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  "path": "/2026/02/24/protecting-religious-minorities-syria-part-1/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-24T06:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://juicyecumenism.com",
  "tags": [
    "Middle East",
    "Yazidi",
    "Christian",
    "(especially the Alawites",
    "attack against the Druze",
    "that existed",
    "National Dialog Conference",
    "In Defense of Christians Expresses Concern for Syrian Christians Facing Escalating Danger Under al-Sharaa, Urges U.S. Pullback from Diplomatic Support",
    "The Vanishing Christians of Syria: A Crisis the World Cannot Ignore",
    "Syria’s New Government, Old Threats",
    "The Challenge of Protecting Religious Minorities in Syria – Part 1",
    "Juicy Ecumenism"
  ],
  "textContent": "The end of the Syrian Civil War (2011-2024) brought an Islamist government, led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to power, following the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. The HTS government sought and gained friendly relations with most countries except Iran and its Shia allies, but for America and the West, there is grave concern about religious freedom for minorities in Syria. It is difficult to see how the new government’s Islamist goals can be reconciled with either religious freedom or democracy. A Syria at the Crossroads event was sponsored at the 2026 International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C. on February 3 by the Shai Fund, The Alawites Association of the U.S., and the American International Druze Public Affairs Council to find a way forward for religious minorities in Syria.\n\nOf the two panels in the event, the first dealt with the consequences of current U.S. policy, the second was a panel of voices from various religious communities in Syria.\n\nIn introductory remarks, Sam Brownback, former U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom (2018-2021) said that now is a crucial time for the future of religious freedom in Syria. He believes that if we get policy right now, there will be a stable, and hopefully “open and democratic Syria … If we get it wrong now,” there will be “a genocide within three, four years.” After fifty years of dictatorship, however, implementing a right policy will be a challenge. He noted in particular that in Syria “there’s lots of fear in the air.” A danger is that fear spreads, so courage is needed. But courage is also contagious.\n\nBrownback emphasized that minorities in situations like Syria have to be enabled to defend themselves. They “must be empowered to provide for their own protection.” He said he saw in the Yazidi and Christian genocide in Iraq what happens when minorities are unable to defend themselves. He also observed that when the American administration and public focuses attention on a particular problem in a foreign country, its interest lasts about “six to twelve months,” and then people lose interest. And so “while you got your moment, you got to get it set right.”\n\nThe first panel was moderated by Nadine Maenza (currently Co-Chair of the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable and formerly Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)). It included Amy Austin Holmes, Research Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University, Mohammed A. Salih, nonresident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and Johannes Kreinath, Director of the Institute for the Documentation of Violations against Religious Minorities in the Levant, and Associate Professor at Wichita State University. He has documented massacres of Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast.\n\n**The Perilous State of Religious Minorities  **\n\nMaenza asked Kreinath about the general state of religious freedom in Syria. He said that the attack on ethnic minorities (especially the Alawites) began in March 2025. He documented the killing that happened at that time. There was also an attack against the Druze in the Sweida Governorate**** south of Damascus in July. His over 70 interviews with people in Syria gave him “the clearest indicators” that the intent of many in HTS is the targeted killing of minorities, which would ultimately lead to “genocide.” Interviews with eyewitnesses provided evidence that perpetrators of atrocities were working with security services. Women are abducted and enslaved, as has been true with ISIS. In one particular incident, a car plowed through demonstrators, and perpetrators were able to effortlessly pass through security checkpoints. Counter-demonstrators were able to shoot at the demonstrators. Many of the anti-government demonstrators are now in prison. This is an example how “there’s no freedom of speech; there’s no freedom of religion.” But Kreinath said there must be documentation of these incidents, and there must be an impartial law enforcement and an impartial judiciary. Yet evidence he collected indicates that certain members of the judiciary are clearly hostile to religious minorities.\n\nMaenza asked Salih to “what extent are religious minorities meaningfully included” in Syria’s transition government. Salih said that there has been no meaningful participation of religious minorities in Syria’s transitional government. There in fact has been no pretense of this. There has been token participation. There actually has been little talk about democracy from the country’s new leaders. The primary selection process for two-thirds of the members of parliament was in fact controlled by the HTS, with the remaining third appointed by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa. But there were no political parties participating in parliamentary elections. HTS manages the part of the country that it controls “down to the tiny details.”\n\nAnother aspect of the effective HTS dictatorship, Salih said, are the military campaigns conducted on the Syrian coast (largely against the Alawites), against the Druze in the Sweida Governorate south of Damascus, and near the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. There was a “colossal level” of atrocities committed by Syrian authorities as part of these campaigns. Atrocities committed by Syrian authorities are advertised by the military personnel themselves on social media, Salih said.