Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and its allies shocked the world by overthrowing the Syrian regime in eleven days last year. This week, they overthrew themselves in eleven hours when carrying out their ethnic cleansing against the Alawite sect, documenting the massacre on social media and calling for jihad. Thousands of civilians were killed, with bodies scattered, burned, or thrown in rivers. This brutal campaign is one of the most violent sectarian cleansings in modern history. Its aftermath will deeply affect the region, as no one will feel safe enough to disarm after witnessing such a massacre.

By Ahmad Ghosn
Since the morning of December 8, 2024, when the Assad regime fell and Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham & partners took control of Syria, thousands of violations have been committed against Alawite civilians, Christians and even Shiites. Most Alawite employees (who share their religion with the ousted president Assad) were dismissed from their jobs, salaries were stopped, and random arrests were made under the charge of "remnants of the former regime." A ransom was then demanded for the release of some detainees.

On every single violation, the self-proclaimed new president Ahmad al Sharaa and his extremist government claimed that these actions were "isolated cases", and did not reflect their policies. Nothing was done to stop these ‘isolated cases’, it became evident from the first day Al-Sharaa & friends did not have complete control over all the armed factions.

What made matters worse is the presence of Uzbek, Chechen, and other foreign mercenaries. Especially those who had been in the ranks of al-Nusra Front, Islamic State (ISIS), and other terrorist factions, as well as fighters from the Syrian National Army, which included jihadists used by Turkey in Syria, Libya and Nagorno Karabakh.

Since the first day of the regime's fall, some groups that belonged to the dissolved Syrian Army launched 46 attacks on the new public security forces. On 6 March, Numerous attacks were carried out by the remnants of the regime and strategic points in the coastal region - the countryside of Tartus to Latakia - prompting the new Syrian government to launch a wide-scale military campaign on the Syrian coast.

The moment the new Damascus government announced its military campaign against the "regime remnants," it returned to its true nature. Instead of sending units from the newly formed Ministry of Defense in the spirit of the so-called new Syrian state, they acted with a Jihadi mindset of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham.

Thousands of fighters from the Syrian Public Security and the Ministry of Defense were deployed to the coast, accompanied by armed factions like the Turkey-powered Syrian National Army, the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade, and the Hamza Brigade. All of whom had previously been accused of committing human rights violations against Kurds in northwest Syria.

The calls for "jihad" echoed in mosques, declaring war against the former regime forces, particularly against the Alawites. Everyone they encountered was killed: fighters who surrendered their weapons, young men, women, children, the elderly, religious clerics, doctors, engineers, lawyers, workers, and students. All their crimes were documented by the fighters themselves on their social media and telegram groups.

Social Dissatisfaction
After the massacres and widespread social dissatisfaction with the actions of the Syrian government, the government started washing their hands in innocence. To fool a United Nations (UN) delegation, civilians' bodies were dressed up in military uniforms with weapons placed beside them. Mass graves were opened, and bodies were thrown into the sea. Hiding as much evidence as possible of the committed genocide (source: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights).

Fighters were instructed to delete all footage documenting the massacres, but a large portion of it has been archived by civil society and global intelligence agencies. The (mainstream) media tried to defend the new Syrian government and distance it from responsibility for the massacres by promoting the narrative that the government was not responsible for these violations and by downplaying the number of victims.

Public opinion was manipulated, focusing on the signing of a memorandum of integration with the Kurds, which received international applause and distracted the global community from the genocide occurring on the coast, and was even invited by the European Union for financial support.

Governmental media focused on promoting the celebrations after the agreement with the Kurds, completely ignoring the bloodshed caused by it. Additionally, pressure was applied on the surviving Alawite civilians from the massacres. Ordering them to tell UN delegations visiting the coast that they didn’t know what happened, didn’t see who killed their children, and didn’t know who committed the massacres even though the UN staff was fully aware of who had carried out these actions and had all the evidence.

Regional Implications
The Syrian government's claims that the factions responsible for the massacres were "beyond their control" are invalid. On the day the regime fell, Al-Shar’a earlier declared that all factions would fall under the Ministry of Defense, thus making him and his government responsible for all the bloodshed. Shar’a has not apologised nor condemned these atrocities.

The question is: How can any Alawite, of any kind, ever trust this "government"? How can this wound ever heal? What happened highlights the weakness of the current rulers of Damascus. Could some rogue factions have been driven by intelligence agencies seeking to punish Al-Shar’a for his persistent attempts to get closer to Saudi Arabia and form alliances?

The genocide against Alawites is a lesson for other minorities in the region. For example, for the Shia community in Lebanon, who are marginalised by the recent Israeli campaign against Hezbollah. If the fallen Lebanese movement would surrender its last remaining weapons to the Lebanese state, what would happen to them? Would they be safe from Sunni extremists?

Hezbollah perceives a looming danger, as if the long knives are already at its doorstep. For the group, facing death a thousand times from an Israeli F-35 would be preferable to being slaughtered by a Sunni blade.

The Syrian “government” with its terrorist actions against civilians, regions, and nature has a philosophical and psychological dimension. Their actions indicate that they want to turn these areas into uninhabitable lands. They did not treat the areas they entered as their land, nor did they act as liberators who entered a territory to free it from an occupier. Instead, they behaved like conquerors.

They entered the regions and destroyed them, burning buildings and houses, looting stores, burning trees and forests, fully aware, consciously or unconsciously, that they would not return to them. The partitioning of Syria is not an external decision, nor a political choice made by minorities; it is something that was done by the “liberators of Syria from its previous regime,” especially during this horrific massacre.

They treated the Syrian coast as if they wanted to eliminate it, much like the Israelis treated Gaza, but with different weapons and a religious, rather than nationalistic or colonial, backdrop. Even if Syria is not geographically divided, its psychological division has already been achieved.

The level of pain, hatred, and division in society makes building a unified state impossible. Instead, these groups should move toward federations and decentralisation, allowing them to preserve their uniqueness while expressing their openness or extremism through institutions that reflect their identities.