The Militias of Latakia
The origins of the Baath Battalions and National Defense Forces in Latakia
The Baath Battalions and the National Defense Forces are two of the most important pro-regime militias in Syria. Both represent the core strategy behind the regime’s formation and deployment of ‘auxiliary’ units: mobilizing loyalist minority communities, tying Sunni communities closer to the state, and creating an alternative military structure to support the weakened army. They are also classic examples of loyalist militias directly tied to central arms of the state (the Baath Party for one, and the Ministry of Defense for the other) and among the earliest militias organized during 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.
The Baath Battalions
The Baath Battalions are one of the more traditional auxiliary-style militias fighting for the Assad regime. In recent years their duties have largely involved guarding Baath Party facilities, providing security at government and charity events, manning local checkpoints and conducting night patrols through urban areas. But this was not always the case. Early in the war, the battalions were deployed heavily across the country supporting army units in offensive operations. The group’s origins date back to before the war, as it has served as the long-standing armed wing of the Baath Party, but the 2011 revolution and collapse of regime security forces sparked an expansion and wider mobilization of the organization. Regional centers were established in Aleppo and Latakia in 2012, in Tartous, Salamiyah, Damascus countryside, and Damascus city by late 2013, in Homs and Quneitra by Spring 2014, and Hasakah in August 2014. Additional, though seemingly much smaller, centers had been established in Hama by late 2015, Deir Ez Zor by spring 2016, Idlib by 2017, Dara’a in January 2017, and most recently Raqqa in December 2020.
The original commander of the battalions and then-secretary of the Baath Party’s Aleppo Branch, Hilal Hilal, told the Syrian state’s al-Watan in a late 2012 interview that the unit has first joined the fight in mid-2012 and, by the end of the year, had transitioned from guarding regime facilities to deploying alongside army units in operations across the city. However, posthumous ‘martyrdom’ claims have been made for Aleppo Baath Battalions members killed in fighting in February and April 2012, suggesting the unit was active earlier than Hilal claimed.
The Latakia Center was also actively participating in offensive operations along the coast by early 2012. Two short histories published by affiliated Facebook pages shed some light into the early establishment of this center and its role in supporting regime security forces.
A November 2012 post by a Baath Battalions-affiliated Facebook page states:
“They worked silently and under the wing and banners of the homeland and they were present everywhere in Lattakia, no one knew anything about them except that they were loyal and sons of Syria at every moment and place...
They participated in many epics that were written in Lattakia and its countryside, they were one of the pillars of liberating Al-Haffa and restoring control, security and safety to it, they worked on the Turkish border and are still working, they were present in the battle of Beit Fares, the area of the [Observatory] forty-five and the Farnlaq checkpoint and taught the sons of terrorism lessons they will never forget.
They confronted terrorism with open hearts eager for martyrdom and watered the soil of the homeland with the blood of four martyrs, the heroes Fadi Qaddar, Ahmed Daoud, Maher Safi and Amer Ibrahim, and with the wounded they broke the pain and returned to fight.
They are among us and for us, they are the ones who will restore to the Baath the glory and glories that it created in the eighties of the last century when it taught the infidel Brotherhood a lesson they will never forget.
The Baathist battalions in Lattakia from every village, street, neighborhood and house from the north, south, east and west of Lattakia were on the first trench with the army and armed forces and they signed with blood and said at the top of their voices:
‘We are farmers, workers and unyielding youth. We are fighting soldiers. We are the voice of the toilers. From the roots of the earth, we came from the heart of the pain of the victims. We did not skimp on the most generous giving. We shed light on them today for no reason other than to thank them for their giving and sacrifices and tell them that you are from us and we are from you, sons of the school of the immortal leader Hafez al-Assad.’”
A January 2013 post gives a similar history, with a few more details on the battles the unit had already participated in:
“The Arab Socialist Baath Brigades in Latakia... We will shed light on them in this report... We hope you read it carefully:
Since the beginning of the crisis in Latakia, the role of young men who carried weapons and stood in the front lines to defend the homeland and its honor has escalated. They were university students and ordinary Syrians, standing on the front lines at the border posts and in every vital institution, and their only concern was to defend it and sacrifice their lives for Syria.
We met some of them, and their words indicated their deep belief in their cause, their belief that Syria needs sacrifice to return better than it was. They were divided into groups, some of them headed to the mountains of Latakia, specifically the northern countryside, and participated with all heroism and sacrifice in the battle to liberate Al-Haffa and in the liberation of Khirbet Solas, Beit Fares, Al-Midan, the battle of the Basit checkpoint, Al-Farnaq, and [Observatory] 45, and some others headed to state institutions to protect them and keep the hand of treachery away from them at a time when the security and army, along with the rest of their comrades, are busy in the process of eliminating terrorism and its cells.
