On 24 October, around 9pm, extremist thugs affiliated with the HTS ruling regime in Syria threw a hand grenade into the home of a schoolteacher in the Al Waleed suburb of Homs (central Syria). Riham Nizar Hammouda (image below) was 32 when she was murdered by this senseless act of violence. Her colleague Sarah Mohammad was seriously injured in the attack. Riham was a member of the teaching staff at the Sabea Rajoub School in Homs, originally from Zama town in the countryside of Jableh, on the coast.
These random, wanton killings are not isolated to any particular area of Syria. They may be more prevalent in the areas where Syrian minorities have been routinely persecuted since the fall of the Syrian Government, but I am told that anyone anywhere in Syria may fall prey to lawless gangs and individuals. This is not the Syria that I lived in for five years and worked in for ten years. This is a Syria plunged into a terrorist vacuum by the Imperialist criminal club whose agenda is aligned with that of ‘Israel’ in the region — economic and territorial expansionism at the expense of the indigenous peoples of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.
The former Grand Mufti of Syria, the inclusive and merciful Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun, is reported to be in intensive care after months of incarceration and torture by the Jolani regime. It is reported that there were brain injuries and a dangerous drop in all vital bodily functions. The Defence Team has been trying for a month to communicate with the Takfiri regime, to visit the former Mufti, and to reassure his family, without any success. The health of another Sheikh Abdel Ghani Qassab has also deteriorated in Jolani prisons after being tortured and he has been transferred to hospital. These regime arrests are often on fabricated or spurious pretexts with flimsy substantiation — the Sheikh had allegedly converted to Shia Islam, considered infidels by the Takfiri hordes.
The so-called ‘Ministry of Terrorism’, led by the Al Qaeda/Turkish Intelligence-linked Anas Khattab (Abu Ahmad Hudud), has a long record of issuing statements accusing innocent people, doctors, engineers, and ordinary civilians of fabricated crimes. These accusations target members of Syrian minorities or former state institution employees without fair trial or evidence to substantiate the charges brought against them. Often the arrests are made to simply seize the assets of the individual taken into custody.
On 15 November, another massacre took place in rural Homs near the border with Lebanon. Five young Alawite men were murdered and other civilians were injured when Jolani’s ‘General Security’ militias entered the village of Umm Hartin Al Gharbiyah and opened fire on a café without warning.
All this bloodshed while Jolani and his team of ‘former’ Al Qaeda criminals are given the tour of the White House, sprayed with perfume by Trump, and offered the keys to a $200 billion IMF debt-enslavement initiative.
Ongoing Violence and Violations
According to sources in Syria, rather than a reduction in violence post-coup, the violations are escalating. In particular, provocations against the Alawite community on the coast have increased. In parallel, I am told that there is an emergence of new military and political forces on the Syrian scene and an attempt to re-introduce Syrian figures who have the potential to put pressure on Jolani.* There is also an Arab consensus for change that has not yet surfaced publicly, according to many I have spoken to (names withheld for their security).
The Coastal massacres in March did not end there. The violations against Alawites began from the day Damascus fell and have never ceased. There are ongoing field executions, kidnappings, and random killings, and crimes against women are on the increase. Alawite women and young girls are being kidnapped, raped, or sold into bridal slavery in Idlib. While the Jolani regime denies these crimes, the evidence from multiple civil society channels is undeniable.
A friend in central Syria recounted the following:
One incident that deeply shocked Syrian society was the rape of the young Alawite girl ‘Rawan Asaad’ (September 2025) from the village of Hurat Amurin, affiliated with Salamiya in rural Hama. The 20-year-old girl was heading to her work at a biscuit factory on her bicycle when three armed young men from the Sunni village of Al-Asharna intercepted her, tore her clothes, raped her and threw her on the roadside where some passersby found her and rushed her to the hospital. Rawan is fatherless, works to support her mother and her disabled brother, and the incident caused wide public sympathy and anger, which forced Hind Qubawat, Minister of Social Affairs and Labor in al-Julani’s government, to comment on the incident to show empathy, yet she failed to condemn the criminals themselves.
