When he works, he goes by the pseudonym “Abu Jassem.” He keeps a small notebook with him at all times, tucked in his pocket during the day and placed beside his bed at night. Inside, he has recorded the names, dates and places of kidnappings and killings happening on a near-daily basis in the Syrian city of Homs.
On the morning of Feb. 14, I sat beside Abu Jassem as he flipped through the notebook’s worn, lined pages. Shafts of sunlight broke through the clouds of cigarette smoke in the dark room, illuminating his notes, which were scrawled in tiny, blue-inked Arabic letters.
He works with a rights organization to document the rise in kidnappings in the city. So far, he has independently verified 15 cases of kidnapping victims since late January — seven of whom were found dead. All of the victims were members of the Alawite sect, a religious minority in Syria, to which the ousted Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, belongs.
“There is a lack of transparency about what’s happening from the authorities, and there are no reliable news agencies,” Abu Jassem told me. He cross-checks social media posts with testimonies from victims’ family members and community leaders — dangerous work if the perpetrators were to discover his identity. “You don’t know who is committing the violations, so you don’t know your enemy, who will be hating you,” he said.
Syria’s new authorities have not provided clear instructions for rights organizations to register in the country, Abu Jassem said, leaving him with little protection. His rights organization was not the only one I’d heard from that is facing difficulties working under the new authorities.
Nevertheless, Abu Jassem said there is a “margin of danger” he was willing to put himself in to document the crimes. “All Syrians should get their lives back and feel justice,” he said. “Now is our opportunity to work toward having a country for everybody, without anyone being marginalized. Everyone — starting from me — should be treated equally under the umbrella of the law.”
After meeting Abu Jassem, I spoke by phone with Dommar al-Soleman, who researches collective violence in Homs. In 2015, he fled his home in the city and has since been living in Paris, where he felt safe to speak openly about his work. On Dec. 9, the day after the Assad regime fell, al-Soleman began to document the kidnappings, working with the Civil Peace Group, a Syrian civil society organization.
By the time we spoke on Feb. 23, he had documented a total of 64 cases of kidnappings and disappearances in the city. Among the victims were women, children and the elderly. Nineteen had been executed. Most of the others’ fates were unknown.
The Civil Peace Group reported on Feb. 12 that kidnapping cases had “surged” in the city since Jan. 24. Of these, only three came with ransom demands, a fact that suggested “motives beyond financial gains, potentially involving retaliation against communities previously perceived as supporters of the former regime,” the organization said.
Some of the killings have been strikingly brutal. One man, kidnapped in early February, was found with gashes across his face, as if he had been sliced with a sharp tool. One of his ears was cut off and the back of his head deformed, but the rest of his body was left untouched. He was a singer and taxi driver, with no clear connection to the regime. He was Alawite, like the vast majority of those kidnapped recently, al-Soleman confirmed to me (the details of his case were also disclosed on Facebook).
The kidnappings, while occurring elsewhere in Syria, have been particularly severe in Homs. The city boasts a unique social fabric, home to Alawites, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians of various denominations, who have lived together for millennia. But the 2011 Syrian uprising and the ensuing years of conflict stoked the city’s sectarian divisions.
Even in the early days of the uprising, sectarianism reared its head. Protests were largely concentrated in Sunni-majority areas, and the first, violent responses reportedly came from pro-regime militias, known as shabiha, who were based in the Alawite-majority neighborhoods. One sectarian chant that emerged at the time was “Alawites to the grave and Christians to Beirut,” a slogan that remains ingrained in the memory of many Homs locals I spoke with.
The Assad regime built concrete walls and installed checkpoints throughout the city, imposing physical barriers between the sects. Although they were removed in mid-2013, al-Soleman said that “metaphorically, they remained.” And in the years that followed, the regime continued to manipulate the sects to its advantage.
