Weeks have now slipped by since the massacre perpetrated by Turkish-affiliated forces along the Syrian coast. For some, revisiting this event may feel untimely, as though it seeks to reopen a wound just beginning to scab. Yet truth does not convalesce in silence, and justice cannot be deferred. It must be faced with courage and addressed with wisdom.
It was a moment meant to signal Syria’s emergence from the long, suffocating tunnel of tyranny. Instead, fire erupted once more on the coastline, and blood ran anew—this time not under the banner of the toppled regime, but beneath the standard of a nascent authority, one still finding its way.
Undeniably, the original blame lies with the fallen regime. Fifty-four arid years—bleak, brutal, steeped in oppression, corruption, and sectarian favouritism—cannot be separated from the current collapse. The remnants of that order, emboldened and supported by a politically and militarily vanquished Iran, were unquestionably implicated in igniting the latest massacre.
Yet the regime’s deeper sin lies in its unrelenting campaign to splinter Syrians along sectarian lines, to drain the republic of a collective sense of national belonging. The Assads, flanked by their inner circle, worked tirelessly to instil fear in the hearts of Syria’s Alawites—painting the Sunni majority as a monolithic, vengeful force waiting to descend upon the minorities the moment Assad fell.
For more than half a century, Alawite Syrians stood on the periphery of the national dream, entangled in a dense net of state-manufactured illusions and fears. The regime invested in their blood manipulated their anxieties and yoked them into its existential battles, often against their will.
The Tragedy of the Syrian Alawite
The tragedy of the Alawite community, as laid bare during the revolution and the decades preceding it, is the distilled essence of a much older narrative—one of historical marginalisation followed by calculated political exploitation. Yesterday’s oppressed became today’s instruments, pliable in the hands of tyranny, driven not by conviction but by fear and tribal loyalty.
Hafez al-Assad understood the rural psyche intimately. He knew that the Alawites, like other rural populations, emerged from a long history of poverty, exclusion, and inherited humiliation. He recognised that their festering sense of injustice made them ripe for promises of reclaimed dignity. But rather than deliver on that promise, Assad repurposed their pain. His so-called “Corrective Movement” turned not toward development, but toward domination—a redistribution of poverty, not the creation of prosperity.
Rather than build infrastructure, invest in education, or foster a flourishing cultural life in Alawite regions, Assad herded young men into the army and the intelligence services, conscripting them as foot soldiers in the regime’s war of self-preservation. In time, they became the backbone of the state’s vast machinery of repression.
This forced assimilation did not elevate them. It imprisoned them. The promise of employment became a trap: modest wages doled out in exchange for loyalty, keeping them barely afloat but never free. The rural Alawite drifted toward the city, only to find himself exiled to its margins. In Damascus, they were crammed into informal neighbourhoods like the infamous “District 86″—crude dwellings where electricity was siphoned illegally, water was rationed, and survival came through uneasy coexistence with a government that regarded them as tools, not citizens.
They lived neither as villagers nor as true urbanites—caught between a past they had been severed from and a present that barely tolerated them. To the city, they were faceless enforcers in uniform. To the countryside, they were strangers who had forgotten the land. In both, they were resented and reduced.
This personal tragedy, multiplied a thousandfold, gave rise to a collective one. The Alawite community found itself ensnared in a closed and suffocating loop: a job in state security, the army, the state-run media, Al-Thawra newspaper, customs, or other government agencies; a crumbling home in an informal settlement; a modest cultural life; and a fragile consciousness clinging to the notion that this existence—precarious as it may be—is still a “gain” not to be squandered.
Those who dared to defy this equation—like the hundreds of comrades with whom I shared a bed, a meal, and a dream in the dungeons of Palmyra, Sednaya, and the military and Palestine interrogation branches—were swiftly ostracised, not merely by the regime but by their own communities. They were branded traitors, accused of “bringing the house down on its people’s heads.” For fear had long become the unspoken bond that tethered the community to the regime.
But Assad’s manipulation did not stop at political exploitation. He poured into their minds the narrative of an imminent Sunni threat and fed their imaginations with the spectre of extermination. When the Syrian revolution erupted, the regime seized its golden opportunity to embed this narrative even deeper: here, it warned, are the “Sunni terrorists” at your doorstep; without your own loyal army, you will be slaughtered, evicted from your homes, stripped of your livelihoods.
In the absence of a lucid, empathetic opposition discourse that could offer reassurance and a viable alternative, the community—reluctantly, fearfully—closed ranks behind the regime. Not out of loyalty, but out of terror at what lay beyond.
Thus did the Assad regime consecrate its most terrifying equation: Stand with me, and you are safe. Stand against me, and you are doomed. This brutal dichotomy smothered dissent within the sect, turning fear into a moral code. In time, participation in the regime’s crimes—even when it meant killing fellow Syrians and betraying one’s conscience—was rationalised as a matter of existential survival.
Yet opposite this constructed myth stood a merciless reality. The death toll of Alawite youth now numbers in the tens of thousands, whether in the ranks of the National Defence or in shadowy security branches—swept off to the frontlines of the regime’s wars, only to be returned as bodies, eulogised in sorrowful rituals devoid of any real reckoning. And still, the dominant belief persists: that it was “sectarian strife,” not the regime, that unleashed this calamity.
A deeper look into the sociology of the Alawite community reveals further layers of dispossession. Their ancestral homes have often been fragmented through inheritance or confiscated under flimsy pretexts; their lands scarcely yield enough to sustain them. And the city, which promised opportunity, has embraced them only as strangers. They remain suspended between the memory of a vanished village paradise and an urban reality that offers neither belonging nor respect.
