“No one will be above the law, and all those whose hands are stained with Syrian blood will face justice—fairly and without delay.”
—A statement made by interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, once an Al-Qaeda affiliate, after the emergence of reports of massacres of civilians by Islamist groups in the country.
“This weekend, the masks fell. Jolani’s men mercilessly massacred their own people—the citizens of the so-called ‘New Syria.’”
—Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, speaking to the German newspaper Bild, referring to al-Sharaa by the alias he used when fighting the Assad regime, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.
Is Syria under the control of a terrorist group or a group that wants peace among all Syrians? That debate has continued to rage ever since the group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) deposed Bashir Assad, the former president of Syria, and took control of much of the country. HTS was formerly associated with Al-Qaeda, and that alone was reason enough for countries around the world to view the group and its leaders suspiciously.
But the HTS-controlled government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has been gaining ground in its attempt to grow international legitimacy, using its claims of religious tolerance and newfound belief in peace to meet with numerous international leaders and representatives. One of the most skeptical countries is Israel, which has maintained an IDF presence in the south of Syria since the overthrow of Assad.
This past week, a series of executions of civilians may have changed how the government is viewed—or not.
The government’s control
At the present, the HTS-led interim government (which has said that elections are several years off) has military control of a large swath of western Syria, running from the northern border with Turkey down to the southern border with Jordan. Northeastern Syria is controlled by the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. A couple of sections of territory in the north are controlled by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, which has clashed with the Kurds.
The focus of this past week’s massacres was the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where there are strongholds of Alawites, the Muslim minority group of which former President Assad was a member. While the government has control over those regions, there are pro-Assad forces operating there, as well.
On Monday, the government and the Kurdish forces announced that the Kurds would be joining the government and folding their forces and infrastructure into the state by the end of the year.
Massacres
The mass murder of civilians in Latakia and Tartus reportedly occurred after attacks were made on military forces that are either directly controlled by the government or allied with it. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group, 125 government security forces members were killed in the fighting. On the other side, they say, 148 pro-Assad fighters were killed.
But according to their count, the vast majority of those killed in the last few days were civilians, at least 745 of them, and the reports from the region say that they were not killed as collateral damage but as direct victims of violence.
A survivor from Latakia described the scene: “Armed men went house to house, attacking people for sport. They declared jihad against us from all over Syria.”
One person who survived the attacks said, “We hid in the bathroom for hours. When we finally ran, the streets were covered in bodies. Bulldozers were collecting them.”
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