Government security forces launched an “extensive combing operation” along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, the heartland of the Assads’ Alawite religious minority, after gunmen loyal to the old regime launched deadly ambushes on security forces in the town of Jableh, according to the state news agency SANA.
The battles in Jableh and the surrounding area overnight were among the fiercest since the new government’s forces overthrew Bashar al-Assad in early December, ending more than a decade of civil war in which the former president used torture, executions and chemical attacks to try to suppress an uprising by his own people.
The clashes reignited tensions across Syria, with throngs of supporters of the government taking to the streets in cities such as Hama and Homs in support of the security operation.
The developments added to a compounding series of political and security challenges facing the new government headed by former rebel leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, who is also negotiating with Kurdish-led militias controlling a swath of northeast Syria and contending with an Israeli demand—backed by military strikes—that it demilitarize southern Syria.
“Old regime remnants are taking advantage of the military and security capacity limitations of the Syrian government to try to derail Syria’s political transition,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House.
Reinforcements poured in Friday morning, with convoys of armed men riding in pickup trucks rolling into the city of Tartus, according to images published by SANA. Syrian authorities also imposed curfews until Saturday morning in the coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia, both Alawite-majority areas.
“We have fully mobilized our forces in the governorate, and we were able to absorb their attack in the Jableh countryside,” said Lt. Col. Mustafa Knefati, the head of the General Security Directorate in Syria’s Latakia governorate.
Highlighting the risk of wider unrest, a former commander from Assad’s forces, Brig. Gen. Ghiath Sulayman Dalla, said that he and other former military leaders had launched a “Military Council for the Liberation of Syria” that he said aimed to free “the entire Syrian territory from all occupying and terrorist forces.”
Dalla was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2020 for leading Syrian military forces during indiscriminate attacks on civilians including chemical attacks.
Sharaa’s forces, which numbered around 25,000 when Sunni Islamist rebels helped overthrow Assad last year, are thinly stretched trying to secure a country of about 24 million people. His government now faces the dilemma of cracking down on pro-Assad forces hard enough to prevent the emergence of a full-blown insurgency without alienating Alawites, who are anxious about their future and a series of attacks on their community by unidentified forces.
On Friday, residents of the coastal region and security analysts tracking the situation said armed men carried out beatings, arbitrary arrests and looting during the security campaign.
“The way it’s being handled carries massive risks,” said Nanar Hawach, a senior analyst for Syria at International Crisis Group. “If this continues, the honeymoon is destined to end, and localized insurgencies will likely start popping up. We were afraid of this kind of crackdown, because they’re going to fuel these insurgencies more.”
A spokesman for the government in Damascus didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged abuses.
Since the fall of Assad, Sharaa has consistently preached a message of reconciliation, and his government has investigated attacks on Alawites, who are worried about sectarian reprisals after half a century of Assad family dictatorship. Accounting for about 10% of Syria’s population, Alawites sometimes occupied privileged positions in the Assad regime but also fell victim to its repressive divide-and-conquer instincts, and many opposed the regime.
The clashes come after months in which the security situation in areas held by the new government has been relatively calm, ending years of war and civil strife during the conflict with the Assad government.
The current security operation will strain the new government’s forces, after Sharaa decided to dismantle the old regime’s military and security forces, attempting to merge opposition groups into a new army.
During the operation along the coast, security forces arrested Ibrahim Huweija, a former head of Air Force Intelligence, which under Assad was one of the most loyal and violent security agencies with a long and well-documented record of the use of torture and disappearances against the regime’s opponents, according to SANA.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two major Sunni Muslim powers in the Middle East, voiced support for the Syrian government in its battle against the insurgents. Sharaa visited Jordan and Egypt this week as a part of his effort to gain acceptance among Arab states.