Today, the sectarian wounds incurred over the past 14 years are bleeding. Al-Soleman blames sectarianism for the high rate of kidnappings in Homs, describing them as “revenge” acts and responses to the organized theft perpetrated by the shabiha since 2011. But like Abu Jassem, his research is full of ambiguity, and often hindered by the lack of transparency from security officials. “Often, it takes days to know if someone was kidnapped, or just being investigated,” he said. “The truth is that, lately, there are often situations where I struggle to understand what’s happening.”
A mother watched as her two sons, Mohammad and Amjad Samer Shadoud, were forced into a white van parked outside her home in Homs’ Karam al-Zeitoun neighborhood. The two brothers, in their mid-20s, were coming home from their jobs at a cafe on Feb. 5, at around 1:30 a.m., when the van stopped them and requested they show their identification. After complying, they were ordered into the vehicle, which then sped away.
The family immediately reported the incident to the local police. But the brothers remained missing for five days, until Feb. 10, when their bodies were found in the village of Morek — nearly 50 miles north of Homs. Both had been shot in the head.
On Feb. 16, I met someone close to the brothers. We spoke briefly, behind closed doors in his office. He requested I remove any details that might identify him. He said he’d expected the kidnappers to ask for a ransom, or maybe harvest their organs, considering they were young and healthy. But there was no evidence of either.
“They were civilians, they had no military or political affiliation [with the Assad regime],” the man said. Al-Soleman confirmed the details of their case as well as the fact that they did not have an official role under the regime. He mentioned, however, that they had expressed support for the Assad government on their Facebook profiles.
The two were their parents’ only children. Since the death of her sons, the mother has barely left the house. Most of the time, their father only utters a few words, drowning his sorrow with cigarettes. “Imagine what it’s like to lose your only sons,” he told me. “They were their parents’ souls.”
The brothers were Alawite, but the man insisted that their killing not be presented as sectarian. “In Syria, we’re all one people,” he said. “All the Syrian families, we only want peace for the country. We are waiting for the new security forces, may God help them, to take control of the security situation all over Syria.”
Over coffee in his Homs office, I met the new police chief, Alla Omran. The flag of the Syrian revolution, with its green stripe, filled the backdrop to his desk. The walls were covered in maps and charts, some seemingly left by the authorities who had worked there under Assad.
To the right of his desk, a large chart illustrated the chain of command of the former regime’s security officials. Across the room, a small hole was visible in a map of the Homs governorate, perhaps pierced by a bullet shot during Assad’s overthrow on Dec. 8.
When I asked Omran about the recent rise of kidnappings and killings in the city, he said he wasn’t aware of it. “I see a continuous decline, from the first day [of the regime’s fall] until now,” he told me. “They’re individual actions, due to the level of hatred that existed between the sects, planted by the regime.”
He said they were “still not satisfied by the limits in the field of security” but explained that the crime rates were “at a minimum,” especially considering they were at the transitional stage of a revolution. He said they had roughly 1,000 to 1,500 police personnel rotating every 10 days throughout the governorate — sufficient numbers of police for the city, though they were still working on filling policing gaps in the countryside.
“When the police are deployed in the right way, the numbers are sufficient,” he said. “Our biggest problem is the people, not us. I mean, our biggest problem is that the people will not accept us.”
Like other majority-Alawite neighborhoods in Homs, the al-Zahraa neighborhood shuts down after dark. Shops shutter their doors, and few people dare to venture outside their homes, fearful of kidnappers lurking in the shadows. Checkpoints had been erected around the neighborhood, where the new security forces were stationed, patrolling for suspicious movement.
Al-Soleman, the Paris-based researcher, said the intensification of security measures was helping prevent kidnappers from entering certain areas. But 70-year-old Shihada Mayhoub, an elder in the Alawite community, felt differently.
“We are war prisoners, encircled in our neighborhood,” he told me in his home in al-Zahraa. “From 5 o’clock in the afternoon, we cannot leave our homes, us and the Christians are in the same situation.”
He had a thick, fur winter thobe draped over his shoulders, his hair had gone completely gray and he wore rectangular glasses. When he spoke, he leaned forward in his seat, moving his hands in passionate gestures and periodically taking a drag of his cigarette.
