The collapse of the Assad dynasty in December 2024 ended decades of oppression against Syria’s Sunni majority. However, it also marked the onset of targeted violence against the country’s Alawite community from which the Assad family hails. Members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, constitute about 10 percent of Syria’s population. They are primarily concentrated on the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, with a significant presence in Damascus, Homs, and Hama as well.
An increase in hate speech against the Alawites accompanied growing sectarian tension and a sense of impunity among some Sunni Islamists because of the new Hay’at al-Tahrir regime in Damascus.
Retaliatory attacks against the Alawites began following Assad’s downfall. An increase in hate speech against the Alawites accompanied growing sectarian tension and a sense of impunity among some Sunni Islamists because of the new Hay’at al-Tahrir regime in Damascus. Tensions culminated with the March 6-10, 2025, atrocities committed against Alawites by Sunni militias. While the massacres drew international attention, they were neither the first nor last instances of violence against the Alawite community.
The interim Syrian government established an inquiry committee to investigate the killings in the coastal region. Although the committee has yet to release any findings, it likely will fail to produce meaningful conclusions, because an independent and thorough investigation likely would implicate members of the government’s security forces.
Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa appears to hope that extending the committee’s mandate will buy time to deflect both local and international pressure. Rights groups have expressed skepticism about the committee’s ability to operate independently of government influence, citing its reluctance to engage with both Syrian and international human rights organizations in the investigative process.
The March massacres were not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern of violence aimed at the Alawite community. In the last week of April alone, the Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the extrajudicial killing of at least 20 civilians in Alawite-majority areas of Homs province. The same organization reported that armed assailants killed more than 360 people in Alawite-populated areas of Homs and Hama provinces between January and the end of April. What renders this trend particularly alarming is that local authorities closed most of these cases under the designation of “culprit unknown.” The absence of genuine accountability, coupled with a prolonged investigation into the March massacres, only emboldens extremist Sunni groups to continue their attacks on the Alawite community.
The absence of genuine accountability, coupled with a prolonged investigation into the March massacres, only emboldens extremist Sunni groups to continue their attacks on the Alawite community.
There also have been recent reports of armed groups affiliated with the interim government’s ministries of Defense and Interior conducting raids on Alawite homes in Latakia and Tartus, ransacking property and detaining individuals for questioning—seemingly with the sole intent of instilling fear and intimidation. The situation remains so tense that many of the thousands of Alawites who sought refuge at the Russian Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia during the March violence continue to shelter there despite Moscow’s calls to vacate the facility.
Al-Sharaa’s government has relied largely on plausible deniability to distance itself from such violent incidents against Alawites, often characterizing them as “individual actions” unconnected to official policy or state involvement. Even if that claim holds merit, it raises concern about the interim government’s ability to exert control over the patchwork of radical militias operating under its nominal authority.
The Al-Sharaa regime employed a similar strategy of plausible deniability in late April, after violent clashes erupted in a Druze area near Damascus following the killing of more than a dozen civilians in another Druze-majority town by an armed group affiliated with the government.
The ongoing violence against Alawites and other communities in Syria demands sustained global focus. This need not mean special treatment for minority groups, but rather, is a reminder that reconciliation in a post-Assad Syria hinges on the international community’s willingness to scrutinize critically the commitments and actions of the interim government, rather than allow wishful thinking to predominate.
