When dictator Bashar al-Assad was thrown out of power in December 2024, it ended over 50 years of his family controlling Syria. Now a new temporary government is running Syria, led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and dominated by a jihadist organization called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) . For the Alawite people, who are a religious minority, this change has meant systematic persecution, mass killings, and the threat of complete elimination from Syrian society.
The Massacres: “Do Not Leave Any Alive”
The simmering animosity against the Alawite community catastrophically boiled over in early March 2025. Between March 6 and 12, a brutal and coordinated assault was launched against at least 56 Alawite villages along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. CSI was closely monitoring these troubling events and on March 10 issued a formal Genocide Warning. The perpetrators included Islamist factions such as al-Hamzat and al-Amshat, foreign fighters (some reportedly operating under the command of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the dominant force in the new government), and armed Syrian civilians. Homes were looted and set ablaze, and vast swathes of the Alawite mountains were scorched by incendiary artillery shells or deliberate fires.
The jihadist forces which took power in Syria in December subscribe to an ideology in which Alawites, who practice a minority version of Shi’ite Islam, are seen as heretics. In 2016, the top religious official of Jabhat al-Nusra, the group that would later become HTS, declared of Alawites, “The land must be purged of them.” In Idlib province, which has been under Nusra/HTS rule since 2015, a generation of Syrian fighters was raised with this kind of rhetoric.
The immediate trigger for the explosion of violence in March appears to have been clashes initiated by armed Assad loyalists who ambushed the new regime’s security forces. Some analyses suggest these actions were not random but part of an organized insurgency orchestrated by remnants of the former regime, such as Brigadier General Ghiath Dalla’s “Military Council for the Liberation of Syria,” possibly intended to destabilize the new order and provoke wider conflict. Whatever their intent, these provocations provided a pretext for a disproportionate and merciless wave of sectarian retribution against the broader Alawite civilian population.
The killings that followed were characterized by extreme brutality and an explicit sectarian motive. In some villages, such as Brabshbu and Snobar, reports indicate that “not a single male was left alive.” The UNOHCR collected testimonies that fighters asked “residents whether they were Alawite or Sunni before proceeding to either kill or spare them accordingly.” Over 800 videos reportedly captured the intentional and public targeted killings of Alawite civilians, with some detainees forced into humiliating acts like “barking like a dog” before being executed.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reported that between March 6 and 10 alone, forces affiliated with the new government were responsible for the deaths of at least 1,217 civilians and disarmed fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported over 1,000 deaths in the initial days, and by March 17, had documented 1,557 Alawite civilian deaths across 47 separate massacres since March 6. Professor Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma offered an even grimmer estimate of over 3,000 Alawites killed between March 6 and 10.
This wave of violence was accompanied by a radicalization of rhetoric. Hours after an alleged “coup attempt” by loyalists, hundreds of imams across what was being called the “new Syria” issued calls for jihad explicitly against the Alawite community. One HTS commander told his men, “Oh warriors of jihad, do not leave any Alawite, male or female, alive.” This branding of Alawites as heretics, “traitors” and collective enemies served as a powerful dehumanization process, effectively legitimizing mass violence against them in the eyes of the perpetrators and their supporters.
Beyond the Battlefields
The March massacres, while the most clear manifestation of persecution, were part of a broader campaign of dispossession and fear targeting the Alawite community. Since December 2024, hundreds of Alawite families in Damascus have been forcibly evicted from their privately-owned homes, often at gunpoint and with mere minutes to leave, by members of the newly formed General Security Service (GSS). Thousands more, like Ghada’s family, were kicked out of government housing linked to their former state employment, which they lost following the regime change.
The new authorities have established committees to manage properties confiscated from individuals perceived to be connected to the previous regime, modeled after a similar entity known as the “War Spoils Committee” from HTS’s former stronghold in Idlib. The language used by some GSS officials, such as a demand to a mayor to “empty one of those houses that belong to one of those pigs,” referring to Alawites, reveals the deeply sectarian nature of these evictions. These actions, often carried out overnight without any due process, have been described by Syria expert Joshua Landis as “transitional injustice.”
