The Long Arm of Violence in Hama's Asharenah
Interview on sectarian crimes during the Syrian war and its impact on inter-faith relations today.
On the southern edge of the al-Ghab Plains, tucked into a bend of the al-Assi River, sits the Sunni town of Asharenah. It is surrounded on three sides by Alawi towns: Hawrat Amurin to the north, Nahr al-Bared to the west, and Salhab to the south. The area marks the edge of what was once the Assad regime heartland.
Both Alawi and Sunni residents of the area claim that before 2011, there were few sectarian problems. However, beginning in early 2012, Alawi militia fighters began to kidnap, harass, and kill Sunnis in Asharenah. The town was too isolated from the core Sunni regions of northern Hama to ever be truly liberated or form a real armed movement, and it was quickly occupied and largely displaced by 2014.
Since the fall of the Assad regime, these unaddressed war-time crimes have fueled ongoing harassments, thefts, and killings by people from Asharenah against Alawis in Salhab, Nahr al-Bared, and Amurin. On March 7, 2025, armed civilians from the town joined pro-government armed factions and stormed Salhab and Naher al-Bared, participating in the killing of 13 people and widespread looting of Alawi homes.
I recently visited Asharenah as part of my ongoing work documenting the history of towns in al-Ghab and the current social problems between them. Below is a partial transcript of an interview I conducted with a resident of the town who had been displaced in late 2012 and spent the war living in the sprawling Atmeh refugee camp in northern Idlib. He returned to his home in the second half of 2025.
Note that while he insists most people in Asharenah support legal avenues for justice, there continues to be revenge-related crimes committed in this area. Last week a man from Asharenah killed someone in Amurin over a years-old dispute, and this week men from Ashareneh stole farming equipment from a farm in Salhab. This dichotomy highlights one of the biggest challenges of civil peace and transitional justice: in a single town where thousands of people have been directly harmed, it only takes a handful of people who reject legal avenues for justice to perpetuate sectarian violence.
