March 10, 2025 - 2:00pm
With his planned limited offensive in northwestern Syria unexpectedly escalating to the seizure of Damascus, former al-Qaeda insurgent and aspiring technocrat Ahmed al-Sharaa may find that conquering Syria is an easier task than ruling it. At the time of the lightning HTS offensive last December, former president Bashar al-Assad’s security forces simply melted away without a fight, even in his ethnic Alawite heartlands of Latakia and Tartus. But when armed Alawite elements ambushed HTS security forces in Latakia late last week, it unlocked a cycle of ethnosectarian violence already casting a pall on the new regime’s international legitimacy.
The new government’s counterinsurgency efforts swiftly degenerated into sectarian reprisals, with more than 700 Alawite civilians reported dead and brutal footage of summary executions posted online by the perpetrators. Sunni Arab advocates for the revolution now find themselves watching footage of the government they support throwing unguided barrel bombs out of helicopters, just like the old regime they spent more than a decade railing against.
Yet despite the flood of journalists flocking into postwar Damascus to celebrate the new Syria, basic facts about the weekend’s events remain strikingly opaque. Firstly, how much control does the new government in Damascus actually wield over the security forces acting under its name in the northwest? And secondly, are the armed Alawite opposition really Assad loyalists, as claimed by government supporters, or do they represent Alawite ethnic mobilisation independent of the fallen regime? The answers to these questions will lead Western and regional powers to pursue very different attitudes to engagement with the new government.
If the perpetrators of these war crimes are acting under Sharaa’s sanction, then all the recent talk of humane and technocratic governance by the new regime rings hollow. Yet if the perpetrators are outside the Damascus government’s control, then Sharaa’s grip on power is surely weaker than many external observers assumed. Neither option bodes well for the new leader’s prospects of stable domestic rule or widespread international legitimacy.
Early indications are that, rather than HTS’s core security forces, the worst violence was carried out by foreign jihadist factions long taken under the group’s wing. Also involved were the predominantly ethnically Turkmen “Syrian National Army” militias armed and funded by Turkey, which control much of northern Syria and have a long and bloody record of human rights abuses. Either way, the massacre of Syrian minorities in the northwest will do little to persuade the autonomous Druze militias in the South and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast to disarm and fold themselves into Sharaa’s new regime.
For the European Union, whose overriding interest in Syria is in preventing a new flow of refugees towards the continent, and the return of those already here, humanitarian concerns appear best swept under the rug for now in the interests of stabilising the new government. But for the Trump administration, long sceptical of the Syrian rebels, the horror on the coast will do little to win the new regime recognition or sanctions relief. Israel, slowly occupying new areas of southern Syria and declaring a sphere of interest up to the suburbs of Damascus in the proclaimed interests of the Druze minority, will now likely be given an even freer hand by the US. Having condemned the atrocities on Sunday, asserting that “the United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities”, Washington will join with Moscow to bring the matter to the UN Security Council later today.
Attempting to assert control over the lawless Turkish-backed SNA forces in the north, which significantly outnumber his own core HTS troops, Sharaa must also juggle the Israeli incursion in the south and the powerful and still-autonomous Kurdish-led forces in the northeast, which continues to host both American and Russian military missions.
Syria’s confessional and ethnic patchwork of peoples has always been a source of both national pride and political instability: the existence of the collapsed Baathist regime represented one brutal attempt to manage such a divided country. In consolidating power at the centre, Sharaa now finds himself, like many a Syrian ruler before him, struggling to manage the country’s diverse and heavily-armed periphery.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeHas anybody ever controlled Syria?!
The Ottoman Empire?
Controlled-ish!
Syria and Iraq are states/countries artificially created by Britain and France a hundred years ago. They’ve only ever been effectively ‘controlled’ as unitary areas of power by brutal dictators.. the Assads and Saddam Hussein.
Even then they had minority groups rebelling constantly, eg the Kurds in the north.
