On February 8, 2025, Suleiman Khalil, the former mayor of the Christian town of Sadad, who heroically defended his town against ISIS in 2015, was arrested at his home by agents of the new Syrian regime. CSI is calling for his immediate release. Suleiman Khalil, a Syriac Orthodox Christian engineer, businessman and former mayor of… Read more »
Roman ruins in Shahba, part of Syria’s Suwayda province, in 2011. csi Guest commentary by Fabrice Balanche A version of this article was originally published in French in Conflits on July 16, 2025. A sectarian conflict On July 13, a Druze man in southern Syria was kidnapped by an armed Sunni Arab group manning a… Read more »
Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, known today as President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria, sits for a podcast interview. February 4, 2025. x. Guest commentary by Sami Alkayial ENGLISH – scroll down for Arabic Many segments of Syrian society, especially ethnic and religious minorities, as well as democratic and secular activists, were shocked by the European response to… Read more »
Image background: CSI visited Aleppo in 2017, under the brutal Assad regime that preceded the HTS takeover of Syria in December 2024. csi The Christian Solidarity Podcast: Violence grows against religious minorities in Syria In the second episode of the Christian Solidarity Podcast, host Abi McDougal and Dr. Joel Veldkamp, CSI’s director for public… Read more »
Erich Vontobel called on the U.S. to support the Swiss Peace Initiative. csi The plight of religious minorities in the “new Syria” is a continuing concern following massacres of Alawites and then Druze under the interim government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa. On July 1, CSI held a side event devoted to the topic at… Read more »
For generations, Alawite communities have lived peacefully along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. csi This article is based on interviews conducted by CSI during a visit to Syria in late June 2025. During a visit to Syria in late June, CSI spoke with Salma, a schoolteacher from Tartous who works with one of CSI’s after-school projects… Read more »
Syrian security forces in Mazara’a in Suwayda province – July 14, 2025. @sayed_ridha, x. Syrian government forces have once again launched an attack on religious minority populations – this time against the Druze, a religious group which makes up about 3% of Syria’s population, and who are considered heretics by jihadist groups. Between July 14… Read more »
At the UN, Professor Fabrice Balanche speaks about the massacres of Alawite Muslims in Syria in March 2025. csi Watch the full event here: GENEVA – “Despite some happy words at the beginning of this new interim constitution, it in fact establishes an authoritarian presidential system,” said Joshua Landis, a leading scholar on Syria, at… Read more »
Suleiman Khalil in 2017. csi. Media Release GENEVA – The daughter of Suleiman Khalil, the former mayor of Sadad in Syria, has written to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Mr. Geir Pedersen, asking him to intervene on behalf of her imprisoned father. Natalie Khalil, the eldest daughter of the imprisoned former mayor, also made… Read more »
Abi McDougal reads out a CSI statement on Syria at the UN Human Rights Council. Video screenshot: csi On the evening of June 22, two assailants stormed the Mar Elias Orthodox church in Damascus’s old city district, opening fire with an automatic weapon and detonating a bomb. Close to 30 worshipers were killed, including… Read more »
