteen soldiers were killed on May 29 alone during the liberation of the village of Maghara in Jabal Zawiyah and frequent, deadly attacks renewed in and around Maarat al-Numan for the first time in several months. The most significant development, however, was the sudden widespread deadly attacks across northern Idlib. These developments likely reflected the significant growth in armed groups both locally in the Maarat al-Numan countryside and more broadly across the Turkish border areas in Idlib and Aleppo throughout March and April.

The regime’s operations in the early spring of 2012 were successful in re-asserting security presence across parts of Idlib and reinforcing and expanding many of the army’s points in the governorate. However, this victory was short lived thanks to the rapidly evolving developments within armed opposition networks internationally and within the broader northern Syria region. Foreign financing for more Islamist-aligned factions had steadily grown since late 2011, and significant weapon shipments began to flow into the north starting in March 2012. These factors, combined with a broader restructuring of opposition military councils and steadily improving coordination between factions, led to the rapid collapse of the Aleppo countryside in May.

The regime’s grip over Idlib began to irreparably slip in June. Confirmed regime losses more than doubled, with at least 124 soldiers killed across Idlib in June compared to just 58 in May. Some regime units in Idlib were tasked with supporting the flailing forces in rural Aleppo, forcing large convoys out of their secure bases and opening them to ambushes.

On June 27, for example, a battalion of the 556^th Special Forces Regiment attempted to redeploy from Mastoumeh to the Aleppo countryside but was ambushed as it approached the central Khan Sabeel checkpoint. At least two tanks, two BMPs, and one transport truck were destroyed and at least one BMP captured by the local affiliate of the increasingly power Suqour al-Sham faction. At least 15 soldiers, including Colonel Nashat Al-Amer who the opposition had previously claimed was the commander of operations in Jabal Zawiyah.

A journalist embedded with Suqour al-Sham in mid-June claimed that 25% of Jabal Zawiyah was liberated. But the largest towns in central and southeast Zawiyah still remained under regime control and staffed with multiple special forces battalions. Over the next month, local armed factions and Suqour al-Sham affiliates liberated a string of villages and regime checkpoints along the central southwest-northeast spine of Jabal Zawiyah. By early August, regime positions had been isolated to the southern Kafr Nabl-Maarat al-Numan highway and the northern area around Ariha.

Bayoush Returns From the Dark

Meanwhile, Fares Bayoush had been trapped in detention facility in Damascus since July 24, 2011. He was first kept in a bare solitary confinement cell, sleeping on the concrete with only a blanket for warmth. Later he was transferred to a group cell with 80 other men, too packed to sleep on their backs and stripped down to their shorts. The cell had no ceiling, exposing them to the winter rains and summer sun.

On June 10, 2012, Fares was released from his 11-month horror:

“The jailer came and told me to get ready for my release. They brought me a military uniform and military boots. He told me that we were going to meet the "Commander General," as they called him. Of course, he handcuffed me and put a blindfold on me. We went to an office and sat there waiting. Colonel Sultan Tinawi, who was the director of Major General Jamil Hassan's office [head of the Air Force Intelligence], arrived. He reprimanded the jailer for handcuffing me and told him that I was an army lieutenant colonel (of course, the jailer didn't know my job title, as my name was a number in the prison). He then told me that we would enter the Commander General's office shortly. We went together to the office, which was very large and had many external surveillance screens I had never seen before. Hassan stood from behind his desk, came to the entrance, and shook my hand firmly. He said, "You have been imprisoned unjustly for a year and have not been proven guilty, but you know the circumstances of the country." We then sat down, and he offered me a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and we began to talk. Then he asked me if I had any special requests. I asked him to release some detainees whom I found to be unjustly treated, and he did so immediately while I was with him.”

Fares then asked about his family, who he was told were in Kafr Nabl, and was informed he would soon be flown back to Deir Ez Zor to report to work. Fares knew nothing about what had transpired sine July 2011, since, as he says, nearly all the men detained alongside him were innocent and thus had not been active in the armed uprising. When Fares asked Major General Hassan about Kafr Nabl, he was told to not visit the town. “I asked him why, and he replied, "You will know when you get out."

Fares then went to the Officers Club to meet an old Air Force friend, Colonel Hassan Hamadeh. As they spoke about the developments since July 2011, Hamadeh told Bayoush he intended to take his jet and defect to Jordan. “I encouraged him to do so, and when he defected 11 days later, I was almost arrested again because of him, because they all knew how strong our friendship was, and I must have been aware of his plan. General Jamil Hassan called me, and we had a long conversation. I then realized I couldn't stay in the army any longer, and so I coordinated the defection of Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Karim al-Yahya, Captain Salim al-Birini, and myself.

“It was a very difficult three weeks. My concern was securing my family first after they came to Deir ez-Zor to see me. So I sent them to Kafr Nabl first, in a very complicated way, so as not to draw attention to the fact that I had defected. Then we agreed on the day of the defection, July 1. I got into my car in the morning as usual, and the lieutenant colonel and the captain rode with me. We headed east toward the airport. But as soon as we arrived at the airport entrance, I continued as quickly as possible toward the city of Al-Muhassan, and from there I announced my defection. With me was another lieutenant colonel from Suwayda, named Hafez Al-Faraj.

“We chose Al-Muhassan because it was liberated, and we coordinated with some rebels there to receive us. The head of the military council was Lieutenant Colonel Muhannad Talaa, and there were many defected officers from most of the provinces. I stayed in Al-Muhassan for several days, then entered the city of Deir ez-Zor, which was under siege. There, I formed the first operations room under my command, and stayed there for about a month. Then I returned to Al-Muhassan for two days.”

From there, I went to Kafranbel by road through the desert with the help of a guide who knew the way. We fell into an army ambush, and one soldier was killed and another was wounded. I, Lieutenant Colonel Hafez al-Faraj, and Captain Salim miraculously escaped, while Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Karim remained in Mohsen until ISIS took control. He then came to Kafranbel and assumed the position of Chief of Staff of the Northern Division, which I commanded.

At this point Fares had been freed for over a month but still hadn’t returned to his home. He called some friends who were part of the city’s armed movements and asked them to pick him up in Jarjanaz, in rural eastern Idlib, where he would arrive from Deir Ez Zor, so that they could safely take him around the regime positions and into Jabal Zawiyah.

Fares, Lieutenant Colonel Hafez, and Captain Salim drove through the central Syrian desert on August 5 alongside a small groups of fighters. Along the way they were ambushed by regime forces, who killed one of the fighters, but the three officers managed to escape unharmed. In Jarjanaz, three Kafranbel fighters met them, Ahmed Al-Nahar, ⁠⁠Mahmoud Al-Bayoush, and ⁠⁠Mahmoud Al-Ghazoul.

“We left Jarjanaz, avoiding all main roads. As we approached Kafranbel, we saw black smoke columns, so I asked them, "What are these?" They said there appeared to be military activity against the checkpoint in Kafranbel.” It was August 6, and the battle for Kafr Nabl has just begun.

“Upon arriving at the entrance to Kafranbel, a group of young men stopped us and warned us not to take the road due to clashes. So we took a path through the orchards until we reached my house. I left my guest, Lieutenant Colonel Hafez, at home and immediately went to the area of the clashes and joined them.”

Liberating the Heartland

Four days later Kafr Nabl was liberated and regime forces pushed back to Marrat al-Numan. All of Jabal Zawiyah was now free, the regime reduced to holding the Idlib-Latakia highway on the northern edge and the Idlib-Hama highway to the east. While the fighting raged in Kafr Nabl, other FSA factions were conducting operations on the northern side of Jabal Zawiyah. On August 9, 17 soldiers from the 7^th Division’s 88^th Brigade were killed in the village of Bzabor, just south of Ariha. In late August, the months-long skirmishing around Ariha came to a head as opposition factions announced a new offensive. “The Battle of Unification” saw reinforcements from across the governorate arrive in and around Ariha, hoping to permanently liberate the city and secure the Jabal Arbaen region to the north of Jabal Zawiyah.

In Kafr Nabl, Fares quickly took command of his town’s fighters and formed the Liwa Fursan al-Haq faction, and later took command of the Northern Division, one of the most prominent FSA groups in Idlib. Colonel Yahya Abdul Karim would stay in Deir Ez Zor leading opposition forces until ISIS captured the region, at which point he joined Fares in Idlib and became the Chief of Staff of the Northern Division.

