Syria’s Alawites are living in fear following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to the Washington Post this week.
During his rule, Assad recruited many Alawites as military allies, and therefore many have been targeted by those angry at the previous regime, the Washington Post reported.
According to the report, the new Sunni rulers of the country are seeking to take down the former Assadites, and the Alawites – a Shia Muslim minority group, of which Assad was a member – fear retribution in the form of disappearances, beatings or even killings.
Recently, protests erupted after a video was circulated showing an attack by armed men on an Alawite shrine in Aleppo.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the alleged-HTS attack on the shrine resulted in five workers being killed and the shrine being set on fire.
However, HTS’s Interior Ministry, via its official telegram, disputed the video, saying that the violence was carried out by unknown groups.
Indeed, an HTS fighter told the Washington Post that they don’t “have any problems with Alawites.”
“Our problem is those who worked with the gang of criminals,” he said.
“They have blood on their hands. They want to stop us from creating a new state.”
As a result, there is a general belief that new Syrian leader Abu Mohammad Al-Julani, may begin a “de-Alawitization” process, according to the Washington Insitute.
Protection of minorities
This comes despite the fact that the new leader was quick to stress that the new government would protect Syria’s many minorities including Alawites, Christians and Druze.
The day after Assad’s December 8 downfall, Julani sent a representative to an Alawaite village – Qardaha – to meet with village leaders, in what was described as a positive talk.
Before the rebels arrived, the residents dismantled a statue of Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad.
Following the discussion, the Alawite notables signed a statement of support. The document was viewed by Reuters, which reported that the Qardaha residents agreed to hand over all of its weapons.
“We affirm the unity of the Syrian Arab Republic’s territory and religious and cultural diversity and diversity of thought,” said the statement signed by around 30 of the town’s notables. It was not signed by the rebels.
Calls for amnesty
However, a Tartous resident and protester told Al Jazeera he was worried the situation could deteriorate, saying “a single drop of blood risks us going back to a very bad scenario”.
Despite calls for amnesty, the New York Times cited Syria’s new government officials as saying that the Alawite community is in no place to dictate terms, given its association with Assad.
“They need to stay silent for at least a year and not make any demands,” Ahmad Hilal, a lawyer who now heads the Palace of Justice, told NYT. “They killed the prisoners in the prisons. They showed us no mercy. Now they are talking about nationalism and being part of a nation? Why didn’t they speak up before this?”
Hama and Homs, mixed Alawite and non-Alawite cities, were the locations of many of the Assad’s regimes worst massacres, as well as mass Sunni displacement at the hand of Alawite-led forces.
Who are the Alawites?
Alawism is a version of Shia Islam, with a central belief in metempsychosis (the transfer of souls) that Sunni Muslim reject. The Washington Institute says that much of Alawite doctrine “is a pastiche drawn from the great monotheistic religions (including Islam) and Zoroastrianism, and many of its rites have been secret and initiatory, rendering it an object of strong suspicion over the centuries.”
The group was not recognized as a Muslim group until 1932, following a fatwa by the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, which offered the group equal treatment.
Arguably though, the Alawites who benefited under Assad were those who chose to cooperate. An Alawite anaesthetist, Mazen al-Kheir, told the Guardian that the “rest of us are the lowest of all the Syrian people.”
Despite being somewhat allied to the regime, the Alawite community suffered significant losses in the 13 years of conflict, losing a third of its men between 20-50 to combat, according to the Washington Institute. The group also remained poor and marginalized. Several Alawites told the NYT that they were driven by economic desperation to join the military, rather than ideological motivation.
How the rebels treat the sizeable Alawite population, will be some kind of litmus test of whether the takeover of Damascus leads to violent revenge against former loyalists of a hated five-decade regime, Reuters reported.
