by Aron Lund

Half a year after expelling the city’s anti-regime rebels, the Syrian government continues to face problems in Aleppo. Though civilians have trickled back to the eastern neighborhoods – there’s now more people living there than under rebel rule – reconstruction of the bombed-out areas has been sluggish at best, and though Assad’s control is no longer in dispute, question marks remain about basic stability.

In particular, citizens of all political stripes have complained about the lawless behavior of some of the many pro-government  militias that are active in the city.

While most of Assad’s armed forces have moved on to man the temporarily frozen frontlines against Turkey-backed rebels in Idleb and fight the Islamic State near Raqqa, Aleppo is still home to a large number of local militias and so-called popular committees. Some of these groups have become infamous for plundering shops and homes in the former opposition areas, extorting traders at checkpoints, and abusing civilians who object to their behavior.

Though these groups are hated by the opposition and often deeply unpopular with government loyalists, too, they are often protected by high-ranking contacts in the intelligence services. The government continues to rely on their services and, in many cases, officials profit from their criminality. Therefore, despite growing popular resentment, the authorities in Aleppo have mostly turned a blind eye to their behavior. Sporadic police clampdowns and attempts by the Aleppo Security Committee of Lt. Gen. Zaid al-Saleh to enforce rules on checkpoints and smugglers have been stop-gap measures at best.

In early June, Aleppo witnessed a string of particularly brutal and meaningless militia crimes, including the accidental killing of a respected Syrian-Armenian dentist and the senseless murder of a thirteen-year old boy, Ahmed Jawish. The murder was widely reported and condemned across Syrian media, including by stalwart government loyalists, and it seems to have catalyzed a change in the central government’s attitude.

Bashar al-Assad has now sent one of his top intelligence officials to Alepp: State Security director Lt. Gen. Mohammed Dib Zeitoun. He has been tasked by the presidential palace with overseeing a crackdown on organized crime and reining in the militias, and local authorities – including Lt. Gen. Saleh’s Security Commitee, the provincial police chief Lt. Gen. Essam al-Shelli, and the local Baath Party branch of Fadel al-Najjar – are now busily reorganizing the security sector.

The success or failure of Dib Zeitoun’s crackdown could tell us a lot about the Baathist government’s ability to stabilize and restore normal governance to areas of Syria where the rebels have held sway – and you can be certain that both Syrians and foreigners are keeping a close eye on what happens in Aleppo right now.

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I have written a three-part series for IRIN News about how Aleppo has fared since major combat ended there in December 2016. For more on these issues, you can read them all here:

• The fall of eastern Aleppo (Dec. 2016) [Français] [العربية]
• Eastern Aleppo under al-Assad (Apr. 2017) [العربية]
• Aleppo militias become major test for Assad (Jun. 2017) – New!

– Aron Lund