Fares describes this period as one in which the army was suffering from bad morale and increasing losses while the opposition factions were increasingly coordinated, experienced, and well armed. “Each time the FSA liberated an area they gained experience and gained weapons and coordination improved, as all of this increased it led to FSA being able to do bigger attacks, more than just checkpoints,” he recalls. Regime forces were no longer on the offensive like earlier in the year, now they relied on increasingly fortified bases along major highways, abandoning many of the smaller villages and unable to defend the larger towns. That fall would see the collapse of regime forces across nearly the entire Idlib-Turkish border, opening the flood gates for human and materiel support to opposition factions across the ideological spectrum.

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The story Syria’s revolution cannot be told without the stories of defectors. Tens of thousands of men, at minimum, escaped regime barracks and frontline positions between 2011 and 2014. Most of these men made their way to Turkey, many making it to Europe, simply seeking refuge from the violence and freedom from the regime’s endless war crimes. Thousands of others joined fledgling opposition factions, bringing with them technical expertise, legitimacy, weapons, and manpower. Other opposition supporters used their time inside the army to support the revolution; planning coups or passing information to rebel commanders and activists.

What many forget is that defections did not peak until late in 2012 and into 2013, well after the revolution had already turned into full-scale war. These men witnessed the changes inside the barracks – how the regime became even more paranoid and abusive, the way loyalist soldiers celebrated in the carnage, and how the entire security apparatus quickly became a tool of sadistic violence against anyone deemed “the enemy.”

Every defector’s story is unique, but all share the same themes of violence and oppression. As Syria turns the page on Assad’s rule, these memories must be recorded and preserved. They are one of the last first-hand accounts of how the regime’s violence was orchestrated at every level: a systematic policy of oppression and murder that has touched most Syrians.

Since December 8 I have visited several times a Sunni family in Latakia whose oldest son, Ali, was conscripted in June 2011. What follows is his story of serving as the lone Sunni non-commissioned officer in the 1^st Division’s headquarters, and his defection in late 2014. It’s worth noting that his brother, Muhammad, was able to delay his service for many years by remaining in college, but around 2019 he was ordered to report to the recruitment office. Muhammad spent the next six years of his life in hiding, confined to his family’s apartment. “For weeks after liberation I would still have moments when walking outside where the terror took over,” he tells me in May, “I would think ‘I can’t be out here, I have to go home.’” The psychological torment of the regime knew no bounds.

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Life as a Conscript

“I served in the 1^st Armored Division in the Damascus countryside. The first 6 months after being conscripted were quiet as we were still in training, and by the beginning of 2012 we had only left the base once, so we knew nothing about what was happening across the country. In 2012 the division was not really involved, but as the revolution went on the regime had to use every soldier, so our units were deployed in Idlib, Damascus, Deir Ez Zor…it was a chaotic mess.”

Some units of the division had deployed to East Ghouta during the regime’s first major offensive there in January 2012, others went to Deir Ez Zor in February.

By the fall of 2012, the division was involved in multiple axes in Idlib, the Damascus countryside, and Deir Ez Zor. One of its brigades, the 76^th “Death” Brigade, quickly became infamous for the string of massacres it committed in Idlib. Ali avoided deployments thanks to his uniquely privileged position.

“I served in the headquarters in Kiswah, I had a very good reputation because I played it very smart and everyone thought I supported the regime. If you wanted to survive you had to do this.

“When the six-month training ends, everyone tries to use his connections to get the best assignment. So, I was asking around and heard the name ‘Mazloum’ – Muhammad Mazloum who was the chief of staff of the 1^st Division. I realized it is the family name of someone my father knew, a close friend from Latakia. I called him and it turned out he was Mazloum’s brother and knew Faisal, the commander of the division, as well. He said they checked the “wasta” excel sheet – literally they had a document named “wasta” – and my name was at the top. This is how I became the only Sunni working in the division command.

“Next to my office were the chief of staff and division commander. My office was in charge of dealing with encrypted messages. One of my tasks was when someone came with a mission card I had to check it was all valid and not faked and then stamp it. This stamp allowed someone to go anywhere in Syria. When a brigadier would come to me, a 1^st Sergeant, they know this is a very sensitive department and all of us must be very loyal, so they don’t come demanding things, they are respectful.

“The division did not enter the conflict in the early stage. Faisal had some kind of agreement maybe, it must have been under the table with the people in the FSA around our base that we wouldn’t attack each other. By that time the division was taking orders only from Bashar directly, even though it belonged to the Ministry of Defense on paper. In the beginning it did not get too involved but then as they needed every unit for the war it was mobilized. Maybe Bashar wasn’t using the division because he wanted to use it as a shield to protect Damascus.

“Faisal’s last day was December 31, 2012. Just a few hours later his office director called me and said ‘take your blanket and go to jail.’ He had hated me for a long time because even though he was an Alawite and the director of Faisal’s office, I held the card stamp, I had power. I think he was also angry because I had accidently reported him earlier. The army takes food goods from the same offices which are used for civilian stores. But the army does not pay, it uses permission forms to take what it wants. I had earlier called an official saying someone is using old permissions to steal extra food. When I reported this, I learned it was not a soldier doing this but an organized crime, and the office director must have been involved to get them these permissions. With Faisal gone he thought I was vulnerable.

“I immediately called my friend again, Muhammad Mazloum’s brother who knew Faisal. This friend’s brother-in-law was also the head of Military Intelligence in Tartous. So even though this friend had lost Faisal as a connection he was still able to intervene and later that night he told me ‘Don’t worry I handled it you won’t go to jail.’

“When Faisal left and was replaced at the end of 2012 the new division commander quickly ordered an operation. We lost 20 or 25 soldiers around Kisweh that day because he tried to enter some of the territory nearby. Whatever truce there was around Kisweh was over.”

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Proud of Their Crimes

A defining feature of Ali’s time in the army was the pride with which many officers boasted of their crimes against civilians. As a “trusted Sunni” serving in the command’s headquarters, he was privy to many of the stories, constantly testing his ability to blend in with the loyalists.

“The son of the man responsible for the first massacre in Homs was serving with me. He was so proud, telling me how his father organized the massacre, killed the civilians and raped women. How could he have the nerves to tell someone this? He was so proud telling me these facts. After the regime fell, I tried to find this guy because we have unfinished business…but I could not find him.

“On the mountains around the base were T-72 tanks with thermal optic upgrades. People in those tanks told me whenever they bombed buildings that they knew just contained civilians. They would laugh about this and say things like, ‘I was waiting for the man to start intimate times with his wife, then I bombed the building.’ They were animals. The guy who said this particular thing was serving in the bordering base. The night when he told me this, he was coming to visit us and at night on his way back to his office he got attacked by a pack of dogs. It was great.

“Almost every day we would hear people talking about killing civilians. My commander once sent me to somewhere near Daraya because another commander told him that they had looted a car parts shop, asking him ‘Do you need anything?’ So my commander said ‘Yes, I need a new battery, I will send Ali and my driver.’ Most of the soldiers there were Alawites, but one guy was Sunni. The Alawites told us, ‘We have never met a guy like him, he killed more Sunnis than us.’

“There was one group that was part in the army and part in the presidential guard, they also worked with civilians. During this time if you wanted a car then you would tell them what model and year, etc, and they would send the details to their people on the checkpoints. When that type of car arrived at the checkpoint they would kill everyone inside it and sell you the car for a third of the market price.

“The whole world knew what was happening. When I escaped Syria, I stayed four months in Antakya. Because of my connections I met an American general who was there to assess the strength of the FSA. He asked me what I thought of the Syrian army. I told him all of this and asked him what the USA would do, you act like the world police so what now? He said ‘We are the best at letting those who count on us down.’ This was December 2014 and he told me ‘The Syrian regime will not fail for ten years.’”

A Sectarian Army

Sectarianism in the regime is a complex topic. Sunni Arabs make up the overwhelming majority of Syria’s population, so of course they are heavily present throughout the security forces. However, their roles and power are distinctly different from those of Alawites, particularly, and other minorities in general. For example, a Republican Guard defector from the 106^th Brigade told me that in his entire brigade there was not a single Sunni, the vast majority were Alawite with a small number of Shia and Ismailis (including him), and even fewer Christians.

