CEP Analyst Greg Waters writes: "Syria’s first post-Assad protests broke out on Dec. 25 after a video claiming to show the destruction of an Alawite shrine spread rapidly across Facebook. The video was quickly debunked as several weeks old, the shrine only partially damaged, and the damage occurring during the capture of Aleppo city rather than in an act of sectarian vandalism. But those first hours were enough to stir up the widespread fears lingering just below the surface among Syria’s Alawite minority, bringing many Alawites (as well as Sunnis) to the streets to denounce sectarianism. Rumors of apparently sectarian-motivated violations by Syria’s new security forces against minorities have been widespread since Dec. 9, the day after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad — rumors fueled by both pro-Assad fake news campaigns and the very real violations that had occurred within these communities. Many of these rumors are impossible to verify, while others are quickly disproven by fact-checking organizations like Verify-Sy. But the new government’s apparent use of extra-judicial executions of local ex-regime criminals has only cemented fears that innocent civilians are being targeted purely over their religion, while the lack of transparency has enabled others to impersonate security forces and carry out their own crimes."