Author’s Note: I apologize for the delay in publishing these past two weeks. I was finishing two months of field work in Syria and did not have enough time to finalize these final security reports.
Announcements of security deployments mostly in western Syria, with an emphasis on the minority regions. This weekly update is intended to provide base level data for more holistic research into the rebuilding of the security and governance structures of post-Assad Syria. Direct links to primary sources are provided throughout.
The past two weeks saw three serious violent acts across the country. Three Alawi men were killed in targeted assassinations across two towns in western Hama in a single day, seven Alawi workers were killed when their public service bus was shot in western Homs, and four Sunni civilians were killed when their service bus was shot in rural Damascus. Several other individual killings occurred across the country as well.
For their part, security forces arrested several men accused of recent murders, as well as many criminal gangs involved in theft and drug smuggling. Two regime-era officers were also arrested. Counter Terrorism units arrested a large number of ISIS members and commanders in a coordinated, multi-province operation and dismantled a Hezbollah-linked cell planning attacks on Israel from southern Syria.