Sunnis Evicting Alawites From Their Homes in Damascus

Ever since he came to power as Syria’s de facto president last December, Ahmed al-Sharaa has been trying to reassure everyone that he’s come a long way from his days — right up until 2016 — when he was a member of Al-Qaeda. He’s traded his battle fatigues for a coat and tie. And he has said Syria wants to be friends with everybody in the region. And what’s more, he has declared that all Syrians will be treated equally, whether they are Sunni Muslims (who make up 70% of the population), or Alawites, Kurds, Druze, or Christians.

Yet his words did not stop hordes of Sunni Muslims, including members of the General Security Service (GSS), from descending on the coastal province of Latakia, an Alawite stronghold, and proceeding to murder at least a thousand Alawite men, women, and children. Indeed, some Alawites claim that tens of thousands were killed. Al-Sharaa promised then to find and punish the murderers; he has failed to do so.

Now another anti-Alawite attack is being perpetrated in Damascus by Sunni Muslims including some who are members of the GSS. The intent in Damascus is not to murder Alawites, but to dispossess them of their houses and all else that was theirs, leaving them destitute and homeless. Their homes have then been taken over by Sunni Muslims. The Alawites who have complained to the government have been wasting their breath. More on this hideous effort to reduce Alawites to poverty and to enrich, at their expense, the very people who have made them abandon their property, can be found here: “Held at gunpoint, with minutes to leave: How Syria evicts Alawites from their homes,” by Amina Ismail, Jerusalem Post, May 3, 2025:

DAMASCUS – Early one evening in late January, 12 masked men stormed the Damascus home of Um Hassan’s family, pointed AK-47 assault rifles in their faces, and ordered them to leave.

When they presented ownership documents, the men arrested Um Hassan’s oldest brother and said they could only have him back once they had moved out. The family surrendered the house 24 hours later and picked him up, battered and bruised, from the local General Security Service headquarters, said Um Hassan, giving only her nickname for fear of reprisals.

Her family is part of Syria’s minority Alawite community, an offshoot of the Shi’ites and the sect of former strongman Bashar al-Assad. Their story is not unique.

Since Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa seized power in December, hundreds of Alawites have been forced out of their homes in Damascus by the security forces, according to Syrian officials, Alawite leaders, human rights groups, and 12 people with similar accounts.

“We’re definitely not talking about independent incidents. We are talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of evictions,” said Bassam Alahmad, executive director of human rights group Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ)….

This takeover of Alawite properties is part of a large-scale plan to seize all of the Alawite properties in Damascus, both to drive them out of the capital and force them back to Latakia, the only part of the country where they are a majority and stand a chance of being protected, and by evicting them, to provide housing for Sunni Muslims who lost their own homes during the civil war.

This is a new weapon of war being used against the Alawites, all of whom are being painted with a broad brush as supporters of Bashar Assad, himself an Alawite. Yes, there were many Alawites who supported the regime — some out of belief, some out of fear of what would happen if they did not do so. But the Sunni Muslims are treating all Alawites as the enemy, and taking out their revenge not only on Alawites who served as officials, soldiers, police, and security forces when Assad was in power, but on Alawite civilians who had nothing to do with the previous regime.