What is behind the clashes in Syria?
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Al Jazeera Podcasts Today, Syria sees its worst conflict since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Hundreds of people, including civilians, were killed in the most serious challenge to the transitional government's authority since it took power in December. As Syrians are left with a fallout, how can they address the roots of this violence? And what's next? I'm Manuel Rapalo, and this is The Take.

My name is Osama Bin Javed. I'm a correspondent for Al Jazeera English, and I work on conflict zones. Osama, let's set the scene. Can you walk us through what's been happening in Syria's coastal regions over these past few days, and what's behind this latest surge in violence?

Since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government, the effort has been to try and bring together all sides and factions, and Syria has quite a few of them. What has been happening in the last couple of days is on the coastal regions, especially in the provinces of Tartus and Latakia, remnants of the Bashar al-Assad regime, people who had guns and power and men, actually tried to stage a

coup and take control of these areas. There's been ensuing fighting that went on for a few days. There's been an announcement that the operation by the security forces is over and the situation seems to be returning to normal. But what actually happened was that these groups who were loyal to Bashar al-Assad, who had all of the resources to continue to fight,

staged some sort of a comeback. Because if you remember, it was a blitzkrieg when the HDS fighters came in and took over all of Syria. So they went in, they killed a bunch of security officers, and then there was a counter-offensive in which not just the

people with guns, but a lot of civilians were killed as well. And according to counts, there are hundreds of people who have been killed, with some estimates saying that it could be as many as a thousand people in just over 48 hours.

There is conflicting information when it comes to the casualties. What's really getting people's attention is these reports of massacres targeting Alawite civilians have been some of the deadliest violence since the fall of the Assad regime. So I think the question that a lot of us are asking ourselves outside of Syria is, why is this happening now?

Well, it was inevitable that there is going to be violence. If you look at the history of what has been happening in Syria in the last 14 years, we were expecting there is going to be violence. But the last few months were so calm and peaceful that everybody went into this false sense of security.

What has been happening is these massacres, as each side tries to call them, have been happening on and off on a smaller scale. What happened now is that because a lot of these forces joined hands and they tried to overtake some of the positions, some of the city centers, some of the towns, some of the villages, that is where it really got out of hand.

And what these massacres are is essentially security officials going in searching for the remnants of the Assad regime. And on information, there has been executions that has been acknowledged by the president, Ahmad Ashara, as well. And then on the other side, they're also accusing al-Aweez of carrying out massacres. There's social media's abuzz with all sorts of accusations and counter accusations. And this is why it is very complicated.

both for people to understand from outside Syria, but also within Syria. Because I was speaking to people in Homs, for instance, and they were like, "Well, it's perfectly calm." And I said, "There's this report." And they said, "No, this is not true." And I was speaking to somebody in the security forces in Latakia, and I said, "You guys are carrying out massacres and committing war crimes, and you're actually becoming what the people were afraid that Bashar al-Assad was." And he said, "A lot of it is false propaganda."

You have to understand that amidst all of the tension and violence and divisions, there's also the proxy powers that are at play. And a lot of that actually plays out in social media as a lot of their influence on the ground is ebbing.

But we cannot take away from what has been happening on the ground. It is a precarious situation. It is a situation where a ruling minority, the Alawis here, who were in power for Syria for more than half a century, and now they see that power slipping away. And I've seen that happening in Afghanistan. I've seen that happening in Azerbaijan. But there's a lot of fear of what's to come next. And that fear stems from two reasons. One, of what

they had been doing or people aligned to them had been doing and two, of what's going to happen to them in this group, which they have been told are vicious and are going to kill people. What happens to them? And that is that fear which we're seeing in a lot of coastal areas, in a lot of towns and cities.

in Syria, where the minority communities are. But I've been to Latakia. I've sat down with the al-Awi community leaders as well as people in the street, and they tell me it wasn't Bashar al-Assad who was serving them. It was essentially these communities who were serving Bashar al-Assad. And it was designed this way, that each community, each sect, where so many of them in Syria, would be pitted against each other.

And that's what I want to talk to you about as well. For those who are listening and watching who don't follow Syria closely, help us understand the sectarian dynamics that are playing into this. What do we need to know about the different religious groups, about the different ethnic groups in Syria? Let me take a step back then.