A common claim emerged in 2012 that the regime had confined all Sunni conscripts to its barracks, deploying only all-Alawite units to the frontlines. I have asked several defected officers about this claim over the past two years. All denied that this was a general policy, citing the regime’s desperate need manpower. However, one artillery regiment officer said that this did occur in his unit, specifically because the regime feared the Sunni soldiers there would defect with the artillery guns. Ali remembers well the deepening distrust towards Sunnis from his Alawite superiors as the war escalated.

“The regime trusted no one, even the Alawite. To get to the army you have to be an Alawite AND show your loyalty. All others were picked randomly, just to show they existed, but never given sensitive position. In the tiny chance a non-Alawite was given a sensitive position everyone around him was Alawite. Most conscripts were Sunni because that is what most of Syria is.

“95% of the army officers and mukhabarat were Alawite. There were Sunnis like me of course and they used us on the frontline, but not in the sensitive positions. I was an exception because I had money and used it well and I was smart in how I used it. My name also helped, and being from Latakia. But others were not as lucky as me.

“Anyone in the Syrian army who gave any indication that they might be against Assad would be killed instantly. I knew personally one officer, Hossam, from the same village as my mother. At the end of my training, Hossam told me ‘Don’t come to me anymore,’ I knew he was planning something. He was planning with a group but one of them was an informant and told the secret services and they were all killed. One of his colleagues was a Kurdish officer, they were together all the time but this Kurdish officer was so scared and didn’t have the strength to do something against the regime. Hossam hadn’t told the Kurdish officer what they were planning, so the mukhabarat didn’t take him since they knew he had nothing to do with it. But he was so scared they would come for him later that he had a stroke.

“How the army used Sunni soldiers depended on what unit they were in and where they were going. If they knew what was needed or who was there, they would not send Sunnis. But if they had no spy inside and didn’t know enough information then the first line would be anyone from lower-tier units as cannon fodder. Then the special forces would follow if nothing happened. Then would come the people who loot everything and sell it.

“At the time I left I heard they were sending anyone because they just had no manpower left. 2012 and 2013 had the biggest waves of defectors and deserters, so by 2014 things were desperate. There was an unofficial statement that if a Sunni wants to leave let him leave. Of course, if they know you will escape and fight the regime they will kill you. But they weren’t stopping you from taking vacation, or paying bribes for extra leave. In the beginning there were Sunnis I knew who had not had leave for two years, but then this changed. By 2012 and 2013 they were able to start replacing these men with Hezbollah fighters, so the regime felt it was safer to get the Sunnis out.”

Defection

“I escaped at the end of 2014, between then I paid a lot of money to stay at home as much as possible. This worked for a while. But eventually the people protecting my back couldn’t protect us anymore so I had to make a plan to escape Syria.”

Since before 2011, soldiers would regularly pay bribes to their unit commanders for extra leave, a system known as tayfish. This was a crucial means for many men to avoid participating in the regime’s crimes while they tried to find ways to defect, and later for wealthier soldiers to remain home during quiet periods in the war.

“A soldier would only leave the army if he knew his family was safe. For me, we faked my death. I only contacted my family with my Austrian WhatsApp number which doesn’t even have my photo on it. But for others they would not leave if their family was still under regime territory. Or if their family was displaced to another city, because then there is no database showing where they currently live so the risk is low.

“Once they leave there are many choices. If they are an officer most likely Turkey would keep them in a camp and prevent them from fighting the regime. If they were a regular soldier they have more options. It’s very hard to know the number of defectors. As the war went on, they stopped doing the morning roll call because they didn’t want us to see how many had left, but they continued the weekly gatherings in the square with the military show for a while. Eventually the command center of the Defense Ministry ordered to end these as well because of the risk someone with a rifle might shoot the officers in the stands. I think this did happen once but I don’t know which division, but I heard someone did this. If it’s true he wouldn’t have done this unless he lost everyone he knew.

“Someone I knew well from Idlib was showing everyone else how much he loved the regime, but of course they did not believe him. He got his first vacation after 1.5 years and of course he did not return. They called him and he didn’t pick up. So his colleagues, the men who served and slept in the same room and everything, they took his box of things from under his bed to steal his things – this was very common. But he was an electrician and he had built a bomb using an old watch and gasoline and nails that would go off when they opened the lid. Unfortunately, it didn’t explode.”

As was the case with Ali, many soldiers who wanted to defect couldn’t out of fear of retribution against their families. The rapid growth in liberated areas starting in late 2012 meant that many Sunni soldiers’ families were now safe from the regime, giving them the freedom to finally defect. But for men like Ali, whose families were deep in Assad-held territory, the risks were too high. One such example of this can be seen in the biography of a Druze conscript whose fear for his family’s safety and pressure from loyalist family members ultimately cost him his life.

For Ali, the loss of his wasta network inside the army and ever-growing risk that his true feelings would be exposed ultimately pushed him to take the risk.

“I had to escape Syria using a fake ID, being passed between cars until I reached the Turkish border. It was a very complicated process going back and forth between villages. First, we drove south, then from Hama…it was night and very dark…the drive took 12 hours, but I can’t tell you the exact road because I couldn’t risk having a GPS with me. Mostly we took countryside roads passing through small villages. When the driver would go through regime checkpoints it was no problem for him, he would give them goods and money and there was no problem.

“After Hama we went to Qalaat al-Mudiq where we crossed the last regime checkpoint and entered the FSA checkpoint. Once we crossed the last army checkpoint most villages were completely destroyed. After my driver crossed the first FSA checkpoint, he started to lose his confidence. When he reached the first Nusra checkpoint he said to his wife, who was in the car with us to lower suspicion, he said ‘I won’t do it after what happened last time.’ He told me to get out and walk and he would meet me later. He said, ‘You have to give me your word you won’t tell them that you had to pay me.’

“From everything I saw in the army and while fleeing the country, I can say that the shittiest rebel factions were still better than the regime. I don’t know about ISIS, I only crossed a small section of their territory and it was just a 14-year-old boy leading a group of fighters. I asked my driver who the hell was this and he said, ‘He is a prince.’ It was such a joke. All the governments including the regime planted this virus.

“What I will tell you, I know you will not believe: The regime knew every single movement of ISIS. They knew every commander and soldier and what streets they were taking. You need to see it from the ground to connect the points. But the whole time the Syrian regime was saying ‘Please help us fight ISIS’ they knew them all. They knew them by their real names not their nicknames. They knew everything but never gave the order to attack them. For the FSA when the regime knew one bit of information, they would give the order to bomb everything around them. This was one reason I had to escape, because they knew that I knew too much.”

A Regime of Prisons

Many Syrians had known for years that the regime’s prison system was more extensive than officially documented. As the regime fell, this belief became fact, with hundreds of secret prisons discovered in military bases, mukhabarat offices, and militia-affiliated buildings. The risk of detention in any one of these facilities was a huge factor preventing soldiers from defecting – especially since any defector caught in those first years was executed or tortured to death.

“There was a Sednaya in every military base. Most of the people caught at military checkpoints I believe didn’t even reach the prison. The roads weren’t safe at times so then the military guys would keep these people in their checkpoint until a car came for them. And if you had proven your loyalty to the regime, you could do anything you wanted to anyone at those checkpoints.

“You are always followed by the fear of ‘what if they know’ so trusting someone is very, very hard. You know many are acting like they support the regime and are not, but also many acting like they oppose the regime to catch those people. But there is a line which separates being a human being and an animal in a human body. In a few special cases, I knew those people. The first thing to take into consideration: he must be Sunni. Anything else is a risk. Even if you know 100% he is against the regime there is still a risk he will be pressured into reporting you.

“To be open and transparent, the Christians were not supporting the regime and didn’t want it, but they did not do anything against it. What else could they do? They are a small minority and can’t do a lot, but on the other hand the regime would not dare bomb their villages. Look at Suwayda, where Assad did not dare to attack them for two years while they protested.

“I know a guy with an office near mine. He took a vacation somehow and at the same time the rebels took his town, so he couldn’t return to our base. After 8 months the regime recaptured his town, but instead of escaping he tried to return to the division! At the front door he gave them his original vacation permission and tried to explain what happened. They immediately sent him to the military prison. He stayed there for six or seven months. When they released him, he had lost his mind to the extent he was sleeping in the streets of Damascus naked in the winter. It’s just one of the stories that when you hear it you think you are watching a horror movie, but it is just what is happening in Syria. When the Syrian regime fell, it was the end of the Nazis.”

