Syria’s new western-backed government has carried out massacres, kidnappings, and forced displacement against Alawites since seizing power.

Raids by Syrian security forces [Jolani’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham terrorists] have almost entirely depopulated an Alawite-majority neighborhood in the Damascus suburbs, Reuters reported on 12 September.

Forces from the “diversity-friendly” government stormed the neighborhood of Al-Somaria in late August, “toting guns, swords and eviction orders,” Reuters revealed.

“In their wake, they left the district’s homes spray-painted with big black ‘X’s and ‘O’s: marking who could stay and who must go,” the report highlights.

Before the raids, Al-Somaria had about 22,000 residents, nearly half of whom were from families of soldiers from the former Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

The SAA was disbanded in December, when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, took power in Damascus with US, Israeli, Turkish, and Russian help.

A week after the August raids, only around 3,000 people remained, members of the Al-Somaria neighborhood committee told the British news outlet.

Reuters could not independently verify the committee’s figures. However, one of its journalists who visited the neighborhood twice in early September said the suburb was a “virtual ghost town, with no lights in homes, no cars on roads, and a handful of people in the streets.”

The raids were led by an interior ministry commander known as Abu Hudhayfah.

Dozens of residents speaking with the news agency said Abu Hudhayfah and his men went door-to-door, “telling families they were living on land illegally seized by the Assads and demanding proof they owned their homes.”

“Those families who couldn’t immediately produce ownership documents saw the outer walls of their homes spray-painted with ‘O’s and affixed with printed eviction orders,” Reuters added.

“This is a notification to residents of illegal housing in al-Somaria to leave their houses in no more than 48 hours or face punishment under the law,” read the notices issued by the “Public Housing Committee of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic.”

Dozens of male residents were interrogated about whether they had served in the former Syrian army. Others were detained in a residential building turned police station, where members of the security forces beat them.

Two residents said that they had shown Abu Hudhayfah their ownership documents, but he dismissed them because they were issued while Bashar al-Assad was president.

“I’ve been living in my house for 40 years. My father bought it with his blood, sweat, and tears so he could pass it on to me. I won’t give it up,” said Ali Barakat, a member of al-Somaria’s neighborhood committee.

Residents speaking with Reuters said the raids created a “general sense of panic” that led families to flee their homes.

They feared a repeat of events on the Syrian coast in March, when the HTS-led security forces massacred at least 1,600 Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast.

Young Alawite men were forced to crawl through the streets and bark like dogs before being executed.

Syrian security forces consist primarily of Sunni extremists who view Alawites as apostates from Islam who deserve to be killed.

One possible reason for the evictions is to make way for a $2 billion metro line that Syrian authorities say they plan to establish in the capital. The plan calls for a transfer junction with a parking garage for hundreds of cars in Al-Somaria.

Reuters notes that the land in Al-Somaria was appropriated from Sunni farmers in the 1970s by Rifaat al-Assad, a powerful Syrian security official and brother of then-President Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father.

Mohammed al-Wawi, a 54-year-old cleaning supplies store owner in the adjacent suburb of Moadhamiyah, said his family had owned a small piece of land in Al-Somaria.

“We gave up on reclaiming it years ago,” he added. “Who would have thought the regime would fall like this?”

The Cradle Media report