As HTS-led security forces pursue former regime personnel in coastal areas, sectarian rhetoric circulates online, prompting locals to call for a distinction between “the Alawite sect and the Assadist sect.”
Elation at the hope of returning home after Assad fell turned to shock for displaced Homs residents who found massive destruction and nonexistent services in areas they fled. Many turned back to northwestern Syria, waiting for reconstruction.
In the chaotic, jubilant process of emptying Assad’s prisons—including the notorious Saydnaya on the outskirts of Damascus—misinformation has spread and crucial evidence has been tampered with, SNHR’s Nour al-Khatib tells Syria Direct.
Their positions exposed, Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militias are repositioning themselves in Syria to avoid being targeted, while Russia uses its own forces as a counterbalance.
One year into Suwayda’s anti-regime uprising, protesters remain committed to their political demands, none of which have been achieved so far. But as the number of people coming out to demonstrate declines, activists wonder about its future.
In Dumayr, a town northeast of Damascus that returned to regime control under a settlement agreement six years ago, residents are asked to donate to fund basic public service projects in place of the state.
To obtain records from Syrian public universities, students must apply in person or through legal proxies. If this is not possible, or if they are wanted by the security services, they are forced to pay hundreds of dollars in bribes to state employees through brokers.
Residents of SDF-controlled northeastern Syria say the US military presence there brings a sense of relative stability, one that any withdrawal—as Washington was recently reported to be considering—would shatter.
After each blow to the Islamic State in southern Syria inflicted by former opposition factions, the group simply reshuffles its ranks and reactivates its cells. How does IS regenerate itself, what is its future in the south and what is the regime’s relationship with it?
Residents of Syria’s opposition-held northwest demonstrate in support of Palestinians facing displacement and bombardment in Gaza—an experience many of them share.