Syria for the last half a century, more than 50 years, was ruled by the Bashar al-Assad family, by the Assad family, Hafez al-Assad and then Bashar al-Assad. In that time, the diverse fabric which constitutes Syria was essentially told to be afraid of their shadows. The Sunnis should be afraid of the Shias. The Shias should be afraid of the Sunnis. The Kurds should be afraid of the Arabs. The Christians should be afraid of the Muslims. The Druze should be afraid of the majority and so on and so forth.

And Syria is a rich tapestry of these different sects and cultures.

Yes, there's the Muslims, Sunnis and Shias, but there are the Druze, there are the Alawis, there are the Seccasians, there's also the Kurds in the north. And then there are also a very small number of Jews and a large thriving Christian community as well. And that has all been the case for thousands of years. You have to realize that Syria is one of those places which is one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world. And people from all communities I've been speaking to say that in the last century or so, we're

colonial powers and then the ensuing Assad government essentially made it a point that you have to not trust the other community and you have to have the blessing of the state which will give you power and weapons and curry favours with them who are going to take care of the other guys. And that has been ingrained into the psyche of Syriac.

The ground reality now is that a militia is now running the country. And in the best of circumstances, in established democracies, you would have a transitional period where the people who come into power would figure out, you know, what their priorities are and how will they run the government. And what is happening in Syria is that this fighting force is essentially trying to figure out how to convert itself from

militiamen fighting to a governing body. It's just been a few months and in a country with such deep divisions, it is going to be easier said than done. I want to go back a little bit to the theme of the sectarian dynamics in Syria because Bashar al-Assad was a member of the Alawite community since his fall.

There have been concerns over what sort of repercussions they might be for that specific group in Syria. The Alawites were historically tied to the Assad regime. With his fall, what does the future look like specifically for this minority group in Syria? Well, that is the question that I wanted to ask. And this is why I went to Latakia. That was my first stop to Latakia.

And before I go into that, I'll give you my own feeling of what Latakia was like. Here you think that Latakia, because for the last half a century is very close to the Assad government, you will see fast cars, you'd see a lot of rich people, you'd see infrastructure, and it was the absolute opposite.

I was talking to people in the street and I told them that, you know, some streets of Idlib look better than the Dhaka, this place which was supposed to be the safe haven for Assad and the bastion for support for Assad. And then people explained to me that what had happened in these al-Awi areas where there were a lot of people who went to the security forces and were part of the security forces.

It wasn't just the Alawis from the Taqiyah, it was actually Sunnis as well, where they were not given the resources and the opportunities as the schooling system was bad, the higher education was terrible. So they were essentially being herded into jobs for the security and the bureaucracy which ran the Bashar al-Assad government.

I spoke to one woman who had come back from Germany and I said, you know, as an Alawi, how do you feel? And she got offended. She goes, well, that's an Orientalist view that we do not want to see in Syria because I have family which is Sunni and I have family which is Alawi. And this is how we identify ourselves, that we are Syrians first and we want to take our country forward.

This is the view that you'll hear from the youth, from the educated people. But then when you go out to the villages of Latakia, on the outskirts of Latakia, where misinformation is so rampant, and if you are living in that bubble and what you're hearing from all of these algorithms throwing at you is massacres and pogroms and fear,

where the reality on the ground is very different. What is refreshing to see in this time around after all of this is the steps that are being taken by the security forces. It was going to be a test for the Ahmad al-Sharaa government as well, which was being seen as somebody who's had very hard-line links and might come down hard and then accused of carrying out these massacres. And it is not to say that you take away from these individual crimes that have been committed

The policy of the current leadership is that these are not acceptable. There's a committee that has been formed, and when he spoke, he spoke about both things, that there won't be any tolerance for people who target the security forces, but also anybody who harms civilians is also going to be taken to task. And we've seen these examples in the last few weeks and months as well, and that is why

People that I've been speaking to, both in the Alabi community and the Sunnis of Latakia and Tartus, say that they have hope for the future. But it is uncertain times. It is going to take a lot of time and effort and energy for people to, you know, come out of those fears and not start leaving Syria and actually take part in rebuilding the country.

