These articles are written in collaboration with Syrian analysts whose names must remain undisclosed for their security in the New Al Qaeda Syria, which is governed by foreign intelligence agencies.
Is Syria inexorably heading towards partitioning? Official statements from involved predatory states like Turkey suggest that “preserving Syria’s unity and territorial integrity” is important but appear hollow when viewed through the lens of events on the ground since the December 2024 overthrow of the Syrian Government.
We are seeing massacres of Syrian ethnic minorities from the north to the south. Israel has recently bombed military installations in Homs, Central Syria, and Latakia on the coast to prevent the restoration of Syrian defence capability and any military expansion by Turkey deeper inside Syria. Russia is re-establishing its occupation of Syrian territory in collaboration with Israel and with the tacit permission of Washington, which sees it as an opportunity to withdraw American military from the northeast. Israel is expanding further into southern Syria on a daily basis, preparing the ground for David’s Corridor, which will link to the Kurdish ‘autonomous region’ on the northeastern border with Iraq. Israel, Britain, Turkey, and the US have infested Damascus with their intelligence agencies. Gulf Arab states are plunging the country into debt enslavement with investment projects designed to plunder the country even further and to increase poverty of the masses reeling from 14 years of war, energy deprivation, and sanction-induced poverty and starvation.
Demographic Change — The Al Qaeda Settlement Pogroms
Entire Alawite villages in the countryside of Latakia and Tartous in the coastal regions have been ethnically cleansed. Foreign Takfiri fighters have taken possession of these homes and villages. According to sources inside Syria, there is talk of granting these foreigners Syrian citizenship. Sources say they will be given the IDs of deceased persons with new national identity numbers. It is a de facto settlement process to change the demographic in Syria from an inclusive, secular society to a Takfiri caliphate comprising the largest possible area within the control of the Al Qaeda/Jolani regime.
The incidents of Alawites being driven from their homes and restrictions imposed upon their livelihoods; arbitrary dismissal from their workplaces began within two months of Jolani coming to power. Now, the pogroms are expanding to Damascus (the capital city) and the surrounding countryside.
Al Sumariyah is an area in the suburbs of Damascus which is home to more than 1,200 Alawite families. Some were officers in the former Syrian Arab Army. The land was granted to them in the 1980s by the Ministry of Defence to build housing for the officers. Later, many Alawite, Sunni, and other poor civilians began constructing houses around those residences. While these houses had not been given official planning permission, they were eventually recognised and given a licence based on proof of ownership of electricity and water meters, with taxes collected by the Damascus Finance Directorate.
I have often been told that more than 60% of Damascus and its countryside consists of similar informal housing, subject to the same mechanism of buying, selling, and ownership proof, due to a historic housing shortage in Damascus and the high cost of building projects and delays caused by the regime change war that began in 2011.
Jolani’s administration has used this precarious system as a pretext to impose demographic change. Residents are being notified to evacuate so that the areas can be demolished to make way for alleged urban redevelopment. Residents are being systematically driven from their homes with no alternative housing plans in place. The forced evacuations are being done by disparate militias affiliated with the Jolani regime.
On 27 August, a military faction-led Abu Hudhayfah stormed Al-Sumariyah in rural Damascus and ordered residents to evacuate. According to testimony from a Damascus source:
Al-Sumariyah is divided into Saraya Housing, which had been allocated to members of the former Syrian army and had already been vacated about a month earlier peacefully without objection, and the ‘Industry’ and ‘Martyrs’ areas, which are civilian neighborhoods inhabited mostly by retirees and tenants, alongside some homeowners. During the raid, the faction members — according to residents’ testimonies — looted household contents, raided homes that contained only women without judicial search warrants, stole some of their phones, and searched others. A video filmed by one woman showed the faction’s members assaulting them physically.
A crippling siege was imposed on the neighbourhood. Electricity and water were cut off. Entry and exit from the area was prohibited unless people were evacuating permanently. Many left after receiving death threats.
On 3 September, an explosive device detonated in a parked car at the entrance to Al-Mezzeh 86 neighbourhood, which is also a predominantly Alawite neighbourhood in Damascus city centre.
