Syria. Bloody Wendeta towards Alawites

At the beginning of March in northwest Syria There were clashes between the forces of the new government and the groups of loyalists of the former dictator Bashar Al-Assad. The fights turned into a wave of brutal violence directed mainly in Alawite – the religious minority from which the Assad clan came from, and on which their rule was based. According to data from the Syrian Human Rights Observatory (OSDH), nearly one and a half thousand civilians have already been killed.

In social media, various armed fractions currently controlling Syria called on hundreds of thousands of Syrians to “universal mobilization” in order to suppress the emerging uprising of supporters of the overthrown dictator.

The Bloody Wendeta in Syrian Alawites reached its apogee on March 6 – writes Reuters. Hundreds of pick -ups filled with armed fighters, in the company of tanks, moved the main highways towards the Syrian coast – the homeland of Alawite.

“They wanted revenge on the loyalists of the overthrown president, primarily his former officers,” writes Reuters.

According to the new authorities of the country, some of the former military faithful to Assad are responsible for a series of attacks on the current Syrian army, thus trying to carry out a coup.

At night and early in the morning of March 7, the pro-government fighters attacked the Al-Qusour district in the city of Banijas, opening fire to residential buildings. Similar attacks took place in a number of other cities and villages further north along the coast, where the Alawic community is concentrated.

Hassan Harfoush is Alawita, but currently lives in Iraq. That Friday afternoon he talked on the phone with his family, living in Al-Qusour. “I heard the screams of children and arrows, I heard my father tried to calm children,” he reported. – He said: Pray for us. They came – he described in an interview with Reuters.

His parents, brother, sister and two children were shot.

Harfoush left Syria a few months earlier, after overthrowing Assad, at the request of his father who was afraid of a wave of retaliation against Alawiti. “He told me that in this way at least one of us would protect against death,” recalled the Syrian.

As Reuters reports, hundreds of Alaw civilians were murdered in less than a week. “Just three months after Assad was overthrown, ending his brutal rule and the civil war lasting almost 14 years, the western part of Syria plunged into a vindictive splendor of blood” – writes the agency. Many Syrian Sunnis, who constitute over 70 percent of the population, felt politically and economically marginalized under the Asads who brutally suppressed opposition protests, dominated by this religious minority.

Independent organizations, including Syria Network for Human Rights (SNHR), announced that as a result of a wave of violence, more than a thousand people were killed, of which more than half at the hands of forces associated with new authorities, and remained at the hands of Assad's loyalists. According to SNHR, 595 civilians and unarmed fighters were among the killed, the vast majority of Alawites.

The government claims that the fights began when on March 6 her forces were attacked by assaad's supporters, and she attributed to the wave of violence against civilians to “individual activities” of units. At the same time, the Syrian authorities announced on March 9 the creation of the “Independent Inquiry Commission”, made the first arrests of suspects of murder and announced that they would punish those guilty without indulgence. Cases of seven detainees have already been directed to military courts – said the AFP agency.

The Radio Free Europe portal announced that from March 7 the threatened Alawici was looking for shelter, gathering near the Russian Air Base Humajmim. “It could have been the only safe place for them if one considers the fact that all parties want to avoid corruption of relations with Russia,” the portal noted.

– Many attackers were not identified because they were masked. There was chaos – said the spokesman for the High Office of the United Nations for Human Rights. – We do not have a clear image of the command structure in the security forces of the Provisional Government – he added.

After overthrowing Assad and dismantling his safety apparatus, a vacuum arose. The new Syrian government is seeking to integrate with its security forces of dozens of armed rebel fractions, born of a long and bloody civil war.

Assad's rule was finally overthrown by the rebel coalition, led by the Islamist Sunni grouping Hajat Tahrir Ash-Szam (HTS). Islamists associated with Al-Qaida in the autumn of 2024 carried out an instant offensive and occupied Damascus. The dictator escaped to Russiain which he obtained asylum. During the civil war since 2011, at least half a million people were killed, and more than half of the 22 million inhabitants of Syria had to run away from home – abroad or to other regions of the country.

There is still one of the greatest humanitarian crises in the world in Syria. The new authorities in Damascus still do not control the whole divided and inhabited by numerous minorities of the state.