La controverse autour du nombre de morts a aussitôt éclaté. Le 6 mars, l’Observatoire syrien des droits de l’homme a reporté plus de 1 450 massacres en Syrie. Une semaine plus tard, le Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) n’en a recensé que 803 et l’Aide à l’Église en détresse (AED) a estimé le chiffre autour de 1 000. Ils ont essentiellement eu lieu dans la région de Lattaquié et Tartous, des bastions alaouites, l’ethnie à laquelle appartenait Bachar Al Assad et son père, Hafez Al Assad.
Le choc pour les populations de cette région est d’autant plus grand qu’elle avait connue moins de combats que le reste du pays. Une vidéo montre des victimes allongées sur le sol, dans une rue avec des taches de sang, tandis qu’un homme barbu les massacre à coups de bâton. Deux des vidéos publiées sur les réseaux sociaux ont été prises dans le village alaouite d’Al-Mukhtariyah. Les forces armées du nouveau régime ont fini par permettre aux habitants d’enterrer leurs morts deux jours plus tard.
Dès que la nouvelle des massacres a émergé, la crainte que des chrétiens aient aussi été persécutés s’est exprimée. Le présentateur star de Fox News, Tucker Carlson est allé jusqu’à affirmer que « des chrétiens étaient massacrés et leurs lieux de culte vandalisés ». Les chefs des communautés chrétiennes de Syrie ont immédiatement nié ces affirmations à la suite d’une réunion avec le département chargé de la sécurité. « Pendant cette réunion ont-ils affirmé, les inquiétudes, les sentiments et les souffrances de notre peuple ont été portés auprès de notre gouvernement. » Les leaders chrétiens ont ensuite réfuté les rumeurs selon lesquelles les églises de Lattaquié avaient ouvert leurs portes pour accueillir des réfugiés, rajoutant que « la situation actuelle de la ville de Lattaquié ne nécessite pas de prendre de telles mesures. » Le vicaire apostolique de la communauté latine de Syrie a lui aussi diffusé un communiqué : « avec tous les fidèles nous prions pour qu’une paix juste et globale soit trouvée dans la région, surtout pour notre Syrie bien aimée. »
Les rumeurs de massacres de chrétiens ne sont pas infondées. Des sources sur place ont affirmé que des chrétiens auraient bien été tués, non pas en raison de leur foi, mais parce qu’ils se trouvaient dans des quartiers alaouites. En revanche, le village chrétien de Belma, situé au nord de Hamma, a été pillé par des groupes armés. Le patriarche grec orthodoxe d’Antioche, Jean X, a de son côté dénoncé la profanation de symboles religieux à Banyas, situé entre Lattaquié et Tartous, où « une icône de la Sainte Vierge a été détruite, piétinée et profanée. »
Les chrétiens ne sont certes pas directement concernés par les nouveaux raids de HTS, mais leur situation demeure fragile, si ce n’est dangereuse. Ils sont eux aussi considérés par HTS comme ayant soutenu le régime de Bachar, dont ils bénéficiaient de la protection. Après les alaouites, ils pourraient bien être les prochaines victimes des purges du nouveau régime, que pourtant Ahmed Hussein al-Charaa a promis de ne pas mettre en œuvre.
When reports started coming through late last week of massacres in western Syria, it quickly made headline news.
What has emerged subsequently is that misinformation and fake news about the nature and scale of what was happening spread quickly at a time of uncertainty.
The media frenzy was further fuelled by fears that what had just unfolded unmasked the true face of the Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) government, until then popularly understood to be carrying out a slick public relations campaign to win support for the fledgling regime in the weeks and months since the sudden ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.
A week on from the start of the tragic events centring on Syria’s coastline and Latakia mountains, the precise details of what has happened still await final clarification.
Within a few days of the first reports of the wave of attacks which began on 6 March, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) was putting the number of fatalities at more than 1,450, including armed combatants.
But as of yesterday, 12 March, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) gave a significantly lower figure for the total number of deaths – 803.
