Tartus After the Fall of the Regime: Initial Impressions

A statue of Hafez al-Assad on the cement factory on the Tartus-Baniyas road (c) Ammar Azir

This paper attempts to identify the features of the new era in Syria by describing and analyzing the first days and weeks in the predominantly Alawite coastal city of Tartus after the sudden fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December 2024. From the first moments of the announcement of the fall, we started working hard to document violations, examine the actions of the armed factions and the new administration in Tartus city and countryside, verify the course of daily life, and survey people's opinions and general mood to answer questions about the shape of the new era and its relationship with a region that was considered loyal to the regime. We sought to answer questions such as: What about the security situation and the fear of chaos? Are there signs of stability? What is the form of this stability and what is the nature of the new regime? In this paper, we try to describe the dynamics of transformation, control, and management of the Tartus province's affairs nearly a month after the fall of the regime, as some features of the next phase began to emerge.

The entry of HTS into the city

The news of Bashar al-Assad's departure from Syria in the early hours of 8 December 2024 coincided with orders from senior military leaders and army staff commanders to lay down their arms and leave the barracks and military units. The sun rose on military barracks empty of their fighters, with some senior officers having fled the country, and others hiding in the countryside and villages. Sumer Ali, a former captain in a supply battalion near the city of Tartus, said: “The commander of our battalion, a brigadier general, left at 2 a.m., followed by two colonels, and I stayed in the battalion with the officers and personnel until 5 a.m. when the general called me and told me that the regime had fallen and that we had to evacuate the barracks and go to our homes immediately.”1The interview with the former regime army captain took place in one of the villages near Tartus at his place of residence on 10 January 2024. When asked about the individual weapons and weapons of the battalion, he replied: “As soon as the personnel and officers heard that the regime had fallen, everyone started stealing and looting all the weapons, fuel, and equipment in their hands within the battalion”. He also confirmed that all the officers and personnel in the battalion had stolen and looted everything they could find. Sumer Ali also confirmed that all military units in Tartus were robbed and looted, first by soldiers and later by civilians, who stole fuel and all the equipment that fell into their hands. I witnessed a large number of civilians looting an air defense battalion about 10 kilometers from Tartus.

The news of the fall of the regime also coincided with young men and women from Tartus neighborhoods marching toward the statue of former President Hafez al-Assad in the southern suburb of Tartus and tearing it down. According to eyewitnesses, most of those present were from Alawite neighborhoods close to the statue's location, reflecting the great discontent of all Syrians with the former regime and its symbols from the first moments of the fall.

According to people from the Khirbet al-Maaza area, the first convoy of forces of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered Tartus city center at around 7 a.m. on 8 December, consisting of three cars full of armed men. Some reported that a Russian military police patrol was accompanying them, but we were unable to verify the accuracy of this information due to conflicting testimonies. They toured the city briefly and then left less than an hour later, after leaving formal guards at the governorate building and the Central Bank branch. More forces were deployed inside the city in the following hours.

The two issues stood out in the first moments following the fall of Assad, namely:

  1. The news of the fall of the regime spread simultaneously with the escape of Bashar al-Assad. People received confirmation of the news in the morning, and there was no resistance from the regime's forces, who were proactive since early morning by publicly cursing the president of the regime and his symbols.
  2. In conjunction with the news of the fall of the regime, rumors spread that HTS forces would search Alawite homes for photos and symbols of the regime and secret books of the Alawite sect. This led to a wave of burning photos and symbols of the regime a few hours after its fall in all Alawite villages.

Ensuring security between reassuring rhetoric and violations

Several government institutions and commercial stores were looted on the first day the regime fell. According to what has been documented so far, these were: The traffic police branch in Tartus, the Tartus municipality building, the tobacco stores of businessman Hamed Hassan (who had a monopoly over the tobacco trade in cooperation with the Assad family), and a few shops belonging to influential people and officials, as HTS forces secured the governorate building and the financial area from the first hours of the fall. On the second day, the looting concentrated on the outskirts of Tartus, where a bread bakery, a tobacco house, Hamed Hassan's tobacco stores, and the mate store of the Kabbour Trading were looted. The governorate did not witness cases of looting, reprisals, or killings in the first two days, but sporadic security incidents occurred later and were quickly controlled and their repercussions were minimized.

