Minutes to leave: Syria's Alawites evicted from private homes at gunpoint

Early one evening in late January, 12 masked men stormed the Damascus home of Um Hassan’s family, pointed AK-47 assault rifles in their faces and ordered them to leave.

When they presented ownership documents, the men arrested Um Hassan’s oldest brother and said they could only have him back once they had moved out. The family surrendered the house 24 hours later and picked him up, battered and bruised, from the local General Security Service headquarters, said Um Hassan, giving only her nickname for fear of reprisals.

Her family is part of Syria’s minority Alawite community, an offshoot of the Shia faith and the sect of former strongman, Bashar Al-Assad. Their story is not unique.

Since Syria’s President, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, seized power in December, hundreds of Alawites have been forced from their private homes in Damascus by the security forces, according to Syrian officials, Alawite leaders, human rights groups and 12 people with similar accounts who spoke to Reuters.

“We’re definitely not talking about independent incidents. We are talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of evictions,” said Bassam Alahmad, executive director of human rights group, Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ).

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The mass evictions of Alawites from privately owned homes have not been previously reported.

For more than 50 years, Assad, and his father before him, crushed any opposition from Syria’s Sunni Muslims, who make up more than 70 per cent of the population. Alawites took many of the top positions in government and the military and ran big businesses.

They now accuse supporters of Sharaa, who once ran an Al Qaeda affiliate, of  systematically abusing them as payback.

In March, hundreds of Alawites were killed in Syria’s western coastal region and sectarian violence spread to Damascus in apparent retribution for a deadly ambush on Syria’s new security forces by armed Assad loyalists.

Two government officials said thousands of people had been kicked out of homes in Damascus since Assad was toppled by Sharaa’s rebel force, with the majority being Alawites.

The officials said most resided in government housing associated with their jobs in state institutions and, since they were no longer employed, they had lost their right to stay.

But hundreds more, like Um Hassan, were evicted from their privately owned homes simply because they are Alawites, Reuters interviews with multiple officials and victims show.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the GSS, and Sharaa’s office, did not respond to requests for comment.

‘War spoils committee’ ‘

Sharaa has vowed to pursue inclusive policies to unite a country shattered by a 14-year sectarian civil war and attract foreign investment and aid.

But Alawites fear the evictions are part of systematic sectarian score settling by Syria’s new rulers.

An official who declined to be named at the Damascus Countryside Directorate, which is responsible for managing public services, said they had received hundreds of complaints from people who had been violently evicted.

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An Alawite mayor in a Damascus suburb, who also asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said in March that 250 families out of 2,000 there had been evicted.

The mayor shared with Reuters a call recorded in March with someone claiming to be a member of the General Security Service (GSS), a new agency made up of rebel fighters who ousted Assad.

The GSS official demanded the mayor find an empty house for a family relocating from the north. When the mayor said there were no apartments for rent, the official told him to, “empty one of those houses that belong to one of those pigs”, referring to Alawites.

Muslims consider pigs unclean and impure and calling someone a pig is highly offensive.

According to three senior GSS officials, the new authorities have established two committees to manage properties belonging to individuals perceived to be connected to the previous regime. One committee is responsible for confiscations, the other addresses complaints, the people said.

Reuters was unable to determine to what extent Sharaa was aware of how homeowners were being evicted, or whether his office had oversight of the committees.

They were created as Sharaa’s forces closed in on Damascus in December and were modelled on a similar entity known as the “War Spoils Committee” in his former stronghold, Idlib, the GSS sources said.

“These evictions will certainly change the demographics of the city, similar to the changes that Assad implemented against his opponents in Sunni areas. We are talking about the same practice, but with different victims,” said Alahmad at STJ.

On 16 April, STJ filed a complaint with the Damascus Suburbs Directorate, calling for an end to “sectarian-motivated” property violations and the return of looted properties.

Two minutes to leave 

Assad’s father, Hafez Al-Assad, moved Alawites from coastal areas to urban centres to help cement his powerbase.

Assad set up military installations and housing units for troops and their families around Damascus, where Alawites, who were over-represented in the army, made up a significant portion of the population, according to Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert and an associate professor at the University of Lyon 2.

Balanche estimated that half a million Alawites have moved to coastal areas after being evicted from the capital, Homs, Aleppo, and other parts of Syria following Assad’s fall.

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In the Alawite neighbourhood of Dahyet Al-Assad, civil servant and mother of four, Um Hussein, said two armed masked men came to her privately owned home on 16 January and identified themselves as GSS members.

The newly created GSS deployed by Sharaa seems to be an extension of the security force that ruled Idlib province, said Syria expert, Joshua Landis, head of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

The GSS now seems to be the Police, FBI, CIA and National Guard, all rolled into one, he said.

Um Hussein said the men gave her 24 hours grace to leave, because of her son’s dependence on a wheelchair. She appealed to numerous government bodies to keep her home, and received some assurances.

The next day, at about 10 a.m., the men returned and gave her two minutes to leave. Um Hussein said they also confiscated a shop her family owned in the neighbourhood and were renting out.

“We have been living in this house for more than 22 years. All our money and savings have been invested in it. We cannot afford to rent elsewhere,” said Um Hussein.

Reuters spoke with two members of the security forces at the private homes they had occupied. One had seized two houses – including Um Hussein’s – after evicting the owners.

Hamid Mohamed, meanwhile, said his unit had taken over four empty homes belonging to Shabiha, a notorious pro-Assad militia.

He said the security forces had not seized anything that was not theirs and recalled angrily that his home in a Damascus suburb was destroyed during the civil war. Mohamed said he moved to the capital after Assad’s fall and had nowhere else to stay.

‘Transitional injustice’ 

On 12 February, the Damascus Governor called on citizens who say property has been unjustly confiscated to submit complaints at directorates.

Reuters visited one in March, where the official who declined to be named confirmed a pattern: armed individuals evicted people without a court order, prevented them from taking their belongings – and then moved in.

The majority of confiscations targeted low- to middle-income Syrians who had lost their jobs and lacked the resources to pay their way out of the situation, the sources said.

Another official in another Damascus directorate said the evictions happened overnight without due process.

“It’s chaotic, but there is a method to the madness, which is to terrify people and to let the whole world know that Alawites are no longer (in power),” said Landis. “There is no transitional justice. There’s only transitional injustice.”

Seven armed men came to Rafaa Mahmoud’s apartment on 20 February and threatened to kill her and her Alawite family unless she handed over the keys to the property they had bought 15 years earlier, she said.

Mahmoud shared a 2 minute 27 second video with Reuters showing her standing behind her door, desperately arguing with the men, who warned the family to leave by nightfall.

The men, who identified themselves as state security agents, called Mahmoud and her family “infidels and pigs”.

When Mahmoud asked for a court order, the men replied: “We only do things verbally here.”

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