Let's talk about that government response that you mentioned there at the end, because over the weekend on Sunday, Interim President Ahmed Alshara spoke rejecting the chaos of

calling for an end to the violence, promising accountability. We confirm that we will hold accountable with all firmness and without leniency anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians or harmed our people or who exceeded the powers of the state or exploited power to achieve his own goal.

He also said that there would be an announcement for the formation of a high committee to safeguard civil peace. Syria will not allow any foreign or domestic forces to drag it into chaos. He's calling for peace, but there also have been these reports of government-linked forces committing atrocities.

I think for those of us outside of Syria watching this, it does call into question how much control the government actually has. And I guess the question is, what kind of accountability can we expect?

I think people are going to believe it when they see it. These are all great words. And I think what people are appreciating in Syria is that essentially that he's not just said everybody on one side and the Syrian military forces on one side. So there is at least an attempt to try and bridge the gap.

There have been multiple meetings between various faith groups. You've seen statements coming out from the Patriarch of Antioch and other Christian leaders. You've seen the Druze leadership, whether it's Jambalat or others, coming out with their statements as well. And you're seeing from the majority of the Alawi community and their leadership as well, calling for calm. So there seems to be

at least in letter, this call for calm and peace and try and bridge the gaps that have divided Syria for so long. But again, as you mentioned, that high committee has been formed. There are judges in that committee. It's been given a 30-day task to come back with, you know, find out the perpetrators as well as the people who were involved in violations who actually took civilian lives.

And that is going to obviously play out and then we'll see, you know, what this committee comes up with and how this justice is dispensed. But

The question of justice is a very, very big one in Syria. For the last 14 years, this is a country which has been at war. I was talking to a fighter outside of the Hamameen base, the base that Russia controls, and I said to him, you know, how do you feel about the Russians being here? And he said, right now, my job is to be on this post. I do not like it. I've met the Russians previously in the battlefield, but my leadership has asked me to make sure that I stand here and make sure that the remnants of the Assad regime don't leave this base.

So it will take time and it will take time to heal. But then that time to heal also depends on all of the foreign actors that are having an impact on Syria as well. If you look at Benjamin Netanyahu's statements that, you know, he's going to protect the Druze community while Israel is occupying more and more Syrian territory. If you look at the statements from Turkey about how it sees a large chunk of the Syrian Democratic Forces being part of the YPG and the PKK. And

that is going to also have an impact on the reality on the ground in Syria. So it is going to be a combination of commitment in words, implementation in spirit, and all of the foreign powers to cool down and let Syria have its peace. We'll have more with Osama after the break. This week on True Crime Reports. It's July 2020. We're in the port town of Salerno in Italy.

Police have just raided a cargo ship and made an unprecedented discovery. The ship is transporting machinery and paper cylinders. But when police crack them open, inside they find bags and bags stuffed with tiny white pills. 84 million of them.

The pills are a very dangerous, highly addictive drug called Captagon. And this hoard is worth more than $1 billion. It's a drug you may not have heard of, but it's been wreaking havoc across the Middle East. True Crime Reports, a new global crime show from Al Jazeera. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

So, Osama, let's talk about where we go from here, because on Saturday, Syrians will be marking 14 years since the start of the uprising, which took place in 2011. So it's a weekend that should be seen as a time for celebration, but is now turning into uncertainty and a lot of grief. What do these past few days sort of tell us about the post-Assad era?

I think these past few days have been telling on how precarious and how fragile the peace in Syria is. I was in Syria, I was in Aleppo on the first Friday

where people were chanting and coming out on the streets, remembering how they used to do that in 2011, before the revolution was violently hijacked by Assad. There's a lot of hope everywhere I went to. I went to Latakia, I went to Tartus, I went to Daraa, I went to Homs, I went to Damascus, I went to the countrysides of these areas, I went to Aleppo, I went to Idlib. The underlying theme after the fall of the Assad regime is hope.

And out of that hope, people, that currency is not going to last very long because the people's problems are real. Syria is in an extremely impoverished state. It is a failed state beyond your wildest imagination because everywhere you go, every aspect of government is rotten to the core and everything has to be rebuilt. A lot of lessons have to be unlearned before they can start rebuilding. They're going to need resources, which they do not have.