You see them with smiles on their faces despite the sacrifices they made. Four of their comrades watered the homeland with their blood, and a number of wounded who returned stronger than they were.”
Both posts claim the unit participated in the battle for al-Haffa in June 2012, underscoring the fact that the center was well established already by mid-2012. Emphasizing its direct tie to the state, the unit was originally led by the secretary of the Latakia Baath Party, Hossam Ibrahim Khadra, until he was killed in battle in Kassab in April 2014. The unit seems to have been small, despite its numerous deployments, with a documented 14 deaths by late 2014 and ten more dead by early 2016.
Latakia National Defense Forces
The Latakia NDF, on the other hand, is much larger, having lost hundreds of members over the course of the war in battles ranging from the coastal mountains to the desert around Palmyra (the group lost 80 fighters during the 2016 Palmyra offensive alone). Like the Latakia Baath Battalions, the Latakia NDF was one of the earliest centers formed within this national militia network.
A 2017 post by an affiliated Facebook page talks about the group’s formation in early 2012:
“When the security events in Syria accelerated unexpectedly in 2011 and the war expanded to include most regions and governorates, specifically in 2012, the armed plot detachments reached the city of Latakia at this dangerous crossroads, most of the young men and men of Latakia spontaneously stood together and spread out in the streets and alleys to protect their city, and later took the sports city as a center for their gathering after it became a ghost town and sporting events were absent from it.
Starting from the aviation square or what is known as the driving training square inside the sports city, the first nucleus of the National Defense Institution began to form, which was entrusted with the task of organizing those numbers and controlling their work in a way that serves the army's operations and movements, because during that period the volume of defections and betrayal associated with the project to destroy the state increased.
Here I want to say that the National Defense Forces, whose past and present some are trying to confuse, have stood for more than four years on a front line extending 22 km in the Latakia countryside, almost alone in light of the near absence of military ground forces affiliated with the army, considering that Latakia does not contain front lines with Israel or a hostile state. I do not claim that the National Defense is unique in protecting Latakia alone, but I acknowledge that it was the best alternative to the army, and what I hope for is recognition of its sacrifices. Who returned the villages of the countryside of Slinfeh when a breach occurred from one of the military sites and the militants entered the homes and committed massacres? And how did dozens of martyrs affiliated with the National Defense die? Didn’t they sacrifice themselves for the return of the villages?
There are many achievements that I do not want to mention in detail, not the first of which is standing by the army in maintaining security inside the city of Latakia and its countryside, as in Jableh and Banias, and sending fighters to most Syrian cities will not be the last. The project to defend the entire geography has been ongoing since the establishment of that force, and I repeat that the National Defense Center in Latakia has sent dozens of military campaigns to all governorates and that force was credited with reclaiming large areas. In the end, the work continues and the institution is at the peak of its giving and I hope everyone will retrieve his memory tape and perhaps say thank you to those forces that presented hundreds of martyrs and wounded.”
Notable is the explicit claim that the unit was formed to support the army due to the rapid increase in defections by 2012, mirrored by the rapidly growing strength of the armed opposition. Somewhat unique to Latakia NDF-affiliated media is a frequent reference to the extreme ‘sacrifices’ the unit has made over the years as a direct result of the army’s near-absence in the coast. This unit draws not just from the Alawite community, but from many core Alawite towns closely tied to central power structures of the regime (the unit was originally led by a cousin of Bashar al-Assad, until his death in March 2014). This proximity to power has perhaps given the center more leeway to complain about the regime’s shortcomings during the war.
The history also references several key moments in the coast’s revolution, such as the destruction of nascent FSA networks in the Southern Raml Camp of Latakia City in August 2011 and the opposition’s August 2013 Latakia offensive. The post goes to great lengths to paint the NDF as standing alone in defense of Alawite villages - particularly during the 2013 offensive when extremist groups executed some Alawite civilians. And while scores of NDF fighters were killed in the battle, the militia did not actually alone. Units from the Syrian Naval command, the 4th Division, the Special Forces, and Air Force Intelligence’s Tiger Forces all participated in the battle.
This is not to downplay the important role militias played in securing the regime’s gradual victory over most of the Syrian opposition. Much of this early history remains shrouded in mystery, in part because these units were specifically designed to carry out some of the regime’s worst war crimes. But these posts help document a small part of their origins and role within the broader (de)evolution of the regime’s security sector during the first years of the war.