In Aleppo’s ruins, vigilantes help Syria’s new rulers keep the peace
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. ALEPPO, Syria—Late one January night, two balaclava-clad security officers with Syria’s new government were speeding through the streets of Aleppo in pursuit of a man who had been spotted stealing fuel from a parked car. The middle-aged officers screeched to a halt, jumped out and ran through a small park with their flashlights and Kalashnikov rifles.
An older woman called out in the dark to check that the men making the commotion were, indeed, the new authorities. The thief got away. Petty crime is no small matter for a new government that just overthrew a half-century of brutal dictatorship.
The former insurgents now in charge need to build popular support and demonstrate rule of law. And they’re finding they can’t do it on their own. Rabie Hardan, a local vigilante watchgroup organizer, said residents of his neighborhood were so worried about rising crime that they volunteered to help the new rulers ensure stability.
“They need time to secure the city," he said. Syria’s new leader moved at the end of January to disband armed groups, including his own, and start the process of creating a new army to secure the country after 14 years of civil war. A visit to Aleppo, the major city they have held the longest, shows it won’t be easy.
Small crimes—including grocery-store break-ins and the theft of steel cables to sell the metal on the black market—are common and unsettling for a deeply impoverished society on edge. Elsewhere in Syria, larger problems are brewing. In the northeast, contests between Kurds and Sunni militias backed by Turkey remain unresolved.
Islamic State, while badly beaten, looms in the deserts. Skirmishes with loyalists of the fallen Assad regime persist. And economic
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