By Serge Jordan, 11 March 2025
The last few days in Syria have brought another grim chapter in the country’s long and bloody crisis. More than 1,000 people, the majority civilians, were slaughtered in the western coastal areas in three days of clashes and sectarian revenge killings.
The gruesome images of executions have flooded social media, showing men forced to crawl and bark like dogs before being shot, bodies left in the streets as warnings. They paint a chilling picture of the brutality unleashed in this latest round of power struggles in Syria.
These massacres erupted after Assad loyalist gunmen launched a series of attacks on the security forces of the newly ascendant Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). They targeted government checkpoints, security convoys, and military positions in the Latakia and Tartus provinces —the heartland of the Alawite minority to which Assad himself belongs.
This set off a wave of reprisals that rapidly spiraled out of control.
Armed supporters of the HTS-led government flooded into the coastal regions, unleashing a wave of revenge killings. They targeted not only Assad’s remaining armed supporters but entire Alawite communities— indiscriminately hunted down and portrayed as supporters of the toppled regime.
Villages were looted and torched. Entire families were killed. Many residents, fleeing for their lives, sought refuge at the Russian military base in Hmeymim, Latakia.
As these atrocities unfolded, some media outlets —like Al Jazeera— chose the language of obfuscation. The butchery is being downplayed as mere “fighting between security forces and fighters loyal to ousted President Bashar al-Assad.”
While this framing is not entirely false, the dominant reality—massacres driven by sectarian vengeance—is largely sidestepped in favor of a narrative aligned with the geopolitical interests of those seeking friendly relations with the new regime.
Assad’s sectarian legacy
There is no question that pro-Assad forces played a role in fanning the flames of this crisis. The now-deposed regime long relied on sectarian manipulation as a tool of rule. They embedded Alawites into its security and military apparatus while fueling fears of Sunni Islamist domination to justify mass killings, forced displacements, and the arming of sectarian militias like the notorious Shabiha.
This strategy created deep-seated animosities that reactionary elements on all sides now exploit. Assad’s remnants know all too well how blowing on the embers of sectarian tensions bolsters their claim as the sole ‘protectors’ of Syria’s minorities.
However, to paint the massacres of Alawite civilians as merely a backlash against old regime remnants is to excuse what turned into a campaign of sectarian terror by HTS and its ilk.
The idea that all Alawites are culpable for Assad’s crimes is a grotesque inversion of justice, one that reproduces the same sectarian logic of collective punishment that his regime perfected to maintain its rule.
Most Alawites were not part of Assad’s ruling elite, which was dominated by a narrow clique of regime loyalists, security chiefs and business cronies.
The majority lived in poverty, working as farmers, laborers, or low-ranking state employees. Many were forcibly conscripted into Assad’s military, sent to die in battles they had no stake in, while dissenting Alawites were silenced.
HTS’s double game
HTS’s response to these events has laid bare the contradictions of Syria’s ‘new order.’
Its leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani (Ahmed al-Sharaa), originally all but endorsed the massacres in a video statement: “Remnants of the ousted regime tried to test the new Syria without understanding it, and today they are relearning Syria.”
He also declared that “What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges,” which can only be read as an attempt to downplay and normalize the atrocities—dismissing them as little more than some routine turbulence.
These remarks reveal HTS’s readiness to condone sectarian violence as a means of consolidating its rule, despite its efforts to present itself as a legitimate governing force.
The ruling faction remains also reliant on radical Salafist elements that have no interest in ending the pattern of sectarian divisions.
At the same time, Jolani and his allies are aware that the new regime must maintain a veneer of ‘inclusivity’, ‘peace’ and ‘order’ to court Western and regional imperialist backers.
Thus, they have announced an ‘independent inquiry’ into the massacres and vowed accountability for those responsible—a move meant to provide public insurance to external players and contain internal dissent, while changing nothing in practice.
Yet these external players have themselves spent years fueling Syria’s destruction. Indeed, what is unfolding is also a byproduct of relentless interference, militarization, and proxy intervention by imperialist and regional powers.
The U.S., Russia, Iran, Israel, Turkey, the Gulf states have all sought to carve out their own spheres of influence, alimenting sectarian divisions in the process. Their competing agendas have entrenched the warlordism and sectarianism that continues to strangle Syria today.
Between hammer and anvil
The country’s crisis will not end so long as its people remain trapped between the hammer of sectarian-reactionary ruling forces and the anvil of Assadist reaction. The logic of these forces is one of endless vengeance, a dynamic that serves the interests of none but these cliques and their international patrons.
As long as security remains monopolized by such forces, the Syrian people will remain vulnerable to both repression and reactionary terror.
Breaking this cycle urgently requires organizing cross-sectarian grassroots self-defense —in neighborhoods, villages, communities and workplaces—independent of the ruling warlords, sectarian militias, and Assadist remnants.
Reports of spontaneous acts of solidarity—such as local Sunnis protecting Alawis from the massacre—offer a hopeful glimpse of what is possible.
But without a conscious effort to develop these initiatives into a structured force, they risk remaining isolated and ultimately ineffective against the power of sectarian factions.
Self-defense must be consciously built, coordinated, and rooted in democratic control by local committees.
Such structures could enable communities to protect themselves against sectarian violence as well as the new regime’s repression, while rejecting the logic of collective punishment.
By taking security into their own hands, the Syrian masses can prevent their country from being torn apart by the forces that thrive on division and slaughter.
Workers challenge the new order
Yet, even amid this horror, another battle is being waged—one not of sectarian bloodshed, but of workers resisting economic devastation.
In the days and weeks preceding these killings, across the country workers have taken to the streets to protest mass layoffs in the public sector, skyrocketing living costs, and HTS’s plans to privatize state-run companies.
These struggles have spurred new efforts at self-organization, with the emergence of workers’ groups and labor coordination committees in various regions.
This movement is a crucial reminder that Syria’s future should not be confined to a false choice between Sunni sectarian warlords, the remnants of Assad’s tyranny, and foreign intervention.
The Syrian working class—long suppressed by the old regime—can potentially emerge as an independent force for change, and to forge a genuine unity based on its common interests.
The road ahead will be difficult, as HTS will seek to crush any form of independent workers’ organization. But the seeds of resistance are there, offering a path forward beyond sectarian revenge, capitalist exploitation and authoritarian rule.
Syrian revolution-for social justice and genuine democracy
The Syrian revolution was, at its core, a struggle for social justice and genuine democracy; for the workers, the poor and the oppressed to shape their own future.
That vision should be revived; but that cannot be done through the hollow promises of right-wing Islamist warlords or the hypocritical illusions of Western diplomacy.
It can only succeed through the independent organization of Syria’s workers, youth, and oppressed communities, across confessional and ethnic divides, and in alliance with their counterparts across the region.
Only a socialist alternative, rooted in the unity of all exploited and oppressed layers of society, can break the cycle of terror, bring an end to Syria’s long night of suffering, and create a future where no community has to live in fear.