A Tumultuous Year of Freedom in Sabburah

Interview with the Alawi town's mayor on security and stability in rural Hama

There are few regions in Syria as complex as Salamiyah. The city and surrounding countryside contain nearly every religious sect in the country, the area has a long history of anti-Assad activism beginning with Ismaili and Alawi communists in the 1980s and extending to huge protests in 2011. Yet the regime was able to mobilize shabiha and later local militias to support a military crackdown on the city and the Bedouin villages in the rural eastern regions. This regime occupation ended with the city’s peaceful handover to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham on December 5, 2024.

The Alawi town of Sabburah sits 20 minutes northeast of Salamiyah. Like Salamiyah, Sabburah has a complex history. It was the center of the regime’s militia mobilization against protestors in 2011 and 2012, but was also the home of nearly 50 communist political prisoners during the era of Hafez and Bashar. I visited Sabburah in and met with a small group of former political detainees who had formed a local council in the months after Assad to lead the town. At the time, their efforts were focused on outreach to the neighboring Bedouin community - who Alawi militiamen from Sabburah had attacked throughout the war - and building ties to the new government.

Two weeks after I left, the March 6 coastal insurgency erupted. As pro-government armed units flooded the coast, so to did General Security units and armed Bedouin enter Sabburah.

I recently returned to the town to meet with the new mayor, Karim Akari, one of those political detainees who had formed the post-Assad council, and discuss with him life in Sabburah since March 6. He provides an extremely nuanced perspective of security and intercommunal relations in one of Syria’s most complex regions. Below is an edited transcript of this interview.