The Syrian Coast: A Regime of Massacres and the Invention of the Internal Enemy — How Is Social Fragmentation Reproduced?

At a moment when Syria appears, formally, to be emerging from one phase of conflict only to plunge into another, the situation in the coastal region reveals that the roots of the crisis have not been uprooted, but rather reshaped into a more fragile and dangerous form. There, existential fear intersects with sectarian incitement, both feeding on an unresolved legacy of violence and on a socio-economic reality that drives further disintegration.

After the 2025 massacres in the coastal region and in Suwayda, fear is no longer only a feeling or propaganda—it is a lived experience. Thousands of victims, displaced families, and demographic shifts within a lawless security environment have entrenched a deep sense of vulnerability, particularly among Alawites, who suddenly found themselves exposed to waves of religious extremism and a hate discourse fostered by the Thermidorian authority. This unfolds amid an absence of real protection and clear complicity in fueling and politically exploiting incitement. This shift has not opened any horizon for transitional justice; instead, it has unleashed vengeful dynamics among the regime’s base—among the rabble—seeking an easy target: an entire community presented to this degraded audience as the “internal enemy.”

In this context, leaks related to Saydnaya Prison and Tishreen Military Hospital have played a central role in amplifying narratives of betrayal and takfir (declaring a Muslim to be a non-believer (apostate), effectively excluding them from the Islamic community) against Alawites. Instead of being used as an entry point to hold the former system of repression and its structures accountable, these materials have been circulated within an emotional and enraged discourse that reduces responsibility to sectarian identity and transforms victims into collectively accused perpetrators. The question is no longer: who committed the crimes? But rather, who belongs to the group presumed to be responsible?

The danger of this trajectory does not stop at constituting a direct threat to Alawites; it also represents an insult to the memory of the victims and their families, by erasing the individual truth of each crime and turning it into a mobilization tool against a broad segment of the population—Alawites wherever they are. In this sense, it is not only generalization that is taking place, but also the hollowing out of the very demand for justice, replacing it with a narrative that serves the repositioning of the ruling authority, which has not hesitated to forge relations and alliances with figures and criminals from the previous phase. Here, justice and accountability are no longer the objective, but instruments; the past becomes material for reproducing control through new mechanisms of repression and domination, rather than dismantling it.

This slide from accountability to generalization is not incidental; it reflects a convergence of interests among multiple forces: a Thermidorian authority seeking to consolidate its dominance over society and manage the behavior of its base; opposition forces incapable of presenting a unified and resistant political project; and sectarian armed groups and warlords aligned with the authority, who find in sectarian discourse an effective tool of mobilization. Within this convergence, social division is reproduced as a political and social structure, not merely as a byproduct of conflict.

What further exacerbates this dynamic is the material dimension. Syria today—and the coast in particular—is not only a space of fear and intimidation, but also one of acute economic decline affecting broad segments of the population across affiliations: rising unemployment, declining services, and shrinking opportunities. Yet this deterioration is not distributed neutrally; it intersects with sectarian fault lines, redirecting public anger toward the “other” instead of the structures responsible for producing it. Here, economic repression and sectarian incitement converge to form a closed cycle of symbolic and material violence.

The most dangerous aspect of this moment is that fear itself becomes an instrument of political and social organization, within a structure where conflict is reshaped along sectarian lines that serve the reproduction of authority and the consolidation of its dominance. When a group is driven by fear of extermination, it withdraws and loses trust in any shared horizon; when another group is demonized as collectively responsible, violence against it becomes justifiable. Between these two poles, the social and class content of the struggle is emptied out and redirected in ways that sustain existing relations of domination.

Breaking this cycle does not come through generic calls for reconciliation or calm, but through redirecting the conflict to its real level: a struggle over power, over the form of the state, and over the distribution of wealth and resources. Justice here is not a moral slogan but a political condition; it cannot be achieved through collective punishment, but through clear individual accountability targeting those actually involved in crimes, regardless of their positions or affiliations.

Today, the Syrian coast stands at a decisive crossroads: either the entrenchment of sectarian and ethnic division as a permanent reality, or the opening of a new political horizon that transcends the logic of the “internal enemy” and closed communal identities, and reconnects justice with liberation rather than identity with punishment. In this equation, victim and perpetrator cannot be equated. The imperative is clear: to stand with the victims of past and present violence, and against all those who have reproduced the conditions of crime—regardless of where they stand.

Prepared by the Frontline Editorial Board