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In the chaos that followed the shooting, a family in Barouha was attacked, their home burned down and five members murdered. The next morning, both Alawite and Sunni Facebook pages claimed the victims as their own. Alawite pages claimed the men were killed by security forces, while Sunni pages claimed they were killed by Alawite insurgents. Barouha’s mixed Sunni and Alawite population added to the confusion.

One local man in Barouha told the author that the initial attack on the security checkpoint had been conducted by local smugglers. But the rumors of the involvement of ex-regime insurgents was, according to this man, capitalized on by an influential figure in the nearby town of Zara. According to his account, the man from Zara quickly mobilized around 100 people to storm Barouha and exact revenge against “the insurgents”. Media activists from Zara resolutely reject this accusation.

These competing narratives and their underlying violence are emblematic of the broader crisis in Syria today: maintaining civil peace and building social cohesion in a country where countless war crimes have been committed in every community for 15 years. The government’s current approach seems focused on arresting high level regime war criminals, while not providing any clear guidance on what will happen with the rank-and-file regime supporters who also committed crimes. This has left many Sunni communities unsure if they will ever find justice and Alawites unconvinced that the government can and will protect them from vigilante attacks. The unaddressed sectarian tensions fueled by pro-Assad militias’ war crimes are particularly fierce in towns where most of the population was violently displaced.

Whether or not 100 men from Zara did take up arms against neighboring Alawites the accusation alone underscores the unaddressed crisis in this region: boiling social tensions born out of the crimes committed by local Alawite militiamen against the town of Zara during the war, the violent displacement of Zara’s population in 2014, and the decade of unchecked looting and destruction of their homes and farms by men from the surrounding Alawite villages that followed.

The history of Zara’s revolution and displacement must be preserved and understood, first as a definitive record of what many Sunni communities endured at the hands of a sectarian regime, and secondly as a study in the complexities of maintaining civil peace after Assad. The layers of crimes committed at the hyper-local level and the way these communities have internalized these experiences has created lasting fissures in the social fabrics of every mixed-sect region. Ignoring the impact of this trauma, failing to recognize and memorialize it, and failing to prevent vigilante attacks, will only perpetuate low-level inter-communal violence.

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Zara’s Revolution

Three months after Assad’s fall, a new banner was hung over the Homs-Tartous highway. “The Martyrs of Zara Bridge” now decorates the overpass connecting the Sunni Turkmen town of Zara with the city of Talkalakh. Those that hoisted the banner claim it stands for “the more than 500 martyrs” from the town. According to one media activist from Zara, around 120 of these were army defectors and local rebels who died defending the town - the rest were civilians killed in detention or by shelling, sniper attacks, and several massacres during and after the fighting.

Zara sits at the foot of the large mountain overlooking the northern Talkalakh countryside, atop which rests the famous Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers. The village that formed around this castle, Hosn, is also majority Sunni Turkmen; nearly ever other village around them is Alawite. Together, Zara and Hosn were the last opposition holdouts in Talkalakh. The regime capture of these towns in late March 2014 marked the end of opposition presence in western Homs.

Zara’s history begins like many towns across the country. During a Friday sermon a few weeks after the first protests in Dara’a and Damascus, one man, Badr Janin, stood up and shouted, "With our souls and our blood, we will sacrifice for you, Baniyas!" His interjection was all that was required to break the town’s sheikh from his government-issued sermon. “Yes... with our souls and our blood, we will sacrifice for you, Baniyas, and Daraa, and all the rebellious regions," the Sheikh finished. A small group of worshippers left the mosque and held the town’s first protest.

The regime’s mukhabarat responded quickly, setting up one checkpoint inside the town and one on the Zara Bridge, preventing any free movement to the city of Talkalakh. An all-too familiar pattern of abuse and raids by security forces played out over the course of 2011, heightening tensions and pushing locals to inevitably turn from peaceful protestors into armed revolutionaries. As in many Sunni communities, many of those arrested were never seen again.

One media activist from Zara has begun documenting the town’s early revolution. According to him, the first skirmish came on October 30, 2011, when a Criminal Security patrol entered Zara intent on carrying out more arrests. Locals gathered in protest, and so the regional director ordered military units to storm the town. At this point, some locals fired back, killing two soldiers. The military commander agreed to withdraw from inside Zara, but the security cordon around the town tightened.

As the revolution became an armed struggle, Zara’s geographic position enabled the town to play a key role in smuggling weapons from Lebanon to opposition groups across Homs. This brought even greater scrutiny and conflict to the town. On December 30, two men from the town were killed while smuggling weapons near the al-Hawash University. The regime refused to hand over their bodies until their families signed a paper saying they had been killed by “armed gangs”. When the bodies arrived, they were mutilated: security forces had gouged out the mens’ eyes.

A month later, five more men were executed by security forces at a checkpoint near the al-Ja'fariyyat Bridge. The continual skirmishes and detentions and the regime’s escalating violence across the country pushed the people of Zara into an even more confrontational stance, understanding that they would not survive if they remained isolated and only reacting to regime abuses:

“These events were not merely isolated confrontations; they represented a fateful turning point that pushed al-Zara to an irreversible choice. Carrying arms was no longer merely a defensive option; it had become a necessity for survival in the face of the regime's escalating security campaigns.

Al-Zara became a front in itself, a strategic target that the regime sought to stifle by any means possible. This trajectory culminated in the Great Battle of al-Zara in 2014, where its people proved their resilience despite the siege and fire. What began as a perilous adventure in those first nights later became a heroic epic told through generations, even after the town was stormed and destroyed.”

The Zara Massacre

The revolutionaries in Talkalakh would soon find themselves besieged by regime military and allied militia forces. Homs governorate more broadly was one of the first and fiercest incubators of the pro-regime shabiha movement, crystalizing by early 2012 into the National Defense Forces. The Talkalakh region was a major source of recruitment for this force. The Zara Bridge became the frontline for the town, the fighters inside unable to break through and connect to the Sunnis in the city of Talkalakh. On July 12, 2013, this bridge would become the site of a massacre that began with a brutal siege.

Siege and starvation was a widespread and institutional tactic used by the regime since the beginning of all-out war. Once besieged communities were cut-off from outside help, senior regime officers or political officials would begin negotiating with local notables. This system of siege→starve→reconcile would become the key means by which the regime, and later Russia, would recapture most of the country.

In Zara, as would happen a few months later in the nearby Turkmen village of Mitras, the regime used the siege to force the town into so-called “reconciliation” negotiations. The Zara Facebook page shared a long account of their town’s attempts at reconciliation and the regime’s betrayal that day:

“In those difficult days, the town's notables, those good, pure men, did not hesitate to strive to save what could be saved. They met and decided to knock on the doors of reconciliation, out of concern for the blood of innocents. They began arduous negotiations with the regime forces, carrying an olive branch at a time when the streets were filled with the smell of gunpowder and death.

After days of negotiations, an agreement was reached stipulating the dismantling of the The siege of the town in exchange for handing over eleven young men from its sons to reach a settlement with the regime... a difficult decision... but it was the only way to save thousands of lives trapped by hunger and fear.

On July 12 of that year, the reconciliation convoy set off. Two civilian cars advanced... and a van behind them carrying young men who had taken it upon themselves to sacrifice their safety for their families. The convoy set off, a faint hope on the faces of its men... perhaps reason would overcome madness... and perhaps peace would precede the bullets...

But treachery awaited... at the Zara Bridge... In a scene that will never be erased from memory... the regime's National Defense Forces set up a sinful ambush... led by Fahim Qamuhi from the village of Hajar al-Abyad and Ali Younis from the village of Qumiri... They rained down on the convoy with a hail of bullets and RPGs... paying no attention to the agreement... nor to the sanity of those who came with their hands extended in peace...

It burned The two front cars, including their occupants, were killed, and the pure bodies were turned into shreds. The van, however, managed to escape, leaving the remaining men crawling under the cover of darkness, across fields and valleys, dragging behind them an unhealed pain and the memory of a massacre that will remain a stain of shame on the foreheads of all who colluded and remained silent. On that bloody day, seven of the finest men of Al-Zara were martyred, martyrs whose virtues cannot be described in words. Men who were true to their covenant with God, and who were icons of peace and loyalty. They carried no weapons and did not seek authority. Rather, they went out carrying the banner of reconciliation, believing that shedding blood is more important than adhering to positions, and that a human being is more precious than any false victory. The convoy of martyrs included seven of the finest sons of Al-Zara:

Sheikh Saeed Awad

Professor Hassan Kanaan

Professor Mohammed Kanaan

Colonel Retired Marwan Awad

Retired Colonel Nabil Halawik

Professor Mahmoud Halawik

Professor Ziad Damarji

They fell as martyrs to treachery... for no crime they committed... but rather because they believed the promises of a regime known throughout its history for treachery, betrayal, and ingratitude for every hand extended for peace. They left with goodness in their hearts, pure intentions, and the hope that their families would live in dignity.

