CSI’s project liaison for Syria was recently able to visit the country for the first time after jihadist groups overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in December. In Damascus, she found a “complex mix of cautious optimism and palpable fear,” in a country transformed.
A church down an alley in Damascus. Archive photo: csi
“The first thing I noticed is how open the roads are,” our project liaison told us. During the war years, the road leading from the Lebanese border to Damascus was dotted with checkpoints, controlled by the Syrian Arab Army and various militias allied with the Assad regime. Today, those checkpoints are gone.
During Syria’s long civil war, the Assad regime, for all its brutality, acted as a protective force for Christians, who were often targeted by jihadist groups fighting to overthrow the regime and set up an Islamic state. Many Christians feared that the fall of the regime would lead to large-scale violence and oppression against Christians. So far, those fears have not come to pass.
But the situation is still tense. “People still don’t know whether the new regime will adopt a fundamentalist or moderate stance,” our project liaison writes. Some of the victorious jihadist fighters who now patrol Damascus’s streets have begun pressuring Christian women to cover their hair, and separating young couples in public. There are also alarming reports of attacks on Christian businesses, particularly those selling alcohol.
“By 11 PM, the streets were deserted — a stark contrast to the vibrant nightlife that characterized Damascus under the previous regime when people would stay out until 4 AM,” our project liaison writes. The Armenian Catholic Archbishop in Damascus has set up a group of 200 Christian scouts from different churches to monitor the Christian quarter at night, and protect it from theft.
The economic situation is also dire. Fourteen years of civil war and an inhumane sanctions regime imposed on the Syria by the United States and its allies have reduced most of the country to poverty. “Salaries are exceedingly low,” our project liaison writes, while prices are still unbearably high. A civil servant in Damascus earns a salary of $25 a month, while the diesel to heat an apartment in Syria’s winter costs $150 a month. For now, the sanctions remain in place, even though the former regime is gone.
On January 29, Ahmed al-Shara’a, the leader of the jihadist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, declared himself the new president of the Syrian Arab Republic. In an address to the nation, he appeared wearing a neat Western-style suit, and standing in front of the flag of the original Republic of Syria in 1930, which secular rebels adopted as their own during the civil war. He called on “all Syrians to participate in building a new homeland” and promised “free and fair elections.”
It was a remarkable transformation for a man once known as “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani,” the founder of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, whose fighters long struck fear into the hearts of many Syrians, especially religious minorities.
These fears were grounded. Throughout the war, the rebels targeted Christians and other religious minorities. Car bomb attacks repeatedly hit Christian neighborhoods and churches. Rebels expelled Christians from their homes in eastern Aleppo city, Qusayr, Raqqa, Ma’aloula, Kassab, and nearly all of Idlib province.
In the Christian town of Sadad, al-Jolani’s forces murdered over 40 Christians during their brief occupation of the town in 2013. In 2015, forces under al-Jolani’s command seized the Alawite Muslim town of Ishtabraq, killing hundreds of Alawite Muslim civilians and kidnapping dozens of women and children.
But the campaign the rebels launched in November 2024, which overthrew the Assad regime in just 11 days, was different. From its outset, HTS broadcast assurances to Christians and Alawites that they would not be harmed, and that the “new Syria” would have a place for all Syrians, regardless of religion.
Despite their doubts, Christians in Syria are seizing the opportunity to participate in building a new Syria. In Aleppo, our project liaison reports, the churches have formed an ecumenical committee to bring the priorities of the Christians to the new president. President al-Shara’a recently named a seven-member committee to prepare for a national dialogue. It includes five Islamist men, and two women, including a Christian activist named Hind Kabawat. She recently appeared in photos with al-Shara’a, her hair uncovered.
Outside of the capital Damascus, however, the illusion of an orderly transition is harder to sustain.
In the countryside of Homs and Hama provinces and along the Syrian coast, former rebels are carrying out a campaign of revenge killings against their enemies. Sometimes these killings target civilians – especially civilians from the Alawite Muslim community, which Bashar al-Assad belongs to.
In Hama province, gunmen recently executed nine people, including two mayors and their family members. Shortly thereafter, a new group called “Saraya Ansar al-Sunna” (Brigades of the Supporters of the Sunnis) announced its intention to “attack every place belonging to the Alawites and the Shi’ites.” “We are coming with our knives to kill, disperse and expel,” they said.
In southeast Syria, armed factions from the Druze religious community are still refusing to hand over their weapons and integrate into the new Syrian army. Like the Alawites, the Druze were repeatedly massacred by the Islamic State and other jihadists during the civil war.
And in the northeast, clashes continue between the Turkish-backed “Syrian National Army” and the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces.” President al-Shara’a demands that the SDF integrate into the Syrian army on his own terms; so far, they have refused.
Since 2012, Kurdish forces have controlled most of northeast Syria – much to the chagrin of neighboring Turkey, which faces its own long-running Kurdish insurgency, and has vowed to crush the Kurdish “autonomous area” in Syria.
If Syria’s fragile peace collapses and the country returns to civil war, or if the new regime seeks to build an Islamic state, the consequences for Syria’s Christians could be devastating. Church leaders estimate that over two-thirds of the Christian population has left Syria since 2011. More emigration could lead to the disappearance of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world – one that dates back to the days of Saint Paul.
CSI is committed to standing in solidarity with the Christians of Syria and the Syrian people. Despite the upheaval of the last few months, our project work to help those affected by the war goes forward. We will continue to advocate for the end of unjust economic sanctions on the Syrian people, and for religious freedom and dignity for all Syrians.
