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 in the region. Salma’s story, along with testimonies from other community members, reveal the devastating impact of the ongoing violence against Syria’s Alawites.
Salma’s hands still shake when she talks about March 6. That morning, the schoolteacher from Tartous woke up to celebrate Eid al-Adha with her family in their coastal village. By afternoon, she was running for her life through the forest, carrying only a small suitcase and hearing the sound of her sister’s crying baby.
“I called my brother and told him I was afraid I might die,” Salma remembers. “The terrorists were attacking villages near us with swords and guns, killing everyone – even the animals.”
Salma belongs to Syria’s Alawite community, a religious minority that makes up about 10% of the country’s population. For generations, they have lived peacefully along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. But since March 2025, their world has turned upside down.
A new wave of violence
CSI has been closely monitoring the worrying developments facing Syria’s Alawite community since the political transition in December 2024.
In March 2025, the Alawites faced coordinated attacks from security forces and government-backed armed groups that swept through their villages, killing innocent people, burning homes, and forcing thousands to flee. As the situation dramatically escalated, CSI issued a Genocide Warning.
Between March 6 and 12, assaults were launched against at least 56 Alawite villages along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. The attacks were brutal; families were murdered in front of their children, and bodies were left in the streets for days without burial.
Ahmad, a computer engineer and community leader, shared one of the most heartbreaking stories: “Two elderly brothers were killed in front of their 90-year-old mother. She wasn’t even allowed to bury them.” These weren’t isolated incidents. Across the coastal region, similar attacks shattered communities that had slowly begun to rebuild after Syria’s long civil war.
Why are they being targeted?
The Alawite community has found itself caught in the crossfire of Syria’s complex religious and political landscape. In the jihadist worldview held by Syria’s new rulers, Alawites are heretics and apostates from Islam, worthy of death. Syria’s overthrown dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is an Alawite, and many Alawites fought in pro-Assad militias during the civil war. Many Syrians now view the entire community as enemies, regardless of individual actions or beliefs.
“People think all Alawites are the same,” explains Salma. “But those who committed crimes should be held accountable individually, not our whole community.”
At checkpoints throughout the region, security forces ask people to state their religion. For Alawites, this simple question has become a source of terror.
“Anyone can come to the coast and start sectarian conflict,” Salma says. “There’s no real protection for people like us.”
Daily life under siege
The fear has transformed everyday life. Salma, who once traveled freely and dressed as she pleased, now feels trapped in her own city.
“I can’t go out or travel like I used to,” she explains. “We’re always careful about where we go and how we move.”
Her brother Ali had to abandon his law studies at the university because his name and religion made him a target. “It’s very frustrating for him,” Salma says. “But we decided it was safer for him to stay home.”
The economic impact has been devastating. Many Alawite men, former soldiers who surrendered their military documents, can’t find work. Women have become the primary breadwinners, because it is often safer for them to leave their neighborhoods than it is for men.
Stories of survival
The testimonies CSI has collected reveal the human cost of this crisis. One woman was kidnapped by jihadist rebels in 2014 with her two young daughters, aged four and five, and then separated from them for four years while they were all held in captivity. During the March attacks, those same daughters, now teenagers, hid trembling under a blanket while gunfire hit their roof and their house was set on fire.
Two university students in Homs were forced to abandon their studies after one was brutally beaten at the university entrance. The attackers made him call his blind father and ask him where the family had “hidden our weapons.” His father replied, “My son, I cannot even see; how could I carry a weapon?” Another young man was kidnapped for a week and tortured simply because he had once served in the military, even though he had legally registered with the new government.
The bigger picture
What’s happening to Syria’s Alawites reflects a broader reality affecting religious minorities across the Middle East. Over the past 15 years, extremist groups emboldened by civil wars and political chaos across the region have ramped up persecution of religious minorities, often hastening their emigration and driving them towards demographic extinction. The attacks on the Alawites resemble ISIS’ campaign against the Yazidi religious group in Iraq a decade ago, and the systematic persecution of Iraqi Christians and Sabean Mandeans by extremists that came before the rise of ISIS. In Syria, government forces have now begun attacking Syria’s Druze minority as well.
The international community has largely focused on Syria’s political transition, but the fate, rights and safety of minorities like the Alawites has received much less attention. CSI has been actively advocating for the Alawites at the international level – earlier this month, CSI hosted a side event at the UN Human Rights Council where leading Syria experts presented evidence of the systematic violence against religious minorities.
CSI is also advocating for individual cases of arbitrary detention, such as that of former mayor Suleiman Khalil, a Christian who was detained by government forces in February.
Follow CSI’s work on Syria here.
The names of individuals have been changed to protect their safety.
