On a recent morning in the Syrian province of Latakia, more than a hundred ex-soldiers stood calm, focused and cautious as they waited to register with the country's new rulers. A tired man walked around with a poster of ousted president Bashar al-Assad's face on a stick, asking men to spit on it. Everything is mandatory.
Since taking power this month, the new interim government – led by the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – has set up dozens of so-called shelters across the country, calling for ex-soldiers to visit and register non-combatants. -Identities of the army and hand in their weapons.
They say campaigns like these will help ensure security and start the reconciliation process after thirteen years of civil war that has left the country riddled with weapons and armed groups.
“The most important thing is to free people,” said Abdel Rahman Traifi, a former rebel who now runs the center. “That's the only way you can ensure safety.”
Yet in Latakia, Assad's home province and one-time stronghold, many fear the takeover marks the start of something much worse: a cycle of impotence and retaliation that will leave them as losers in the new era. Syria.
Despite the widespread joy throughout the country, the coast of Latakia is home to many from the Assads' small Alawite sect and others who – whether by choice or desperation – make soldiers and loyalists who help support the family's ruthless minority rule.
In the weeks after Assad's fall, some have closed shops, stayed at home or hid among the shelters and stories of revenge killings and attacks on minors.
“I didn't dare to go because I was worried about the road,” said one former Alawite security official about the settlements. They will kill us on the way there, or in our villages.
So far there is little documentation of retaliatory violence, and the new authorities have issued reports as “independent cases”. Traifi, asked about rumors of men at checkpoints abusing Alawites and asking him to curse the former president, said those kinds of trouble are not representative of the new government.
“But there are people in charge of checkpoints who lost children, wives, family members in bombings and fighting, their friends disappeared in prison. They have pain in their hearts,” he said. “We endured them for 14 years. They may put up with us for a while.”
Some soldiers lined up at the Latakia settlement center appeared to be cautiously accepting the prospect of a new start, a sign of how disillusioned and disloyal they have become.
One 29-year-old former soldier said he was repeatedly denied leave to visit his home last year as Assad's grip on the country and its withering economy led to growing fears that soldiers would leave.
“Our life was an army, we never learned to do anything else,” he said, adding that he was not worried about security. “We have been wanting this for a long time. At this new level, they just want us to live our lives. “
However, Traifi said that maybe only 30 percent of those who arrive at the shelters hand over weapons, adding that the intelligence unit is working to identify and search those who still hold their arms. Even a former government security official admitted that both sides still have arms and, without complete disarmament, “we will have a massacre in two months”.
Before the rise of Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez in 1970, the Alawites were the poorest group in the Syrian society: families sent their daughters to clean houses in the big cities and their sons to the army to ensure they were provided with food and sustenance. steady income.
But during his rule, the Assad family promoted a select group of loyal Alawites to high positions, giving them special treatment above all others. Resentment of the imposition of coercive measures to ensure that they hold wealth, power and political status unlike their numbers was one of the main drivers of the 2011 protests that led to the civil war.
But on the eve of Assad's fall, many of these Alawites now face an uncertain future, with thousands fleeing the capital Damascus to their ancestral homes.
The former government security guard said he received a call from his boss in the middle of the night, who told him to pack his things and go home. He described past events: ordinary people and tired men filled the streets on foot and in cars, their discarded weapons strewn on the side of the road. “I parked on the right side of the road on the way to Homs, and I threw my gun into the waterway,” he said.
The two-hour journey to his village on the Lebanese border took about eight hours on rough roads. After that, he hid at home, knowing that the men from his village who had been detained in Lebanon after joining the rebels were now returning. He was afraid that those men were now planning revenge on those who criticized them for killing their friends and families.
“There is no supervision or security here, so no one can stop the revenge killings,” he said. “There's nobody here.”
A quiet calm has hung in the air in Alawite villages and towns since the fall of Assad. Schools were open but empty. When asked if anyone was working, the groundskeeper said: “Yes, what's missing are the students.”
In the birthplace of Assad's tribe Qardaha, unlike the big cities, the green flag of rebellion was almost impossible to find. The interior of Hafez al-Assad's mausoleum was covered in ashes from a bonfire burning in his resting place, while the exterior curses were painted on him and his wife.
Such attacks on the memorial tomb have become “a form of pilgrimage” for rebel supporters, one resident said.
But the Alawite elite who benefited from Assads rule were few and far between. Others in the broader Alawite community remain the poorest in Syrian society, many terrorized by the same people who were committing crimes across the country.
A 40-year-old Alawite resident of Qardaha, who asked to be identified by the nickname Nana to avoid reprisals, describes how the townspeople lived their whole lives in fear of their bosses, who abused and looked down on their own sect. .
“They wanted us to remain (poor) so that people would continue to go to the army,” said Nana.
Nana and her sister taught in schools where children could not afford the meager cost of government textbooks, while her brother-in-law had spent the past 14 years avoiding military service.
Although disappointed with the Assads, minorities such as Alawites and Christians fear not only their safety but also that the new rulers will impose a new and unusual social order.
Nana's family made and sold alcoholic beverages including arak and wine, which were not banned under the Assads, and like many others they had borrowed money to sell before December, the busiest time of the year. But when they woke up to the news that the Assad regime had fallen to the Islamist HTS, the family packed up their belongings and took the store's sign as a precaution.
When Nana's husband later asked an armed man patrolling the town if he could reopen, he was told that selling alcohol was forbidden in Islam. The family, like others, is waiting for clarification from the new government about what is legal and what is not.
“We bought stock like crazy and now we're going to sit in our stores,” said his brother-in-law, adding that his nephew was told off by another security guard for wearing pajamas outside.
While they had suffered “shame” under the Assads, he said, at least they knew how to manage under the regime. “Now, we don't know what (kind of control) we have,” said Nana.
Sculpture by Aditi Bhandari