Humanitarian groups helping persecuted Christians shared reports this week of Islamic extremists attacking and threatening the remaining Christian minority in Syria, warning they were “next” after the elimination of Alawite Shia Muslims.
Syria experienced a sudden eruption of violence against Alawites in its western coastal territories this weekend, attacks described as “revenge” against the minority for perceived support of ousted dictator Bashar Assad. Assad and his family are Alawites, a minority sect within Shia Islam, and Sunni jihadists in the country consider all who share that identity opposed to their goals.
Those jihadists have been emboldened by Assad’s ouster in December, which occurred after the Al Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a massively successful conquest campaign in late November 2024.
The HTS government, led by top jihadi Ahmed al-Sharaa, claimed on Thursday that a group of Assad sympathizers launched attacks against their forces in Latakia governate, an Alawite stronghold. Sharaa’s regime admitted to launching an “operation” against the alleged fighters, but claimed to avoid any civilian casualties.
The regime ultimately admitted to widespread evidence of such atrocities and promised to establish a “committee” to investigate them. On Tuesday, they claimed to have arrested four people for violence that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a monitor group, documented had killed about 1,500 people and counting, hundreds of them confirmed civilians.
Widespread reports indicated that unknown jihadist parties massacred entire Alawite families in their homes and a drone strike campaign against rural Alawite communities. SOHR described the violence as “the bloodiest revenge ever since the fall of Al-Assad regime.”
While the attacks have overwhelmingly targeted Alawites, some reports indicate that Christians have also suffered threats and attacks. Under Assad, Christians were allowed to maintain churches and worship so long as they did not challenge Assad politically; the regime imprisoned and eliminated many Christian political dissidents, but did not persecute Christianity itself.
As a result, the same Sunni jihadists who view Alawites as irredeemably pro-Assad distrust Christian communities and see them unfit to integrate into the fabric of the country, despite Christianity’s much more ancient presence in the country than Islam.