Beyond the massacres and evictions, a persistent, low-intensity campaign of violence has plagued Alawite communities, particularly in Homs. From January through May 2025 and
reportedly continuing, Alawite civilians in Homs city and its surroundings have been subjected to weekly killings by “unknown gunmen” or “unknown masked men.” These attacks, concentrated in Alawite-majority neighborhoods like Karam Al-Zeitoun, Karam Al-Loz, Al-Nuzha, and Wadi Al-Dahab, often involve masked assailants on motorcycles firing randomly at homes or individuals, or kidnappings where victims’ bodies are found days later bearing gunshot wounds. The Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) assesses these as sectarian revenge killings.
The result has been significant internal displacement, with an estimated half a million Alawites moving to already strained coastal areas after being evicted from homes in Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. Alawites are also leaving the country altogether. Some 15,000 Alawites fled into Lebanon during the March massacres; since then, that number has grown to nearly 40,000.
The New Rulers: HTS, al-Sharaa, and the façade of minority protection
The new Syrian government, led by the jihadist fighter Ahmed al-Sharaa, has publicly declared its commitment to inclusive policies and national unity. The interim constitutional declaration, adopted in March 2025, contains provisions guaranteeing equality before the law and freedom of religious belief for ” heavenly religions” (typically understood to be Islam, Judaism and Christianity).
However, a stark chasm exists between these official pronouncements and the grim reality on the ground documented by human rights organizations and victims. The token inclusion of minority figures in the cabinet does little to mitigate the systemic persecution and violence faced by communities like the Alawites. This “inclusivity paradox” suggests that such appointments may be more geared towards gaining international legitimacy than reflecting a genuine shift in policy. Syrian essayist Sami Alkayial, in an article for CSI, argues that “these four ministers are not well-known in their local communities, nor are they close to the main parties within them. Rather, they appear to be artificial personalities created by the ruling power in Syria to serve as a facade of representation without influence.”
The constitutional requirement for the president to be Muslim and the designation of Islamic jurisprudence as a principal source of legislation also raise serious concerns among minorities about the long-term direction of the state, especially given HTS’s Salafist-jihadist ideological roots. As Alkayial explains, HTS represents “a kind of ‘New Qaedaism,’ that is, an upgraded version of the classical methods of al Qaeda, maintaining the pursuit of establishing an Islamic state and imposing the ‘proper Islamic model’ on society” and continues to classify non-Muslims according to traditional jihadist frameworks, dividing them between “people of dhimma,” meaning Christians, who can be accepted as second-class subjects in the Islamic state in exchange for their complete submission and identification with Islamic ethics; and completely infidel minorities, whom it is permissible to kill and exterminate, usually likened to ‘pigs,’ such as Alawites and Druze.”
The new government’s response to atrocities, particularly the March 2025 coastal massacres, has been a critical test of its credibility. An independent national committee to investigate the violence was announced by al-Sharaa on March 9, 2025. However, its initial 30-day deadline was extended in April by three months (to mid-July 2025), with the committee citing the need for more time to investigate 41 identified massacre sites, some of which remained inaccessible. As of early June 2025, no public findings had been released. This delay, coupled with the fact that government-affiliated militias are heavily implicated in the killings and that Amnesty International reported authorities failed to intervene for two days during the Baniyas slaughter , has led to widespread skepticism among Alawites and human rights groups regarding the committee’s transparency, independence, and ability to deliver accountability.
Targeted dismissals from state institutions have continued, alongside calls for Alawites to be expelled from private sector jobs. Hostile attitudes, often stoked by incitement on social media platforms like Facebook, have beoame commonplace. Discriminatory hiring practices are rampant: Alawites report being explicitly told not to apply for jobs, or are advised by relatives and friends to hide their coastal dialects, their city of origin, and for women to adopt the hijab to avoid suspicion or hostility. The constant fear of one’s identity being discovered has become an exhausting daily burden. The Arabic magazine “Raseef” reported the story of an Alawite journalist who was offensively questioned about his sect during a job interview, and a business owner who was explicitly ordered not to hire Alawites and now advises others to mask their identity.
These testimonies align with findings from CSI, which continues to monitor the situation; shortly after the massacre in March, CSI spoke to several Alawites from within Syria. These stories paint a disturbing picture of post-Assad Syria, where the Alawite community faces an existential threat. A threat which is not merely physical, manifested in brutal massacres and ongoing killings, but also social, economic, and cultural, through systematic discrimination, forced displacement, and the erasure of their presence from public life.
