It is an explosion of violence which testifies to the feverishness of the new Syrian government, just three months after the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad. President Ahmed al-Chareh called, this Sunday, March 9, to national unity and civil peace after death, according to an NGO, of hundreds of people, mostly civilians of Alaouite confession, by supporters of the new regime.
After France on Saturday, Germany described this Sunday the situation as “shocking” and urged the transitional government to “prevent new attacks, investigate and request accountables”. “The killings of civilians in the coastal areas of northwestern Syria must stop, immediately,” said Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a press release. Here is what we know about the current situation.
Why such clashes?
It all started after a bloody attack on Thursday, March 6, led by supporters of Bashar El-Assad against the current security forces in Jablé, near Lattaquié, in the west of the country-an ex-binding of the fallen power in which a large Alawite Muslim community lives (a branch of Shiite Islam), which itself comes from the Assad clan. After the attack, the security forces sent reinforcements and launched significant operations in the region. Who are accused of having led reprisals against civilians.
Who are the victims of the abuses?
The Human Rights Observatory (OSDH), which has a large network of sources in Syria, reports “executions on confessional or regional bases”. He evokes “745 civilians killed in the regions of the coast and the mountains of Lattaquié”, where a strong Alawite community lives, “by the security forces and affiliated groups” in recent days. At least 273 members of the security forces and pro-Assad fighters also perished, said the OSDH.
On social networks, testimonies evoking abuses against Alawite civilians have multiplied, emanating from relatives or friends of the victims, although the images have not, for the time being, could be authenticated. At AFP, an alaouite family living on the Syrian coast said that she had to hide to escape the massacres. “When we were able to flee our Al-Qoussour district, we saw the streets full of corpses,” said Rihab Kamel, mother of 35.
Like this, the testimonies of methodical liquidations follow one another. In Banias, still on the coast, Samir Haïdar, a 67-year-old Alaouite who was himself imprisoned under the regime of Assad, saw his brothers and his nephew perish in an attack. The OSDH and activists have published videos on Friday showing dozens of bodies in civilian clothes stacked in the courtyard of a house, women crying nearby. In another sequence, men in military uniform ordered three people to crawl in line, before shooting them at close range.
For its part, a security source quoted by the official Sana agency reported on Friday of “isolated abuses” on Friday, attributing them to “crowds” acting in retaliation for “the assassination of several members of the police and security forces” by “faithful of the former regime”.
What does this reveal from the country’s situation?
For Ahmed al-Chareh, who directed the Sunni Islamist coalition which overthrew Bashar el-Assad on December 8, “these challenges were predictable”. Speaking during a speech in a mosque of Damascus, he called to “preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible, adding, if God wants, we will be able to live together in this country”. The Syrian presidency shortly after announced the formation of an independent “commission of inquiry”. For their sides, the Syrian churches also denounced the “massacres of innocent civilians” and called “to an immediate end of these horrible acts”.
While the recovery of security is the main challenge for the new Syrian power after more than 13 years of civil war, Ahmed al-Chareh had called on Friday the Alawite insurgents to “lay down their arms before it was too late”.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Defense said that “the roads leading to the coastal region were closed to prevent abuses”. And the order was given to the security forces to “bring the order” to Jablé, Tartous and Lattaquié. He reported the arrest of a “large number of looters”. The Minister of Education, Nazir al-Qadri, announced the closure of schools this Sunday and Monday in the provinces of Latquié and Tartous.
What responsibility for the current government?
On December 8, an alliance of Sunni Islamist rebels led by the radical group Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTC), from which Ahmed al-Chareh came, managed to overthrow Bachar al-Assad, now refugee in Moscow with his family.
For Aron Lund, from the Century International Center for Reflection, the outbreak of violence testifies to the “fragility of the government”, of which a large part of the authority “is based on radical jihadists who consider the Alawites as enemies of God”.
Since coming to power, Ahmed al-Chareh has been trying to reassure minorities and has called for forces to show restraint and avoid any denominational drift. But this line is not necessarily shared by all the factions that operate under his command, according to Aron Lund. What let fear that violence will persist.