As for those who survived the ambush... they returned to Zara carrying an unforgettable story... and the stories of men who chose martyrdom over sacrificing the dignity of their town... men whose names history will forever write in gold and tears...

What happened at the Zara Bridge is living testimony to the criminality of a regime that does not abide by its covenant... and does not hesitate to kill innocents... testimony that this regime fears only the truthful word... and only fights those with good intentions... and that pure blood will remain... the blood of men Reconciliation... a beacon illuminating the path of the free... and a cry in the face of every tyrant... that peace has men... and even if time betrays them... history will do them justice... and from their blood the earth will grow an immortal dignity.”

The Zara Bridge massacre was not the first nor the last time the regime executed those it pledged would be safe. Three months later, regime army and local Alawite militia forces would conduct a similar operation against the small village of Mitras, in Tartous, after which the commanding officer demanded the remaining defectors and fighters to “reconcile”. All would be executed or tortured to death in Sednaya.

Regime forces increased their pressure on the Zara following the massacre. Seven months later, they army and allied militias launched a new battle to capture the town once and for all. On March 8, 2014, the town fell.

Systemic Destruction by Neighbors

Most of the forces used in these battles came from local Alawite men who had volunteered in the pro-regime National Defense Forces. This nation-spanning militia played a critical role in supporting the overstretched army with manpower and manning checkpoints around isolated opposition communities. In Homs governorate, the NDF played a particularly central role in brutal fighting in 2012 and 2013. Beyond fighting, the NDF was an economic powerhouse deeply involved in extortion, kidnapping, and looting. It also operated detention facilities across the country (the investigative outlet Zaman al-Wasl has recently published the pictures of more than 200 men and children who were held in NDF prisons).

With Zara’s capture, these militiamen and army officers were free to steal and destroy everything. From 2014 through 2024, the buildings and farmland were systematically dismantled or taken over by people from the surrounding Alawite communities. The latter crimes are just as impactful as those committed by the security forces before 2014. Often, victims view the years looting and destruction of agricultural land as linked to a wider range of perpetrators, holding the farmers and businessmen of nearby Alawite communities - from which the NDF fighters came from - culpable as well.

With Zara’s residents now returning for their first agricultural season after Assad, the impact of these crimes is particularly glaring. Zara’s media activists recently published a detailed list of crimes, explicitly linking them to the need for a clear framework of transitional justice:

“Since the regime took control of the town of Zara in March 2014, the town's notables have attempted to obtain security approvals for the return of residents. However, the regime's response was that the neighboring villages "did not want them to return," especially the shabiha known as “Ghawar Khanat”, who had not yet completed the theft of property.

During the years (2014 to 2019):

• All the contents of homes were looted.

• More than 70% of the roofs of buildings were destroyed to extract iron.

• More than 600,000 fruit trees were uprooted.

• Thousands of beehives, two modern olive presses, wheat mills, and a bread oven were stolen.

• Approximately 80 groundwater wells were filled in after their pumps were looted.

• More than 100 agricultural tractors were stolen.

• 130 poultry farms were destroyed.

• More than 1,700 greenhouses were stolen.

• A number of residents were forced to sell their lands at low prices or forcibly relinquish them. The boundary stones separating the lands were also stolen in an attempt to obscure the features of real estate ownership.

• Cow and sheep herders from neighboring Alawite villages have been raiding al-Zara's homes and fields for several years, converting the carpet factory and one of the town's mosques into animal pens, and carrying out widespread vandalism against civilian homes.

Between the years (2019 to 2024):

• After a partial return of residents in 2019, thugs from the villages of Qumri, Shloh, and Kafrish started annual fires at the beginning of each summer, burning hundreds of hectares of wheat land and olive trees that were regrowing. These fires were documented in photographs and testimonies from farmers. The fires also caused hundreds of snakes and wild animals to flee toward residential neighborhoods, posing a danger to residents.

• In the al-Qasibiyat area, farmers affiliated with the so-called "Ghawar Khanat" from the villages of Khirbet al-Jibab and al-Sindyaneh seized lands owned by the people of al-Zara and prevented the owners from entering or cultivating them.

• Shabiha from the village of Hajar al-Abyad seized land belonging to the Khalil family, building a factory, warehouses, and a football field near the Zara Bridge.”

The scale of the regime’s physical destruction of opposition communities is so great that it is easily captured in satellite imagery.

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Civil Peace Requires Local Accountability

The specific history of Zara is unique to this town, but the criminal pattern is ubiquitous across the country. Every week a new mass grave is found in a Sunni town which was displaced by the regime, whose surviving population returns now to rebuild their lives. Each of these communities holds the scars and trauma of the crimes - often committed by their neighbors who joined regime militias. With many of the guilty shabiha fleeing the country on December 8, the rest in hiding, and no clear policy from the government on amnesty or accountability, some Sunnis have sought “justice” through indiscriminate revenge against innocent Alawites.

In Zara, there is a clear history of sectarian tensions in the area, exacerbated by the crimes of the Assad regime and local militia fighters during the war, that have gone unaddressed in the half-year since liberation. Such is the case in hundreds of Sunni communities across the country. While some activists make demands for inter-faith dialogue, many ignore the reality on the ground: Sunni communities are often casting a wide net for justice and accountability demands, while Alawite communities have largely remained adamantly opposed to acknowledging the sectarian nature of the Assad regime and their role in his survival. In many cases, neither “side” is in any place to hear the nuances of the others’ experiences - and each sectarian killing since December 8 has only widened the gap between these communities.

Syria risks falling into a vicious cycle of division driven by those irreconcilables on the far extremes of each community. These narratives of revenge and communal retribution feed off of the specific, individual experiences of trauma and crimes endured by millions of Syrians. They continue to thrive in an environment where historical revisionism and sectarian mis-conceptions have gone unaddressed.

Memorializing the martyrs and publicizing the crimes against these communities is a necessary first step in establishing a definitive historical record of what the Assad regime did to those who opposed it. At the same time, Sunni communities need to understand that the Alawite experience under Assad was not universal, and while the regime was powered by Alawite militias and officers, that does not mean the entire sect is guilty for the crimes of those participants.

Justice cannot be achieved through individual acts of personal revenge, particularly when that violence is directed without evidence. Yet the government’s current focus on regime officers with only the most widespread crimes has left many communities afraid that their suffering will never be acknowledged. Building real, effective transitional justice systems at the local level takes time, even under the best circumstances.

In the meantime, the government must focus its efforts on preventing sectarian violence. When an attack by a criminal group can trigger the massacre of an Alawite family, it means the government has failed to both provide real security to Alawite areas and to address the pain and rights of opposition communities. Each failure to do either of these results in more dead Syrians, more sectarian division, and more fear and social stagnation.

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Mitras is one of only three Sunni towns in the Safita region of Tartous, a governorate dominated by the largely pro-Assad Alawite community. To its east lies the mostly Christian Wadi Nasara region of Homs, an area to which many of Mitras’ young men would soon flee, seeking safety from the regime and the Alawite villages surrounding them in all other directions. The town had held one of the earliest protests in Syria, just a few weeks after the first demonstrations in Dara’a, and continued to promote and host pro-revolution activities during the ensuing months. “There was some pressure from the mukhabarat,” recalls Muhammad, who has served as the town’s mukhtar since before the war, “and many threats, but we continued to celebrate the revolution.” Mitras’ 5,000 inhabitants are almost entirely Sunni Turkmen, but there is a small Alawite minority of around 300 people who live in the town as well. None of them participated in the April 20, 2011 protest, but they also left the pro-opposition community alone. “Before the revolution we had normal relations with our neighbors,” Muhammad insists. He, like many people across Syria’s coast, remember the pre-2011 years as ones of decent inter-faith relations – their social fabric only shattered by the regime’s brutal sectarian approach to suppressing the revolution.

