'Are you Alawite?': Killings in Syrian village of Arza raise fears of endless sectarian violence

An eerie silence hangs over Arza, a mainly Alawite village in the rural countryside of Hama province in eastern Syria. All of its residents fled after armed men from neighbouring Sunni villages rampaged through here on Friday, killing 25.

The calm is broken only by the crying of Youmna, who has returned with her husband and child to collect what little remains of their belongings. They barely survived the massacre. The attackers stormed into their house and took away her brother, she says, her voice cracking and her soft blue eyes filling with tears.

“They told us they wanted to kill 500,000 Alawites as revenge,” she adds.

The Alawites are a religious minority in Syria to which the deposed president Bashar Al Assad belongs. His brutal rule was ended in December by a lightning rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist rebel group that now runs the new government in Damascus.

Youmna’s brother was taken to the village roundabout, where he was executed along with other residents. Empty shell casings litter the ground where the killings took place.

“They were asking, ‘Are you Alawite?’ – and then they randomly killed them,” Maher, another resident of Arza, told The National.

The attackers then looted the homes in Arza, ripping doors from their hinges, snatching air conditioners from walls, and stealing sofas, beds and televisions, leaving almost nothing behind. In one house, a few remaining belongings are strewn across the floor – a stroller, nappies, mattresses, and a wall hanging embroidered with the word “Allah”.

Youmna says she has no other information about the attack, glancing cautiously at the general security officer who accompanied The National during a visit to the village on Thursday. A second government official denied that the violence in the village was sectarian, dismissing it as motivated purely by theft, before asking journalists to leave.

Arza, Tawouin and Salhab in Hama province, Banias, Snoubar, Jableh and Mukhtaria on the coast – the list of Alawite-majority places targeted in sectarian revenge killings over the past week is long.

The flare-up followed a government crackdown on a nascent insurgency led by Assad loyalists, who launched a co-ordinated attack on security posts in the coastal area on March 6. The violence was the deadliest since Mr Al Assad’s removal and threatens to ignite a new cycle of retribution, dealing a significant blow to Syria’s new rulers who had vowed to restore stability after 14 years of civil war.

A preliminary report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights says that 961 people were killed between March 6 and March 13, mainly Alawites, in the coastal area and Hama province.

The war monitor reported that Assad loyalists killed at least 207 government security forces and at least 225 civilians during the insurgency, while groups aligned with the new government killed at least 529 civilians – including children, women and medical personnel – and disarmed fighters.

According to the SNHR, the attackers included local groups and unregulated factions nominally affiliated with the Ministry of Defence. Locals told The National they also saw foreign fighters, as well as Sunnis from neighbouring villages, seeking revenge on the Alawite minority for Mr Al Assad’s past atrocities.

While the ousted regime had many high-ranking officials from the Alawite community, most of the impoverished minority say they were not supporters of Mr Al Assad's brutal regime and also suffered under his iron rule.

Syria’s interim President, HTS leader Ahmad Al Shara, has vowed to punish those responsible for the mass killings of Alawites, “even among those closest to us”. He also announced the formation of a committee to investigate the massacres.

“There were fault lines in key areas of Syria – east of Hama and the coastal area, the suburbs of Damascus – where the wounds were really deep, while there was no transitional process to deal with underlying tensions,” said human rights lawyer Nadim Houry.

“It is as if [it was a] pressure cooker and the authorities just managed to put the lid on, and over the weekend it was lifted.”

'No one wants to return'

Maher said the attack on Arza began after the midday prayer on Friday, when hundreds of men from neighbouring Sunni villages, angered by the Assad loyalists' insurrection, rushed to the village.

The village checkpoint, set up by HTS, was quickly overwhelmed. Security forces tried to stop them but the men forced their way into the village, and the massacre began, he said.

He locked himself in his home and peered through the window, waiting for the worst. The attackers never reached his house and he managed to escape – but 25 other residents did not. Pictures shared by survivors show bodies covered in white sheets lying in a pit.

“I would show you the mass grave, but I’m too scared to go,” Maher said. “No one wants to return to the village.”

Maher said the perpetrators were the same as those who killed 10 people in Arza in January – men of the influential former rebel fighter Sheikh Abou Jaber, who returned from Idlib to his home in the neighbouring Sunni-majority village of Khattab in December.

In Khattab, Abou Jaber told The National he did not take part in the killings and that he had given up all his weapons. But he confirmed his presence at the massacre.

He said that “protesters” initially took residents to the roundabout with the aim of driving them out of Arza. “But then people whose families had been killed arrived, and they opened fire,” he said.

Abou Jaber claimed that the people of Arza had committed countless atrocities during Mr Al Assad's rule, including cold-blooded killings, torture and theft.

“Arza's residents killed everyone, humiliated everyone, took everyone’s money, destroyed and burned everyone’s houses, because they were the ones who held power under the regime,” he said.

He said that while he regretted the killings in Arza, revenge from those who had been affected was inevitable. “Their fathers were killed, their brothers were killed, their sons were killed – what do you expect? To bring flowers and put olive branches on it?” he said.

Abou Jaber does not differentiate – old or young, everyone in Arza is guilty, he said, even if they were not involved in attacks. “Arza is not a supporter of the regime – they are the regime,” he said. He drew the line only at women and children – if they were killed, he said, it was “by mistake”.

“Arza residents brought this on themselves by breaking the roof of stability that was given to them by the authorities,” he added, referring to the Assad loyalist insurrection. He was not able to say whether Arza's residents took part in the pro-Assad insurgency.

Residents said regime loyalists in Arza had left the village after Mr Al Assad was ousted, fearing reprisals.

Abou Jaber said the killings had stopped because the new authorities requested it. “I follow my state order, with our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice for you, Shara,” he said, echoing a slogan once chanted by Assad supporters.

“Still, I don’t advise Arza residents to come back. We’ve been displaced for 13 years – they can wait a few months or years,” he added.

Displacement, mass executions, humiliation, looting – the recent atrocities mirror those of the former regime, with victims becoming perpetrators and indiscriminately lashing out at a minority that had also long been marginalised by the former president. Arza is by all measures a disenfranchised village rather than the home of a privileged group.

“There is an urgency to begin a credible process for transitional justice, so that everyone feels they have mechanisms to air their grievances, without that, the conflict will continue to simmer waiting for any occasion to blow,” Mr Houry said.

"There is a narrow window of opportunity for the government to act, but if they don't, the alternative will be terrible."

• Remittance charges will be tackled by blockchain

• UAE's monumental and risky Mars Mission to inspire future generations, says minister

• Could the UAE drive India's economy?

• News has a bright future and the UAE is at the heart of it

• Architecture is over - here's cybertecture

• The National announces Future of News journalism competition

• Round up: Experts share their visions of the world to come