Continuing the purge of Syria’s Alawite minority that began with large scale massacres back in March, Interior Ministry security forces have almost entirely depopulated the metro Damascus neighborhood of al-Somaria, which was up until the raids, an Alawite majority area.
The raids began in late August, with security forces led by an Interior Ministry commander known as Abu Hudhayfah entering al-Somaria with guns and eviction orders. They went door to door and informed Alawite locals that they were living there illegally and demanded they prove otherwise. Those who couldn’t immediately document the ownership had their homes spray-painted with O’s, meaning they had to leave within 48 hours.
Some reported that they produced paperwork showing ownership, but that Abu Hudhayfah rejected the documentation out of hand, citing them as dating back to the Assad era. Assad was in power in Syria until December, so almost no one would have paperwork that is more recent than that.
In al-Somaria, security forces painted O’s on the homes of Alawites ordered to leave | image from Reuters
The Alawites in the neighborhood historically had some ties to the Syrian military, though it’s effectively a different military after the December regime change. The forces reportedly asked younger men if they’d ever served in the military, and detained them if they had.
The Interior Ministry forces created a temporary “police station” in a building in the neighborhood and brought the detainees there, where there were reports that many were beaten. Lawyer Ali Barakat, a member of the neighborhood committee, reported that he was also “slapped around” by the security forces.
Barakat reported that he’d been living in his house for 40 years and it was originally his father’s. The full scope of the purge is difficult to fully confirm, as the Interior Ministry is refusing comment on the matter, but reportedly some 22,000 people lived in al-Somaria before the raids began, and now the neighborhood committee estimates about 3,000 are left.
There were early reports that this purge was done contrary to the wishes of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) government, though there are no indications that anything has been done to stop it. Much like the massacres, this may just by the HTS retaining plausible deniability for what amounts to de facto policy.
In the 1970s, al-Somaria was known as al-Balan, but it was “appropriated” by Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and renamed Somaria after his son Somar. The area then became a neighborhood for former soldiers, and ultimately became mostly Alawites.
Since the Assad family were Alawites, many have interpreted the entire religious minority as having been in league with them, though Alawites have pointed out they weren’t always treated particularly well under the old government either. Though the HTS has promised an inclusive government in contrast to the old system, their first 9 months in power have seen multiple massacres of religious minorities and an increasingly aggressive attempt to frame anyone not sufficiently on board with their rule as “Assad remnants.”
