When Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham leader Ahmad al-Sharaa overthrew Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024, he sought to assure Syrian Christians and other minorities that they had nothing to fear. Christians, however, understood otherwise. While many Washington pundits swore that al-Sharaa had changed from his days as an Al Qaeda affiliate and had reformed, for almost a decade prior to the drive on Damascus, the Turkey-backed al-Sharaa had controlled Idlib with disastrous effect on the Christian community. Many Christians, especially in Aleppo but also in Damascus, began to leave.
“The mountainous areas around Tartus are currently being ravaged by extremist Muslim groups, killing whole families.”
Earlier this month, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militants and terrorists began targeting Alawis, Christians, and other minorities across Syria. On March 9, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised alarm. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities,” he said, blaming “radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis” for murdering civilians in western Syria. He called upon Syria’s “interim authorities” to “hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
Such violence should have policy consequence. On March 10, the United Kingdom’s House of Commons discussed the “egregious human rights violations.” Jim Shannon, chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion, asked the government to “review the planned £50 million [$65 million] of aid prepared for Syria in the light of the refusal of the interim Syrian government to address the ethnic cleansing of Christians.”
Liberal Democrat parliamentarian Brian Matthew cited the eyewitness testimony of a Syrian Ismaili family with family members in his constituency who live in an area of Syria with Alawite, Muslim, and Christian villages. “The mountainous areas around Tartus are currently being ravaged by extremist Muslim groups, killing whole families,” Matthew said. “They are pleading for an urgent intervention from the international community to stop the killings and to protect civilians.”
U.S. and European leaders must calibrate their policy to reality rather than wishful thinking. Even if al-Sharaa were sincere, he cannot control his own team. More likely, he is engaged in a game of good cop, bad cop to achieve ideological aims while avoiding accountability for his actions.
Human rights advocates increasingly argue to recognize and encourage Syria’s decentralization to prevent it from imposing a single creed and way of life on Syria’s diverse regions. While Syrian Kurds signed a deal with al-Sharaa on March 10, apparently at U.S. urging, many of its details remain to be negotiated.
U.S. backing of decentralization in Syria provides the best hope for both religious freedom and security.
Jason Jones, president of the Human-Rights Education and Relief Organization, argues that U.S. backing of decentralization in Syria provides the best hope for both religious freedom and security. “What Syria really needs is to be radically decentralized, on the model of the Syrian Democratic Forces-controlled enclave in Syria’s northeast—where religious freedom and fair elections prevail,” he explained. Jones and John Zmirak, a senior editor at The Stream, say the Swiss model is already present in Syria. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria provides freedom and security to the region’s Kurds, Christians, and Arab residents and migrants based on self-governed cantons in voluntary association. The Druze are also consolidating their own region.
After the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham massacres of Alawis and Christians, Western governments should cease funding the former Al Qaeda group. In January 2025, for example, European Commissioner Hadja Lahbib gave $256 million in taxpayer money in “humanitarian aid” to the regime. Earlier this month, the United Kingdom became the first country to unfreeze all Central Bank of Syria assets. It also lifted sanctions on 24 Syrian entities, despite Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham remaining a designated terrorist organization in both the United Kingdom and United States.
“Christians really are the canary in the mineshaft that Western governments should sit up and take notice of,” Martin Parsons, chief executive officer of the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution, said. Prior to the Syrian civil war, Christians comprised ten percent of Syria’s population; today, they are a tiny fraction. Diplomats must recognize reformed Al Qaeda terrorists are still intolerant militants, not democrats. The best way for Syria to remain at peace with itself is if power and security devolve to its various regions glued together by a weak central government unable to impose its will on Syrian society in any meaningful way.