In this liminal state, their need for illusion intensifies—for any voice that tells them they will endure, even if only beneath the collapsing roof of the Assad regime.
Their fate echoes the fatalism of Greek tragedy, where destiny is sealed before birth—like Oedipus, condemned by prophecy. The Alawites of Syria, too, have been shackled to the destiny Assad carved for them: submission and fear, or annihilation. But for how long? And what future awaits them when the regime, which has for decades intertwined its survival with theirs, finally collapses?
This tragic cycle will not be broken unless a new discourse emerges—honest, national, free from hollow slogans. A discourse that offers Alawites true safety, not the threat of vengeance; that invites them into a social contract founded on equality, dignity, and citizenship—not revenge, quotas, or exclusion. But such a discourse is conspicuously absent. The opposition has failed to address the Alawite question with insight or empathy, while the regime continues to drain the community’s lifeblood for its own survival.
The Alawites are not a monolithic bloc. Among them are intellectuals and soldiers, perpetrators and victims, loyalists and dissenters. Yet they are all, to varying degrees, prisoners of the regime’s narrative—one that has suffocated their aspirations, constricted their awareness, and transformed them into instruments in a war from which they stand to gain nothing.
The moment the average Alawite realises that he is not bound by Assad’s choices—that he has the right to choose differently—that moment will mark the beginning of redemption from a tragedy that has gone on far too long.
The Politics of Transitional Justice
Despite the transitional president Ahmad al-Sharaa’s speech acknowledging the recent atrocities, he refrained from naming the perpetrators or outlining mechanisms for accountability. This silence echoes past crimes—such as those in Homs—that were quietly buried, untried and unpunished.
This absence of justice creates space for vengeance to masquerade as justice, fuelling public fears that the abuses of the former regime may be replicated under a new guise. These unaddressed crimes have already sown deep societal fractures, triggered waves of displacement from the coast, and nurtured a growing despair—a despair rooted in disillusionment with the new leadership, its hesitations, and its administrative fragility.
The issue lies not only in the sheer horror of what occurred, but in the glaring inadequacy of the emerging authority to lay the foundations of a national, civil state. It has failed to build inclusive institutions and is increasingly reproached for marginalising large swaths of Syrians. Worse still, it appears to be governed by a Salafist mindset—narrow in vision, sectarian in instinct—that disregards the core principles of partnership and citizenship.
All of this unfolds in a country fractured beyond recognition: a north controlled by Turkish-backed factions; a northeast governed by Kurdish forces; a southeast under American oversight; a south fragmented among local militias; and a vast, unsettled desert still plagued by remnants of ISIS. The army remains disunited. Experienced officers who once defected from the former regime—many of them men of honour and professionalism—have not been invited to participate in rebuilding the armed forces. Instead, various factions continue to hoard weapons outside the framework of the state, some of which have been involved in documented violations that are now making their way into human rights reports.
In this turbulent landscape, the concept of transitional justice has spread like wildfire—touted by government officials, human rights advocates, members of the old opposition, op-ed writers, and even YouTube personalities. Yet behind this chorus lies no harmony. There is little agreement on what transitional justice truly means. For some, it is merely the right to exact personal revenge—to become judge, jury, and executioner, eradicating one’s oppressor under the banner of justice.
Five pillars
But true transitional justice—as defined by the International Center for Transitional Justice—is society’s response to a legacy of gross and systematic human rights violations, with the victims placed at its centre, above all other considerations. It is justice that begins with the acknowledgement of the victims’ dignity—not as statistics, but as citizens and human beings—and pursues accountability, recognition, and reparation. It aims to forge a new social contract, one that binds together all citizens, protects their rights, and dignifies their pain.
Its architecture rests on five pillars: truth, accountability, reparations, memorialisation, and community reconciliation—each intended to ensure that such violations never recur. Whether implemented in part or in full, these pillars guide a society’s transition: from conflict to lasting peace, from authoritarianism to democracy, from the trauma of mass violations to a culture of human rights, and from impunity to a new ethos—where citizens are treated not as subjects, but as human beings deserving of dignity and respect.
A few days ago, Malik Daghestani penned a powerful article that rang with urgency and moral clarity. He warned against replicating the criminal machinery of the Assad regime under the banner of revolution. He rejected any justification—no matter how veiled—for the crimes now being committed against innocent Alawite civilians in the aftermath of the regime’s fall. Justice, Daghestani reminded us, is not divisible. The foundations of a new Syria cannot be laid upon denial, nor upon selective memory. The future begins with an unflinching acknowledgment of past wrongs and the prosecution of those responsible—without hesitation, excuse, or evasion. To overlook these crimes, or to explain them away, is to imperil the very project of the state we claim to be building. It is to hand the remnants of the old regime—and those who mirror them—the tools to poison the fragile transition we so desperately need.
Daghestani closed his eloquent essay with words I wish I had written myself:
“We should be ashamed, and stop this farce. Otherwise, how will we ever sever, once and for all, from the Assad regime—one of whose defining traits was its brazen and absurd denial of crimes that scorched the entire country? Not in the name of the revolution, nor in the name of the new Syria, can you justify such grotesque comparisons between what you do now and what Assad’s media once did—media that lacked even the basic conscience to see your dead. Do you wish to become them—soulless, sightless, devoid of shame?”
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
