The Daily Populous Monday November 17th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by inews.co.uk and submitted by theipaper

A coalition of Syrian militias has called for 'liberation' of the country's coast, and mounted a significant challenge to Damascus

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The fragile calm that followed Bashar al-Assad’s ouster as Syrian president almost a year ago shattered in March when gruesome sectarian killings broke out along the country’s impoverished coast.

Since then, the region has remained tense, gripped by simmering violence, and an unfolding pattern of kidnappings and targeted killings alongside guerrilla strikes on Damascus’s security forces.

In response, President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government has flooded the coast with security forces, erecting dense networks of checkpoints and launching frequent sweeps through villages in search of regime holdouts.

There are now growing concerns that these could be signs of a re-emerging insurgency, as militias calling for the “liberation” of the coastal region have managed to partly wrestle it out of government control.

A deadly campaign carried out by government forces, militias, and volunteers across western Syria emerged after the first March attacks.

It ignited after armed groups, described by officials in Damascus as Assad loyalists, waged coordinated attacks on government positions, killing around 300 security personnel and hundreds of civilians.

The bloodshed was a pivotal moment for post-Assad Syria, signalling the first major organised insurgency by remnants of the ousted regime and exposing the unresolved sectarian rifts left in the wake of his overthrow.

The ensuing massacres killed 1,400 people, including women and children. The forces responsible carried out summary executions, burned homes and abused detainees.

Many survivors of this ugly, sectarian campaign recounted government forces and their allies demanding to know who in the area was Alawite (a syncretistic religious minority group in the Levant) and hurling anti-Alawite slurs.

These reprisal attacks against the Alawite community, the sect to which the Assad family belongs, served to heighten Alawite anxieties about life in the “New Syria”.

Destroyed residential area after clashes at Jableh district in Latakia in March (Photo: Izettin Kasim/ Anadolu via Getty)

“Whatever openness some within the community might have had toward Syria’s transitional leadership at the beginning began to wane almost immediately as security forces conducted ‘combing operations’ throughout Alawi neighbourhoods and communities,” Adam Coogle, a deputy director with the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, told The i Paper.

“These operations often turned violent and included serious abuses such as summary killings and outrages on the personal dignity of Alawis, and they culminated in the widespread massacres in March.”

He added that many Alawis had reported widespread arbitrary firings in both public and private sectors, along with an inability to find work due to safety concerns, leaving much of the community feeling excluded and unrepresented under Syria’s new authorities.

“Alawis I have spoken with feel stigmatised due to their association with the former government, and many feel that this perception is in some cases unfair or unwarranted – there were plenty of Alawis who disagreed with the direction of the country under Assad and were not sad to see him go,” he said.

“Nevertheless, many feel like they are now automatically under suspicion due to their sectarian affiliation.”

Destroyed buildings in Darayya on the outskirts of Damascus (Photo: Louai Beshara/AFP)

In March, Ghaith Dalla, a former top military figure under Assad, announced the formation of the Military Council for the Liberation of Syria and called for the “liberation” of Syria’s coast from “terrorist” forces.

Along with the Coastal Shield Brigade, this faction has managed to partly wrestle the coastal region out of Damascus’ control.

These factions have significantly challenged Damascus.

While the armed factions do “not appear to have an established organisational structure at this moment,” Dario Sabaghi, a Beirut-based journalist, told The i Paper, they had the potential to “evolve into a broader spoiler if not effectively addressed”.

While Iran was accused of backing the Alawite insurgency in March, no evidence has emerged of it playing a direct role. “Tehran seems to be still assessing what kind of relationship it can establish with the new government,” said Sabaghi.

He explained that it was uncertain whether “renewed insurgent activity might indirectly or directly benefit Iran in restoring its influence along the regional corridor it once relied upon”.

Karam Shaar, a non-resident senior fellow at the New Lines Institute think tank in the US, noted that the group’s political goals remained murky. “Some of them are just disenchanted, and I think many of them are just testing the waters,” he said, adding that the militant factions on the coast had a “very low” chance of ultimately succeeding.

Shaar pointed out that Syria’s Alawite community, which makes up around 10 per cent of the population, was dispersed across cities and villages and divided among different zones of control, and even along the coast they remained a minority.

He remarked that, unlike the Kurdish factions in the northeast that have Western support, and Druze elements in the south that have Israeli backing, the “Alawites are alone and there’s no way they could be supported by other countries because they do not have any pocket that they can control”.

Western governments, for their part, appear to be focused on Syria’s stability under a government more friendly to their own interests, and wanting to stop Russia from regaining influence.

Al-Sharaa was in Washington DC last week, meeting President Donald Trump, in a huge moment for the former militant, who was the first Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country’s independence in 1946.

It came only days after he was taken off the US’s global terrorist list (al-Sharaa was once a member of al-Qaeda and had a $10m (£7.6m) bounty on his head).

President Donald Trump with Syria’s President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the White House in Washington last Monday (Photo: Syrian Presidency press office via AP)

The formation of a breakaway state might not come down just to domestic divisions.

Karim Emile Bittar, a lecturer in Middle East Studies at Sciences Po Paris, said there was a “genuine risk of fragmentation” in Syria and Lebanon if Israel chooses to “go all the way” with its strategy of reshaping the Middle East by exploiting anxieties among minority groups.

He observed that most local and international powers opposed redrawing borders, aware it would “open a Pandora’s box”, but “many in Israel would like to redraw borders in the region”.

Either way, the uptick in bloodshed and sectarian killing has heightened anxieties in post-war Syria.

“It’s paramount that Syrian authorities provide real accountability for the abuses and violations that have taken place within Alawi communities, including possible leadership accountability,” said Coogle.

“And it’s also important the Alawis enjoy the right to political participation, including representation in decision-making organs and in parliament on par with other Syrians.”

SriMulyaniMegawati on November 16th, 2025 at 18:38 UTC »

No one is going to support them. It's the equivalent of supporting Nazis after WW2. The probability that an Alawite man commited war crimes is higher than a German during WW2. Addad's military was structured in such a way that the Alawites dominated elite combat units.

Secondly, to say these are impoverished is a gross mischaracterization of what happened during the Syrian Civil War. The Aalwaite region on the coast was the least impacted by the War. Aleppo looks like Gaza; this is what Latakia, their main city, looks like in 2025.

This is Aleppo

WPG431 on November 16th, 2025 at 17:01 UTC »

Over the long term, it's looking more and more like Syria will end up being be balkanized into 3 or 4 regions primarily along religious lines. Both Israel and Turkey will have ambitions here so eventually their heads will butt.

theipaper on November 16th, 2025 at 16:41 UTC »

The fragile calm that followed Bashar al-Assad’s ouster as Syrian president almost a year ago shattered in March, when gruesome sectarian killings broke out along the country’s impoverished coast.

Since then, the region has remained tense, gripped by simmering violence, and an unfolding pattern of kidnappings and targeted killings alongside guerrilla strikes on Damascus’s security forces.

In response, President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government has flooded the coast with security forces, erecting dense networks of checkpoints and launching frequent sweeps through villages in search of regime holdouts.

There are now growing concerns that these could be signs of a re-emerging insurgency, as militias calling for the “liberation” of the coastal region have managed to partly wrestle it out of government control.