Assad’s Syrian stronghold is preparing for life after the regime

On a recent morning in the Syrian province of Latakia, more than a hundred former soldiers stood quietly, wide-eyed and wary as they waited to register with the new rebel governors. that country. A tired man walked around with a picture of ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s face on a stick, asking men to spit on it. All are required.

Since taking power this month, the new interim government – led by the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – has established several so-called shelters across the country, making appeal for former soldiers to visit, register for non-citizens. -military IDs and loading their weapons.

They say efforts like this will help ensure security and start the reconciliation process after 13 years of brutal civil war that has left the country riddled with weapons and armed factions.

“The most important thing is to disarm people,” said Abdel Rahman Traifi, a former rebel who now heads the center. That’s the only way you can ensure safety.

However, in Latakia, the Assad family’s home province and one-time stronghold, many fear that the takeover marks the beginning of something far worse: a cycle of impunity and revenge. it will leave them as losers. Syria.

Despite the widespread euphoria across the country, the Latakia coast is home to many people from the Assads’ Alawite minority and others who – either by choice or by desperation – have formed soldiers and loyalists who have they help support the tyranny of the family.

In the weeks since Assad fell, some have closed shops, stayed at home or gone into hiding amid security concerns and stories of revenge killings and attacks on minorities.

“I didn’t dare to go because I was worried about the roads,” a former Alawite security officer said of the settlements. They will kill us on the way there, or in our villages.

So far there has been little documentation of retaliatory violence, with the new authority dismissing reports as “exceptional cases”. Traifi, when asked about rumors of men at checkpoints harassing Alawites and asking them to insult the former president, said that kind of harassment does not represent the new government.

But there are people who run checkpoints who have lost children, women, family members due to bombings and wars, whose friends disappeared in prison. They have pain in their hearts,” he said. “We put up with them for 14 years. They can put up with us for a while.”

Some soldiers lined up at the Latakia settlement appeared to be cautiously accepting the prospect of a new beginning, a sign of how disillusioned even the professed loyalists have become.

A 29-year-old ex-soldier said he was repeatedly barred from visiting his home last year as Assad’s weakening in the country and its shrinking economy fueled growing fears. that the soldiers will leave.

“Our life was a military one, we didn’t learn to do other things,” he said, adding that he is not worried about security. “We have been looking for this for a long time. In this new role, they just want us to live our lives. ”

However, Traifi said that maybe only 30 percent of those who arrived at the shelters gave weapons, adding that the intelligence agency is still working to identify and attack those who are still holding hands. Even a former government security official admitted that both sides still have weapons and that, without a complete arms reduction, “we will have more killings within two months”.

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

But during their rule, the Assad family promoted a certain group of Alawite loyalists to high positions of power, giving them special treatment over everyone else. Frustration over the brutal enforcement of the means to ensure that they hold wealth, power and political positions disproportionate to their numbers was one of the main motivators of the 2011 protests that led to the war. local.

But before the fall of Assad, with many Alawites now facing an uncertain future, thousands fled the capital Damascus to their ancestral homes.

The former federal security guard said he received a call from his boss around midnight, who told him to pack his things and go home. . He described the events of the apocalypse: citizens and exhausted men crowded the streets on foot and in cars, their discarded weapons littering the roadside. “I parked on the right side of the road on the way to Homs, and I threw my gun into the waterway,” he said.

The two-hour journey to his hometown on the Lebanese border took about eight hours on bumpy roads. Then he hid at home, knowing that the men of his village who had gone into exile in Lebanon after joining the rebels were returning. He feared that the men were now preparing to take revenge on those they blamed for killing their friends and family.

“There is no supervision or security here, so there is no one to prevent revenge killings,” he said. “There’s nobody here.”

Silence has been in the air in Alawite villages and towns since Assad’s fall. Schools have been opened but empty. When asked if there is anyone working, one caretaker of the playground said: “Yes, what is missing are students.”

In the Assad family’s birthplace of Qardaha, unlike the major cities, the green rebel flag was almost nowhere to be found. The interior of Hafez al-Assad’s mausoleum was covered in smoke from a fire burning in his resting place, while outside curses were painted against him and his wife.

One resident said that such attacks on the temple have become “a kind of pilgrimage” for rebel supporters.

But the Alawite elite who benefited from Assads rule were a minority within a minority. Some within the broader Alawite community remained the poorest in Syrian society, many feared by the same people who committed crimes against the entire country.

A 40-year-old Alawite resident of Qardaha, who asked to be known only by her nickname Nana to avoid reprisals, described how villagers lived their whole lives they fear their kings, who abused the people of their sect and despised them. .

“They wanted us to stay (poor) so that people would have to register in the army,” said Nana.

Nana and her sister taught in schools where children could not afford the low price of government textbooks, while her brother spent the last 14 years avoiding military service.

However, despite their frustration with the Assads, small groups such as Alawites and Christians are not only afraid of their safety but also that the new rulers will impose a new and unusual social order.

Nana’s family makes and sells alcoholic beverages including arak and wine, which were not banned under the Assads, and like many others had borrowed money to save money before December, a busy time. most of the year. But when they woke up to the news that Assad’s regime had fallen to the Islamist HTS, the family packed up their belongings and took down the store’s sign as a precaution.

Later when Nana’s husband asked the armed man patrolling the city if he could reopen, he was told that selling alcohol is forbidden in Islam. The family, like others, is waiting for clarification from the new government about what is legal and what is not.

“We bought a crazy amount of stuff, now it’s going to live in our stores,” her husband said, adding that her niece was told off by a security guard for wearing pajamas. outside.

While they had suffered “humiliation” under the Assads, he said, at least they knew how to govern. “Well, we don’t know what (type of government) we have,” said Nana.

Cartography by Aditi Bhandari