Time to Support Rural Syria?
Changes on the ground have opened the door for effective interventions
There has been an unmistakable increase in activity in rural Syria over the past month. No matter if it’s the weekend or weekday, before or during Ramadan, the streets of western Homs and Hama and the coastal governorates have been packed with travelers. Men and women, young and old, taking minibuses, personal cars, and motorcycles, walking by themselves, waiting on the side of the road for friends, or socializing outside. It is a remarkable change from one year ago, when many people in these areas wouldn’t leave their towns out of fear from the security forces and criminals.
Over the past two weeks, I visited communities in northern and western Homs, western Hama, and rural Latakia and Tartous. Everywhere I went I saw the same changes; different even from just two months earlier during my visits in November and December. Everyone I spoke with now echoed the same thing: the people have decided to return to life.
The return of activity should not be mistaken for a true return to normalcy, however. The surface layer of fear and self-isolation that many Alawis felt following the fall of Assad and the March 2025 massacres has ebbed away. Yet the deeper layer of anger and mistrust in the new government remains. Yet this is still an important change that has real impacts on ground and opens the door for renewed outreach and engagement by both Damascus and the international community.
A Partial Return to Life
There are several underlying factors for this partial return to normalcy. Most important has been the continued improvement in the conduct of security forces. This improvement began in earnest in the fall of 2025 and has steadily continued since then. The Ministry of Interior’s (MoI) conduct during the coastal protests late last year further built trust among locals, and the end of harassments and violations at checkpoints combined with the increase in friendly interactions by checkpoint personnel has helped encourage more travel. Since the start of this year, the MoI has also significantly expanded its presence in the countryside, taking over most checkpoints which had previously been manned by the Ministry of Defense (MoD).
The defeat of the Syrian Democratic Forces in January also helped push people back into their normal routines. Since the fall of Assad there has been a segment of the Alawi population which resolutely rejected the new government in Damascus, insisting that an outside power should and would intervene. Many had looked to the SDF as this power, or at the very least had been inspired by the perceived U.S. loyalty to the non-state actor and thought that Alawis could attain their own foreign backer. Multiple Alawi leaders and activists I spoke with in all four governorates this month said that the SDF’s rapid defeat broke this perception among the more reticent parts of the population, who are now looking for ways to build their lives within the existing system. This is not to say there are not still people refusing to engage with the state and instead pushing for an armed insurgency, but their influence and reach was greatly diminished by the SDF’s defeat.
Yet the current peace and significantly reduced violence in recent months is not a reflection of renewed social cohesion. Some small degree of inter-communal interactions has grown, but these are largely relegated to businessmen and traders who work between different areas. Genuine inter-sect relations outside of this remain limited in much of western Syria. In some places, new civil peace initiatives have sought to address this by tackling the underlying violations and lack of accountability which have fueled distrust. But this work remains limited to a few areas, like Wadi Nasara and the al-Ghab Plains, and must be expanded.
Underlying Anger Remains
This return to life also does not mean the coastal communities trust Damascus or have recovered from the violence of early last year. As one activist in Baniyas described the atmosphere in his city: “Psychologically there are no improvements, but life is returning…the situation has returned to a careful normalcy of some sort. Because the economic heart is here in Baniyas the people had to move around and leave their homes to continue their lives. But in my opinion, the security forces and locals are both being performative, they smile but nothing inside has changed.”
Trust remains extremely fragile and vulnerable to backsliding. A Christian leader in northern Homs described the challenge succinctly, “To rebuild trust takes years, to destroy it takes seconds.” Many Alawis expressed a surge in trust in the MoI following the November Ghazal Ghazal protests in the coast, citing the MoI’s good conduct and efforts at protecting the protesters from counter-protestors. Yet a second round of protests in late December had markedly different results. These protests were more violent, with ex-regime insurgents embedding themselves in multiple demonstrations and Sunni counter-protestors mobilizing more aggressively. The MoI was unable to prevent clashes from breaking out in several cities, with multiple deaths in Latakia. Most importantly, in the days and week afterwards, MoI units arrested scores of protestors across Latakia, Tartous, and Hama. Nearly all of these men were released within a few days, but the Ghazal-linked sheikhs who coordinated the region-wide protests remain in jail.
