Syria’s New Unelected Regime Launches an Ethnic Cleansing Campaign Against Religious Minorities

By Roqayah Chamseddine | March 18, 2025 | 11:02am

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International Affairs Syria

Syria’s New Unelected Regime Launches an Ethnic Cleansing Campaign Against Religious Minorities

Editor’s Note: Some of the hyperlinks in this piece direct to videos of violence and executions; use caution when navigating off this page, as the content can be extremely disturbing.

Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al Assad, elements loyal to the regime of unelected president Ahmad al-Sharaa, known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, and the paramilitary group Hayat al Tahrir al Sham (HTS) have been attacking numerous Alawi villages across Syria. The attacks, which have targeted the towns of Jableh, Mukhtriyeh, Bisnada and Baniyas, have seen armed men associated with the HTS-led Syrian government going house to house, summarily executing men, women, and children, looting their homes, forcibly disappearing citizens, and subsequently celebrating what can only be described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting religious minorities, namely Alawis. The scenes currently unfolding have been described as “killing fields” by Lebanese journalist Hala Jaber, with the bodies of executed Syrian Alawis littering the streets—in one case, documented by the UK-based Syrian Coast Observatory on March 12, executed Syrian Alawis were dumped in orchards in Tartous.

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Those affiliated with HTS and al-Jolani have made it abundantly clear that a new war is being waged in an effort to destroy historic religious communities, specifically Alawis. The violence has only increased over the last week, resulting in the deaths of at least thousands of mostly Alawite Syrians. Further emphasizing the anti-Alawite sentiment present in Syria, volunteer members of a Syrian NGO known as Abaq were seen distributing iftar packages in Aleppo with the sectarian phrase “Alawis deserve to live in peace in their graves.” The targeting of religious minorities in Syria is not only one of violence but of humiliation, with videos circulating of men being made to walk on all fours and bark like dogs. In another shocking video taken in the village of al-Qabu al-Awamiyah, an elderly Syrian woman, Zarqa Sbahiya, stands before the bodies of her children, Suhail and Kinan Reyhan, as armed gunmen say that they will “stomp every Alawi.”

Numa Ali, a Syrian Alawi woman, said HTS security forces carried out a massacre of her two brothers and father in the city of Jableh on March 7, killing them in cold blood—Abdullatif Ali, and his sons, Majd and Bishr. “Three innocent people who did not hurt an ant,” Numa Ali wrote. “My beloveds, I want to tell the whole world about you, and how you were killed.” In another testimony, Syrian Alawi expat Mohannad Espers describes his mother awaiting the possibility of death. “God willing, I will meet my Lord as a faithful, content martyr—right in front of my home, beneath my olive trees, just like the Palestinian women. I am not sad for myself; I have lived my life and prepared my grave next to your late father. What breaks my heart is the young people, the families, the children—relatives and friends who now entrust me with their little ones, in case they survive.”

As the targeting of Syrian religious minorities continues, Western governments have rolled out the red-carpet for al-Jolani, who consider this more polished version of the former leader of the Syrian offshoot of ISIS to be a statesman of sorts. Al-Jolani and Syria’s new foreign minister, Assad al-Shibani, made an appearance at a donor summit in Brussels on March 17—which was the first time a Syrian representative was present at the yearly conference—signifying a dynamic shift in relations with Syria and emphasizing that the new regime has been offered support from the European Union.

Despite al-Jolani’s well documented ties to Jabhat al-Nusra, which was then rebranded as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and his association with al-Qaeda, efforts by the United States and Europe to present al-Jolani to the world as a reformed leader have persisted with little to no pushback by those in support of the anti-Assad Syrian opposition, some of whom have even described the victims of these sectarian attacks as “regime remnants” of the former Assad government in an attempt to whitewash the severity and sectarian nature of these crimes. In 2015, the southern suburb of Beirut was rocked by suicide bombings carried out by the Syrian offshoot of ISIS, resulting in the deaths of at least 43 people, with the undeniable intention of killing Shia Lebanese citizens. These same perpetrators are now carrying out pogroms against religious groups in Syria—and even Sunnis who have come to their defense—further indicating that the current wave of repression is only the beginning.

A member of the Syrian Christian diaspora, Mikhail, told Splinter that his cousin, a displaced civilian from rural Idlib, was one of the people murdered in Latakia.

“According to his mother, he was heading to the barber when he was kidnapped. His body was found in Da’tour in Latakia. His mother said his body had bruises all over,” he said. “As a Christian, it’s scary. You see all kinds of sectarian rhetoric and you wonder if it is going to expand to other areas. I’ve never seen anything like this; it’s like a pogrom and collective punishment for living in that area.”

Mikhail explained that though it happened in 1860, there is still a collective memory of the massacre of Christians in Damascus. The violence spreading in the Middle East means there is little option of where they might go.

“Lebanon? The country is dealing with the aftermath of the Israeli attacks and there are already a large number of refugees there,” he said. “In my opinion, the violence was foolish and only divided the people more. I can’t imagine an Alawite wanting to remain in a Syria run by Jolani.”

What awaits Syria and its people is yet to be known, especially as Israel continues to take advantage of the growing sectarian violence in order to capture more Syrian territory, and attack Syrian cities including, for the first time, the capital of Damascus. It is clear that these attacks have had a chilling effect, as explained by Angie Bittar, a Syrian consultant and researcher with expertise in political violence, non-state armed groups, and state development. Bittar told Splinter that the past week has horrified her. “It feels like we are living a nightmare for the second time in recent memory.”

She said she has been on the phone nearly constantly for the past week, trying to stay in touch with family and friends in Masyaf, Homs, and Lattakia.

“While the cities have fortunately not seen the same violence as the countryside, everyone is terrified,” she said. “We all know who these militants are, and we have seen their handiwork before. We know they don’t stop at ‘revenge,’ but rather aim for extinction.”

She added since Assad’s regime fell, residents of her Christian village have experienced regular harassment, and wages and essential goods have been scarce. Her grandmother has gone more than a month without a pension check, and there is diminished availability of water and electricity.

“All this could be swallowed if we could say, even in some small way, that we really are ‘free’ now. But frankly, the only freedom we have is to capitulate or die, to fall in line with Syria’s new status quo or leave,” she said. “Neighbors in our villages have been waking nightly to the sounds of gunshots, cars backfiring, motorcycles from surrounding, majority Alawite villages. That is what our ‘freedom’ sounds like.”