Assad’s Syrian stronghold prepares for all times after the regime

Lately, in Syria’s Latakia province, greater than 100 former troopers stood quietly, wide-eyed and cautious, ready to register with the nation’s new insurgent leaders. A person in fatigues walked round with a poster of ousted President Bashar al-Assad’s face on a stick, asking males to spit on it. All obliged.

Since coming to energy this month, the brand new interim authorities – ​​led by the Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – has arrange a number of of those so-called settlement facilities throughout the nation, calling for former troopers to go there, register on the unauthorized lists. -military id playing cards and give up of their weapons.

They are saying such initiatives will assist guarantee safety and start the method of reconciliation after 13 years of brutal civil conflict that left the nation awash in weapons and armed factions.

“Crucial factor is to disarm the inhabitants,” stated Abdel Rahman Traifi, the previous insurgent who now heads the middle. “That is the one technique to assure security.”

But in Latakia, the start province of the Assad dynasty and a former stronghold, many worry that this takeover marks the beginning of one thing extra sinister: a cycle of dispossession and reprisals that may go away them losers within the new nation. Syria.

Regardless of widespread pleasure throughout the nation, coastal Latakia is residence to many members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect and others who – whether or not by selection or desperation – made up the troopers and loyalists who helped supporting the household’s ruthless minority rule.

Within the weeks after Assad’s fall, some closed their outlets, stayed residence or went into hiding amid a safety vacuum and tales of revenge killings and assaults on minorities.

“I did not dare go there as a result of I used to be afraid of the roads,” a former Alawite safety official stated of the settlement facilities. “Both they may kill us on the way in which, or in our villages. »

Till now, there was little documentation of retributive violence, with the brand new powers that be dismissing these studies as “remoted circumstances”. Traifi, requested about rumors that males at checkpoints had been intimidating Alawites and asking them to curse the previous president, stated that form of nuisance didn’t signify the brand new authorities.

“However there are folks manning the checkpoints who’ve misplaced youngsters, girls, members of the family to bombings and combating, and whose mates have disappeared in jail. Their hearts damage,” he stated. “We put up with them for 14 years. They’ll put up with us for some time.

Some troopers queuing exterior the Latakia settlement middle appeared to cautiously welcome the prospect of a recent begin, an indication of disillusionment even amongst nominal loyalists.

A 29-year-old former soldier stated he was repeatedly barred from taking break day to go to his residence over the previous 12 months as Assad’s grip on the nation and its economic system weakened. decline led to rising fears that troopers would desert.

“Our life was the military, we did not be taught to do anything,” he stated, including that he was not frightened about security. “We’ve needed this for a very long time. On this new part, they simply need us to stay our lives.

Nonetheless, Traifi stated maybe solely 30 p.c of these arriving on the settlements handed over their weapons, including that an intelligence unit was working to establish and assault those that nonetheless held their weapons. Even the previous state safety worker acknowledged that each side nonetheless had weapons and that, with out full disarmament, “we’re going to have massacres inside two months.”

Earlier than Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, got here to energy in 1970, Alawites had been one of many poorest teams in Syrian society: households despatched their daughters to wash homes in huge cities and their sons within the military to make sure they obtained meals and a secure earnings.

However throughout its rule, the Assad household elevated a choose group of Alawite loyalists to positions of excessive authority, providing them preferential therapy over everybody else. Resentment in the direction of the heavy-handed enforcement of practices designed to make sure that they maintain wealth, energy and political standing disproportionate to their numbers was a key driver of the 2011 protests that led to civil conflict .

However on the eve of Assad’s fall, with many Alawites now going through an unsure future, hundreds fled the capital Damascus to return to their ancestral houses.

The previous State Safety worker stated he obtained a name from his superior round midnight, who informed him to pack his luggage and go residence. He described apocalyptic scenes: civilians and males in fatigues crammed the streets on foot and in vehicles, their deserted weapons littering the aspect of the street. “I parked on the precise aspect of the street in the direction of Homs and threw my gun right into a stream,” he stated.

The 2-hour journey to his village on the border with Lebanon took about eight hours on chaotic roads. He then took refuge at residence, conscious that the boys from his village who had gone into exile in Lebanon after becoming a member of the rebels had been now returning. He feared that these males had been now getting ready to take revenge on these they accused of massacring their family and friends.

“There isn’t any surveillance or safety right here, so there isn’t a one to cease the revenge killings,” he stated. “There’s simply nobody right here.”

A tense calm has reigned within the air of Alawite villages and cities because the fall of Assad. Colleges are open however empty. When requested if there was one in operation, a gardener replied: “Sure, what’s lacking is college students. »

In Qardaha, the birthplace of the Assad clan, in contrast to the massive cities, the inexperienced flag of the rebels was virtually nowhere to be discovered. The inside of Hafez al-Assad’s mausoleum was coated in soot from a fireplace set at his resting place, whereas exterior curses had been spray-painted in opposition to him and his spouse.

Such assaults on the mausoleum have turn into “a form of pilgrimage” for insurgent supporters, one resident stated.

However the Alawite elite who benefited from the Assad regime had been a minority inside a minority. Others inside the broader Alawite neighborhood stay among the many poorest in Syrian society, many terrorized by the identical individuals who commit crimes in opposition to the remainder of the nation.

A 40-year-old Alawite resident of Qardaha, who requested to be recognized solely by her nickname Nana to keep away from reprisals, described how the city’s residents lived their complete lives in worry of their overlords, who mistreated the members of their very own sect and handled them with disdain. .

“They needed us to remain [poor] to maintain folks enlisting within the navy,” Nana stated.

Nana and her sister taught in colleges the place youngsters couldn’t afford the meager value of presidency textbooks, whereas her brother-in-law had spent the final 14 years evading navy service.

But regardless of their disillusionment with Assad, minorities comparable to Alawites and Christians worry not just for their safety, but additionally that the brand new leaders will impose a brand new and unfamiliar social order.

Nana’s household makes and sells alcoholic drinks, together with arak and wine, which had been unregulated beneath the Assad regime, and like many others, she had borrowed cash for provides earlier than December, the busiest time of the 12 months. However once they discovered that the Assad regime had fallen to the Islamist HTS, the household went to pack up their groceries and take down the shop’s signal as a precaution.

When Nana’s husband later requested an armed man patrolling the city if it might reopen, he was informed that the sale of alcohol was prohibited in Islam. The household, like others, is ready for the brand new authorities to make clear what’s authorized and what’s not.

“We purchased shares like loopy and now they will keep in our shops,” her brother-in-law stated, including that his niece was reprimanded by one other police officer for carrying pajamas exterior.

Though they suffered “humiliation” beneath Assad, he stated, they a minimum of knew easy methods to maneuver beneath the regime. “Now we do not know what [kind of regime] we did it,” Nana stated.

Mapping by Aditi Bhandari