The most prominent security incident was on 24 December when two HTS vehicles were ambushed in the town of Khirbet al-Maaza, near Safita. The ambush was carried out by supporters of General Military Prosecutor Mohammed Kanjo and 20 of his members. The HTS forces then cordoned off the town, combed its surroundings, arrested about 10 young men from the town, and pursued and arrested others in the following three days. The exact number of deaths on both sides and the number of detainees was not known. The new interior minister, Mohamed Abdel Rahman, said that 14 members of the security forces of HTS and three militants were killed on the first day, but testimonies from residents gave higher numbers that cannot be confirmed. During the encirclement of the town, the HTS forces brought in food aid to the residents and agreed with them to hand over weapons, which brought the situation under full control quickly, according to residents in Khirbet al-Maaza, many of whom spoke to the author.

The HTS forces dealt professionally with the civilians by being cautious in their responses and how they dealt with the population in Tartus. Most of their messages were centered around the following issues:2I was personally present at many events where members and commanders from the HTS addressed the public. I also heard testimonies from other events, all of which carried the same observations. The representative of the HTS in Banias said in a meeting with the Banias National Assembly, which I attended, “Civil society organizations are the ones that frame the work of the authority, and we need these organizations badly.”

  1. Most speakers emphasize reassuring the population and minorities regarding their security, private property, civil rights, and the right to express opinions and demonstrate.
  2. The speeches included promises of economic prosperity and a quick solution to the living conditions that had reached the point of famine in most areas of the former regime.
  3. There were no direct calls to the public to organize socially, civilly, politically, and based on their community; their speeches included clear references to the freedom of political work, and calls to the population through communication media to start working on “building Syria.”
  4. The HTS forces refrained from personal contact with any person from the city and requested that anyone who wanted to communicate with them must necessarily be a representative of a civil, civic, or political organization. However, the former provincial council, which was tasked by the HTS with managing the province's emergency affairs, communicated with personalities and dignitaries of the areas to resolve matters, such as reporting cases of theft or a few violations by HTS members, such as attempts to break the shelves of alcoholic drinks in shops or intimidate their owners, or reporting the loss of bread in a certain area.

Despite the official rhetoric, during the policing operations in Tartus as well as during the presence of the HTS forces in the city and its countryside, many violations lacked proper and adequate documentation due to the absence of civilian organizations concerned with such violations and the absence of “government” oversight. This includes some violations that were confirmed through the testimonies of residents and others that remained unknown in terms of who perpetrated them. However, residents' fears have increased with the rise of such violations, which makes the general situation of the population in a state of fear and anticipation, given the hardline background of the HTS factions, which carry an ideology hostile to the minorities in Tartus, where Alawites constitute about 80% and Christians 10%, according to preliminary estimates of activists from the governorate.

Appointing a governor and starting to run daily affairs

On 8 December 2024, HTS appointed the Salvation Government, which was operating in the Idlib areas and was affiliated with HTS factions, to replace the regime's government and was called the Interim Government. The next day, HTS appointed a caretaker with full powers of the governor in Tartus, similar to other Syrian provinces, and the appointments of the caretakers came from “trusted” Sunni sheiks known for their hostility to the previous regime. Sheikh Anas Ayrot, who hails from the city of Banias, was appointed governor in Tartus. Ayrout was at the forefront of the Islamist protests in Baniyas when, in 2011, he asked regime authorities to segregate male and female students in schools. Ayrout quickly appointed a governorate council of former officials and began working on all service levels in the province, but the “leadership” replaced him with Ahmad al-Shami less than a week later and appointed him governor of Tartus, for reasons it did not explain. Al-Shami continued to work in the same manner.