Al-Mezzeh 86 has traditionally been inhabited by the families of officers and conscripts in the former Syrian Arab Army. It was originally state-owned land. Unlicensed houses dominated the landscape, as in Al Sumariyah. After the outbreak of the Zionist bloc war against Syria in 2011, the area saw a construction increase due to the influx of displaced Syrians from several provinces, fleeing the sectarian violence by Western proxy groups. This changed the demographic, with Syrians from all backgrounds entering the neighbourhood. It has remained a traditional Alawite zone but inclusive of all Syrians since 2011.
Following the events of December 2024, tribal Bedouins began purchasing property in the area; this increased after the massacres in Suwayda that have been written about in previous articles. Alawites sold their homes for less than their actual value, fearing recriminations from the hostile factions now taking dominance in the area. According to friends living in the area, the car bomb was the trigger for Jolani’s ‘security’ forces to sweep the area and begin a campaign of intimidation and arrests that will force evacuation and enable further settlement by factions aligned with Jolani’s regime.
The targeted car belonged to Alawite lawyer Sana Muhammad, head of the Aerobic Sports Federation. Responsibility was taken by the faction Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, a group that acts on behalf of Jolani’s intelligence complex when violent events are required to justify or facilitate increased demographic change. Since the explosion, the Jolani intelligence forces have entered the area, demanding ownership documents, proof of sources of income and employment, and forcing residents to declare if they had previously served in the Syrian Arab Army.
The ‘People’s Assembly’ and Currency Manipulation
The number of seats in the New Syria People’s Assembly will be 210, distributed among the provinces according to population. Of these, 70 members will be appointed by Jolani. The remaining members will be elected through subcommittees selected by the Supreme Election Committee appointed by Jolani in accordance with a decree he issued in June 2025.
This process effectively marginalises the regions of East Euphrates and Suwayda by excluding them from the new People’s Assembly. What the Syrian state media describe as ‘elections’ are a farce, and exclude entire swathes of the Syrian population.
The exclusion of Suwayda (Druze) and East Euphrates (Kurds and Arabs) is claimed by Jolani to be because of ongoing conflict in these areas. The reality is that it is designed to impose and entrench division among Syrians, and to give this division nominal constitutional legitimacy by force.
Then came the controversial decision by the Jolani financial arm to replace Syrian currency and to remove zeros from the banknotes, according to a report from Reuters:
Two of the bankers and another Syrian source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Syria had agreed with Russian state-owned money printing firm Goznak to produce the new notes.
They said the deal was finalised when a senior Syrian delegation visited Moscow in late July. Goznak, which also printed Syria’s currency during the Assad era, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Syrian economy is in a catastrophic free-fall. Previous articles have outlined the Iraq-style resource theft and crony capitalist projects that will further deepen the misery for the majority of the population. To take this step in such a volatile environment seems designed to plunge Syria deeper into economic collapse and soaring inflation, so why is Jolani accelerating these policies? A financial analyst in Syria told me:
It seems Al-Jolani’s time is running out — he knows it and must do what is required of him as quickly as possible: entrench demographic change and impose Syria’s partition as the only inevitable solution. The further collapse of the economy and changing the currency in his areas of control will eliminate the value of the Syrian pound in Suwayda and East Euphrates, excluding them from the state’s economy. Meanwhile, the economic deterioration in major Sunni areas like Aleppo and Damascus will ultimately enforce Turkish economic dominance as the alternative. In the areas under the control of the SDF and Suwayda, the Dollar, and likely the Israeli Shekel, will become dominant.
It is also important for Jolani to create a legislative body, even if only nominally, to ratify any agreement he wants to sign, with Turkey or Israel. He must do this quickly before heading to the UN General Assembly in New York on 24 September, where he will very likely meet with Israeli officials, including Netanyahu. The members of this body must be loyalists to ensure no objections. This explains the rush to establish the People’s Assembly under the control of Jolani while promoting it in the media as an ‘elected parliament’.