\n\n**The Example of the Northeast Syrian Enclave**\n\nMaenza asked Holmes about the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces enclave (Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES)) that existed in northeast Syria effectively as an independent state until January 2026, and how reasonable is it that the relatively liberal governance that region had can be realized nationally, and particularly about the inclusion of women and minorities in society and politics. Holmes said that both the U.S. and the West generally want a democratic and inclusive government and society in Syria and yet support an interim government in Damascus that is marginalizing minorities. She said that cross-national research has strongly indicated that governments that include religious minorities and include women provide greater social and political stability and are “strongly associated” with greater economic growth.\n\nBoth women and religious minorities were notably included in the governance of DAANES enclave in northeast Syria. But the HTS government in Damascus is moving away from inclusion of women and minorities in the area that it controls. Holmes said that the HTS government in Damascus “could actually learn from” the political experience of the DAANES area. The Kurds and religious minorities of northeast Syria should not be forced into abandoning its progressive social and political policies, and the U.S. and Western government should “insist” on this. Sunni Muslims constitute a majority in Syria, so reasonably, such accommodation and inclusion would not threaten HTS’s power. Holmes observed that the World Bank has said that including women in the workforce of Syria would raise the country’s GDP by 74 percent. But the transitional government in Damascus is instead discouraging women from participation in the workforce. But again, a policy of inclusion would contradict HTS’s Islamist commitments.\n\nOn another front, Holmes said that religious freedom was enshrined in the law of the northeast enclave and prevailed there since 2012. Yazidis were for the first time recognized as a religious minority in Syria. Yet this was significantly undone by the Turkish invasions of the Kurdish areas from 2018 on. Half of Yazidi shrines have been desecrated. She expects that this will happen again, resulting from the Turkish/HTS ascendency. Yazidis do not seem to be among the religious groups recognized by the Turkish aligned HTS transitional government.\n\n**The Need for Western Support for Accommodation of Minorities**\n\nHolmes said that minority cultures should be accommodated through “education in the mother tongue.” Education in the mother tongue is more effective education, with better resulting literacy, academic achievement, and lower dropout rates. A current presidential decree mentions accommodation for the Kurdish language, but not the Syriac language, a dialect of the Aramaic spoken by Christ, and spoken today by Syria’s Christians. In the DAANES enclave, however, all three languages spoken in Syria are recognized: Kurdish, Arabic, and Syriac.\n\nMaenza, who moderated the panel, said like other speakers that the present time is crucial; the pattern set today can affect Syria for many years to come. “Pressure is really key right now,” she said.**** There is significant and widespread support in Syria for an inclusive government, but only America can apply pressure to move the nation in the right direction. Current American policy supports the HTS government, but this does not seem to be qualified by insistence on respect for religious and ethnic interests and thus does not offer the qualified support necessary to indicate the right path, both Maenza and Holmes maintained. Maenza asked how pressure can in fact be applied, and what process is needed to move the country forward to national reconciliation.\n\nKreinath said a process is really needed specifically to achieve a public recognition of truth, and achieve justice, and reconciliation. It should involve an acknowledgment first of all “that atrocities happened,” and “deep listening to stories.” Much documentation of what has happened has been destroyed. But without acknowledgement of atrocities, there can be no true reconciliation. Salih said that Syria cannot fully stabilize without Western and in particular U.S. support, and that the U.S. has “a lot of leverage … with the main regional backers of the current government” (principally Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Gulf states and Turkey). Everyone in the region and in Syria wants to get past the trauma of recent years, but the transitional government must be pointed in the right direction to ensure that this happens.\n\nHolmes said the U.S. has leverage with the Syrian government by virtue of its public statements. But these must not offer unqualified support, suggesting that HTS may pursue intolerant policy. She disagreed with the nine-month timeline for the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces (which controlled the northeast enclave) with the transitional government’s armed forces. The SDF was judged to be “at fault” when there was not full integration . Integration and reconciliation efforts in other countries took years, she observed. It took three years for an integration process in in South Africa, four in Colombia. Dialog in Syria (the National Dialog Conference) was supposed to take one day (Feb. 24-25, 2025).. “No serious analyst believes that was an actual dialog,” nor do they believe that the recent elections in Syria were free and fair. She said that the U.S. should stop pressuring the SDF and religious minorities to submit to the HTS government and condemn the HTS for promoting Islamists to top positions in the government and military. Further, any agreements made with HTS need to be monitored.\n\nRemarks by a second panel focusing on the experience of religious minorities under the HTS government will be reviewed in a subsequent article.\n\n**More from IRD** :\n\nIn Defense of Christians Expresses Concern for Syrian Christians Facing Escalating Danger Under al-Sharaa, Urges U.S. Pullback from Diplomatic Support\n\nThe Vanishing Christians of Syria: A Crisis the World Cannot Ignore\n\nSyria’s New Government, Old Threats\n\nThe post The Challenge of Protecting Religious Minorities in Syria – Part 1 appeared first on Juicy Ecumenism.",
  "title": "The Challenge of Protecting Religious Minorities in Syria – Part 1"
}