The new administration was characterized by its quick response to daily issues and worked hard to facilitate work, transportation, and trade, and lower the prices of basic foodstuffs., which helped stabilize the exchange rate of the dollar, which witnessed a significant rise before and after the fall, reaching 30,000 lira and stabilizing after 10 days at 14,000 lira, only to stabilize a month later at 11,000 lira. A notable example of rapid response and intervention is the issue of securing fuel and determining the prices of transportation and bread after the liberalization of energy prices, which have risen significantly.

On this topic, we collected the following testimonies:

  • Transportation: “We started working on the second day after the fall, and we were charging 5,000 lira for a passenger's fare inside the city, but the governorate reduced it the same day to 3,000 lira, and everyone complied with it, with the availability of diesel at 14,400 lira per liter. Today the transportation lines are witnessing normal movement with buses available for all lines,” said Ali Mohammed, 54, a private minibus driver working in Tartous City. With the availability of diesel, the transportation sector witnessed a significant increase in prices of about 400% on all transportation lines, noting the availability of buses and the disappearance of congestion.
  • Bread: Bread was distributed throughout the province for free on the first and second days, and the new price was set on the third day (2,000 lira for a package, up from 650 lira), and the so-called smart card was canceled (the previous regime used the smart card to supply bread to each family according to the number of its members, and each area designated an agent to transport the bread from the designated oven without taking into account quality). The bakeries were freed from work restrictions, while the price of bread increased by 250%. The freedom to buy bread from any bakery increased the quality of the bread.
  • Other basic services: Services such as water, communications, education, and health did not witness any negative or positive changes but continued to work according to their established mechanisms. The governor and the operations room management communicated from the first day with the directors of these services and summoned them to work and follow up with employees normally while keeping the directors of some directorates and water, and young people from the HTS were appointed as observers of the work of these directorates and supervise the directors of departments and other employees. This helped to conduct a preliminary assessment of the work of these directorates and their mechanisms through questionnaires distributed to employees or through direct meetings with employees in their departments.3Customs and electricity sector employees emphasized this, and other sectors have also adopted digital questionnaires, such as the education sector.

The revival of political life

As soon as the Assad regime fell, opponents and activists in Tartus began expressing their joy at the fall of the tyrant on Facebook, and within a few days, these actors began holding consultative meetings to establish political and community organizations. However, most of the activists and opponents were inclined to work within civil society organizations. I arranged a meeting between most of the civil society actors in Tartus, such as those who worked during the previous regime and newer initiatives, including the Tartus Civil Society Initiative, Tartus Civil Society Gathering, Civil Peace in Tartus, and Sindian. The dialogue revolved around the civil experience and community work that extended in those areas for six years under the authority of HTS, and the most important points that were clarified to the participants were the modern ways of working with civil society organizations and the most effective ways to achieve the goals of these organizations, and through my daily work with these organizations and events, I concluded the following results:

  • The general tendency of most political activists in civil society organizations indicates a sharp and negative view of the political party, as most of them expressed their inability to work in ideological organizations with rigid ideological discourse, as Syrian politics in the modern era has only invented ideological parties, while all forms of political organization have failed to produce institutions with a democratic dimension.
  • Most activists confuse the concept of civil society organizations with the concept of a political party, as most of the new community initiatives stayed away from specializing in a clear field. Under Assad, NGOs had complex specializations and were managed under the supervision of the intelligence and economic office of Asmaa al-Assad.
  • The absence of democratic experience led to the lack of knowledge among activists and politicians of the real meaning of democratic organization and its importance in maintaining an organization together. To avoid divisions, most of them agreed that elections, organizing, internal oversight, transparency, and general political principles of the organization are not important. This predicts chaos and confusion in these organizations, which may prevent them from working effectively for a long time.

Political demonstrations and union protests

On 26 December 2024, Tartus governorate and many of its cities and villages witnessed demonstrations carrying sectarian slogans of an Alawite nature, with demonstrators chanting slogans such as “Labbaik Ya Abi Abdullah” and “Labbaik Ya Khasibi”. Less than three weeks after the fall of the regime, a video of the burning of the shrine of one of the most important Alawite imams in Aleppo (Abu Abdullah al-Hussein ibn Hamdan al-Khussaibi) went viral. These demonstrations lasted from noon to evening and ended the same day with statements from the shrine's supervisors and guards that the shrine was safe and protected from any attack.

