Thousands of terrified Alawite Muslims fled across the border from Syria into Lebanon over the weekend as Syria’s new jihadi rulers began hunting them down and murdering them for allegedly collaborating with the regime of deposed dictator Bashar Assad.
The Syrian Defense Ministry initially claimed the slaughter was a legitimate military operation against Assad loyalists who had to be “neutralized” for “life to return to normal.” The Defense Ministry claimed the operation concluded after “achieving all the specified objectives.”
When watchdog groups reported over a thousand civilians have been killed since Thursday, interim Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa began talking about the revenge killings as a crime that would be investigated and punished.
“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” said Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda leader who has been attempting to reposition his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadi organization as a legitimate political party, in part because he wants Western nations to lift punitive sanctions against Syria.
“We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us,” Sharaa declared, insisting it was necessary for his forces to respond after Assad loyalists attacked security personnel in the coastal town of Jableh last week.
The Alawites are an esoteric sect of Shiite Islam. Both Bashar Assad and his father Hafez, founder of what would prove to be a fairly brief dynasty, were Alawites. Some other Syrians believe the Alawites were pampered by the brutal Assad governments to maintain their political support. The Alawites have been nervous about retaliation ever since Assad was driven into exile by the HTS-led insurgency in December.
The National reported on Monday that some 10,000 Alawites have fled to Lebanon over the past five days, causing headaches for security forces in the already troubled and dysfunctional Lebanon.
Among its many other problems, Lebanon has seen sporadic outbreaks of violence between Alawites and Sunni Muslims since the early days of the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011 and ended with Assad’s overthrow.
“The feeling now is that things could explode in the north at any moment,” a nervous Lebanese security source told The National.
The Alawite refugees appear to be gravitating to Tripoli, a Lebanese city whose population is about 80 percent Sunni Muslim. Some of the Alawites who have long dwelled in the city were outspoken Assad supporters, while some of Tripoli’s Sunni residents crossed the border into Syria to fight against Assad during the civil war.
Another grim omen is that gun runners have been hauling thousands of leftover firearms from the Syrian conflict back into Lebanon and selling them for cut-rate prices. If there is trouble between the Sunni and Alawites of Tripoli, it will likely involve exchanges of gunfire.
“Syria’s pro-government armed groups could decide to invade Lebanon from the north to pursue wanted Alawites, with the help of local allied groups,” another Lebanese security official warned, pointing to signs that Syrian militias have been massing along the Lebanese border to launch such an incursion.
Syrian Alawites spoke of fleeing through “roads full of corpses” on their way to Lebanon, as one anguished mother told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Sunday.
The woman said armed men stormed through her neighborhood in the coastal city of Baniyas while she and her children hid in their bathroom. A family of Christians, also fearful of persecution, helped them reach the Lebanese border.
“What crime did the children commit? Are they also supporters of the regime? We as Alawites are innocent,” she said.
Another Alawite living in Baniyas said a death squad augmented by “foreign” gunmen killed two of his brothers, his nephew, and his neighbor. He said his brother was gunned down in a mass execution on the rooftop of his apartment building with other residents.
Alawites in other neighborhoods said they were living under siege, without food, water, or electricity, while dozens of their neighbors were killed and dumped into mass graves.
The U.S. government urged Sharaa and his junta to protect Syrian minorities against “radical Islamist terrorists,” while Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the mass killings of Alawites have revealed the “true face” of Sharaa as a “jihadist terrorist from the al-Qaeda school.”
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – which have been cultivating good relations with the new Syrian government – backed Sharaa and blamed the killings on “outlaw groups.”
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