“This isn’t war. It’s genocide”: The silent massacre of Syria’s Alawite, Christian, and Druze communities continues

In the dead of night, masked men stormed villages in Syria’s coastal regions, dragging families from their homes and executing them in the streets. Entire neighbourhoods were reduced to smouldering ruins, and mass graves were hastily dug to conceal the evidence of unspeakable horrors. This is not war. This is genocide.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant militant group in northwestern Syria, has unleashed a wave of violence against the Alawite, Christian, and Druze communities. Born out of the ashes of Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, HTS has rebranded itself for international legitimacy but continues to carry out massacres, ethnic cleansing, and the systematic extermination of those who do not conform to its radical ideology.

The massacre in Latakia: a night of unimaginable horror

In rural Latakia, coordinated attacks by HTS and its foreign recruits resulted in mass executions. Survivors recount masked men storming their villages, dragging families from their homes, and carrying out public executions. Those who resisted were burned alive inside their homes.

“They didn’t even speak our language,” an elderly survivor told RT. “They had no idea who we were, no reason to hate us – except that they were told to.”

Satellite imagery confirms the devastation: rows of torched homes, mass graves, and ghost towns where life once thrived. Entire villages have been abandoned, their populations either massacred or displaced.

Tartus, once a thriving coastal city, has become another graveyard. HTS fighters conducted door-to-door massacres, accusing families of supporting the government or practicing the “wrong” faith before executing them. A local journalist, speaking anonymously, described the scale of the killings: “There were so many bodies that people stopped counting. They weren’t buried properly – just dumped into ditches.”

Foreign fighters played a leading role in these atrocities. A humanitarian worker recalled speaking with a survivor: “He told me he heard Chechen, Uzbek, and North African Arabic among the attackers. These weren’t local militants – these were imported killers, trained elsewhere and sent here to finish us off.”

Jableh: the systematic erasure of a community

In Jableh, hundreds of men were rounded up, executed, and dumped into mass graves. Women and children were kidnapped, their fates unknown. Witnesses reported hearing gunfire for hours as the slaughter continued unchecked. “They lined up all the men and took them away,” a survivor said, his voice trembling. “Later, we found their bodies piled on top of one another, shot execution-style.”

One woman who escaped described her captors: “They were foreigners. Some were Arab, others were not. They had dead eyes, no emotion. To them, we weren’t people – we were just bodies to be destroyed.”

The involvement of foreign fighters suggests a well-coordinated, externally supported operation designed to systematically erase communities. Witnesses report hearing different languages among the attackers, including Western languages. “These aren’t local fighters,” a displaced resident now sheltering in Damascus said. “They were trained somewhere else, then sent here to do what they know – kill.”

Intelligence sources indicate that these fighters were funnelled into Syria through neighbouring countries, trained in camps, and deployed to slaughter civilians.

Despite overwhelming evidence of genocide, Western and regional media continue to present the massacres as “clashes” between HTS and government forces, deliberately sidestepping the mass extermination of Syria’s Alawite community. A Syrian human rights activist, speaking under anonymity, condemned this distortion: “This isn’t war. It’s genocide. Yet, the world’s media avoids using that word because it doesn’t fit their political narrative.”

Western governments that once backed opposition forces are now reluctant to acknowledge the nightmare they helped unleash. The United Nations has remained largely passive, offering vague statements of concern but taking no meaningful action. As the world turns a blind eye, one should ask: How many more have to die before the word “genocide” is spoken aloud?

yogaesoteric
March 25, 2025