“Four of my children were burned to death by the Assad regime.” Abu Hassan recounts his losses with a nearly steady voice as we sip tea in Bahluliyah’s central cafe. “Thousands of dead bodies are still waiting to be found buried under the rubble in Jabal Zawiya. If we do the same thing to others then we will not be no different from the Assad regime.”
Abu Hassan, a large man with a stern face, fought for fourteen years in Syria’s revolution in Idlib, but for the past year he has served as a police officer in this rural Alawi subdistrict 30 minutes east of Latakia city. We are sitting with Samer, the owner of the cafe, discussing security and sectarianism after the fall of Assad. Outside on the street, Abu Hassan’s son is playing soccer with Samer’s son and other boys from the town. Every now then other policemen, much younger than Abu Hassan, come over and buy a tea, making small talk with the men sitting outside.
This was my second visit to the town, having previously met with some residents in September. During that visit I was struck by the degree of trust those I spoke with had for the local security officials. The every day fear I had encountered in a year of field work across Alawi communities seemed to be absent here, but I didn’t understand why.
I returned in December to better understand why relations in this area were so much better than elsewhere in the coast, and what lessons could be taken and applied to other Alawi communities.
Not Like the Others
The Bahluliyah subdistrict consists of around a dozen towns and villages containing a few tens of thousands of residents. It lies on the wide plains between Syria’s coastal mountains and the coast’s largest city of Latakia. Around 75% of the residents relied on government work under the regime, according to the last government census in 2004, with the rest of the area’s income coming from agriculture, trade, and work in the city. It has been and remains a genuinely impoverished area.
Unlike many parts of the coast, Bahluliyah did not have many residents in powerful regime positions, and those that were did not use their resources to enrich the area. “Once under Hafez there was a deputy minister of defense from our town,” Samer tells me, “so we went to him and said, ‘please can you build us a hospital?’ but he rejected us, saying, ‘there’s no land to build one.” Samer smirks and spreads his hands, gesturing vaguely and the large amount of empty land surrounding us.
This dynamic kept Bahluliyah’s Alawi population at more of an arms length from the Assad regime than most coastal communities, whose sons and fathers were more deeply enmeshed in the regime’s apparatus. “The people here are very educated [aware] and have always been sidelined by the regime,” insists Samer, “we are not like those in Jableh or Qardaha or Tartous.”
The difference in mentality was obvious to the first opposition factions that arrived here just days after the fall of Assad, and the positive first impressions they had would be crucial for the budding relationship built between the community and security forces.
First Impressions are Key
Like many rural Alawi areas, panic seized the residents of Bahluliyah when the regime first fell. For three days the towns here were empty, most families having fled to the forests and mountains. “We imagined jihadists with large beards and swords would arrive,” remembers Samer, reflecting on the image of the opposition fighters pushed by regime propaganda. Late on December 11, residents hiding in the forests instead saw an “organized and professional looking unit” turn off the M4 Highway and head towards their communities.
Samer and a large group of locals made their way to the main road to greet the two opposition factions. “We cheered as they entered, which surprised them,” he says. The sun was setting by this point, so the locals offered the faction members to sleep in two nearby municipal buildings and brought them blankets, water, and food. “We began building trust from these first steps", explains Samer. That night he contacted other residents who had not yet returned, “assuring them of the factions’ good actions.” At the same time, the leaders of the two factions contacted security officials in Latakia city, telling them about their positive experiences.
The faction leaders gave residents their personal phone numbers to use in case of any security issues. Meanwhile, newly appointed security officials in Latakia city also got in touch with local notables, connected via the faction leaders, and similarly shared their phones numbers and began building a rapport.
After ten days one of the two factions, the HTS Othman Brigade, withdrew. The other faction maintained only a limited presence due to the lack of any security threats. For more than a month there was no permanent police presence in the area, though the General Security (GSS) units based in Latakia City were always quick to respond to any needs. There were no raids against ex-regime soldiers and arrests were increasingly conducted in coordination with local notables or village mayors.