Drawing on material from multiple contacts in the region, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the Catholic charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, estimates that, according to available reports, about 1,000 people died, while acknowledging that the full death toll may be higher.
In search of an explanation for the discrepancy in the figures, a conversation I had with a leading Church figure I spoke to this week, as part of my ACN work, was very revealing.
The individual, whom I have met on trips to Syria during the height of the conflict, and who I cannot name for security reasons, indicated that reports about the attacks were difficult to verify because for several days parts of the conflict zone had been sealed off by the HTS government in a bid to reassert control.
What is beyond dispute, though, is the veracity of early reports indicating that the primary target of the attacks were members of the Alawite community – the Shi’a sect to which the Assad family belonged.
These members were implicated in a pro-Assad refusal to submit to the new regime, whose militants then responded with a deathly wave of violence.
SOHR has denounced the attacks as genocide. But were Christians also targeted?
Early reports alleged that Christians were killed in large numbers. Allegations of a massacre against Christians were quickly amplified.
US journalist Tucker Carlson stated that, while the number of faithful in Syria had sharply declined during the Assad regime, since the former president’s departure, those Christians still left in the country were “being slaughtered and their holy places desecrated”.
That Christians should be targeted by HTS would seem logical given that they were perceived – in many cases mistakenly – as being loyal to the Assad regime.
“Alawites to the grave and Christians to Beirut” was a refrain oft repeated early on in the rebellion against the Assad regime.
And indeed, initially evidence suggested Christians were under fire. The leading Churchman that I spoke to said, early on during developments, that up to 80 Christians were among the dead. But within a few hours he called me back to say the figure was massively inflated, explaining that people were mistaking fears for facts in a situation of panic and amid a dearth of firm evidence.
Indeed, Christian leaders came together to reject claims of a mass targeting of Christians.
Drawing on reports from Church leaders from Syria, ACN subsequently issued reports confirming that three Christians were killed during the conflict.
These included a father and son from an evangelical church in Latakia, and the father of an Orthodox priest in Banias, which witnessed some of the worst attacks.
My contact subsequently spoke of how one Christian man received a knock on the door of his home only to be met by a man who shot him in the head.
My source said: “Many of the Christians who died happened to be among the Alawites. Many of those who carried out these attacks cannot tell the difference between Alawites and Christians.”
But such mis-identification has not always been the case. My contact described how attackers targeted the Christian village of Belma. He said that in this community “there are no weapons…most of the residents are elderly” and “the population endured two days of terror with the sanctity of homes violated and property stolen”.
As for the motive of such attacks, the ACN source said the violence was part of a looting spree in which people’s homes were ransacked and cars stolen.
Such isolated reports, however, suggest some violence has been motivated by hatred of Christianity.
In a homily, Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X of Antioch denounced the desecration of religious symbols in Banias, declaring that “the icon of the Virgin Mary has been smashed, trampled upon and desecration”.
But for the most part, sources say that, far from being motivated by hatred of Christianity, the attacks bore the hallmarks of a regime more familiar with the tactics of a militia group whose instinctive response to insurrection is to hit back hard rather than make effective use of police, the judiciary and other forms of conventional government law enforcement.
My contact added: “For the HTS forces, when you see your friends lying in a pool of blood, this is the kind of reaction you can expect. They are not like Christians – they do not know how to forgive. They only know a system of justice which insists on ‘an eye for an eye’.”
For the people of Tartous and the surrounding area, what makes the violence so much more painful is that, for the most part, the region had largely escaped the attacks that had blighted so many other parts of the country in the decade after 2012 when Syria descended into civil war.
This I saw for myself when I visited the region and met some of those from among the countless who had sought sanctuary there away from the likes of Aleppo then under bombardment.
Will wholesale violence return? The most recent reports suggest the security situation in Banias and elsewhere in the affected region is now calmer as a result of better government law enforcement.
In a statement issued today, 13 March, Archbishop Jean-Abdo Arbach, Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Homs, who has welcomed me to the city on numerous occasions, stated: “We don’t want any more bloodshed. We call for unity and reconciliation.
“After 14 years of war, we don’t need another conflict.”
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