Ongoing Takfiri Violations and the Gathering Storm
Since December 2024, Syria has been wracked by ongoing violations, targeting minorities and any Sunni Muslim detractors of the Jolani regime massacres, kidnaps, child and women abductions, ritual humiliation, and ethnic cleansing pogroms across the country.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 874 deaths, including 806 civilians, during August alone in different parts of Syria. These numbers are always much lower than reality and do not reflect the general abuse that is a daily occurrence for the majority of Syrians. As one source pointed out to me:
Between December 8, 2024, and September 6, 2025, the death toll exceeded 10,000 — more than 3,000 of them sectarian-related. This is only what the Observatory could document, while sources on the ground speak of numbers several times higher. The persistence of retaliatory behaviours with sectarian and political overtones underscores the scale of ongoing human rights violations in Syria, which not only claim lives but also deepen social divisions and undermine any attempt to establish peace or national reconciliation. All of this will inevitably lead to an explosion that many believe is imminent — perhaps in the coming weeks or months.
Suwayda has not only been excluded from the People’s Assembly. The salaries of state employees have been suspended. Electricity is still cut off. Druze students are unable to attend universities in other provinces. The province is still under siege and is being forcibly starved by the Jolani regime. All roads into the province are blocked by the Jolani militia. Only limited food and humanitarian aid is being allowed to trickle through the blockade. Just enough to keep the population alive. More than thirty villages were completely razed to the ground during the Jolani-led massacres.
These Zionist-style measures have led to the formation of the National Guard in Sweida. This is considered the first nucleus of a unified military bloc in the province to defend the community should the ceasefire not hold, or the humanitarian situation deteriorate further. The Guard was launched from the home of Zionist-aligned Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, who made the following statement:
There is support for the National Guard, which represents the Druze military arm. The guarantor states asked us to form this army. We have prepared for all scenarios. We are moving toward our survival, for as a Druze community we have faced many genocides throughout history, including the infamous massacre in Antioch (during the Ottoman era), and what we have recently faced is the same pattern.
In parallel, we see the formation of new organised armed factions in the Syrian Coastal region. According to Syrian sources, there will be an announcement of a Military Council in the area and there are increasing signs of local forces organising within a structured military framework.
A new armed group calling itself Men of Light… Saraya al-Jawad announced the beginning of its operations against the Takfiri elements in the Syrian coast, claiming it was “revenge for the souls of martyrs”. The group began posting short video clips on its Facebook page, created on 2 August, one day after Syrian Arab Army Day. Their mission: to force the Jolani militia to leave the coastal region.
On 3 September, the group posted a video claiming responsibility for an operation targeting a car belonging to Al-Jolani’s General Security, carried out on 19 August. Local pages from the Coastal region had reported an explosion in Jableh on that date. The State-controlled SANA agency reported that a military vehicle from the ‘New Syria’ military was attacked on 14 August by “remnants of the former regime, in the Latakia countryside”.
Local Resistance Forces and Their External Backers
The Syrian Coastal region is representative of the external power games that are vying for influence inside Syria since the fall of Damascus.
Turkey is working to recruit Alawite factions through characters like Khaled Al Ahmad and Fadi Saqr. Israel and the Zionist bloc are working to prevent any neo-Ottoman expansionism beyond the northern Syrian territories. Russia is consolidating its bases on the coast, the northeast, and potentially in the south, all in collaboration with Israel.
Al Ahmad was once an advisor to former President Bashar Al Assad before joining Jolani’s team. Having allegedly assisted in the overthrowing of Assad, he has since returned to Syria alongside Jolani.
In the summer of 2021, Al Ahmad travelled through Turkey to Idlib via Turkish mediators to meet his old school friend, the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, who embraced him warmly, calling him “my dear brother”, according to The Economist, which had the first exclusive interview with the mysterious Al Ahmad after Assad’s fall. The newspaper reported that Jolani and Al Ahmad spent the entire day at Jolani’s headquarters in Idlib, eating shawarma, reminiscing about their childhood, and discussing post-Assad scenarios.
Jolani briefed his friend on plans for Damascus reconstruction, while Al-Ahmad promised to use his connections to herald a new future to Syria. His initial idea was to establish some form of federalism with a new regime in Damascus, while maintaining Jolani’s control over Idlib. With Turkish approval for Jolani to seize Aleppo in November 2024, according to The Economist, Al-Ahmad conveyed a message to senior Assad army commanders in Aleppo that Jolani’s forces would not attack them if they withdrew, which led to the rapid fall of Aleppo.
