U.S. President Donald Trump with new Syrian President – and former jihadist leader – Ahmad al-Sharaa. Riyadh, 14 May 2025. (Karoline Leavitt on X)
Guest Commentary by Charles Glass
And you know something’s happening
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man,” 1965
When the dictator was overthrown, Syrians hailed the new leader with such fervor that they lifted him in his car and carried him shoulder-high through the streets of Damascus. Men beating their chests chanted the old Arabic oath of fealty, “With our souls, with our blood, we will sacrifice for you!”
That momentous event occurred, not at the end of last year when Bashar al Assad fled to Moscow, but in November 1970 when Bashar’s father, Hafez, overthrew a previous tyrant. An old Syrian friend who witnessed that event told me he watched crowds last December, fifty-four years later, cheering the newest ruler, Ahmad al Sharaa. The latest transfer of power left him less with nostalgia than foreboding. Assad père, like Sharaa, began his tenure with what Syria historian Patrick Seale called “an immediate and considerable advantage: the regime he displaced was so detested that any alternative came as a relief.” If modern Syrian history taught any lesson, it was that deliverance from a wretched past did not guarantee a brighter future.
No one worries more about that future than the minority communities – Arab and Armenian Christians; Alawi, Druze and Ismaili Muslims; Kurds and Yazidis – who together comprise an estimated thirty percent of Syria’s population. During the civil war from March 2011 to December 2024, the militants who finally seized power had vowed to establish an Islamic state in which kafirs, non-believers, have no place. Their slogan “Massihiyeh ala Beirut, Alawiyeh ala Taboot (Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the coffin)” warned Christians and Alawis to beware a jihadist victory.
After that victory, however, jihadi leader Sharaa underwent the most dramatic conversion Damascus had witnessed since Pharisee Saul became Christian Paul around 35 AD. The feared Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) chief dropped his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al Jolani, trimmed his beard and exchanged battle fatigues for suit and tie. The rhetoric altered with the image. Instead of persecuting Christians, he courted them. Syrian bishops from the multitude of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant sects met him soon after he opened his office in the presidential palace. Syriac Archbishop Jacques Mourad stated after the meeting, “He [Sharaa] said that Christians and other groups are part of the Syrian people. He is aware that we Christians are foundational to this country.” Sharaa allowed Christians to celebrate Christmas and Easter with public processions as they always had, and most of the clerics I spoke to in Damascus were willing, albeit conditionally, to trust him.
The new government promulgated a Constitutional Declaration on 13 March that declared, “Citizens are equal before the law in rights and duties, without discrimination based on race, religion, gender or lineage.” Syrians must hope this provision will be honored more than the commitment in Israel’s 1948 Proclamation of Independence to “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex…” Israel has never honored that obligation to the Muslim and Christian Palestinians it rules, and no one can force Sharaa’s government to protect non-Sunnis in Syria. Interestingly, neither founding document uses the word “democracy,” which would imply a state of all its citizens.
Sharaa’s metamorphosis from Salafist to moderate Islamist impressed French President Emmanuel Macron sufficiently to invite him to the Elysée Palace on 7 May. Macron, whose country occupied and exploited Syria between 1920 and 1946, assured Sharaa he would push the EU and US to rescind the economic sanctions that are inhibiting Syria’s reconstruction. On May 13, President Trump promised he would do just that, just before shaking hands with Sharaa on the sidelines of an international forum in Saudi Arabia. Yet Sharaa’s rehabilitation coincides with jihadi attacks on Christians, Alawis and Druze throughout the country.
In March, Sunni Muslim fundamentalists attacked Alawis along the Mediterranean shore in Syria’s northwest following an ambush of their comrades. More than 1,300 people were killed. A CNN investigation into the massacre in one Alawi village concluded, “CNN tallied at least 84 bodies in videos geolocated to the Pine village, which has a population of a few thousand. Locals said they counted over 200 dead – the vast majority of whom were male.” In April, in response to an alleged insult of the Prophet Mohammed on social media, fundamentalists attacked Druze living in the Jaramana neighborhood in the southeast of Damascus. Sharaa promised to investigate and prevent the assaults, but one Druze spiritual leader, Sheikh Hikmat Salman Al-Hijri, did not believe him: “We no longer have faith in any entity that claims to be a government—because a true government does not kill its people with its own affiliated takfiri militias, only to later claim these are rogue elements.”
“Rogue elements” linger within HTS itself. I have seen them at checkpoints around the Mezze 86 Alawi slum in western Damascus harassing and insulting inhabitants. No HTS security forces prevented loudspeaker trucks from trundling through the Christian Quarter of Damascus’s old city blaring orders to convert to Islam or die. Many women of all sects have told me that HTS checkpoint guards have told them to cover their hair or face retribution. One Christian woman said she told a guard that Jolani (Sharaa) said she was not required to cover her hair. He replied, “Jolani is not here.”
Since I left Syria last January, Alawi and Christian friends have sent me almost daily messages about killings, beatings, house break-ins, threats and intimidation. Sharaa’s defenders tell me he needs time to restore order and keep the promises in the Constitutional Declaration. A Christian businessman I have known for years insists that Sharaa and his government ministers, whom he has met, are “good people.”
Sharaa confronts a delicate balance: how to maintain the loyalty of troops who fought, not for democracy and sectarian equality, but for a pure Islamic state; while convincing Syria’s non-Muslims and western governments that minorities will have full rights in the new Syria. If he fails to protect the Christians, Druze, Alawis and others, Western states have the option of reimposing sanctions, which would cripple Syria’s economy and forcing more Syrians of all religious persuasions to seek better lives elsewhere.