The Assad family hails from the Alawite minority, along with much of the former regime’s leadership and security apparatus. In Syria’s northeast, simmering tensions between the government and the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces have sparked low-level clashes. More than six months after the violence, Alawite communities are still waiting for accountability for what they suffered. Though thousands of Syrians have returned from abroad since Assad’s fall, tens of thousands fled to Lebanon in the wake of the March violence, according to the U.N. refugee agency. According to the U.N. report, GSS forces organized buses to take Alawite residents to a school for food and shelter.