In March, in excess of 1,300 Alawite civilians were killed by Syrian forces, chiefly along the northwest coast. In July, several hundred more Druze civilians were executed by security forces in the southwestern Suwayda Governorate. But the calls for decentralization and the nascent insurgencies resisting the overt massacres are being branded as insurgencies by Assad-era remnant forces. The Druze seeking limited autonomy within Suwayda, just a few months after large scale executions, is similarly being presented as Israel-fueled unrest. In reality there have been reports that the HTS was preparing a large scale military offensive against the Kurds for months, with expectations such an offensive would happen in October.