Qubawat contacted the family and informed them that they should unite to “stop the sectarian hatred and incitement”. She went on to say:
This is not a personal matter, but rather an issue for an entire society. If honor is violated with such brutality, none of our daughters will be safe. I confirm that I am closely following the case and have begun communicating with the Ministry of Interior to monitor the investigation progress, and with the Ministry of Endowments to take appropriate action against this crime and the threat it poses to values, religion, and society. Let us all raise our voices and make our position clear: There is no place for such crimes among us, and justice must take its course. Rawan is our daughter [emphasis added].
Rawan was not the first and will not be the last. Syria has been plunged into unprecedented levels of security chaos and lawlessness where the victims become the criminals and the killers are released without charge, if they are ever taken into custody.
According to one statement from within the Alawite community:
Syria is still a conservative culture that regards a woman’s honour as sacred and considers the defence of their honour to be the highest duty of the men in the community. In most Alawite communities, there is now a heightened mix of anger and impotence among the men. This emotion is going to explode at some point, especially when you add ritual humiliation at checkpoints, arbitrary dismissal from their employment, deliberate impoverishment and the targeting of their properties and livelihoods.
There are also thousands of detained Syrian military personnel, officers, and soldiers who voluntarily surrendered following the collapse of the former regime's military apparatus; these include former fighters against ISIS in the Syrian desert and those who completed missions against ISIS in Iraq, arrested on their return. Other detainees are civilians arrested during raids or at checkpoints throughout the region. Local sources have informed me that Jolani’s gangs are benefitting from extortion and blackmail, demanding payments of a minimum of $10,000 for the release of their sons, fathers, or husbands, while other sources said that dozens were tortured and executed in prisons.
In September and October 2025, multiple violations against Alawites were recorded.
On 29 September, three Alawite young men were found murdered in Safita by unknown assailants. On 1 October, three brothers from the village of Hayalin in western Hama countryside were found killed after being taken from their home under the pretext of interrogation. On 2 October, gunmen from factions affiliated with the Ministry of Defense killed four unarmed young civilian workers returning from their work; poor Alawite builders: three from the Zidan family and a young man from the Bayt Yusuf family. This crime was followed by a strike covering 21 Alawite villages in the Homs and Hama countrysides in protest at the continuing violations. Also on 2 October, unknown assailants shot three Christian youths in the village of Anaz in the Wadi al-Nasara area of rural Homs, killing them instantly. Thirteen sectarian murders in only 72 hours.
The lack of acknowledgement and tacit approval of these crimes by the Jolani security apparatus is driving the gathering backlash. Jolani’s dominance in Idlib was predicated on violence, intimidation, warlord tactics and US support. The West, Turkey, and Israel brought this despot to power in Damascus in the knowledge that these tactics would be used against the entire country. The ensuing breakdown of Syrian societal fabric and the fracturing of unity and cohesion will drive people to rally behind their communities, sects, and faiths and to form national defence within each neighbourhood, village and community — reducing Syria to warring factions and disassociated regions built on sectarian principles to defend themselves against the external and internal threats.
One source in Damascus told me:
Syria will not survive under the current equation; everyone is profiteering from the current chaos and working to manage the crisis rather than find radical solutions. This approach aligns with what is known as the ‘creative chaos’ project, where crises are left to worsen and are managed at a minimal level without real resolution, waiting for their outcomes to impose a new reality on the ground.
The persistence of chaos and violence demand that solutions will emerge through the reshaping and distribution of decentralised influence, imposing new concepts of state, society, and sovereignty on the Syrian people, not through genuine political consensus or cohesive national initiatives. The transition to a so-called ‘New Syria’ does not emerge from a popular national vision, but through a distorted reality produced by external competing powers moving their proxies and investments on an increasingly misshapen Syrian chessboard. The lines drawn by Sykes Picot have been erased, and new boundaries, borders, and maps are being drawn to suit the economic and trade agendas of the primary entities vying for post-coup influence in Syria. The Syrian people are irrelevant to the ongoing resource, territory, and economic plunder campaigns by the global capitalist players that include the US, Turkey, UAE, China, Russia, Israel, France, UK, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
The systemic Jolani ‘General Security’ crimes encourage an environment of petty crime in Syrian society, leading to criminal gangs and local Mafia that also kidnap, steal, and murder their rivals in local power games.
