The Ismaili Mediators of Qadmus
How the small minority community is leveraging its new relationship with Damascus to engage Alawites
“Before December, we shared the same fears of HTS as the Alawites,” an official in the Tartous Ismaili Council told me in February. Yet now, just three months after the first contact between HTS and the Syrian Ismaili leadership, “It seems that the new government truly respects and has a special relationship with the Ismaili community.” This same sentiment has been shared with me by Ismaili officials in Hama’s Salamiyah region and in Tartous’ Qadmus. This small community loosely linked to Shia Islam has suddenly found itself in a uniquely privileged position with - at least at the local level - political and security officials of Syria’s new government.
In Tartous’ Qadmus district these new relations were put to the test during this months’ devasting violence across coastal Syria. The city of Qadmus is itself largely Ismaili, while the countryside is entirely Alawite. The larger concentration of Ismailis in this district compared to other parts of the coast have resulted in unique and positive political and security developments here going back to mid-December. I recently spoke with several Ismaili activists in the city, as well as an Alawite civilian from a nearby village, about these dynamics and their impacts on the region before, during, and after last week’s events.
As with many parts of Syria, Assad’s rapid collapse left a short period in which there was no real governance in Qadmus. In response, the city formed a local council of Ismailis (not to be confused with the Ismaili Council, a distinct civil body long-present in Ismaili-dominated parts of the country) to help administer the city and maintain civil peace with the surrounding Alawite villages. One local activist described these first weeks to me: “After Assad, there was no government and no security so before the new government came we made this new local council and started efforts to maintain the local government office, hospitals, things like this.” The council has continued this work even after the arrival of government administrators: “we manage our city in cooperation with them,” explains another activists, “all administrative, logistical, and security issues are coordinated.”
As part of these efforts, the council quickly began hosting meetings with leaders from the local Alawite villages. “We toured the Alawite villages after Assad,” explains one activist, “we said we must start a new page and cooperate to build a new country with this new government.” After security forces arrived in Qadmus on December 18, the Ismaili council shifted its focus to more of a mediation role between the villages and new security officials (along with basic administration and service support in the city). “We tried to convince the security forces to make checkpoints inside all the Alawite villages and give them weapons to man these checkpoints,” explained the activist. And indeed, within a week the new police in Qadmus had begun establishing checkpoints inside 30 to 40 Alawite villages around the city, according to one Ismaili activist, all manned by local Alawites, and even passing out around 80 rifles for the locals to use (another Ismaili activist remembered it as only eight Alawite villages that were given their own checkpoints). This effort was mirrored by the establishment of an Ismaili security council inside Qadmus city. Around 30 young men volunteered and were armed by the police, helping supplement the manpower shortage that was severely limiting the efforts of the police and General Security more broadly across the country.
Qadmus’ Ismailis had first reached out to HTS via individual contacts after the group began its final offensive in late November. “We wanted to make sure there was a peaceful handover of our city,” explained one activist. Since then the community has enjoyed good relations with the security and military forces operating in the region. “The first armed group that came here was very good to us,” said the same man, “we coordinated with them to protect the town, so they didn’t mind giving us weapons to help them protect the city. This was the situation for three months, and we didn’t face any problems. Even the Qadmus countryside, which is Alawite, was involved with this process.”
The situation in Qadmus first escalated on February 28, when two Ismaili security volunteer were kidnapped and executed by ex-regime insurgents near one of the Alawite-run checkpoints in the village of Kaf Jaa, their bodies found nearby later that day. “We had informed the security office here of the dangers,” remembers one activist, “but they didn’t take it seriously, maybe they didn’t know how serious it was.” Then, on March 6 as the ex-regime insurgency erupted across the coast, an Ismaili member of the local council and two government security officers were executed at another Alawite-run checkpoint in Midan al-Atiq as they tried to enter the town to meet with the local leaders.
By that evening, “around 1,500 men armed with all kinds of things including heavy weapons” had surrounded the city. The insurgents came from the countryside, many from the village of Hamam Wasl, and, according to three local sources, demanded the government security forces be handed over and the city given to the insurgents. “They said ‘we will come to Qadmus and massacre you all if you do not hand over the security officials for us to kill,’” described one activist involved in the negotiations, who also emphasized that none of the Alawite residents of the city itself supported the insurgents. The city’s Ismailis reached back out to the Alawite sheikhs and mukhtars they had spent the past four months engaging with and by the morning of March 7 were able to negotiate the safe passage of the city’s 20 police officers to Masyaf - which remained under control of the government - and that the city would stay under Ismaili control.