According to people I have spoken to, both inside and outside Syria, Al Ahmad does not care about the fate of the Alawite sect. He is an opportunist seeking power and exploiting the situation for his own economic benefit. Al Ahmad was included, by Jolani, in the hastily formed committee to preserve civil peace that has failed to bring any of the coastal massacre perpetrators to justice.
Al Ahmad’s Alawite identity has provided the opportunity for Jolani and his Turkish backers to attempt infiltration of the Alawite community in order to recruit some, neutralise others, and to sow division among them. This is where Fadi Saqr also becomes pivotal to the success of such operations.
Fadi Malik Ahmad, known as Fadi Saqr, was the commander of the National Defense Forces in Damascus and closely connected to Khaled al-Ahmad (no family relation despite the shared surname). Saqr was accused of committing violations during his leadership, including the infamous Tadamon neighbourhood massacre. Jolani granted Saqr immunity after he also helped Al Ahmad to orchestrate the fall of the former Syrian Government. A Syrian source connected to the Coastal region told me:
Today, Fadi Saqr coordinates with Khaled al-Ahmad in trying to infiltrate the Alawite community — either by paying money or persuading them that he protects them due to his ties with the de facto authority in Damascus. Private Alawite sources told me that the so-called ‘Political Council of Central and Western Syria’ is nothing but a façade for a group of corrupt figures funded by Fadi Saqr, who works for Turkish intelligence, aiming to create chaos in the coast and thus a pretext for Turkish military intervention at the request of some Alawites. However, most Alawites hate Turkey more than they hate Al-Jolani, despite everything he has done to them.
Rumours are also rife among the Alawite communities that preparation is ongoing of fighters funded by Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf. Makhlouf was at the centre of controversy under the former government when Asma Al Assad seized his assets in his telecommunications business, Syriatel. Makhlouf is Bashar Al Assad’s maternal cousin. The rumours remain fluid at the moment, but there is talk of between 50–150,000 fighters and the return of former SAA General Suhail Hasan or ‘The Tiger’, who was always linked closely with Russia inside Syria.
The Russia link is important, and it would be easy to speculate that none of this preparation would be feasible without Russian and perhaps even combined Russian-Israeli backing behind the scenes. Sources indicate that Makhlouf and Hasan are biding their time to launch a major offensive, but they also indicate that September/October may be the opportune moment, coinciding with the Jolani appearance at the UNGA. Any campaign to secure secession on the Coast would require Russian military and political willingness to protect the enclave and to prevent Turkish influence or occupation. This, in turn, would require the green light from Israel and Washington.
Syrian social media channels are also intimating the possibility of intense Russian/Israeli coordination, not only on the coast, but in Suwayda and the northeast:
A Syrian military source close to Damascus said that Russia and Israel are working on creating a joint military structure to carry out an operation on the Syrian coast. This operation could be either limited and quick, or prolonged, as in Suwayda. A source who wished to remain anonymous told Erem News that there has been intense coordination between the Russian and Israeli sides recently.
In this context, Hanan Geffen, a former commander of Israel’s Spy Unit 8200, said on i24News:
There will be events either in the Kurdish areas or in the Alawite areas of Tartous in the coast. There are extremist forces there — look at Israeli airstrikes in Tartous and Latakia countryside. There are forces not controlled by the new regime, and there will be confrontation. The Americans will then say: this is not a coincidence, there is a real problem with this regime, and everything will stop — aid to Syria will stop, support for the Syrian administration will change. Today, the Qataris are paying salaries, but this will change. We see only diplomacy, conferences, and smiles — but nothing real is happening on the ground.
The question remains: to what extent is Jolani actually facilitating these demographic changes and the partitioning of Syria? The ongoing violations and fracturing of Syrian society is a deliberate policy of Jolani, not a mistake. He is being advised by the Zionist bloc Intelligence agencies, including MI6, embedded in Damascus. Jolani is doggedly maintaining a path that will inevitably alienate all Syrian minorities and exclude them from central governance. Rather than stupidity on Jolani’s part, it appears to be a carefully constructed plan leading to the partitioning of Syria, in stages. The enforcement of conditions so miserable that the population will accept partition as the only route towards survival, economic recovery and dignity.
