Assad’s Syrian stronghold prepares for life after the regime

On a recent morning in Syria’s Latakia province, more than a hundred former soldiers stood quietly, eyes wide and wary as they waited to register with the country’s new rebel rulers. A man in military uniform was walking around holding a poster of ousted President Bashar al-Assad’s face on a stick, telling the men to spit on him. Everyone is obligated.

Since taking power this month, the new interim government – led by the Islamist rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – has established several so-called settlement centers across the country, inviting former soldiers to visit and registering for others. -Military IDs and handing over their weapons.

They say such initiatives will help ensure security and begin the reconciliation process after 13 years of brutal civil war that left the country riddled with weapons and armed factions.

“The most important thing is to disarm people,” said Abdul Rahman al-Tarifi, the former rebels now in charge of the center. “This is the only way you can guarantee security.”

However, in Latakia, the birthplace of the Assad family and onetime stronghold, many fear that the seizure of power marks the beginning of something more sinister: a cycle of disempowerment and revenge that will make them losers in the new war. Syria.

Despite the joy spread across the country, the coastal city of Latakia is home to many from Assad’s Alawite minority and others who – whether by choice or desperation – formed the soldiers and loyalists who helped uphold the family’s harsh minority rule.

In the weeks since Assad’s fall, some have closed shops, stayed home or gone into hiding amid a security vacuum and tales of revenge killings and attacks on minorities.

“I didn’t dare go because I was worried about the roads,” a former Alawite security official said of the settlement centers. “Either they will kill us on the way there, or in our villages.”

There has so far been little documentation of retaliatory violence, with new authorities dismissing reports as “isolated cases.” When Al-Tarifi was asked about rumors of men at checkpoints bullying Alawites and asking them to insult the former president, he said that this kind of disturbance does not represent the new government.

“But there are people manning the checkpoints who have lost their children, wives and family members to the bombing and fighting, and their friends have disappeared in prison. “They have pain in their hearts,” he said. “We have tolerated them for 14 years. “They can tolerate us for a while.”

Some of the soldiers lined up at the settlement center in Latakia appeared to cautiously welcome the prospect of a fresh start, a sign of how disillusioned even nominal loyalists were.

A 29-year-old former soldier said he had been repeatedly prevented from taking leave to visit home over the past year, as Assad’s weakening grip on the country and its deteriorating economy led to growing fears of soldiers deserting.

“Our life was the army, and we were not taught how to do anything else,” he said, adding that he was not worried about security. “We have wanted this for a long time. And in this new phase, they just want us to live our lives.”

However, Al-Tarifi said that only 30% of those who arrived at settlement centers surrendered their weapons, adding that an intelligence unit was working to identify and raid those still holding on to their weapons. Even the former State Security employee acknowledged that both sides still possess weapons, and that without comprehensive disarmament, “we will be committing massacres within two months.”

Before Hafez, Bashar al-Assad’s father, came to power in 1970, Alawites were one of the poorest groups in Syrian society: families sent their daughters to clean houses in major cities and their sons to the army to ensure they had food and supplies. Fixed income.

But during its rule, the Assad family promoted a select group of Alawite loyalists to senior positions, providing them with preferential treatment above all others. Resentment at the brutal application of practices to ensure they retained wealth, power and political status disproportionate to their numbers was one of the main drivers of the 2011 protests that led to the civil war.

But on the eve of Assad’s fall, with many of these Alawites now facing an uncertain future, thousands fled the capital, Damascus, to their ancestral homes.

The former state security employee said he received a phone call from his boss around midnight, who told him to pack his bags and go home. He described horrific scenes: Civilians and men in military uniform filled the streets on foot and in cars, their abandoned weapons strewn on the side of the road. He said: “I stopped on the right side of the road on my way to Homs, and threw my rifle into a stream.”

The two-hour trip to his village on the border with Lebanon took about eight hours on chaotic roads. He then took refuge at home, realizing that men from his village who had gone into exile in Lebanon after joining the rebels were now returning. He feared that these men were now preparing to take revenge on those who accused them of killing their friends and families.

“There is no supervision or security here, so there is no one to stop revenge killings,” he said. “There’s just no one here.”

A tense calm has prevailed in the atmosphere of Alawite villages and towns since the fall of Assad. Schools are open but empty. When asked if one of these facilities was working, one of the groundskeepers said: “Yes, what we are missing are students.”

In Qardaha, the birthplace of the Assad clan, unlike the larger cities, the green rebel flag was almost nowhere to be seen. The interior of Hafez al-Assad’s tomb was covered in soot from a fire at his resting place, while the exterior was sprayed with curses on him and his wife.

One resident said such attacks on the shrine had become “a kind of pilgrimage” for rebel supporters.

But the Alawite elite who benefited from Assad’s rule were a minority within a minority. Others within the broader Alawite community remained among the poorest of Syrian society, many of them terrorized by the same people who were committing crimes against the rest of the country.

A 40-year-old Alawite resident of Qardaha, who asked to be identified only by her nickname Nana to avoid retaliation, described how the townspeople lived their entire lives in fear of their masters, who mistreated people of their sect and treated them with disdain. .

“They wanted us to stay [poor] “So that people will continue to join the army,” Nana said.

Nana and her sister taught in schools where children could not afford the meager prices of government textbooks, while her brother-in-law had spent the past 14 years dodging military service.

But despite their disillusionment with Assad, minorities such as Alawites and Christians not only fear for their safety, but also fear that the new rulers will impose a new and unfamiliar social order.

Nana’s family manufactures and sells alcoholic beverages including arak and wine, which were not banned under Assad, and like many others, the family borrowed money to stock up before December, the busiest time of the year. But when they woke up to news that the Assad regime had fallen into the hands of the Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the family went to pack their supplies and take down the store’s sign as a precaution.

When Nana’s husband later asked an armed man patrolling the town if he could reopen, he was told that selling alcohol was forbidden in Islam. The family, like others, is awaiting clarification from the new government on what is legal and what is illegal.

“We bought stock like crazy, and now it will stay in our stores,” her brother-in-law said, adding that another patrolman scolded his niece for wearing pajamas outside.

He added that they suffered “humiliation” under Assad’s rule, but at least they knew how to maneuver under the regime. “Now, we don’t know what [kind of regime] “We have,” Nana said.

Cartography by Aditi Bhandari