On 2 October, armed groups affiliated with the ‘Public Security’ entered the tourist beach area in Wadi Qandil, Latakia, and forced around 50 young men and women into security vehicles. They were customers and employees of the Chaika Tourist Resort, and the surrounding chalets and children were also taken with the adults. According to reports, they were subjected to physical and psychological abuse and torture. Money was stolen from the resort owners and local shops. The detainees were released the next morning without charge or explanation from the authorities. Since the attack, shops have remained boarded up, and the Jolani administration has dismissed the crime as an ‘individual act’ while failing to bring the ‘individuals’ to justice.
Syrian schools are also under attack. Gone are the morning Syrian flag salutes and slogans, replaced by Islamic slogans. Such changes are designed to bring about a dramatic transformation in society and state for the future generations. A friend of mine told me, “there are two videos showing a deep cultural split between two completely different currents and their influence on coming generations. One can clearly see the difference between light and darkness”.
In one video, elementary school students in areas under the control of HTS organisations chant: “God is greatest, God is our leader, the Prophet is our model, the Qur’an is our constitution, jihad is our way, death in the path of God is our highest aspiration.” My friend told me:
The entry of political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood — Salafi-jihadism) into the educational field does not stop at changing rituals or appearances. It extends to reshape values, cultural, social and political norms. Worse, it targets childhood by instilling extremist and exclusionary ideas, gradually producing a closed sectarian environment similar to what was witnessed in Idlib and Afghanistan.
This means we are facing new productions of “caliphate cubs” in a different formulation and new style, although the essence has not changed — it remains extremism and intolerance. The transfer of extremists to schools represents a real danger that threatens not only Syria but the whole region, which calls for awareness among the Syrian people and the peoples of the region and the world and caution about what is happening — these children are like hidden bombs and mines that will explode on all of us in the future.
In contrast, in another video from a coastal school where the teachers are Alawite, children chant completely different slogans: “Good morning, we greet you, knowledge is light, ignorance is darkness, sports are life, good morning Syria”. According to my friend, “this vast difference not only shows which culture is better, but clearly shows the path of destruction and the path of salvation for Syria”. My friend is Sunni Muslim.
According to many Syrians who are now expressing views on the deteriorating situation inside Syria, the crimes committed against Syrians in HTS-controlled areas require a genuine and sincere protest stand from the united Syrian people to end this bloodshed, rape, torture, abuse, and kidnapping. These crimes are not punished or even acknowledged by the Jolani regime. Only a united Syrian people can hold the perpetrators to account and ensure a halt to these violations. The first actions began to manifest against the lack of security and stability — local strikes in sympathy with the families of victims and in schools after repeated crimes targeting teachers and students, even children, without any accountability.
My friend warned:
Defeating a nation does not require nuclear bombs or long-range missiles; it is enough to booby-trap the minds of its children by planting hatred of the other, sectarian resentment, and a desire to kill under distorted religious pretexts.
In 2018 a Resistance-dedicated journalist and activist, Ibn Walid, reported on the emergence of Wahhabi doctrine education in Idlib, under the control of Jolani’s militia and affiliated gangs:
This video shows female students at a religious studies school in Idlib, the capital of Syria’s so-called revolution. If the US and its allies had gotten their way, all the women in Syria would have had to adhere to this dress code. Long live Syria's secular government.
The video follows.