The second major protest in Mitras was a funeral. On September 9, 2013, a father and his three children were murdered in the farm outside the town by local shabiha – a common term for pro-Assad thugs, many of whom had organized into a country-wide militia known as the National Defense Forces (NDF). It was not the first murder by neighboring Alawite fighters – another man had been killed while traveling through a nearby village in 2012 – but it was the first attack on the town’s land and the first time children were murdered. A small group of local men and army defectors had formed an armed group inside Mitras specifically to prevent such attacks. But these men, led by a defected major named Ali Oghli, only carried their weapons at night to guard from criminals and had never launched attacks against the regime. While the funeral-protest was peaceful, tensions were rapidly escalating. Three weeks later, on September 29, a weapons cache belonging to this armed group exploded inside the home of Khalid Tamer, drawing the irreversible attention of the governorate’s intelligence branches and nearby army brigade. Muhammad and another member of the town’s local council went to Tartous to negotiate. Muhammad recalls how the head of Tartous’ Air Force Intelligence Branch – a Sunni from Deir Ez Zor – had begged him “we cannot control the NDF if they enter the town, please just surrender or they will massacre all of you.”

On October 5, 2013, the head of the Tartous Military Intelligence Branch Brigadier Tayseer Kiwan announced to Mitras, “you’ve stalled long enough”. At 6am tanks opened fire from the two hills to the town’s west. For four hours the town was shelled, then local Alawite NDF fighters and soldiers advanced through the cemetery, located on a small hill just outside the town. The opposition fighters met them there, and the intense clashes left at least eight NDF and army soldiers killed. As the fighting died down, one of the NDF commanders called Muhammad and another town notable, Mahmoud Qarajah, demanding “if you do not recover the bodies of our dead we will destroy your town.” Muhammad and Mahmoud drove up to the cemetery, the NDF still firing at them, and began to crawl up the remaining 50 feet to where the bodies of two NDF men lay. Still, the NDF continued to shoot at the men they had ordered onto the hill. Unable to reach the bodies, Muhammad called someone back in town who had the number of one of the NDF commanders. “The commander told us, ‘take off your shirts and wave them above your head and maybe we will stop shooting,’” Muhammad recounts coldly.

At 10am regime officers contacted the village leaders and offered an ultimatum: the remaining armed men would be allowed to settle their status – a process known as taswiya which would become ubiquitous in later years – turning over their weapons and signing documentation of their “crimes” with the intelligence branches in exchange for the bombardment to end. Muhammad and his associates agreed, and the army entered the town for the first time. Most men had fled, but the remaining armed men handed over their weapons and went with the mukhabarat to settle their status. While the army cleared the town, dozens of cars from nearby Alawite villages circled in the hills above, the men inside waving knives out the windows and shouting threats at the inhabitants below. It was a clear reference to the massacre of the Sunni town of Bayda the year before, many of whom were stabbed to death by local Alawite shabiha.

On October 6, the army withdrew and the NDF entered Mitras. “There were a lot of killings, theft, and kidnapping,” Muhammad recounts. “They kidnapped children too,” he says, pointing to the house next to his, “there they took a father and his young children, we have not heard of them since.” The armed group leader Major Oghli was taken that day by the NDF, as well as Khaled Tamer. Oghli was executed in Sednaya a few months later, while Khaled was able to leave prison after seven years and flee to Lebanon. There were no limits to the crimes of the NDF – everyone in the town was their victim. Even pro-regime Alawites inside Mitras were beaten by them.

On October 7, the mukhabarat arrived. Members of the three main directorates – Air Force Intelligence, Military Intelligence, and State Intelligence – swept the town again. They burned down the homes of “terrorists” and executed several people who refused to give up their properties. At one point a retired regime soldier from Mitras tried to negotiate a softer sentence for his brother as he handed the man over to the mukhabarat. But the officers refused, and the argument escalated until both the former soldier and his brother were simply shot dead in the street. Thirteen men were killed inside Mitras during those three days. Later, locals would find four more men executed, their bodies burned, in the fields around the town.

With Mitras firmly under regime control the army and mukhabarat withdrew. In their place they left the local NDF factions, under the command of a man named Basil Braidi. For seven brutal months Mitras suffered under an NDF occupation. “We never slept,” recalls Mahmoud, “At night they would enter our homes and take whatever they wanted.” The NDF fighters – all from the Alawite villages around Mitras – robbed, harassed, beat and kidnapped whoever they wanted. At one point they nearly executed Mahmoud, then serving as head of the Farmer’s Association, when he tried to speak out against the violations. Meanwhile the mukhabarat continued to raid the town, a growing list of men forever disappearing into Assad’s detention matrix. Muhammad somberly describes that period: “During those months, we wished for night to never fall.”

Muhammad and a few other respected men from the town established a council to try and work with the mukhabarat for the taswiya demands and ensure the summoned men would be protected. These council members became prime targets of regular NDF harassment. As the weeks bore on and the men who had left Mitras to settle their status in early October still hadn’t returned, the council began to demand to know their fate. “They told us ‘this wasn’t a taswiya, those men surrendered to us and have been sent to prison’,” says Muhammad. Among them was Yahya, his son who had defected. In April 2014, his family was delivered a death certificate: Yahya had been executed in Sednaya, along with Major Oghli and others.

In May 2014, the NDF commander terrorizing Mitras was himself detained by the mukhabarat over a dispute with some local intelligence officer. His replacement decided to withdraw the NDF forces from the town, instead establishing a checkpoint at the town’s entrance and exit. Here men from Mitras still risked being kidnapped, while everyone had to deal with the typical harassment and extortion behavior of the NDF. By now most men had fled Mitras for Idlib or Europe, leaving only the elderly, women, and children behind. But as boys approached conscription age they too had to either smuggle themselves out of the region or hide in the town to avoid detention. Many locals would seek temporary refuge in the nearby Christian villages in western Homs, moving from there to opposition-held parts of Homs or to Idlib.

Meanwhile, the police commander in the nearby district capital of Safita, Dureid Abbas, ordered all checkpoints on the highway to tax any truck arriving from Mitras carrying charcoal, which was the town’s main trade good. Life continued this way for the next ten years. Twelve more men would be murdered by shabiha and security forces during this time, either during raids in the town or while traveling in the nearby roads. Death certificates from Assad’s prisons would continue to arrive as well, with 44 men confirmed murdered in prison by 2019 and dozens of others remaining missing. Many men from Mitras also continued serving in the regime’s army. Most of these were men who had been conscripted before the war and were unable to escape, others had been captured at checkpoints and forced into the army. In total, 16 locals would die fighting for Assad between 2011 and 2018.

On December 8, 2024, Mitras was liberated along with the rest of Syria. “The night Assad fell the security forces vanished,” says Muhammad, “all the men grabbed our hunting rifles and spread out into the hills looking for Basil Braidi, but we could not find him. It was clear he had already fled Syria.” It is a story that has played out across Syria in the weeks following the regime’s collapse. With the international community’s focus on the topic of transitional justice and amnesty at broad level, it is easy to forget the brutal existence these individual Sunni communities had endured until the hour Assad fled to Moscow. People in towns like Mitras also emphasize the need for legal accountability and community healing – but the scale of violence inflicted on them is overwhelming.

The years of war and layered national and international crises stemming from Syria have obscured the unimaginable events these forgotten communities went through. Now these communities, brutalized by their own neighbors whose regime fueled their greed, fear, and bloodlust, are engaged in their own civil peace initiatives. Two months after Assad, most of the families who had fled to Idlib have returned to Mitras. The town remains impoverished and downtrodden, but young children play freely in the streets while small groups of military-aged men wander into the hills to go bird hunting, unfettered by fears of detention or murder. Muhammad insists the area has returned to a state of calm: “The violations were committed by the NDF, not the Alawite civilians. We don’t hold what we endured against the civilians from the villages around us.” Still, this understanding does not mean that there are post-war dialogues between them and Mitras. The Alawites inside Mitras live in peace with the Sunnis, but as for those in the surrounding villages: “they do not believe their regime has fallen, so there is nothing to discuss with them.”