“The general atmosphere is far from how us Syrians like to live. Soldiers enter our homes, search them and break the windows and our furniture. This is shameful, an assault on personal freedoms,” he said. He was referencing the “security sweeps” the new government’s Military Operation Command had launched in Homs against soldiers and militia members loyal to Assad who refused to surrender their weapons. The Associated Press reported that, on Jan. 2, over 100 people were detained in one of these sweeps. (Other residents of majority-Alawite areas I spoke to said not all the sweeps were aggressive.)
Mayhoub said that, in December, following the fall of the regime, around 700 youths were arrested in his neighborhood, along with around 500 others from other Alawite neighborhoods in the city. Those found “innocent” have been periodically released from prison, but Mayhoub told me on Feb. 13 that around 450 were still detained.
He said he supports the “transitional justice measures” to hold those accountable for committing crimes under the regime but criticized the lack of fair judicial procedures. He said the authorities had not informed many families of the whereabouts of their relatives, contributing to the fear and mistrust of the new authorities. “My son could be in prison, and I wouldn’t be able to tell whether he’s really there or kidnapped or killed by some random group,” he said.
Mayhoub mentioned one of his relatives, a 78-year-old man who, 15 years ago, had served as a high-ranking officer with the regime. For a month and a half, his family had heard nothing of his whereabouts. “They need to inform us about who they arrest. We have a right to visit them, to go to court, and to hire a lawyer,” he stated, “We didn’t get rid of Bashar al-Assad to have these people repeating his same practices.”
For Mayhoub, the “random” arrests, killings and kidnappings — combined with the high rates of joblessness — were feeding a dangerous scenario in his community. “I fear the security, the safety and the hunger,” he said. “Some people are now saying that we were better in the days of Assad — this is a big loss for us.”
Fear was prevalent among many other residents I encountered from Homs’ Alawite and Christian communities. As I entered the Syriac Catholic Church, in the city’s historic quarter, I bumped into an elderly lady passing through the gray-stoned courtyard. She was just about 5 feet tall, timid and wearing a loosely-wrapped red scarf and knit hat.
I asked her where I could find the archbishop, Jacques Mourad, explaining I was a journalist. She pointed upstairs, and as I proceeded, she followed me into the stairwell. “The situation is very bad, for Christians and for minorities. There is so much fear,” she told me once inside, moving her hands urgently as she spoke. “I don’t know what we’ll do, this is not freedom. I hope that you’ll deliver our voices, the situation is very, very bad,” she repeated, and then turned quickly to leave before I could ask her name.
Upstairs, the archbishop echoed her concerns: “The Christian people, we are very concerned. … We feel excluded.” Under the sliver of light that shone through his window onto the crowded, stained-wood bookshelf and ornate carpets in his office, he spoke about concerns over the enforcement of Sharia and the escalation of killings and kidnappings.
“We’ve spent a few weeks of incredible tensions, especially in the Alawite neighborhoods of the city and in the villages,” Mourad told me. He attributed the kidnappings to “revenge from Sunnis on Alawites.” “People returned with a lot of hatred,” he said. The archbishop himself was kidnapped for five months in 2015 by Islamic State group militants.
He criticized the new authorities for not doing enough. “We tried to talk with the officials, who have the social and political responsibility, but we’ve received no concrete reaction,” he said. He said their common reply was that the crimes were “individual acts” committed by armed groups that they have “no power over.” Mourad also feared the new government was carrying out the same mistakes as the regime: “There is a repeat to all the things the Assad regime did before, we cannot accept this.”
“Homs is the tipping point,” the archbishop stated. “If we look at what’s happening in Homs, we can see what will happen in Syria. If we succeed in Homs to stabilize the security situation, it’s a very good chance for the future.”
On a different day, across the city, Abdel Moneim Su Taif, a volunteer rescuer with Syria’s White Helmets, echoed the archbishop as he said: “In Homs, we have all the sects. So we say that when there is peace in Homs, there will be security and peace in all of Syria.”
