An uneasy calm settles over Syrian city of Homs after outbreak of sectarian violence

HOMS, Syria (AP) — Syria's new security forces checked IDs and searched cars in the central city of Homs on Thursday, a day after protests by members of the Alawite minority erupted in gunfire and stirred fears that the country's fragile peace could break down.

A tense calm prevailed after checkpoints were set up throughout the country’s third-largest city, which has a mixed population of Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites and Christians.

The security forces are controlled by the former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the charge that unseated former President Bashar Assad. On the road from Damascus, security teams at the checkpoints waved cars through perfunctorily, but in Homs they checked IDs and opened the trunk of each car to look for weapons.

Armed men blocked the road leading to the square formerly named for Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, where one foot was all that remained of a statue of him that once stood in the center of the traffic roundabout. The square has been renamed Freedom Square, although some call it “the donkey’s square,” referring to Assad.

Protests erupted there Wednesday among Alawites — the minority sect to which the Assad family belongs — after a video circulated showing an Alawite shrine in Aleppo being vandalized. Government officials later issued a statement saying that the video was old.

Wednesday's protests began peacefully, said Alaa Amran, the newly installed police chief of Homs, but then “some suspicious parties ... related to the former regime opened fire on both security forces and demonstrators, and there were some injuries.”

Security forces flooded the area and imposed a curfew to restore order, he said.

Mohammad Ali Hajj Younes, an electrician who has a shop next to the square, said the people who instigated the violence are “the same shabiha who used to come into my shop and rob me, and I couldn’t say anything,” using a term referring to pro-Assad militia members.

The protests were part of a larger flare-up of violence Wednesday. Pro-Assad militants attacked members of the new security forces near the coastal town of Tartous, killing 14 and wounding 10, according to the Interior Ministry in the transitional government.

In response, security forces launched raids “pursuing the remnants of Assad's militias," state media reported. The state-run SANA news agency reported late Thursday that clashes broke out in the village of Balqasa in a rural part of Homs province.

The unrest left many people fearful that the relatively peaceful conditions that have prevailed since Assad's fall could break down into sectarian fighting as the country begins to recover following nearly 14 years of civil war.

Those who instigated the violence "are supported by parties that may be external that want strife for Syria to return it to square one, the square of sectarianism,” Amran said.

Ahmad al-Bayyaa, an Alawite in the al-Zahra neighborhood of Homs, said he and his wife and three daughters fled to the coastal town of Baniyas when insurgent forces first arrived, but came back a day later after hearing from neighbors that the fighters had not harmed civilians.

“We had been given the idea that there would be slaughter and killing based on our identity, and nothing like that happened,” he said. “We came back, and nobody asked to see my ID from the coast to Homs.”

Before Assad's fall, al-Bayyaa said, he spent 10 years in hiding to avoid a call-up for reserve army service and was afraid to cross a checkpoint in his own neighborhood. After the former Syrian army collapsed in the face of the HTS-led advance, residents of the neighborhood set up a fruit and vegetable stand on an abandoned tank in a gesture of mockery.

In the predominantly Christian Homs suburb of Fayrouzeh, a group of teenage girls took each other’s pictures next to a giant cutout of Santa Claus with a Christmas tree in the town square.

Residents of the area said their initial fears that the country's new rulers would target religious minorities were quickly laid to rest. HTS was once aligned with al-Qaida, but its leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has cut ties with the group and since coming to power has preached religious coexistence.

“We had a very beautiful holiday even though there was some anxiety before it,” said Fayrouzeh resident Sarab Kashi. “The guys from HTS volunteered and stood as guards on the door of the churches.”

The city’s Sunni majority, meanwhile, welcomed the new administration. Many of the young men now guarding its streets were originally from Homs and were evacuated to opposition-held Idlib when Assad’s forces solidified control of their areas years ago.

“These guys were young boys when they took them in the green buses, and they were crying,” said Wardeh Mohammed, gesturing at a group of young men manning a checkpoint in front of a grocery store on one of the city's main streets. “Thank God, they have come back as young men, as fighters who made us proud.”

The country’s new rulers have scrambled to impose order after the initial anarchic days after Assad’s fall.

The former police and security forces — widely known for corruption — were disbanded, and members of the police force in what was formerly a regional government headed by HTS in the opposition-held northwest were deployed to other areas.

Amran, the police chief, said recruitment efforts are underway to build up the forces, but he acknowledged that the current numbers are “not sufficient to control security 100%.” The new security forces have also struggled to stem the proliferation of weapons in the hands of civilians or non-state groups, he said.

Al-Sharaa has said that the country's patchwork of former rebel groups will come together in one unified national army, but it remained unclear exactly how that would happen or whether the groups can avoid infighting.

In Homs, it was clear that several different armed factions patrolled the streets, in a sometimes uneasy coordination. An HTS official hastened to explain that a handful of armed men wearing patches with an insignia sometimes associated with the Islamic State were not members of his group.

Many feared another flare-up of violence.

“From what happened yesterday, it’s clear that some people want to take the country backwards” to the worst days of the country’s civil war, al-Bayya said, “and no one wants to go back 14 years.”