So, yes, as Syrians mark 14 years since their revolution, the uprising, they will also remember the 7th of December because they didn't think that this was possible. A lot of people did not think that Bashar al-Assad is going to go that easily. A lot of people could not believe that the Assad regime is gone. And I think that sense of euphoria is still there as reality slowly starts to kick in.

The international community turned its back on Syria. It's had its back turned on Syria since 2011. I think that's fair to say. But the eyes of the world have been on Syria since the fall of the Assad regime. So I wonder what role do you think the United Nations and other members of the international community should be playing now?

We know that there's this donor conference coming up on March 17th. I'm wondering if you can talk about that as well. They're expected to talk about sanctions and foreign aid. But what role should the international community be playing now?

Well, the international community has had an abysmal record when it comes to Syria, including the United Nations. You've had secretary generals come and go, and they weren't able to resolve anything in Syria. The UN stopped its body count after 200,000 people were killed in Syria.

There's a lot that the world left Syria behind and the people of Syria remember it. And now is the time for the world to show that beyond its proxy interests, it is actually interested in the people of Syria. And the biggest representation of that would mean that the sanctions, which if you look at the sanctions, whether it's the Caesar Act, whether it's the UN sanctions, whether it's the American European sanctions, they targeted against the Bashar al-Assad government. Everything that they talked about

whether it was the battle bombing of civilians, whether it was sieges, whether it was de-weaponization, whether it was working towards a unified government and a constitution, every single one of those conditions seems to be on the surface being met, yet the sanctions stand. And those sanctions are really hurting people.

So the international community needs to step up if it wants to see a Syria which becomes a prosperous area where people would want to go back to rather than a country which again gets embroiled in conflict. And you have to remember that so far we've seen a few thousand people leave Syria because of, you know, conflicts here and there. But if the situation goes bad, these people are not just going to be going to the neighboring countries, but a lot of them will again turn to Europe.

So, Osama, what are you hearing from Syrians that you've been talking to? Well, the underlying theme, as I mentioned earlier, in Syria is that of hope. People are hopeful. People want to rebuild, but they're also desperate. I've been to neighborhoods which are, as soon as the sun sets, they're in complete pitch dark conditions.

I've been to hospitals where they're struggling. There's only one cancer hospital in all of Damascus, and their machines, which are supposed to run for three hours, are running for six hours, and they have been serviced for God knows how long. Large parts of the country are without electricity, water, basic road network.

So Syrians are looking around themselves, and as Syrians are, as we know them, as we've covered them, to be people of, you know, resolute intentions, people who want to overcome their odds, people who really want to rebuild their country. They're going to do with however they can. I've seen people living in bombed out buildings with just a few bricks and a window sill and a little heater in the middle, in the middle of nowhere with no electricity.

trying to rebuild their lives. And this is the Syrian spirit that I came across wherever I went. I think it's the Syrians who inspire all of us to be a little bit Syrian because, you see, when you talk to Syrians and you're sitting there sipping tea near a bombed out building where somebody's come out

Actually, there's this old man I remember. We were close to the occupied Golan Heights in Quneitra where the Israeli tank was behind us and they turned the tank towards us as they saw us reporting from there.

This is an old man who walks out with a tray of coffee, you know, in the town that is besieged, where little communication is happening. He comes in and, you know, gives us this coffee and says, one of my sons was killed in the fighting. And if I had more sons and if I am needed, I will fight for this country. I ask this government that has taken charge now to show us mercy and show us respect. And we will stand with them. And even if they want us to take on these tanks, we will take them on.

And you see that spirit of the Syrian people wherever you go. These are ordinary, warm-hearted civilians who will just come out and see you and meet you and greet you. And they will pour their heart out to you.

And at the end of the day, you return from that with a little bit more of humanity and a little bit more concern and care about the Syrian people who've gone through so much, and yet their determination, their will to live and continue to prosper is extraordinary. And that's The Take.

This episode was produced by Khaled Sultan, Chloe K. Lee, with Philip Llanos, Spencer Klein, Hannah Shoker, Melanie Marich, and me, Manuel Rapalo. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abusala and Mohanad Almelham. Alexandra Locke is the take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. We'll be back tomorrow.