It is noteworthy that in some areas, these demonstrations included calls for armed confrontation with the HTS to stop them from entering Alawite neighborhoods and villages. These calls were made by former regime officials and those involved in criminal acts. These calls fell on deaf ears as Alawites insisted on the peacefulness of their demonstrations and the need to cooperate with the HTS and preserve civil peace.4I personally attended the demonstrations in the city of Banias and followed some of the demonstrations in its villages as well as those in Tartus. Some participants carried weapons in the demonstrations and called for fighting in defense of Alawite shrines, declaring their association with Wasim al-Assad. Some were also accused of drug trafficking and a doctor was suspected of trading human organs for Iranian elements. These voices seemed strange and out of touch with the general public mood, which tends towards stability and feels tired of war, chaos, and hunger.

Many analysts and activists reported that the so-called remnants of the regime are trying to spread chaos to cover up the crimes they committed. At a community meeting in Baniyas, former political prisoner and Labor Party leader Samir Haidar said: “Those whose hands are stained with the blood of Syrians, criminals, thieves, and mafia merchants do not want the good of the country or its people, we are with state building and the efforts of the HTS to establish security, we will not be dragged behind them.” I was present at this meeting and noticed the emergence of prepared speeches inciting sectarian hatred and mass intimidation of Alawites by influential members of the former regime. However, these speeches seemed to be out of step with the public mood, which is tired of the war and looks forward to a stable future.

In December 2024, the employees of the National Hospital in the city of Tartus protested, as the new hospital administration discovered the presence of about 8,000 employees in the hospital, which cannot accommodate more than 1,000 jobs, and placed all surplus employees at the disposal of the governor, which led them to fear a mass dismissal. About 400 employees gathered in front of the governorate building, formed a delegation and met with the governor, who promised to study their situation and lay off the rest properly while preserving their rights, as I attended this protest with activists and followed its proceedings.

Conclusion

Despite the sudden fall of the Assad regime and the radical changes that took place overnight, which could have led to a state of chaos that would have included massacres and mass displacements, what happened and is still happening in Tartus and the country indicates well-prepared actions. The Turkish assistance to the HTS rule and the US, Western, and Arab states' blessing of the new leadership in Syria indicates that Syria is moving toward a civilian state project agreed upon by all these parties and carried out in coordination with the Turkish side. The road is still long. Some militias have been conducting executions of those allegedly involved in past violations, with some arrested arbitrarily and detained in inhumane conditions, which the HTS justified as individual actions. Such incidents are likely to continue without a thorough settlement of the Syrian file that ensures the representation of Syrians in all areas, especially security, which is highly sensitive to the Syrian people. This could only be achieved through a constitutional declaration and a transitional government before moving to a public vote for a permanent constitution and general elections.

Endnotes

Endnotes
1 The interview with the former regime army captain took place in one of the villages near Tartus at his place of residence on 10 January 2024.
2 I was personally present at many events where members and commanders from the HTS addressed the public. I also heard testimonies from other events, all of which carried the same observations. The representative of the HTS in Banias said in a meeting with the Banias National Assembly, which I attended, “Civil society organizations are the ones that frame the work of the authority, and we need these organizations badly.”
3 Customs and electricity sector employees emphasized this, and other sectors have also adopted digital questionnaires, such as the education sector.
4 I personally attended the demonstrations in the city of Banias and followed some of the demonstrations in its villages as well as those in Tartus. Some participants carried weapons in the demonstrations and called for fighting in defense of Alawite shrines, declaring their association with Wasim al-Assad. Some were also accused of drug trafficking and a doctor was suspected of trading human organs for Iranian elements. These voices seemed strange and out of touch with the general public mood, which tends towards stability and feels tired of war, chaos, and hunger.

The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.