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On July 25, 2011, members of the regime's Military Intelligence invaded al-Jilani Mosque in Baba Amr, Homs and filmed themselves detaining and beating the Imam, Sheikh Muhammad Mustafa. The video of the beating was then leaked, with many claiming the videographer was a regime intelligence officer who intentionally leaked the video in order to inflame sectarian tensions in the city. Years later, pro-regime Facebook pages would admit that the man behind the raid was the Military Intelligence Captain Ibrahim Muhammad Issa. This would not be Issa’s last involvement in the regime’s atrocities in Homs.

Just a few days before the mosque operation, the regime’s Central Crisis Management Cell had issued new directives to security forces in Homs. According to documents published by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, the CCMC ordered a increase in raids throughout the city in order to find and detained “wanted persons” and to prevent the continuation of weekly protests.

Captain Issa was one of the men assigned this job. Born in an Alawite town outside Qardaha, Issa had served in the Air Force Intelligence for many years. When the popular protests began across Syria, Issa “proved his worth in the field” and was assigned to undergo a specialized training program in “street fighting”. He was then transferred to the Military Intelligence Directorate and assigned to Homs City, where security forces had began a brutal crackdown on protestors that March.

The regime crackdown triggered the formation of armed opposition groups, first to protect protestors then to attack regime forces and create free zones in the city. One of these men was Bilal Al-Kin, whose life was recently documented by Zaman al-Wasl. Al-Kin had first clashed with security forces on March 25, 2011, when shabiha began storming homes and kidnapping civilians in the Jourat Al-Shayh neighborhood. In April, he stood guard during Homs’ great sit-in. By August, al-Kin had helped form the FSA-affiliated Khalid bin Al-Walid Battalion operating within the city. A month later, regime forces launched a large military operation in the old city of Homs. Opposition forces withdrew after days of heavy fighting, but in the chaos al-Kin was killed.

In early 2012 the 104th Republican Guard Brigade deployed additional units to Homs City, led by the infamous war criminal Ali Khuzam. Khuzam had already overseen the suppression of protestors and insurgents in East Ghouta and southern Damascus in 2011. He then turned to Homs to help lead the brutal offensive against opposition-controlled neighborhoods. From February to April, 2012, regime forces would indiscriminately shell anti-regime neighborhoods with tanks and artillery while ground forces conducted mass executions of civilians, all in an attempt to drive entire populations from their neighborhoods.

Over the next year, Ibrahim Issa and his Military Intelligence colleagues would assist in these military operations, first in the Khalidiya and Bab Amr neighborhoods, then in the Qusayr and Talkalakh regions, and going as far north as Jisr Shoughur in the Idlib countryside. In early 2013 Issa returned to Homs City as the regime prepared for a renewed offensive against the remaining opposition neighborhoods. He was killed alongside four other soldiers on March 10, 2013 as security forces again stormed Baba Amr.

A posthumous biography of Issa shared widely by pro-regime Facebook pages in 2015 explicitly links the officer to all of these events. He was “the leader of the Jilani Mosque operation” in July 2011, claimed to be the man responsible for killing al-Kin in September, and is described as “the right-hand man” of Ali Khuzam. His biography underscores the central role of the regime’s intelligence services not just in monitoring, detaining and torturing Syrian in the detention system, but also as central combatants in military operations throughout the war.

Both militias are national networks comprised of a central office and regional centers. These regional centers grew over the course of the war depending on needs and resources available to the state. However, Latakia served as one of the earliest centers for each militia - due to both the excess of loyal Alawites and the relative dearth of pre-existing military units. Here we will look at the origins of the Latakia Baath Battalions and Latakia NDF, as told through several histories published over the years by affiliated Facebook pages.

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One of these original shabiha leaders described the origins of the neighborhood’s militias and their founders in a 2023 Facebook post:

“The first to establish the Popular Protection Forces in Rukn al-Din al-Assad, affiliated with the Guard (Qadesh) Baland Murad... Rafa’at Barazi (Da’as) and Agha Saher Ali Barazi, and with him were the heroic Issam and Khaled al-Kurdi, with Colonel Khader Khaddam... and the first building block of the heroic National Defense Forces, which were called committees, with the blessing of Major General Ghassan Nassour (Abu al-Basil), who was the commander of the Qalamoun sector... the heroic uncle Abu Jaafar Bassem al-Muhammad and Zakaria al-Ali (Abu Hussein), and the hero of the shadow Mazen Murtada... and the piercing star Dr. Ammar Kalou (Abu Sarbast) and the first group from which the hero Mohammed Nour Al-Waish and Ahmed Al-Bash were martyred... Our first place was opposite Salah Al-Din Mosque and the pictures speak for themselves... With the support of the hero Abu Al-Zain Ismail... and Brigadier General Commando Ali Al-Safi... and with the assistance of the Baath Battalions Tiger Diaa Mardini (Abu Mazen) who blessed us with a visit to the leadership with the brave men.”

This short history, written by Zakaria al-Ali and quickly deleted, provides a small glimpse at the complexity of early militia movements. Ali names three militias operating in the neighborhood, each just a small branch of a national organization. The Popular Protection Forces (PDF, also known as the Popular Defense Forces, or “Qadesh” as referenced in the post) created with the support of local Republican Guard officer Colonel Khader Khaddam; the National Defense Forces (NDF), with its authority granted by the Republican Guard officer Major General Ghassan Nassour and army officer Brigadier Ali al-Safi; the Baath Battalions, predating both of the other militia branches and providing Baath Party legitimacy via its local commander Diaa Mardini.

The first man listed in Ali’s post is Biland Nizar Murad, a member of a wealthy merchant family in the neighborhood. Documents obtained by the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks and shared with the author show that Murad registered a 37 million SYP transportation company with a Yemeni national in December 2011. Currently Murad is linked to the “Murad Company” - a regional petroleum distribution company - and the “al-Badea Investment Company” - an import-export business also involved in real estate, construction, tourism, and telecommunications. Given this background, Murad likely served as a key financier for the original shabiha networks and later both the PDF and NDF units inside Rukn al-Din.

Saher Ali Barazi has served as the commander of the Rukn al-Din PDF since founding the branch, presumably alongside his brother Rafa’at Barazi. Saher’s other brother, Samer Barazi, ran the Sahab Real Estate office next to the Salah al-Din Mosque, which would become the headquarters of the militia groups. According to some local activists, Samer was the head of one of the neighborhood’s shabiha networks in early 2012. This network included Saher as well as Khaled al-Kurdi, who is also referenced in the original post as a founding member of the PDF branch.

In the first years of the revolution these networks of local informants were closely linked to the Syrian Mukhabarat. Frequent visitors of Samer’s real estate office included al-Hajj Aboud, an informant for the State Security Internal Branch, Bassam Janad, a Military Intelligence informant, and Jihad Barakat, a mukhabarat informant operating in the adjacent Qaboun neighborhood. Mazen Murtada, referred to in the original post as “hero of the shadows” appears to have also served as a mukhabarat informant during the beginning of the revolution. According to opposition activists from Rukn al-Din, he and his brother, Ghazi Murtada, helped inform on and detain youth in the neighborhood and deliver them to the local “Jabhat Branch” intelligence office.

The state then turned to its various military branches to formalize these loose informant and enforcer networks. Here is where Zakaria al-Ali’s story begins, citing the role of three regime military officers in establishing the formal PDF and NDF branches of the neighborhood. Brigadier Ghassan Nassour served as the Republican Guard’s commander of the Qalamoun sector from 2011 until 2017, during which time he regularly commanded the local PDF units within his operations room. Lieutenant Colonel Khader Khaddam appears to have served under Nassour’s command, taking a more direct liaison role with the various PDF units in Rukn al-Din and the Qalamoun region. For example, a June 2015 video shows Khaddam at a PDF ceremony in Yabroud alongside the overall commander of the PDF Colonel Samir Dabbah Hassan, the Yabroud sector commander Colonel Youssef Shaqif, the Yabroud State Security branch director Colonel Mohammed Hashish, and officials from the Yabroud Reconciliation Center and local Baath representatives. This ceremony gives a small insight into the overlapping layers of state control over these local militias.

Ghassan Nassour also “blessed” the formation of the Rukn al-Din NDF, essentially providing legitimacy and the seal of state approval for the development of the unit. His involvement in both militias implies that the Republican Guard, and perhaps more specifically the 105th Brigade, was more broadly assigned to build and support militias in the Qalamoun and northern Damascus region. Army Brigadier Ali Ibrahim Safi played a more direct role in supporting the new formation within the umbrella of the NDF’s Damascus Center. Safi, who would go on to serve as the commander of the Damascus Countryside NDF Center, appears to have been charged with general command of NDF units in Damascus in the first years of the war.