In October 2025, the following video was circulating on social media. Sadly, what Walid predicted in 2018 has now become reality:
Assaults on university students by their radicalised classmates or external actors is commonplace in ‘New Syria’. The assault on the university student Rebal Suleiman Baraka, a Durzi from Arneh in Jabal al-Sheikh, inside Al-Jazeera Private University on the Daraa highway, south of Damascus, is indicative of societal fragility and the vertical and horizontal disintegration that some Syrian regions are experiencing.
What happened was not an isolated incident or a passing student disagreement, but a systematic sectarian assault carried out by a group of students belonging to Salafi Takfiri popular cult, simply because the student belonged to the Druze sect. Worse, the assault took place in front of the University security, which turned a blind eye, while the attackers chanted sectarian phrases and made public threats against Druze students.
Student Rebal sustained serious injuries before being temporarily detained by elements affiliated with al-Julani. The victim was detained and then released, while the thugs who attacked him were left unpunished. A scene very reminiscent of the genocidal Zionist settler attacks on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, supported by the Zionist military and security forces. A scene that would never have been witnessed in the former pre-coup Syria. Another friend local to the south told me:
The gathering of a group of human hyenas around an unarmed young man because of his sectarian background reveals the extent of moral erosion and ethical collapse within a society dominated by this mentality. How can a state be built with factions that still believe God guided only them and see what happened in Syria as a liberation for which they take credit?
It is a closed mentality, an exclusionary culture that has proven its revolutionary, political and moral failure and will surely fail to build the state, because their system based on theocracy and Takfir cannot produce a cohesive society or a unifying national system; rather it inevitably leads to the collapse of the self before the state.
This same individual explained the process that Syria is being forced to adopt:
This criminal scene means that Syrians have become hostages to extremist criminal organisations and militias that kill, rape, and fabricate charges, with a total absence of the concept of accountability and law. Today the victim is punished and the perpetrator is honoured. Such crimes, which have not been addressed for nine months, will by nature lead to armed rebellion, then resistance, and then to civil war and, eventually, partition. This is the essence of the disagreement between the minorities and the secular Sunni current on one hand and these extremists on the other, a conflict between the rule of law and the law of the jungle, between order and chaos. Syria is now moving through the law of the jungle and chaos, ruled by gang logic.
Everyone will eventually leave the scene; the current conflict is extremely complex and is being managed without clear rules. In reality, you find yourself facing the most dangerous organisations directly: the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi-jihadist groups and remnants of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, organisations that enjoy intense regional and international media and political cover, in addition to thugs, mobs and electronic/social media trolls. Thus, you find yourself alone facing a tsunami of takfiri thought and organised violence with almost empty hands and without any real cover to balance that force, reaching a stage of exhaustion and exiting the arena for your own mental security and physical safety. This is exactly what pushed most of the cultural elite, especially inside Syria, either to rally around the HTS authority and Jolani, and defend them in a way that seems strange but is a reality due to fear, or to remain silent and withdraw entirely from the scene.
The Manufacture of Sectarianism under MI6 Rules
With MI6 very much in control of the Intelligence operations in Syria since 2011 and now with operatives embedded in Damascus to coach and school Jolani and his entourage, we see the sinister rollout of the sectarian divide and conquer strategy that has served the neocolonialists so well throughout their sordid history.
The online trolls and informants overlook the devastating effects of Jolani’s failures for Syrian society as a whole while doxxing Syrian dissidents and critical thinkers. This drives the dissidents underground, fearful to express an opinion in case they are arrested, their homes stolen or their family abused. Among the online troll clusters, a dangerous level of blind sectarian loyalty is driven by the concept that Jolani will “protect the Sunni majority from the ravages of Infidel minorities”. In reality Syria has become a hollowed out state without an identity, a media without impact, an opaque ruling entity disconnected from the people, a collapsing economy, zero security, stability or accountability unless you are the victim, in which case you will be detained for the crime of resisting torture, abuse, theft and sectarian hatred.
