What actually happened in the past few days in Syria?
To understand, we have to go back months. After taking over Damascus, the Syrian revolutionaries issued a general amnesty for all officers and military personnel of the Assad regime’s army.
They established reconciliation centers in every province under their control, where soldiers would surrender their weapons and receive a card confirming that they had settled their status. They would not be held accountable for their service in Assad’s army as long as they had not committed war crimes or participated in massacres. After that, they would return to being ordinary Syrian citizens.
Thousands have settled their status.
This step provoked the majority of Syrians, who saw it as a naïve move to forgive those who had committed crimes, killed more than a million Syrians based on identity, and displaced 13 million others.
However, the Syrian administration stated that anyone with accusations against specific individuals should file a complaint at security centers, where their cases would be reviewed according to the law.
The security situation, the availability of weapons among some civilians, and the anger toward the Syrian administration-seen as indifferent to their grievances-led to isolated incidents where individuals who knew of officers responsible for killing their relatives took matters into their own hands. They would eliminate the officer and leave a note on the body stating the officer’s name, workplace, and the crime he had committed.
These incidents were limited and disappeared after the first two months, as Syria’s Ministry of Interior forces established control. With regular security patrols in place, it became difficult for any Syrian citizen to seek revenge.
They are a religious sect of Shia that emerged in the 9th century and primarily live as minorities in Syria and Turkey.
Most reports estimate their population at a maximum of 10-11% of the Syrian people, who are predominantly Sunni Muslims.
The Ba’ath Party and Pan-Arabism:
Arabism is a movement supported and nurtured by western colonialism to serve as a substitute for the Islamic identity that united the region with its minorities. This allowed nationalism to dominate, causing minorities in the Arab world to feel oppressed and excluded if they are not Arabs and fostering nationalist tendencies.
One of the most famous movements is the Arab Ba'ath Party.
The party was founded on April 7, 1947, by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar in Damascus, Syria, and it found followers throughout the Arab world. The Ba'ath Party was founded and led mostly by Arab minorities because it was their only means to achieve power:
In Syria, its prominent leaders were from Christian minorities, and the Alawite minority came to power.
Why do Westerners/Zionists resort to promoting any ideology other than political Islam in the Arab world?
Because the Palestine cause is a sacred one in Islam due to the presence of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the only way to diminish the importance of liberating Palestine is to eliminate political Islam.
Hafiz Al-Assad, an Alawite, reached power, not by election by the Syrian people but by a coup.
He became president in 1971, after the coup in 1970. He was the minister of defense when Israel occupied the Golan Heights in 1967, and if you know any military or have common sense, you would understand that there is no way the Israeli army of the 70s would have been able to seize or advance towards the Golan Heights, for a simple reason: Golan heights rises to an average elevation of about 3,280 feet above sea level, with some areas reaching as high as 9,186 feet.
Its strategic importance lies in its elevation, which provides a commanding view over the surrounding areas, including northern Israel and southern Syria.
The presence of forces there prevents any advance by any invading army unless it is surrendered peacefully to the invading army, and this is what many Arab military experts and even politicians have said.
In the 70s and 80s there were arab reports that the surrender of the Golan Heights by Syrian Defense Minister Hafiz Al-Assad was in exchange for him becoming the president of Syria.
How does that make sense? He could just carry out a coup and become president without needing to make any concessions?
The legitimacy of ruler comes either internally through elections or popular mandate for the leadership, or through external (Western) recognition.And Israel and the West are one entity.
Prior to his coup, he fired most of the Sunni high-ranking officers (the majority in Syria) and surrounded himself with his minority Alawite officers, some of whom were not even in the army and were appointed and given promotions. This helped him seize power and later ensured the continuation of his rule and his son Bashar’s rule.
Where the Syrian regime became, by all accounts, an Alawite regime.
I have to keep this short, but let’s move forward to what happened after the Syrian opposition took power. How did the majority of Syrians, who lost over a million in documented massacres and had 13 million displaced (according to international agencies), respond?
They were furious, and some of them considered the 50 years of Assad family brutal regime rule and massacres as a war waged against the majority, which are Sunnis, by the Alawites.
And the new Syrian administration wanted, and still wants, to separate Alawites from the former regime in its official speeches and in its media, so that the revolution does not turn into a sectarian war driven by revenge.
For a simple reason, it will destroy the country they are trying to build. But what happened in the past two days?
Prior to the events that took place in the past few days in Syria: 1, The Iranian Fars News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC, published: The announcement of the establishment of the “Islamic Resistance Front in Syria.”
Simultaneously, on the 28th of February, another Alawite militia calling itself the “Syrian Coast Shield Brigade” announced its debut and declared hostilities against the Syrian government. In their first video statement, they said they are remnants of the former regime’s army.
the same personnel who were forgiven by the current Syrian administration in the “reconciliation centres” Right after these two statements, ambushes and attacks against Syrian police patrols started taking place along the coast (where the majority are Alawites).
SDF militias was involved also but through providing safe passages of weapons from Iraq to these newly created militias.
Syrian media reported yesterday that The Syrian army neutralizes groups affiliated with Hezbollah that attempted to infiltrate Syrian territory from Lebanon towards the Homs countryside.
The attacks by these remnants of the Assad regime began on checkpoints with small numbers of personnel, where: •On March 1, two were killed in Jaramana, Damascus.9, •On March 2, two Syrian army personnel were ambushed and killed by former Assad militias in Salhab, rural Hama
Then, the attacks escalated with larger numbers until they reached the point of seizing some state sites and hospitals in the coast. During these ambushes and attacks on Syrian security patrols and checkpoints, at least 100 Syrian police officers and army personnel were killed, and a number were kidnapped and then executed on video.
How did the Syrian government react?
These attacks angered the Syrian majority, who are Sunnis, and fueled their rage not only against the militias of the former regime, led by the Alawite minority, but also against their own government for providing Assad regime army personnel with safety in the “reconciliation centers,” only for them to carry out all these attacks.
The Syrian government responded by:
1.Declaring a curfew in all of the coast, with the aim of protecting civilians and identifying the militants, as most of the attackers were in civilian clothes. Those who fought in uniform, as seen in videos, removed their uniforms after they couldn’t hold their positions and left them on the streets.
2.Sending massive reinforcements to the coast and recapturing almost all of the taken positions and state institutions there (
3.Arresting a large number of members of the “Syrian Coast Brigade”
4.Killing a large number of the Assad remnant militias in clashes .
As stated by Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, there were some isolated violations by few members of the Syrian forces. [It is likely related to the execution of some militia members after clashes and their surrender.]