White Helmets volunteers are among those leading efforts to build civil peace in Homs. Taif, like some of his other team members, fled Homs in 2012 and lived between Turkey and the opposition-held region of Idlib, until the regime fell in December. “From the moment we returned, we started working on the issue [of civil peace] in Homs so that, God willing, all of Syria can be stable,” he told me.
Taif, 55, has a round face and a hopeful smile. He opened his smartphone to show me a photo taken during a meeting with leaders of Homs’ Christian sects. “Roman Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, evangelical,” he listed, pointing to the men posed in the photo. “We are connecting with all the sects, visiting all the leaders of the Christian sects, the Alawites and the [Shiites]. There is not someone we didn’t visit,” he said.
Taif was not the only Homs resident working toward civil peace. Throughout the week I spent in the city, meetings were ongoing between activists, religious leaders and some government officials. An imam at the Great Mosque in the city, Fares Abdullah Salamoun, told me they had held two peace negotiations since the regime fell, inviting delegations from different Christian sects. On an individual level, the mosque’s fatwa office was also mediating disputes between residents of different faiths.
A short walk from the mosque in the historic quarter, Kamal Awad is working through his organization, Harmony, to build peace and safe spaces for youth. He said they had held a workshop on peace-building and conflict resolution with trainers from Idlib, as well as an online transitional justice workshop. Outside his office, a group of young locals of different faiths were gathered in a small room beside a steel furnace, sipping the popular drink mate. For them, Harmony was the space where they felt protected, because outside their neighborhoods they did not.
Taif explained that, besides the more obvious peacebuilding efforts, his rescue teams had earned the trust of communities through their humanitarian work — much of which has lately involved transporting the dead. In mid-February, there were over 100 unidentified bodies, those killed in attacks in Homs and the surrounding countryside, left in hospital morgues. Many families were avoiding checking the hospital for their loved ones — some in fear, others in denial, according to the Civil Peace Group.
Taif heads operations in Fahel, a village in Homs governorate, roughly 24 miles from the city. On Jan. 23, 15 men, most of whom had formerly served in the regime’s army, were killed by an armed group that entered to carry out searches of homes and then proceeded to arrest the villagers and execute them. Taif was there the day after and, upon the villager’s request, transported the bodies from the hospital in Homs to the village.
“We tried to make them comfortable, we tried hard to provide them with some security, safety and reassurance,” he said. “We told them, ‘Whatever services you want from us, as civil defense, we are ready.’”
The villagers grew to trust Taif and know him as “Abu Shaimaa” (the father of Shaimaa). He offered to bring me to Fahel, to meet the villagers, but the Homs media authorities — who supervise the granting of foreign journalist permits — said it would be “too dangerous” due to the “remnants of the regime.” The day I requested access, protests involving thousands of people were being held in the village after the new security forces “brutally beat and insulted” assaulted a young man for “wearing military clothes,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There were also cases of some armed groups firing at the new authorities stationed at checkpoints, a social media news channel reported.
For communities like Fahel, building communication channels was key to “resolving the issues at hand,” said Fahel. “It’s important they can express their needs clearly,” he added. “There needs to be someone, chosen by them, who can take care of the situation and ensure there is mutual support between them and the administration.”
As we concluded our conversation, Taif reached again for his phone. He opened it to show me a video of a group of young women, part of a local scout group, from different religions. To the tune of Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” they chanted in Arabic, “We are a strong team, we tire and work hard, but are happy,” clapping their hands on their laps, and up again, in unison. “This is how Homs should return,” he told me, “Hopefully, it will become better, hopefully on your next visit, you will see a different Homs.”
As for Abu Jassem, when I checked back in, the pressure of his work — the brutal killings, the constant fear — was weighing on him. “My mind is always trying to delete the horrible details,” he said. He had begun to tear out pages from his notebook, clearing the evidence of his work and transferring his notes to more secure, online files. “I just hope that all the crimes will be solved, [that] everyone that has blood on their hands will face justice,” he told me, breathing out a long sigh.
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