Syria's new leadership must break the country's cycle of revenge

On Friday, this newspaper warned that Syria and its fledgling administration needed the world’s help to rebuild and mitigate the risk of recent violence in the country spiralling. Since then, an appalling weekend of murder and mayhem has taken place in which more than 1,300 people have been killed, most of them civilians.

Much of this violence has been nakedly sectarian. Although gun attacks last week on pro-government forces carried out by factions loyal to the deposed regime appear to have lit the fuse on this combustible situation, more than 970 civilians – most of whom were members of the minority Alawite community – have since been killed in areas along the Mediterranean. The UN has condemned the violence, decrying “summary executions on a sectarian basis” and calling on Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara to intervene.

Syrian leader: ‘We will pursue remnants of Assad regime and bring them to trial’

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This is a critical moment for Mr Al Shara’s government. Its reaction will set the tone for the country’s future. Certainly, if the situation is to be recovered then the worst violence since the fall of the Assad dynasty three months ago demands an effective and judicious response. There are signs that Damascus is aware it must act decisively. On Sunday, the Syrian presidency said it had formed a committee to investigate the deaths and, in a video posted the same day, Mr Al Shara said his government would “hold accountable, firmly and without leniency, anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians … or who overstepped the powers of the state”.

The first step must be to restore security to all Syrian citizens, regardless of their community affiliation. That means establishing the primacy of government forces, disbanding armed factions involved in provocations or revenge killings, and prosecuting those found guilty of abuses. The Hayat Tahrir Al Sham-run administration is no longer an insurgency – it is a government, even if only an interim one, and must lead by example.

Part of that example should be establishing a reconciliation process to undermine the deadly sectarianism that has fuelled so much of the violence and humiliation meted out to the Alawite community in particular. Many Syrians – though not a majority, and not all of them from one particular community – supported the Assad regime for all manner of reasons, including family ties, financial security or communal solidarity. Often, it was merely the fear of the Assad government being replaced by something worse. Mr Al Shara and his team must prove what took place over the weekend was not the start of “something worse”, that it can be stopped and its perpetrators held to account.

The reality is that things should not have gone this far. The new political order in Damascus is in its infancy and surely expected to be directly challenged by Assad loyalists, rogue militias, foreign fighters, ISIS or other forces. That the situation in Tartous, Banias and areas of Latakia was allowed to degenerate into indiscriminate bloodshed only underlines the urgency for a professional security response and committed leadership to draw the poison of sectarian hatreds. No one is pretending that there are easy answers to unpicking years of division and mistrust, but allowing a new cycle of revenge to set in could condemn the country to repeat the mistakes and abuses of the past.