Syria Stirs Beneath a Hesitant Dawn, Six Months After Assad’s Fall, by Leila Al Shami – 9 June 2025

From The New Arab

Building a free and just Syria after five decades of totalitarian rule, in a region rife with instability and foreign meddling, was never going to be easy, writes Leila Al Shami 

In December, Syrians breathed a collective sigh of relief as the Assad regime was finally deposed. The following weeks were filled with celebration: the green flag of the revolution flew at gatherings across the country, and family chat groups buzzed with news of long-exiled relatives planning their return to Syria. Six months on, cautious optimism remains, but so do immense challenges.

The violence that erupted along the coast in March exposed the country’s fragility. Sparked by remnants of the Assad regime, including senior military and intelligence officials, targeted attacks were launched against transitional government security forces. In response, several militias and Islamist groups went on a rampage, carrying out indiscriminate sectarian reprisals, primarily against Alawites.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), 1,334 people were massacred in Latakia, Tartous, and Hama, including 60 children. Of these, 889 were killed by armed forces nominally aligned with the transitional authorities; the rest by regime loyalists. Reports emerged of sectarian incitement, kidnappings, forced displacement, and videos of Alawite civilians being humiliated.

The transitional government condemned the violence and set up a fact-finding committee, pledging to prosecute those responsible, but no results have yet materialised. Armed clashes with Druze factions in Jaramana, Sahnaya, and Sweida have deepened fears among minority communities. A campaign of disinformation, including AI-generated videos of massacres and recycled footage of past atrocities, is fueling this anxiety.

The open-source platform Verify Syria has traced much of the content to Iranian networks. Many Syrians have taken to social media to debunk false reports of their own deaths. Fabricated claims of Christian massacres, amplified by high-profile Western figures like Elon Musk, have been publicly refuted by religious leaders. Both Iran and Israel are exploiting communal fears for geopolitical leverage.

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Leila Al-Shami is co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War and co-founder of From the Periphery media collective.

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