Kurdish Factions: A Force To Be Reckoned with
The confrontation between the Kurdish factions, backed by the US and Israel, is also gathering momentum. Turkey has deployed significant military reinforcements to the villages of Qaraqozaq east of Aleppo, along with a convoy including artillery, heavy equipment, and jamming systems to the Tishrin Dam front. This coincides with Jolani mobilising Takfiri reinforcements to the same frontline, which has witnessed military tensions and sporadic skirmishes since the fall of the previous Syrian Government. Meanwhile, Turkey negotiates with the Kurds through Jolani. The withdrawal of Jolani from the Paris talks could well be an attempt by Turkey to prevent a reemergence of French influence in the area.
Talks between Jolani and the Kurdish factions have yielded no success with regards to the integration of Kurds into the Syrian central state. Jolani represents Turkish demands in the discussions: the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its integration into the ‘New Syria’ military infested by Syrian and foreign Takfiri elements and the abandonment of SDF zones of influence. In exchange, the Kurdish component will be recognised and permitted participation in Parliament and Ministries. The Kurdish language will be recognised. No different to the policies proposed by Assad during negotiations with the Kurds. The Kurds have refused these conditions in favour of maintaining a military force under the umbrella of the Takfiri Ministry of Defence, with negotiations over resource-sharing in the oil-rich East Euphrates region.
Integration of Kurds into the ‘New Syria’ military is almost impossible due to the fundamental ideological divide. Prominent Turkish-backed Syrian National Army figures like Muhammad al-Jassim (Abu Amsha) and Abu Hatim Shaqra are implicated in grave human rights abuses against Kurds, which renders integration even more unlikely.
For Turkey, there is a potential conflict between Erdogan and the deep state. Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan see a Syrian Kurdish entity as a future threat to Turkey’s national security and believe that the peace deal with the Kurdish PKK’s leader Abdullah Öcalan has not yielded any benefits. The real decision makers in the SDF factions are PKK cadres from the Qandil Mountains. The Turkish deep state perceive that the entire region is heading towards the redrawing of borders according to the emerging zones of influence and control. Thus, Turkey would benefit from tolerating a special status for the SDF in northeast Syria, perhaps even cooperating with it and driving a wedge between the SDF and Israel, to prevent Zionist expansion via the David’s Corridor.
As one Syrian source told me:
I believe Turkey’s deep state is recalculating after losing southern Syria to Israeli influence, and with no positive signs of the Alawites accepting Turkish protection in the coast, given their bloody history with Ottoman rule. Turkish influence will be limited to Aleppo, Idlib, and some border areas. Especially since influence from Damascus to Homs and Hama has become shared with the Gulf States, who have the wealth to invest while Turkey does not. Turkey risks emerging a failure after investing heavily in the regime change war against Syria. It is likely that Erdogan will try to push for military conflict in the northeast but this will, likely, further compound his failure to unify Syria under the neo-Ottoman expansionist campaign. Even the potential to use Tribal factions against the SDF are doomed to fail because the tribes in the SDF areas of influence are aligned with the US and Saudi Arabia, unlikely to turn against the SDF or allow Turkish influence to gain traction.
Pockets of conflict within Syria are simmering or near boiling point, and Jolani is doing nothing to actually extinguish the flames of dissent and division. This indicates that his reign is nearing completion once his role is fulfilled. The Syrian street is also a brewing powder keg, with even Sunni communities privately condemning Jolani’s policies. Syria is hurtling towards a real civil war along externally-engineered fault lines. If the Coastal Alawite groups do rise up, there will be even greater bloodshed than we have seen thus far. Jolani has been deliberately deploying foreign Takfiri elements to the region and indoctrinating, recruiting and training Sunni Muslim youth in the province. Syria faces yet another cycle of violence and bloodshed that will not be contained in the Coastal region. It will spread like wildfire to all other zones of division and confrontation.
Jolani must know that this final descent into national conflict and factional collision will signal the end of his role; he will not be able to restrain his rabid Takfiri militia once they are unleashed. The collective backlash will be immense, even against the Syrian factions that have stood by while Jolani has destroyed the inclusive structure of the Syrian state. Here would lie the spark of a perpetual Syrian civil war that would only serve the interests of the external forces poised to carve the country up into zones of influence and occupation, not the interests of the Syrian people or the region as a whole.
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