After three months of investigations, a Syrian government committee has released its official findings into the March massacres along the country’s coastal region. The report documents 1,426 deaths, including 90 women and several former soldiers who had reconciled with the government after the fall of the ousted regime in December. Far from being just statistics, the numbers reveal the depth of security collapse and sectarian division at a critical moment in Syria’s recent history.
The report names 298 suspected perpetrators, 265 of them loyalists of the deposed regime. Accusations against current security forces remain limited, despite witness testimony describing sectarian slurs from some government personnel during the violence.
A Question of Justice
The findings raise questions about the impartiality of the investigation and whether Syria’s new authorities can hold all perpetrators accountable, regardless of their rank or affiliation.
The committee conducted field visits to 33 villages and towns in the coastal area, documenting mass graves, burned homes, and destroyed neighbourhoods. Investigators gathered 450 testimonies related to killings and 486 accounts of threats and torture. In total, 938 residents and 23 officials gave statements, most requesting anonymity, a sign of persistent fear and mistrust even after active fighting ceased.
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The Army’s Disbandment: A Costly Mistake
Lebanon-based political analyst Hassan Aliyan notes that the report itself acknowledges the government’s limited or non-existent control over the coastal region at the time. He argues that dissolving the old army entirely after the regime’s fall was a grave error, comparable to the U.S.-led decision to dismantle Iraq’s army in 2003, which fuelled chaos.
Speaking to +963, Aliyan said the absence of a central decision to curb security abuses, whether during the coastal operations or in later incidents in the southern Province, reflects a deeper crisis within Syria’s new governing structure. The government, he noted, has so far failed to integrate the various armed factions under the Ministry of Defense, leaving the country exposed to unchecked weapons proliferation and the freedom of local militias to act without formal oversight.
The Lebanese political analyst added that alongside the collapse of security, sectarian incitement remains a dangerous driver of violence. The report documented the use of sectarian slurs against local residents, while some hardline figures continue to promote such rhetoric. This, he said, runs counter to the more moderate vision President Ahmed al-Sharaa has tried to project since December, and if left unpunished, risks fuelling new waves of violence in the future.
Shocking, but Likely Incomplete Figures
Dr. Adi Ramadan, an academic at Italy’s Mediterranean Academy for Studies and Research, says the official death toll is “shocking by any measure,” though it likely undercounts the true scale. He believes the violence was less about restoring order and more about settling scores, massacres carried out as acts of retribution rather than law enforcement.
Speaking to +963, Ramadan argued that the scale of the violence can only be understood as part of a campaign of score-settling rather than a genuine effort to establish security and stability. The massacres, he said, sent a clear message that the logic of revenge had prevailed over the rule of law, while the breakdown in security opened the door for armed groups and uncontrolled factions to pursue their own agendas outside any centralized control.
He went on to say that although the committee directly accused “remnants” of the former regime and assigned them part of the blame, these charges are insufficient to explain the sheer magnitude of casualties and destruction. The tragedy, Ramadan stressed, struck civilians before combatants and included women and former soldiers who had reconciled with the government, making it difficult to frame the events as merely a reaction to hostile elements.
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Ramadan added that the committee’s account focuses largely on accusing specific individuals of carrying out the massacres, but this narrative clashes with the vast geographic spread of the violence. The killings took place across a wide area of Syria’s coastal region, something that would have required significant movement, at least implicit coordination, or deliberate exploitation of the security vacuum. This scale of atrocities, he said, cannot be reduced to the acts of a few isolated perpetrators.
By describing the events as “widespread and unorganized,” the committee raises a serious contradiction: how could massacres of this size occur in a single region and across such an extensive area without some force capable of coordinating them, or without deliberate inaction that allowed the conflict to turn into collective score-settling? This question points toward the possibility of hidden actors or a degree of security negligence that enabled the violence to spiral out of control.