When a GSS detachment did arrive in late January, they came relaxed and open to the population thanks to those initial experiences and reports by the first factions. On January 24, 2025, rumors spread across social media that Maher al-Assad was returning to the coast at the head of a Russian military column. By this point, many of the heavier armed government military units had been withdrawn from civilian areas, leaving isolated GSS offices in the Alawi countryside. Fearing they would be attacked by Alawi insurgents supporting the rumored invasion, the security forces in Bahluliyah took refuge in locals’ homes. This action further strengthened the forces’ trust in the locals.
March Massacres
These initial trust-building experiences were put to the test on March 6, 2025. That evening, a large, coordinated insurgency erupted across much of coast, led by ex-regime officers who had recruited hundreds of former Alawi soldiers and civilians. In Bahluliyah, however, there was no local support for the insurgency. The GSS office was not attacked - the only such case in Alawi parts of Latakia - and terrified locals remained in their homes.
The next day, pro-government armed groups began entering the region to retake the areas captured by Alawi insurgents. Some convoys traveled along the M4 highway that connects Idlib with Latakia and passes between the Bahluliyah and Haffeh regions. A small group of armed men from one of these convoys turned north to Bahluliyah, encountering a local Alawi family driving on the outskirts of the towns and killing all four people.
Samer, who serves as an unofficial community leader, quickly heard about the killings and called the GSS office. “Within 12 minutes they had sent 14 trucks to the main road and expelled the faction from the area,” Samer tells me. The situation was not so good further along the M4, however.
Early on the morning of March 7, Alawi insurgents attacked the GSS checkpoint overlooking the M4 outside the town of Mokhtariyah, which sits just outside the Bahluliyah subdistrict (this attack was reported by the Commission of Inquiry and confirmed to me by Samer). The insurgents killed all 30 GSS members in the village. Later that day, armed factions entered Mokhtariyah and killed between 120 and 240 Alawi civilians, mostly men.
Over March 7 and 8, two armed groups also entered the nearby village of Brabishbo, which sits on the edge of the Bahluliyah subdistrict just east of the M4. According to Samer, who led aid convoys to these towns after the massacres, the first two factions that entered Brabishbo on March 7 and 8, “were polite, telling the residents that they had confirmed there were no insurgents or threats and passing out their phone numbers in case any problems occurred.” However, on March 9 a third armed group entered the town and began killing residents and looting homes. One resident, who I spoke with in March, told me they quickly called the numbers provided by the earlier factions, who were then able to return and force out the third faction and end the killings, but not before more than 30 Alawi civilians had been killed.
According to Samer, after the March 9 attack the GSS took control of the entire highway, setting up new checkpoints and preventing any armed groups from entering villages. “Our relationship with the GSS grew stronger after the events of March 6,” says Samer. “Before March 6 I don’t think they [security forces] knew how to deal with us, but that’s changed since then.”
Strengthening Bonds
In the weeks following the insurgency and massacres, locals in Bahluliyah organized several aid convoys to Mokhtariyah, Brabishbo, and other affected villages along the M4. These convoys were escorted by local GSS units and members of Faylaq al-Sham, the faction which had stopped the killing in Brabishbo. But the local initiative soon ran out of money and the work stopped. Free of any massacres or looting, Bahluliyah’s residents were able to more quickly return to their daily lives. The GSS presence in the area was gradually reduced, replaced by a single police station.
Governorate officials further strengthened their relationship with the Bahluliyah area in the summer when they appointed a new police director, also referred to as the Subdistrict Director. Captain Mazen Qunaifdi was transferred from Latakia City, where he had been serving as police chief of the Sheikh Daher neighborhood since December 2024. Qunaifdi, from the nearby Sunni town of Salma, had served as a police captain in Latakia before defecting in the beginning of the war and forming a Free Syrian Army faction in northern Latakia. His family had a long history in Latakia’s police force, with his brother having previously served as a senior official in governorate’s police.
“Forty members of my family were killed during the war,” Captain Qunaifdi tells me in his office, “three of my brothers were disappeared in Sednaya. This history is well known to all the people of this region as well as the security forces, and I know all the Alawi villages and families here, who was with the regime and who was against it.”