But not a problem for anyone else…
Syria is going to break up obviously.
“Syria’s confessional and ethnic patchwork of peoples has always been a source of both national pride and political instability”
What percentage of the population felt this “national pride”, I wonder.
A dominant group may feel pride at being able to oppress a wide range of other groups. This is the imperial mindset.
For ordinary citizens to feel pride in diversity, it must surely be in the context of a functional society where people willingly cooperate despite their differences, and harbour no serious grievances against others.
Has Syria ever been such a society?
Yes, the same as Lebanon, Iran, and Afghanistan. 50’s through 60’s.
Yes, and I think there was a pride felt there – once. Syria had been the cradle of many civilisations but then along came the 21st Century, 9/11 and the globalist agenda got into its stride with wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, regime change in Algeria, Syria etc.. US funding of groups such as Al Qaeda (they were on “our side” according to Jake Sullivan in an email to Hilary Clinton). The islamist cause has been fuelled by Western politicians (particularly American and British) and their foolish meddling. They created a monster that they can no longer control and simply abandon innocent people to suffer the nightmarish consequences.
I believe that recent reports as to the number of Alawites massacred in recent days is closer to 3,000. Why did the the Alawites rise up? That question is not being adequately answered in the mainstream media. Any suggestion that it was on Asaad’s orders is nonsense, since fleeing and abandoning his fellow Alawites there are very few that would respond.
One thing is for sure, right now I wouldn’t want to be a member of the Alawite community, a Kurd or one of the remaining members of the Christian population that can trace its roots back to pre-islamic days – the barbarism that is being unleashed against these people is horrific.
Where are the protesters?
New regime wants peace and love for all mankind, but they’ll just take out the people who don’t match their particular Islamic and political mould; next its the Kurds, and shortly thereafter the Jews followed by Europe.
I imagine whst the new regime wants is simply what Turkey tells them they want. No more and no less. Regardless of whether they are genuinely seeking an multifaith, multicultural country (as per Lebanon in the 50’s and 60’s when Damascus was “The Paris of the ME”) they are only in power, and totally reliant on, support from Turkey and Turkish interests in the region.
There is an excellent interview on yu tube with Syrian, Kevork Almassian. It is a month old but he has the most compelling perspective on Syria and what has unfolded there so far this century that I have heard. I can’t post the link but it is titled Syria’s stolen future: war, sanctions & the globalist agenda exposed.
Could you please provide a link. I’d be very interested to watch it.
I put the title of the interview in my comment if you’re genuinely interested all you need do is paste it into the search bar. If you put the name Kevork Almassian into you tube many different interviews come up on screen. He has a channel called Syrian Analysis and can also be found on Twitter.
Where are the protesters?
Why would there be any protests? This doesn’t involve the Israelis.
True, it doesn’t feature any of the BBC and Guardian’s favourite baddies.
Fair point! If there’s no Jews, it’s not worthwhile news. Assad killed 500,000 people over 10 years, about 250,000 were killed in Yemen by Saudi Arabia. No, you haven’t heard (much) of any of this before. And there are hundreds of other such conflicts occurring in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere ….
No protests will happened until right wingers and Christians start playing the game properly – funding their own NGO networks and organising such things. Everything is a game.
As I predicted months ago on another UnHerd article regarding the Middle East, the real horrors in Syria are only now being uncovered, the West in their support for the Syrian ‘rebels’ are complicit in the mass murder of Christians and Alawites. A certain UnHerd serial replier ‘El Uro’ called me a lunatic for saying so, seems our Zionist ‘friends’ in the Middle East are happy with the mass murder of Christians.
In consolidating secular power at the centre. That was their crime.
It sounds like what Syria needs is a friend. Not Turkey, not Iran, not Russia. All these want a piece of Syria for what Syria can give to them, not vice versa. I suggest the US of A may be able to strongly invest in Syria to increase its prosperity and stability. Can al-Sharaa help this happen? One can hope ….