There are several notable local figures connected to the Rukn al-Din NDF. Like Murad, Dr. Ammar Kalou also comes from a well-known merchant family in the neighborhood. Prior to the revolution, Kalou ran a health clinic in Rukn al-Din, and his family had no history of holding political positions. However, by early 2014 he had been appointed to the Damascus Governorate Executive Office where he has gone on to serve in various roles, including as a member of the Relief Subcommittee overseeing support for displaced persons, as director of the Social Affairs and Labor Office, and as assistant to the governor of Damascus. Throughout this time he has also served as the commander of the Rukn al-Din NDF, regularly visiting with soldiers on the frontlines across Damascus city and Eastern Ghouta.

Diaa Mardini has similarly gained local political power through his militia involvement. Originally the commander of the neighborhood’s Baath Battalions detachment, by 2017 he was serving directly under Kalou as Deputy Commander of the Rukn al-Din NDF. Mardini was a small time businessman prior to the revolution, owning a body building gym before leading the Baath Battalions branch. He was later accused by other Baath Battalions sectors of abuses against locals, and in 2018 secured a position in Damascus’ Local Council alongside his brother, Ramez Mardini.

Working closely with Dr. Kalou is Fayez Afash ‘Abu Adham’, the commander of the Rukn al-Din NDF Special Tasks Company. This is the core offensive unit of the Rukn al-Din NDF, deploying not just to Damascus city but across the entire country. Afash appears to have been the company’s first and only commander, retaining his position to this day. By late 2016 the company had already fought in northern Latakia, Palmyra, the Shaer Gas Field in Homs, and participated in the short-lived regime offensive to retake Raqqa. The unit also fought across Eastern Ghouta, including in the capture of Maydaa in 2016, Jobar and Hawsh al-Dawahra in 2017, and manning the Jobar axis during the regime’s final 2018 offensive to capture the pocket. In 2020 the group was even deployed to the Deir Ez Zor countryside as part of a broader deployment of Damascus NDF units to counter ISIS.

The story of Rukn al-Din’s militia movement underscores the regime’s multifaceted counter-revolutionary approach. Individual officers carrying the authority of the regime empowered previously civilian loyalists to enforce the will of the state in an area with mixed loyalties. These enforcement networks were then molded into various auxiliary units which could be directly employed by their state patron in military actions across the country. In exchange for their support and loyalty, the civilian leaders of these new state-backed armed groups have been awarded political positions. In essence, this new class of elite have turned their informal power into official power, now fully enshrined by the long-standing power structures of the Syrian regime.

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Yet it was not until after all of this that tens of thousands more soldiers succeeded in defecting. Why were there so many ‘late’ defectors, and what were their experiences like in those interim years before they were able to escape? Each defectors’ personal story is unique, yet many bear a key similarity - the decision to defect came long before the actual defection took place. Some soldiers delayed their defection because they wanted to secure their family’s escape to free areas as well, others waited as they attempted to foment larger defections within their own units, and many officers remained in their posts in order to assist opposition activists and fighters from within the regime. Still, there are other soldiers who struggled to escape due to familial pressure or fears that the regime would catch them. Here is a story of one such man from Suwayda, as told by a defector from the same governorate who tried for over a year to secure his defection until the last moment, when the two men met on opposite sides of the battlefield. The author ends the account with a appeal to the families of Suwayda that the Druze community (of which he belongs) should not sacrifice its sons for the sake of Bashar al-Assad, and that the FSA is not asking the Druze to join them simply to leave the army and return to their homes.

“Why did you, Salman, refuse to defect? The story of First Lieutenant Salman Duwaier.....***Abu Khaled Al-Nashmi.***

Salman Duwaier was an officer in the 18th Tank Division and was in the 134th Brigade since the beginning of the revolution. I was one of those who investigated his news. I heard that he was one of the most vehement opponents of this regime and this army. Events wanted us to distance ourselves from each other and I lost contact with him. I defected from this army and I lost contact with all the officers who were still serving in it. After more than 5 months, I went to Idlib. After that, First Lieutenant Imran Mahna came and we talked for a long time. I asked him about First Lieutenant Salman. He said that he was at a checkpoint in the central prison in Idlib. I asked him why he had not defected yet. He told me that he was in contact with him and that Salman had tried more than once, but there was something preventing him, his fear or his family. I told him to call him and tell him that we are together and that we are in a psychological comfort and reassurance that we have never felt in our lives. We do not want you to fight with us, but we want to protect you because the battle to liberate the prison is near. And indeed, we contacted him 10 times, I swear to God 10 times, and he is still thinking, but we concluded that his fear of his family is greater than his fear of the regime.

We had a group of revolutionaries close to him, we told them and gave them his name. They told us that he only had to walk 50 meters and we would wait for him. We would get him out and bring him to you. We contacted him and told him that we were close to him, but he also refused out of fear and not lack of conviction. He told us that his father had undergone a heart operation a while ago and that he was afraid for him. We told him, “Brother, you might die because the battle is in a few days. Go out and you will return to your family.” But we received the message and understood from it that his family was against his defection or that he was afraid. But the important thing is that he did not come, knowing that the last contact was 3 days before the prison was stormed, and the prison was surrounded. But we had revolutionaries we know and they said that we are ready to break the rules if this officer really wants to defect, but he did not show any desire, even though he is an opponent and hates this army. He tried to defect once and returned to the army again. He arrived in Daraa during one of the vacations, but he returned to his work in the ranks of this army. I know him well, he was one of the opponents.

The prison was stormed and Salman was killed during the war and he died because during the fighting no one knows the other and no one can distinguish and I did not participate with them in this battle but I knew that his fate was death. We tried with all our effort and with all our energy to protect him but he did not help himself first before he helped us. Why, Salman, did you refuse to defect? ​​Why did you not believe us? Why, Salman’s father and mother, did you stand in his face? He feared for you from security and you did not fear for him from death. Your son died and you postponed his defection and unfortunately he was buried on the pages of the shabiha and today he is an honorary captain. This is what the regime gave him, an honorary rank and a picture for his family. Hang it in your guesthouse and write under it (You were martyred, my son, and our fear killed you).

My people in my governorate, Salman’s story is not the first nor the last. Most of your sons in this army saw the truth and knew that there is no escape from death because the regime distributed them in checkpoints and left them to their fate without asking about a single one of them. They are just soldiers and numbers for an emperor who only cares about his name and himself, who is ready to offer his wife and children to death in exchange for his throne, but you are the ones who frighten your children from defecting. You are preventing them out of fear for yourselves. You are the ones who kill them, not the revolutionaries. You presented them to certain death out of fear for security and the defunct regime. You were afraid that the security assistant would come and interrogate you. You were afraid of this, but you were not afraid for your children from dying. Your children are not guilty. You are responsible for them. You believe, according to your thinking, that you have nothing to do with this war. Fine, if you have nothing to do with this war, withdraw your children and step aside and protect them from death. You need them more than Bashar and his army. Do not offer them to achieve the goals of the dogs over their blood. Take a stand to protect your children. Fight your sheikhs who declared that the sons of the province must join the army to defend the homeland. Tell them to shut up and be quiet. Our children are not a toy in your hand or in the hand of your emir. A drop of blood from one of our children is more honorable than all of you, even a shoe of one of our sons is more precious than you. We do not want your sons to join the Free Army. We want to protect them. We want them to leave this regime and return to you and avoid fighting. You are not defending the homeland. You are defending a seat that has nothing to do with you. Rather, for 40 years, this seat has been sitting on our chests. Do not pay the price of its remaining in power with the blood of your sons. I remind you that you are the ones who killed your sons, not us. Think carefully. You will know that you alone are responsible for the death of your sons.”

1st Lieutenant Salman Duwaier was killed during the liberation of Idlib Central Prison on January 25, 2013 after serving in the army for five years. He had graduated as an armored vehicle specialist from the Military College in 2008 and joined the 18th Division’s 134th Brigade. During the war, his unit fought in Talbiseh and Homs City in 2011 and early 2012, then deployed to the Aleppo countryside briefly before establishing positions in Kafr Takharim and Armanaz in April 2012. His unit then withdrew to al-Mastouma Camp following the liberation of the two towns in July. He was then stationed at Idlib Central Prison until his death.

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