This is a three-part series about the Alawite sect in Syria and the March massacre in its community. To read the previous story of a pastor ministering among them and the context of the massacre, click here.
On March 6, Ziad nervously scoured social media, hiding in a windowless room in his apartment. He had heard gunfire, and over the long course of the civil war in Syria, he had learned how to distinguish the various weaponry. These were military-grade machine guns. Bands of balaclava-clad militants in pickup trucks shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they attacked a government office just a mile from his home in the coastal city of Lattakia.
The 46-year-old educator and his wife, Zeinab, knew the militants were looking for Alawites. The couple belonged to the heterodox Islamic sect that many Sunni Muslims in Syria hated for their connection to the deposed Assad regime. Others went further and condemned their beliefs as heretical. Medieval and Ottoman-era fatwas declared Alawites deserving of death, and videos circulated of mosques calling for jihad against their community.
Ziad did not leave his home for the next three days.
When the dust settled, the March massacre claimed the lives of at least 1,700 Alawites. Ziad, currently in Lebanon and granted anonymity to preserve the safety of his relatives in Syria, describes the terror the community experienced.
“O God, save us,” he prayed quietly. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Six months earlier, when Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell, Ziad hoped for a transition to democracy and wide-scale reform. Assad’s father, Hafez, seized power in a 1970 coup and disproportionately selected Alawites for key military and government posts. But few from the community truly benefited, Ziad said, while most lived in relative poverty—as in other rural regions. The regime permitted no dissent and cultivated insecurity among its minority religious populations to curb any threat to its power.
While Alawites make up a majority in the coastal plains and mountains of western Syria, the ethnoreligious group represents 10–13 percent of the overall population. Sunni Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians live among them in peace. But as militants barged into homes, looting cell phones and cash, they killed adult Alawite males and sometimes whole families.
Ziad had barred the iron gate to their building. Perhaps this spared their lives.
He and Zeinab sat in the darkness to avoid showing signs of life in their apartment. And as he scrolled Facebook for updates, he learned of the carnage.
A stray bullet hit Zeina Jdeed, his former student who was then in her third-year of medical studies, while sheltering in her apartment. The wound should not have been fatal, but she lost too much blood after gunmen pinned her family inside the foyer and refused to let them make the 900-foot trek to the nearby hospital.
Militants forced Yasser Sabbouh, head of Lattakia’s cultural center, out of his apartment at gunpoint. Ziad attended many lectures and concerts hosted by the Alawite intellectual. But instead of seeing an invite to an upcoming event, Ziad learned that militants had dumped his friend’s bloody body outside Sabbouh’s home.
By the end of the third day, relative calm returned to the city. But violence continued elsewhere, and Ziad left the apartment only to buy food at the local grocer before hurrying home. He filled his time reading about the history of ancient Mesopotamia and lamenting the current state of Syria and Iraq. He also called his friends and relatives, wondering if they were all right.
In total, the militants killed 11 of Ziad’s relatives in their family village. His wife mourned the deaths of three relatives. Zeinab’s uncle survived a kidnapping, she said, after assailants forced him at gunpoint from his home and shoved him into their getaway vehicle. But the car had a flat and couldn’t carry the weight of its plus-sized victim as it jerked down the road. The kidnappers pushed him out and went in search of an easier target. He was lucky, Ziad said.
While Alawites usually marry within their sect, Ziad’s father’s cousin married a Sunni Muslim, which ended up saving her family’s lives. When the militants broke down the door to their home, they put a gun to the head of the couple’s adult son and demanded all the gold in the house.
“He’s Sunni,” his Alawite mother pleaded, since Islam assigns religious identity through the father, who was not present at the time. She fumbled for his ID card as her Alawite daughter-in-law stood petrified and their three-year-old daughter cried out, “Leave him alone!”
Convinced by the ID’s indication that he shared their Sunni identity, the militants transported them all two miles away to a safe area in Lattakia—in exchange for $3,000 in gold. The family returned days later to learn that looters had taken their furniture, appliances, and valuables.
Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa condemned the killings on March 10, vowing to hold criminals responsible. But militants still roamed the area at night, Ziad said, and with their faces covered, no one knew who they really were. The couple eventually regained confidence to move about in their city, making sure to return by nightfall.
More than 40,000 Syrian refugees, mostly Alawites, have fled to Lebanon in the last three months, many of them crossing the porous border illegally. Ziad and his wife were determined to come with their passports stamped. He told no one, not even his parents, of their plans to leave. Anyone who travels has money, he said, and would become a target. But government offices were slow to reopen and process his paperwork.
Even in Lebanon, the fear remains ingrained. When she learned that this interview at their safe house in Beirut would take place after 7:00 p.m., Zeinab instinctively recoiled, thinking it wouldn’t be safe to come to her after dark.
A few of Ziad’s friends eventually made it to Rwanda, and he and Zeinab will soon travel onward to Southeast Asia. Syrians are not welcome in many places, Ziad said, and suspects it will be a decade until it is safe and stable enough to return home. The interim constitution continues to enshrine strongman rule and the role of Islam, he explained, and Sharaa declared it could take five years to prepare for presidential elections.
“I am not ashamed of my Alawite heritage,” said Ziad. “But I want to go anywhere I won’t hear ‘Allahu Akbar.’”
The next story will explore the religious beliefs of Ziad’s sect. For the previous story on how a church ministered to displaced Alawites, click here.
