In Aleppo’s ruins, vigilantes help Syria’s new rulers keep the peace

 At a school in Aleppo, a record book contains a defaced image of Bashar al-Assad. Photographs by Emanuele Satolli for WSJ
At a school in Aleppo, a record book contains a defaced image of Bashar al-Assad. Photographs by Emanuele Satolli for WSJ

Summary

The Islamist former insurgents now in charge need to build popular support and demonstrate rule of law. And they’re finding they can’t do it on their own.

ALEPPO, Syria—Late one January night, two balaclava-clad security officers with Syria’s new government were speeding through the streets of Aleppo in pursuit of a man who had been spotted stealing fuel from a parked car.

The middle-aged officers screeched to a halt, jumped out and ran through a small park with their flashlights and Kalashnikov rifles. An older woman called out in the dark to check that the men making the commotion were, indeed, the new authorities. The thief got away.

Petty crime is no small matter for a new government that just overthrew a half-century of brutal dictatorship. The former insurgents now in charge need to build popular support and demonstrate rule of law. And they’re finding they can’t do it on their own.

Rabie Hardan, a local vigilante watchgroup organizer, said residents of his neighborhood were so worried about rising crime that they volunteered to help the new rulers ensure stability.

“They need time to secure the city," he said.

Syria’s new leader moved at the end of January to disband armed groups, including his own, and start the process of creating a new army to secure the country after 14 years of civil war.

A visit to Aleppo, the major city they have held the longest, shows it won’t be easy. Small crimes—including grocery-store break-ins and the theft of steel cables to sell the metal on the black market—are common and unsettling for a deeply impoverished society on edge.

Elsewhere in Syria, larger problems are brewing. In the northeast, contests between Kurds and Sunni militias backed by Turkey remain unresolved. Islamic State, while badly beaten, looms in the deserts. Skirmishes with loyalists of the fallen Assad regime persist. And economic hardship carries the threat of a new, future insurgency.

Contending with all this are the former members of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a group whose roughly 25,000 fighters have been spread across a country of 24 million people. Before advancing on Damascus in December, the group had administered Idlib, an enclave of just a few million people. Aleppo, less than an hour away from that power base, was the first city that fell when the group launched its lightning offensive in November.

Before the civil war, Aleppo was Syria’s largest city and its commercial hub. During the conflict, which began as a public uprising in 2011, it became one of the most dangerous places on earth. Aleppo suffered extensive damage, a stark illustration of the Assad regime’s willingness to unleash wholesale destruction on the country to survive. Russian airstrikes and fighting between Assad forces and rebels laid waste to the city, including its Old Bazaar, a Unesco heritage site.

Today, entire residential neighborhoods are still in ruins, their residents killed, exiled or disappeared into Assad’s underground prisons. In some deserted areas, a single clothing line or a few plants on a balcony are the only signs of life. Electricity is scarce, and streets plunge into darkness at midnight.

When HTS, whose leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was once affiliated with Islamic State and al Qaeda, swept through the country late last year, some religious minorities were unsettled. During their first days in Aleppo, the group’s fighters went knocking on doors in neighborhoods that have housed Christians for centuries to reassure residents they were safe, said Joseph Tobji, Maronite archbishop of Aleppo. Weeks later, the group deployed security to protect Christmas celebrations.

“Honestly, we were surprised," Tobji said during an interview in his office down a narrow alleyway near a 19th-century cathedral. International pressure can help safeguard Syrian minorities, he said. “They don’t want to tarnish their reputation among the public and the world."

Visitors from across the country flock to Aleppo’s historic citadel. Banners depicting former President Bashar al-Assad have been left in shreds on building facades. Syria’s pre-Assad tricolor flag of green, white and black has been reinstated everywhere, from government buildings to license plates—by taxi drivers with ink markers.

The conflict in the country’s northeast—where Syrian Kurds supported by the U.S. are under attack from militias allied with Turkey, which has close ties to HTS—reverberates in Aleppo.

In one neighborhood, Kurdish militants refuse to lay down their arms and have erected barricades of dirt and sandbags blocking off a maze of streets where snipers lurk in bombed-out buildings. In late December, a drone launched by a Turkish-backed militia killed two Kurdish fighters and injured eight civilians here.

“We as Kurds have lived in Syria for centuries," said Zahros Afrin, a 24-year-old fighter standing in the sniper-guarded alley. “We just want to live in peace with our own traditions and have our rights as Kurds and Syrians."

Assad ruled Syria with an iron fist. But the new rulers need popular support to avoid another uprising. In Idlib province, which HTS captured in full in 2019, the group suppressed political dissent with force but provided a welcome semblance of safety and social services. It is now drawing on that experience to govern the whole country, said Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization based in Brussels.

“They see themselves as a governing body," Khalifa said. “They see themselves as politicians."

HTS has moderated certain stances over time, knowing that it can’t rule alone given its small size. “They need to strike alliances with other Syrians and bring them into government," Khalifa said. “They need more people."

To bulk up security forces, HTS has promised amnesty for former regime forces who weren’t involved in killing or torture, said Lt. Col. Hassan Ali Abu Mohammad, HTS director of the department for officers’ affairs in Idlib.

“We interview each one who comes here and assign them to fill vacancies," he said, in an interview at his office. “We are all sons of Syria."

HTS also encourages Syrian civilians to report potential spies, he said.

Syrians hope the new rule will eradicate the pervasive corruption of the Assad years. Under the former regime, lawyers paid bribes just to bring a case to court, but so far, the new rulers have made no such demands, said Ahlam Babeli, a lawyer in Aleppo. She said HTS had been polite, giving her hope that female lawyers could continue their work.

“We have many women’s rights activists, and they won’t be silenced," she said. “Women have a crucial role to play in the future of Syria."

HTS will also have to contend with a Syrian civil society bolstered by the return of activists who fled the country in the past decade. Under Assad, political organization of any sort was banned. So far, HTS has been tolerant. In recent weeks, crowds of civilians have gathered in Damascus to demand justice for their disappeared relatives, and activists have gathered for conferences downtown.

“We are very different in our way of thinking," Alma Salem, executive director of the Syrian Women’s Political Movement, speaking in a personal capacity, said of HTS. “But there is a big hope that we can establish a political life where we can have those conversations in a peaceful way."

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com

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