Qunaifdi’s deep local roots have allowed him to work in Bahluliyah without the heavy-handed approach that often accompanies ‘outsider’ officials who are afraid of the Alawi population. He and his family’s history in the local police forces also gives him an established reputation and connection to many of the Alawi areas, helping them to begin with a base layer of trust.
All residents I spoke with emphasized the openness and responsiveness of Qunaifdi and his police officers as a key reason for the lack of fear in the area. When asked how he builds trust, Qunaifdi responds, “Justice is the basis of all - give the oppressed people of any sect his rights and sideline the criminals, this will always increase trust.” On why he has chosen to pursue such an open and engaging approach with the residents, he explains:
“We have strict directions from the President on how to deal with people with mercy and compassion. I was an officer who defected because I saw the oppression of the regime. We rebelled for a cause and this cause never ends. I am from this area so I know that many Alawis were oppressed as well.”
Both Qunaifdi and every resident I spoke with said the senior government and security officials in Latakia city have placed an emphasis on the Bahluliyah region. There seems to be an understanding that, through the efforts of both the locals and security forces, the situation in Bahluliyah has been untarnished by the problems elsewhere in the coast. Keeping it that way is now a priority. GSS units in Latakia city are quick to send any resources towards Bahluliyah for issues outside of the police station’s control, and strict orders are issued to checkpoint personnel on the highway connecting Bahluliyah to Latakia which have helped prevent any cases of harassment or violations.
Sheikh Raji Nasr, a prominent Alawi religious leader in the Bahluliyah area, described this dynamic succinctly to me over coffee at his home:
“The Ministry of Interior are the ones who can hold us together or cause divisions. The officers in Bahluliyah have played a large role in settling the community’s fears because they do their jobs professionally, establish connections with the people, and are responding to needs.”
The Sheikh echoed what other residents had said throughout my two visits. After the massacres, government officials had made “shy” attempts to make amends with the affected communities, but a ‘return to life’ after such rapid and brutal violence needed time. Some individual violations continued across Latakia for a period, which further undermined trust building attempts, but gradually these ended. Persistent responsiveness by Captain Mazen and the GSS to any security concerns or violations committed by army units stationed nearby, along with the expansion of MoI checkpoints, have reinforced trust throughout the Bahluliyah subdistrict.
Lessons for Local Civil Peace
I returned to Bahluliyah in December in search of a specific answer for the coast’s most important question: “How do you reduce fear and build trust between Alawi communities and the government.” But there is no clever trick to Bahluliyah’s success, nor one specific moment in which everything changed. Instead, it was many small moments building on each other, all underpinned by a population that was brave enough to open itself to the new government, and officials who were equally brave enough to approach their communities with open minds.
Two crucial factors have made trust building easier here than in many other places: the lack of serious violations committed by security forces here and the lack of an insurgent movement among the local population. With this basis, simple trust building measures have deep impacts. Where these problems have occurred, however, more is needed to absolve the past and help the two sides move forward.
Bahluliyah is a glimpse at the kind of simple, local civil peace that is already being built in some parts of Syria. Yet these relationships are local, between the community and the officials living there. The trust building rarely extends to the national government. Larger steps are still needed to bridge the wide gap between the Alawi community more broadly and the new Syrian government: Passing and enforcing a law criminalizing sectarian speech, continuing the release of Assad-era soldiers in detention, addressing food insecurity and damaged infrastructure in poor Alawi areas, and providing loans to help families transition from employment in the military to owning small businesses.
Back at the cafe, Abu Hassan and Bassam tell me about a field trip they arranged a few months prior. Abu Hassan had taken Bassam’s two sons with him to his hometown in Idlib’s Jabal Zawiyah for the weekend, showing them the villages and towns which were among the first to rebel against Assad and which suffered immensely as a result.
Abu Hassan is tired of the violence of the war. Unless on a mission, he and the other policemen in Bahluliyah walk around without weapons. They make house calls to check on families and sit with young Alawi men on the street. They even moved their families to Bahluliyah in the fall, renting apartments and enrolling their children alongside the local Alawi kids.
Throughout our discussion, Qunaifdi repeatedly emphasized the need to change the mindset of a populations which only knew Assad’s propaganda. “We need to reduce the gap between the people and government,” he says, “but this takes time and effort.”
