Reports of massacres and intercommunal violence in Syria this month have been devastating to Syrians who hope for a future of interreligious peace in the embattled nation. That vision was set back dramatically in the hours following an ambush of forces loyal to the current Sunni-led government in Latakia province on March 6.
That attack, according to the government, was orchestrated by remnant forces of the deposed Assad regime. A wave of violence targeting the region’s Alawite community followed, and hundreds of unarmed people were murdered by militia and national security forces loyal to the transitional government in Damascus.
Video posted by Islamist militants on social media depicted unarmed men and teen boys being rounded up in Alawite villages, abused and finally executed. The Syria Campaign and the Syrian Network for Human Rights reported on March 8 that both security forces and pro-Assad gunmen were “carrying out mass executions and systematic killings.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in London reports that 745 civilians were killed in the areas around Latakia and Tartus in some of the worst violence Syria has experienced in nearly 14 years of conflict. According to Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF’s Regional Director for the Middle East, a six-month-old baby was among at least 13 children reported to have been killed.
The new Syrian government, headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, announced the formation of a national committee to investigate the massacres, directing blame for much of the killing at Chechen and other foreign Islamist fighters. Mr. Al-Sharaa is a leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militia, a former rebel faction with roots in the al-Qaeda network that gained control of much of Syria after deposing President Bashar al Asaad in December, ending 50 years of Assad-family rule.
Speaking from Beirut on March 13, Daniel Corrou, S.J., the director of Jesuit Refugee Service’s Middle East and North Africa office, reports that tensions had been rising in recent weeks before the weekend of violence in Latakia. While Syrians broadly have been happy to see an end to the Assad family’s dictatorial rule, many within its religious and ethnic minority communities have been skeptical of the new Sunni Islamist leaders and are reluctant to turn over weapons to the central government and allow Damascus to take control of their communities.
Many leaders of minority religious and ethnic communities also felt left out of an ongoing national dialogue that Syrians hope will lead to the drafting of a new constitution that will protect minority rights, according to Father Corrou. Fighting had already broken out in recent weeks between national security forces and Druse gunmen before the cataclysm of violence on March 6.
Mr. al-Sharaa signed a temporary constitution on March 13 that places the country under Islamist rule for five years. The question asked by many Syrians from Alawite, Shiite, Druse, Christian and other minority communities, according to Father Corrou, has become: “Can [I] live in an Islamist country and not be [Sunni] Muslim?”
“At the moment, those people who were afraid before are still afraid,” Father Corrou says. But he is quick to point out that those who have been more optimistic about Syria’s future also have a reason to hold onto hope—a landmark deal signed on March 11 between the new central government and Kurdish forces who have controlled northeastern Syria.
The deal aims to bring all border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, as well as airports and oil fields in the northeast, under the central government’s control. Prisons in Syria’s Kurdistan, where about 9,000 suspected members of the Islamic State are held, are also expected to come under government control.
Syria’s Kurds will gain “constitutional rights,” including the right to use and teach their language, banned for decades under Assad rule. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds displaced during Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war may return to their homes, and Syria’s Kurds will finally be given the right of citizenship long denied them during the Assad dictatorship.
The agreement also integrates Kurdish militia forces into a new national army and asserts that all Syrians will be part of the political process, regardless of their religion or ethnicity.
Another sign of hope, Father Corrou says, are commitments made by Mr. al-Sharaa to hold all parties responsible for committing or promoting the violence on March 6 and March 7 accountable. Now all Syrians are waiting to see if the transitional government will follow through on those words, punishing not just Alawites who returned to the gun, but the militias who rampaged through Alawite villages.
“That would be an enormous step forward,” Father Corrou says.
There is a territorial overlay of Christian and Alawite villages around the Syrian cities of Latakia and Tartus, where the weekend’s conflict erupted, but the reprisal attacks primarily targeted Alawite communities, the focus of resentment among Syria’s Sunni Muslims because of the privileged position they enjoyed under Mr. Assad’s rule.
Open Doors, a British charity that highlights acts of persecution against Christians, reported on March 11 that, contrary to reports circulating on social media, “there is no evidence that Christians have been targeted for their faith in the attacks. Most of the civilians killed are believed to have been Shia Muslim Alawites.” According to Open Doors, four Christians in the region died during the violence, “including a father and son who are believed to have been killed [on March 6] by pro-Assad fighters.” The group reported that another Christian was killed in his home on March 7 “after he was hit by a bullet that appears to have gone astray in the fighting between the two sides.”
For many, the events of the weekend were a traumatic reminder of past periods of terror when Isis militia rampaged across Syria and Iraq. Hundreds sought refuge at a Russian air base, and the U.N. reports that many thousands of Syrians fled—many not for the first time—into Lebanon.
On March 8, the Christian patriarchs in Syria issued a joint statement deploring a “dangerous escalation of violence, brutality, and killings, resulting in attacks on innocent civilians, including women and children. Homes have been violated, their sanctity disregarded and properties looted—scenes that starkly reflect the immense suffering endured by the Syrian people.”
The patriarchs condemned “massacres targeting innocent civilians” and called “for an immediate end to these horrific acts, which stand in stark opposition to all human and moral values.”
“The Churches also call for the swift creation of conditions conducive to achieving national reconciliation among the Syrian people,” the patriarchs said, urging an “environment that facilitates the transition to a state that respects all its citizens and lays the foundation for a society based on equal citizenship and genuine partnership, free from the logic of vengeance and exclusion.”
The statement was signed by John X, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch; Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Syriac Patriarch of Antioch and All the East; and Youssef Absi, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement on March 9. “The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” he said in a post on X. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
Following the sudden cancellation of 83 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development contracts on March 10, assistance efforts for 2.5 million people in the country’s northeast shut down, according to the United Nations. A dozen health clinics, including the region’s primary hospital for the area, have also shut down, according to Doctors Without Borders.
The timing of the White House-directed dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. and the end of other U.S.-sponsored humanitarian and civil society building efforts could not be worse in terms of the potential impact on Syria, where tentative steps toward a new era of intercommunal peace and national stability had just begun.
The United States had been the largest donor to humanitarian efforts in Syria. The United Nations reports that Syria remains the world’s largest refugee crisis.
Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in March 2011, more than 14 million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes. More than 6 million Syrians are refugees in Europe or in nations around Syria, and within its borders more than 7.2 million people remain displaced. Seventy percent of the population relies partly or completely on humanitarian assistance.
With reporting from The Associated Press
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