“We stayed for two days like this,” recalls one activist, “protecting our city from all sides.” Another local claimed the Ismailis began receiving hundreds of WhatsApp messages from local numbers, all threatening the Ismailis and their families for ‘siding with the government.’ Yet as news spread of the massacres being conducted by pro-government forces and armed Sunni civilians across the coast, the Ismailis in Qadmus became equally afraid for their own safety. Rumors spread that the faction responsible for some of the worst crimes in Baniyas city was nearby and might soon enter the Qadmus region. Ismaili leaders were in regular contact with government security forces, who reportedly promised them that they had explained the situation of the Ismaili community to other commanders and were trying to make sure no extremist factions would enter the area.
General Security forces and a pro-government military faction that had been in Baniyas entered Qadmus early on March 9. Along the way, one of these units attacked the Alawite village of Hataniah, burning around 10 homes and executing 14 people. No one I spoke with knows the circumstances of the attack or who was responsible, but many Alawites fled their villages throughout this day, hiding in the forests nearby in fear that the massacres in the Baniyas countryside and elsewhere would now happen here. When the military faction from Baniyas reached the outskirts of Qadmus city they began assaulting some Ismaili homes, but the community was able to contact the arriving General Security officers who quickly intervened and stopped the attack. After that, the situation in the city was calm, according to all those interviewed.
The arrival of security forces and the return to the pre-uprising relationship between the Ismailis and security forces eased much of the fear locals had felt over the previous four days. Now many Ismailis hold anger for the Alawites who had threatened their city. As one activist told me, “I feel disappointed because we gave them our trust, yet some of them killed our people and so of course we feel betrayed.” Since March 9 the government security forces have called on more Ismailis to volunteer with them, again passing out weapons to those who join and now beginning to pay salaries as well. Around 60 men have joined now and it appears likely that they will be formally integrated into the Ministry of Interior forces soon.
Despite these events, the Ismaili council quickly returned to its work as mediators. Government security forces established checkpoints around many of the Alawite villages and began negotiating with the village leaders for the handover of weapons and wanted people. The Qadmus council first negotiated with the security forces to allow Alawite women and children to leave the villages before any military operations were conducted. However, no military operations occurred, and so now the council has been working to convince the local Alawite leaders to commit to the negotiations. including hosting a meeting between Alawite elders and the security officers in Qadmus on March 12. Nearly 600 weapons were handed over from 10 villages on March 16. According to one source, the Qadmus region director (who also serves as head of the General Security and Police in the area) has offered an amnesty to all the men involved in the insurgency on the condition that they hand over around 30-40 men who are believed to be key local leaders of the movement. The villages have so far refused.
Exacerbating the issue is the continued presence of a semi-independent military faction in the area. One local Alawite resident has told the author of repeated violations from this faction, including night patrols in two villages during which the men would randomly shoot at homes or towards anyone they saw outside their homes (justified as ‘breaking the curfew’). This faction has also prevented the movement of Alawite vehicles between villages, especially those bringing basic goods and aid to some hard-suffering areas. These violations and the presence of the group rumored to have committed massacres in Baniyas is only reinforcing the Alawite community’s reticence to fully engage with the local officials.
Two of the Ismaili activists in Qadmus confirmed these violations were ongoing, and explained that “every day we [Ismailis and General Security] go and talk to them and tell them to stop shooting randomly and randomly detaining people.” But the faction does not listen. The problem, according to the activists, is that the security forces under the Ministry of Interior have no power over the faction, nominally under the Ministry of Defense. Still, the Qadmus region director has tried to help the Alawite villages where he can. According to the Alawite local, the director has sent his own General Security trucks to escort the inter-village aid deliveries through the faction’s checkpoints. One Ismaili activist added that, “the director is a very good man to both us and the Alawites. He has been trying to stop the factions and he is helping the Alawites where he can – he is helping them more than the Ismailis because that is where the problems and violations are. All of his efforts are directed there since the situation in the city is good.”
Despite the extensive outreach campaigns by Ismailis since December 8, last week’s events have only deepened tensions between them and the Alawites. As the Alawite from the countryside put it, “As if the factions aren't enough, the Ismaili society is always at our neck. They keep claiming we have insurgents in our village when I can swear to you that no one was able to leave their homes in fear ever since the regime fell.” The Ismaili-Alawite-government dynamics here underscore the scale of the challenge facing Alawite-Syrian dialogue moving forward. Even as a “third-party”, Ismailis have struggled to gain the full trust of their Alawite neighbors. Yet their role as a mediator has resulted in positive outcomes, and should be viewed as an example to replicate in other parts of the country.
Qadmus also stands as an important example of the nuances of post-Assad governance building and minority engagement by the new government. The violence and division between much of the Alawite community and Damascus is not reflective of the experience of other minorities. Ismailis here, and in Salamiyah and Masyaf, have been heavily integrated into local security and governance structures. The Ismaili spiritual leader, Rahim Aga Khan, pledged on March 17 to commit at least $100 million to Syria’s redevelopment over the next two years, a sign of the Ismaili community’s trusted place within Syria’s new government just four months into their first contact with HTS. Damascus should now build on this and ensure Ismailis are fully represented within the central government as well.