The arrest campaign has had a clear dampening affect on the Alawi community. It successfully delayed renewed protests – which some activists were already calling for the night the second round ended – likely preventing a serious outburst of inter-communal violence. But the arrests eroded some of the trust the MoI had earned the previous month. Furthermore, the government’s lack of transparency on releasing the December 2024 prisoners of war has added to the continued distrust and anger. While Alawi detainees have continued to be released over the past two months, none of these releases come with public statements explaining who they are or why they were detained. Most local activists told me that they believe that these men are the ones detained in recent arrest campaigns, rather than the men from December 2024.
Growing Economic Anger
As the security situation has improved, the economy has surfaced as the main source of anger and tension now. All of Syria is suffering economically, but geographic isolation and distrust in the state have created divergent perceptions of the causes of this economic strife. Many Alawis believe the government is explicitly banning aid organizations from working in their areas. The feeling of intentional marginalization is fueled by the ongoing dismissals of government employees across municipalities in Latakia, Tartous, Hama, and Homs. These firings create a continually expanding pool of unemployed Alawi households, straining an already non-existent local economy.
Yet at the same time, most Sunni areas also remain unserved by Damascus or international organizations. Two friends from Idlib’s Jabal Zawiyah, both of whom are veteran HTS members now serving in the MoI, told me that their towns remain partially destroyed, with all rebuilding having been done by locals, and little to no jobs outside of the security forces for the residents. Huge swathes of northern Latakia, Hama, Idlib, and Deir Ez Zor face the same problems. Far from a marginalization of Alawi areas, the state instead faces a universal inability to support any rural community. This situation is exacerbated by most international organizations’ refusal to operate outside of major cities.
Perceptions of marginalization are also fueled by the lack of government engagement in rural areas. In nearly every part of Syria outside of the major cities, the main, and sometimes only, contact people have with the state is through local MoI officials. Rural Sunni communities usually have a means of engaging with the state through long-established personal and social networks with new officials and institutions. Christian communities work effectively through their religious leaders and are supported by strong and semi-independent international organizations, but Alawi communities lack any real feedback mechanism to state officials, especially those in Damascus.
This has resulted in increased trust in the MoI and a significant reduction in security-related fears, but it has done nothing to ease concerns over the direction of the new state or the competency of its bureaucrats. Widespread anger online over claims of nepotism and corruption impacting new hiring practices adds to the belief that governorate-level directorates have no concrete development plans, all creating a broad perception that this current government does not know how to bring the country forward.
Next Steps
Much of the coast and western Syria is currently experiencing a degree of calm not seen since the fall of Assad. Damascus and international organizations should take advantage of this period to institute the next series of reforms and local interventions; steps to ease some of the economic and political tensions, which remain widespread, and solidify locals’ willingness to engage with the new government. Such steps could include:
Approving the elections of local councils. These would fold into the current Rais Belediye system (pseudo-elected mayors who report to a single Damascus-appointed official at the governorate level), having authority over local social and administrative duties like municipal budgets and supporting cultural events. Such councils would give rural communities in particular the ability to participate directly in their own governance and reduce their widely felt feeling of abandonment.
Government outreach to rural communities. Rural areas’ only real interaction with the state is through the Ministry of Interior. Government officials, whether at the governorate level or a committee formed in Damascus, should begin holding town hall-style meetings in rural Syria to hear from local communities. Providing a means for people to express their concerns and needs, followed by actions that address them, will help show that rural Syria is just as important as the major cities.
Targeted economic initiatives. Economic development as social cohesion should be the driving philosophy for (I)NGOs going forward. Targeted, low-cost development projects in rural areas that are designed to address basic economic deficiencies while creating opportunities for inter-communal collaboration can help reduce the risk of violence between communities while easing tensions caused by financial stress. Such projects should focus on the agricultural sector, including waste water treatment and recycling for irrigation, processing factories, storage warehouses, and training.
Supporting youth exchanges. Such organizations should also focus on reducing the geographic isolation between communities that was exacerbated by the war. Youth groups and youth engagement has shown itself to be an effective means of inter-communal engagement. Offering tailored training and cultural activities that bring together youth from specific areas, followed by exchanges of those youth groups between wider areas, is a low-cost, high-impact way to build new ties between regions.