Another Syrian analyst described the three main mechanisms that are used to achieve this level of sectarian repression:
The exploitation of sectarian ‘belonging’ by the HTS authority and the ‘othering’ of non-Sunni sects in Syria, employing media and censorship, and, finally, amplifying the discourse that links Jolani and his henchmen to his sect as its supreme protector. Thus, every detractor becomes a target for bullying and intimidation under the cover of an authority that refuses to criminalise sectarian hatred. On the contrary, it is encouraged and reinforced by the media and social media cohorts. Distrust is borne out of such an environment. People withdraw to smaller and smaller circles of debate, fearing that they will be betrayed for holding views that condemn sectarian violence and killings. What was once a complex but cohesive society is now being systematically divided along multiple lines of both sect and ideology.
This policy creates a sense of supremacy among Jolani’s supporters with a belief in a right to rule through force, the criminalisation of criticism or protest, reducing critics to traitors and relying on majority dominance to divide society and fracture unity. The seeds of inter-Syrian hatred are being sown and there is now a very real risk of the country being dragged into decades of conflict and even civil war that will spare nothing and nobody. Everything that the former Syrian Government and military fought to prevent since 2011.
As a friend said:
The national, value-based intellectual system has begun to erode and is heading toward rapid collapse that will make even demands for federalism and decentralisation futile in the future.
Collective national consciousness has been killed among Syrians, and the simplest basics of life, such as safe living or finding enough daily food and drink, have become the aspirations of most of the Syrian people. It is clear that this state was not the result of random or accidental events but is at the core of what is happening which is a primary objective of all the international and regional forces controlling the Syrian arena.
Moreover, the HTS gang has seized the Sunni sect through this Salafi-jihadist approach, demonising the entire sect, which has been known for centuries for its moderation and openness to others. Today, it has become a source of fear not only for minorities in Syria, but for other sects in the region. Europe, which is hosting thousands of refugees, may think it is immune, but it is delusional. This extremism will strike Europe sooner or later, and Europeans will pay the price for their governments' policies that support terrorism.
Jolani may return ‘triumphant’ from his round of talks at the White House, but behind the scenes, he is perceived to be nothing more than another puppet, in power for as long as the Washington-Zionist club deem it useful. He was mocked and humiliated by Trump and later by Vice President J. D. Vance, who congratulated Trump for asking Jolani how many wives he had — an exercise in denigration of the individual and the culture he claims to represent.
While Jolani’s supporters cling to the mirage that Jolani is making strides on the global stage, Israel advances further into Syrian southern territory. Russia expands influence into the south, the coastal area, and the northeast, in close coordination with Israel and, by default, the US. The Kurds, supported by the Pentagon and Israel, are dragging their heels on integration into the Syrian military. Jolani has been made a member of the ‘international’ anti-ISIS club, which puts him in an untenable position. ISIS is a de facto US/Zionist-bloc-proxy, despite claims to the contrary, and ISIS fighters make up a high percentage of Jolani’s ‘New Syria’ military. Washington is asking Jolani to turn against his own Takfiri elements in favour of a Western agenda which supports Zionist expansion into Syrian territory while containing Turkey in the north, restricting effective military aid for Jolani from Erdogan.
Death threats have already been issued against Jolani by the Caliphatists within his formerly loyal bloc of Takfiri fighters. The Zionist research centre Alma has just published a paper on the possibility of Jolani’s assassination and presenting a post-Sharaa/Jolani strategy for Israel. Holding on to power just got a whole lot harder for Jolani. Stability in Syria is a thing of the past. Insecurity and sectarian strife is the future, regardless of who the West brings in to rule. History teaches us that the only choice is resistance when there is nothing left to lose.
*In Part Two of this miniseries, I will go into greater detail on the emergence of political and military individuals and groups on the Syria scene to challenge Jolani’s enforced dominance. I will also look at the devastating eradication of Syrian culture, history, and heritage by the MI6, Mossad, and CIA project that envisions a Syria more like Dubai — devoid of historical identity and divorced from its complex origins and roots, condemned to be a playing field for the globalist cartels and unable to defend itself against the ravages of vulture capitalism.
