Reports of massacres of civilians in Syria’s Latakia are a major test for the new government of Syria. Since the fall of the Assad regime, the new authorities have sought to balance the needs of numerous Syrians from different regions and groups.
The group that came to power on December 8, 2024, after the Assad regime fell, was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
HTS has its roots in extremist groups that opposed the Assad regime. Since December, there have been concerns that the Sunni Islamist political and paramilitary group might persecute minorities. However, its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, moved quickly to make it seem like Damascus had a new face.
The clashes that began in Latakia in the past few days have been brewing for months. Depending on the source, the reports say that groups of insurgents with ties to the old regime attacked the security forces of the new Damascus government.
#Breaking: It is happening in the coastal regions of #Syria. Terrorists of the new #Syrian Jihadist regime are looting shops owned by religious and ethnic minorities, similar to what happened in #Manbij, #Afrin, and other Kurdish cities in #Syria that were occupied by the… pic.twitter.com/dXBdpx2SsL
— Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch (@BabakTaghvaee1) March 8, 2025
Unclear reports from Syria
The result was the deaths of dozens of security force members. Faced with this growing opposition, the government appears to have unleashed numerous armed men on Latakia without much control over their behavior.
This led armed groups to enter the major port city claiming to seek revenge and supposedly conducting security sweeps. In reality, it seems that on March 7, dozens of people, perhaps hundreds, were murdered. The victims are mostly members of the Alawite minority, to which the Assad family belongs.
As with any conflict where there are multiple sides, the reports are unclear. What is clear is that Alawites and others fear that a massacre is taking place in areas around Tartous and other cities and towns. Videos show men being murdered in the streets, run over, forced to crawl on the ground, and groups of bodies dumped in places.
Backers of Damascus generally say these killings are an unfortunate outcome of some people who sought revenge and that they are a kind of collateral damage of “security” operations. They argue that the Assad regime was brutal and that, by extension, responses to Assad loyalists killing members of the new security forces will result in these extremes.
The reality is that the government in Damascus is facing its first major test. It has faced many smaller ones already, such as finding a way to work with the Druze minority in southern Syria, managing relations with Turkish-backed proxies called the SNA, and managing talks with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
Latakia was always going to be complex, because there are many people among the Syrian rebel factions and SNA that have wanted revenge for the years of Assad rule. They see the Alawite minority as a place to exact their vengeance.
Voices excuse this behavior by arguing that we should focus on the larger crimes of Bashar al-Assad or that too much attention is given to minorities in Syria and that it is “disinformation” to claim that there is now a campaign of pogroms targeting Alawites. Time will tell which is the case.
For now, the government in Damascus will need to assure international partners that the reports of massacres will be addressed. It will also need to be transparent. If the government ends up relying on gangs and extremisms to enforce its rule in Latakia, it will be seen as not much better than the former regime.