In July 2025, clashes between the Druze non secular minority and Sunni Arabs subsidized via government-affiliated forces resulted in loads of deaths in Sweida province in southern Syria. Israel later introduced dozens of airstrikes in reinforce of the Druze.
This eruption of violence used to be an eerie reminder of what had spread out in March 2025 when supporters of the fallen regime led via Bashar Assad, an Alawite, focused safety gadgets. In retaliation, militias affiliated with the newly shaped authorities in Damascus performed indiscriminate killings of Alawites.
Whilst precise figures stay tricky to ensure, greater than 1,300 folks, maximum of them Alawites, misplaced their lives. In some instances, complete households have been summarily accomplished.
Even supposing the Syrian authorities promised an investigation into the atrocities, house invasions, kidnappings of Alawite ladies and extrajudicial executions of Alawite males proceed.
The violence in Sweida additionally bore a sectarian measurement, pitting individuals of a non secular minority in opposition to armed teams aligned with the rustic’s Sunni majority.
A key distinction, on the other hand, concerned the energetic Israeli reinforce for the Druze and the U.S. efforts to dealer a ceasefire.
Put up-Assad Syria has observed promising trends, together with the lifting of global sanctions, a resurgence of civil society and the tip of diplomatic isolation. There used to be even a restricted rapprochement with the primary Kurdish political birthday party controlling northeastern Syria.
The continual violence focused on the Alawites and, to a extra restricted extent, the Druze, starkly contrasts with those tendencies. As a pupil of non secular minorities and the Center East, I argue that the present political state of affairs displays their ancient persecution and marginalization.
Historical past of the Alawites
The Alawites emerged as a definite non secular group within the tenth century within the area of the Latakia coastal mountains, which nowadays make up northwestern Syria.
Even supposing their ideals have some commonalities with Shiite Islam, the Alawites deal with their very own distinctive non secular management and rituals. Beneath the Ottoman regime within the overdue nineteenth century, they benefited from reforms equivalent to the growth of instructional alternatives and financial modernization, whilst gaining geographical and social mobility.
After Hafez Assad, the daddy of Bashar, got here to energy in a coup in 1970, he drew upon his Alawite base to strengthen his regime. In consequence, Alawites changed into disproportionately represented within the officer corps and intelligence products and services.
Previous to the civil battle, which started in 2011, their inhabitants used to be estimated at round 2 million, constituting more or less 10% of Syria’s inhabitants. Throughout the civil battle, Alawite younger males preventing for the regime suffered heavy casualties. On the other hand, maximum Alawites remained in Syria, whilst Sunni Arabs and Kurds have been disproportionately displaced or changed into refugees.
Contributors of the Alawite minority acquire out of doors the Russian air base in Hmeimim, close to Latakia in Syria’s coastal area, on March 11, 2025, as they search safe haven there after violence and retaliatory killings within the space.
AP Photograph/Omar Albam
Amongst Syria’s minorities, two key elements make the Alawites maximum susceptible to mass violence in post-Assad Syria. The primary issue is that, just like the Druze, Alawites have their very own distinct ideals that deviate from Sunni Islam. Their non secular practices and teachings are regularly described as “esoteric” and stay most commonly inaccessible to outsiders.
In my 2024 e-book “Liminal Minorities: Religious Difference and Mass Violence in Muslim Societies,” I categorize the Alawites and Druze in Syria along Yezidis in Iraq, Alevis in Turkey and Baha’is in Iran as “liminal minorities” – non secular teams topic to deep-seated stigmas transmitted throughout generations.
Those teams are regularly handled as heretics who cut up from Islam and whose ideals and rituals are deemed past the faded of acceptance. For example, in keeping with Alawite ideals, Ali, the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, is a divine manifestation of God, which demanding situations the speculation of strict monotheism central to Sunni Islam.
From the point of view of Sunni orthodoxy, those teams’ ideals had been a supply of suspicion and disdain. A sequence of fatwas via distinguished Sunni clerics from the 14th to the nineteenth century declared Alawites heretics.
Resentment in opposition to the Alawites
The second one issue contributing to the Alawites’ vulnerability is the common belief that they have been the primary beneficiaries of the Assad regime, which engaged in mass homicide in opposition to its personal voters. Even supposing energy remained narrowly concentrated underneath Assad, many Alawites occupied key positions within the safety equipment in addition to the federal government.
In nowadays’s political panorama the place the central authorities stays vulnerable and its keep watch over over more than a few armed teams is proscribed, non secular stigmatization and political resentment create fertile flooring for mass violence focused on the Alawites.
The massacres of March 2025 have been accompanied via sectarian hate speech, together with open requires the extermination of the Alawites, each within the streets and on social media.
Whilst many Sunni Muslims in Syria additionally understand the Druze as heretics, they maintained a better stage of distance from the Assad regime and have been much less built-in into its safety equipment.
However, in fresh months the location deteriorated hastily within the Druze heartland. The Druze militias and native Bedouin tribes engaged in heavy preventing in July 2025. Not like the Alawites, the Druze won direct army the help of Israel, which has its small however influential Druze inhabitants. This additional complicates non violent coexistence amongst non secular teams in post-Assad Syria.
A sober long run
Sunni Arab identification is central to the newly shaped authorities in Damascus, which will come on the expense of non secular and ethnic pluralism. On the other hand, it has incentives to rein in arbitrary violence in opposition to the Alawites and Druze. Projecting itself as a supply of order and nationwide harmony is helping the federal government across the world, each diplomatically and economically.
Internally, on the other hand, the brand new authorities stays fractured and lacks efficient keep watch over over huge swaths of territory. Whilst it will pay lip provider to transitional justice, additionally it is wary about being perceived as overly lenient towards folks related to the Assad regime and its crimes. In the meantime, Alawite and Druze calls for for regional autonomy proceed to stoke well-liked Sunni resentments and possibility triggering additional cycles of instability and violence.
I imagine that during a post-Assad Syria outlined via fractured governance and episodic retribution, the Alawites in addition to Druze are prone to face deepening marginalization.
