[10] While most Shabiha were members of the Alawite minority, the main common denominator of the groups was loyalty to the Assad family rather than religion, and in areas such as Aleppo they were primarily Sunni.

[13] Strongly loyal to the Assad regime and containing anti-Sunni factions, shabiha militias are discreetly financed by powerful Syrian businessmen, and have often been responsible for the more brutal actions against the opposition, including possible massacres.

[13] The shabiha, who were named for the Arabic word for ghost or for the Mercedes-Benz W140 that was popular for its smuggling sized trunk and was called the Shabah,[15] were known by the Alawites in Syria as Alawi ganglords.

[19][20][21] In March 2011, activists reported that Shabiha drove through Latakia in cars armed with machine guns firing at protesters, and then later of taking up sniper position on rooftops and killing up to 21 people.

[22] In May, Foreign Affairs reported that the shabiha joined the Fourth Armoured Division, led by Maher al-Assad, and attacked civilians in the cities of Banias, Jableh, and Latakia.

"[1] A month later in June, witnesses and refugees from the northwestern region said that the shabiha have reemerged during the uprising and were being used by the Assad regime to carry out "a scorched earth campaign […] burning crops, ransacking houses and shooting randomly.

It was also reported by Syrian locals that some elements in the Shabiha were contemplating plans to clear Sunni Muslim villages from the Alawi northwest in the hopes of creating an easily defendable rump state.

[27] The newspaper Toronto Star describes Shabiha as "mafia militia […] smuggling commodities, appliances, drugs and guns between Syria and Lebanon at the behest of Assad’s extended family" and the Telegraph as "a group that suffers from a dangerous cocktail of religious indoctrination, minority paranoia and smuggler roots".

[34] While a small proportion of the deaths appeared to have resulted from artillery and tank rounds used against the villages, the foreign press later announced that most of the massacre's victims had been "summarily executed in two separate incidents",[35] and that witnesses affirmed that the Shabiha were the most likely perpetrators.

[41] The U.S., U.K., and eleven other nations–the Netherlands, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Bulgaria, Canada and Turkey–jointly expelled Syrian ambassadors and diplomats already 4 days after the massacre took place.

[50] British newspaper Sunday Times and pan-Arab network Al-Arabiya have reported on Shabiha militia stealing Roman antiquities and selling them on the black market in Syria and Lebanon.