There Is, in Syria, a Hideous Effort to Reduce Alawites to Poverty

There is, in Syria, a hideous effort to reduce Alawites to poverty and to enrich, at their expense, the very people who have made them abandon their property: “Held at gunpoint, with minutes to leave: How Syria evicts Alawites from their homes,” by Amina Ismail, Jerusalem Post, May 3, 2025:

For more than 50 years, Assad and his father before him crushed any opposition from Syria’s Sunni Muslims, who make up more than 70% of the population. Alawites took many of the top positions in government and the military and ran big businesses.

They now accuse supporters of Sharaa, who once ran an al Qaeda affiliate, of systematically abusing them as payback….

No other conclusion is possible. Despite that reassuring rhetoric, al-Sharaa has done nothing concrete to help the Alawites. When Alawites by the thousands were being murdered in Latakia, al-Sharaa did not send in troops to protect them. Nor has he done anything since about finding and punishing the Sunni Muslims who murdered the Alawites. In Damascus itself, hundreds, if not thousands of Alawite families have seen their houses seized and they are now out on the street, unless they are lucky enough to have relatives, most likely in Latakia, willing to take them in. Al-Sharaa knows all about the evictions, but as with the murders of Alawites in Latakia, has done nothing to stop them.

Two government officials said thousands of people had been kicked out of homes in Damascus since Assad was toppled by Sharaa’s rebel force, with the majority being Alawites.

The officials said most resided in government housing associated with their jobs in state institutions and, since they were no longer employed, they had lost their right to stay….

Why were these people no longer employed by the state? What was their fault? Were they really part of the Assad government’s terror state? Or was it only the fact of their being Alawites that condemned them to such barbarous treatment by Sunnis determined to take over their property?

As long as the Sunnis in Syria continue to wage war on the minorities — so far they have killed more than a thousand Alawites in Latakia and evicted many thousands of them from their homes in Damascus, and attacked the Druze in Jaramana and Sahnaya, two suburbs of the capital city — those minorities will not put any faith in Ahmed al-Sharaa’s assurances about inclusion and equal treatment. To protect the Druze, Israel has hit Sunni Muslims threatening the Druze suburbs, and even managed to conduct airstrikes all around the perimeter of the presidential palace in Damascus, as a way to warn al-Sharaa to protect the Druze. And since those airstrikes, IDF troops on the ground have moved northward from the Golan, providing enhanced protection to more of the Druze villages.

On April 16, STJ filed a complaint with the Damascus Suburbs Directorate, calling for an end to “sectarian-motivated” property violations and the return of looted properties.

It is doubtful that the Sunni Muslims will be stopped by a complaint from the STJ. Al-Sharaa surely knew what has been going on in Damascus ever since January, when the security services first started their evictions of Alawites.

Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad moved Alawites from coastal areas to urban centers to help cement his powerbase. He set up military installations and housing units for troops and their families around Damascus, where Alawites, who were over-represented in the army, made up a significant portion of the population, according to Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert and associate professor at the University of Lyon 2 in France.

Balanche estimated that half a million Alawites have moved to coastal areas after being evicted from the capital, Homs, as well as Aleppo and other parts of Syria following Assad’s fall.

That’s a huge number of evictions of Alawites from homes all over Syria, that has received no attention in the Western media. Half a million Alawites, within less than four months, have been evicted from their homes, not just in Damascus, but also in Homs, Aleppo, and other cities, and have now sought safety in the Alawite stronghold of Latakia. The total Alawite population in Syria is between two and three million, so a very large percentage of the Alawites have now lost their homes to Sunnis. Nothing will assuage their despair and fury, nor will they ever trust the assurances of Ahmed al-Sharaa, whom they are sure knew about and did nothing to stop — and some think he may even have encouraged — these evictions.