Al-Sharaa, Syria’s Minorities, and Israel

Andrew Fox is a former officer in the British army, who has become a journalist, and now writes for Spiked. He has cast a cold eye on what the new Syrian regime has allowed to happen to that country’s minorities, on how the IDF has tried to protect the Druze, and why there is so much misplaced hope in the former Al Qaeda supporter who now wears a suit and tie, Ahmed al-Sharaa. More of Fox’s coruscating criticism of the credulous Western acceptance of al-Sharaa and his regime of “inclusive jihadists” can be found here: “Syria’s new dawn is already a nightmare,” by Andrew Fox, Spiked, July 18, 2025:

Fighting has engulfed the Druze-majority city of Sweida in southern Syria, leaving over 200 people dead. This week, Druze villages have been overrun by Syrian regime forces and allied Islamist militias under the guise of ‘restoring order’, only for those forces to unleash executions, looting and arson upon Druze neighbourhoods. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 92 Druze were killed (including 21 civilians executed by government troops) in the space of a few days. In one incident, an 80-year-old Druze sheikh had his moustache, a symbol of honour, forcibly shaved by invading fighters. He was reportedly killed shortly afterwards. This is, it appears, the dark reality of ‘national unity’ under Syria’s new rulers.

As of June 20, more than 900 people — almost all of them Druze civilians — have been reported dead by the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights.

The Druze of Sweida are not the only minorities being targeted. In March, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, over a thousand Alawite civilians were slaughtered in sectarian pogroms. Jihadist militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army rampaged through Alawite villages, committing mass murder and revenge killings. A Reuters investigation found that nearly 1,500 Alawite men, women and children were killed between 7 and 9 March by Sunni fighters in Alawite areas.

The violence was ostensibly triggered by a short-lived rebellion of loyalists to former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but the response descended into outright collective punishment. There have been killings, looting and arson targeting Alawites at 40 separate sites at least. Nor were the perpetrators rogue outlaws – they included at least a dozen factions now under the command of Syria’s new government. Many of these are notorious Islamist militias, who have long been under international sanctions for prior atrocities. Graffiti scrawled on a ransacked Alawite home declared: ‘You were a minority and now you are a rarity.’ The intent was nothing less than ethnic cleansing.

The Syrian regime in Damascus, led by interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa (better known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), a former ISIS and al-Qaeda member, denies any policy of targeting Alawites. But it is impossible to ignore the regime’s fingerprints on these crimes. Reuters has traced a chain of command from the Alawite massacres in March straight to men serving alongside Sharaa. Orders from Damascus to crush the ‘remnants’ of Assad’s old regime were interpreted on the ground as a licence to exterminate Alawites. Sharaa’s government claims to be investigating these crimes, vowing punishment ‘even among those closest to us’, but impunity reigns. No one has been held to account for March’s bloodbath, and now a similar atrocity is unfolding against the Druze….

Israel at least seems to understand what kind of regime it is dealing with in Syria. The contrast with the UK here could hardly be more stark. Barely two weeks before the Sweida massacre, UK foreign secretary David Lammy was in Damascus, shaking hands with President Sharaa and pledging £94.5million in aid to support Syria’s ‘long-term recovery’. With great fanfare, the UK re-established diplomatic ties with Syria after 14 years. Lammy spoke of ‘renewed hope’ and an ‘inclusive and representative’ transition.

Washington has been equally eager to embrace Syria’s post-Assad regime. US president Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Syria in June, and even praised Sharaa as an ‘attractive, tough guy’. He also floated the idea of Syria joining an expanded Abraham Accords peace framework, therefore recognising Israel. The logic was simple: bring Syria in from the cold, peel it away from Iran’s orbit, and declare the 14-year civil war resolved….

Amazing, isn’t it, how quickly the U.S. and the U.K. both decided to overlook al-Sharaa’s long association with Al Qaeda and ISIS, and chose to believe he really has been transformed and is no longer a jihadist. It is pleasant to think so, but the evidence goes the other way. He did nothing to stop the mass murder of Alawites — in his first week in office, he could have issued a proclamation promising to punish anyone engaged in revenge killings or the killings of any of the minorities, whom he might have called “our Alawite, Christian, and Druze brothers,” and sent troops to Latakia to protect, not murder, the Alawites. He still has made no attempt to punish the killers of the Alawites; he knows perfectly well that many of those involved in those killings were Syrian army soldier or veterans of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel group al-Sharaa headed. And why has he had nothing to say about the killing of Christians in Damascus and Aleppo, and especially about the suicide bombing of the Mas Elias church, in which 25 worshippers were killed and 63 wounded?

In his second address to the nation, al-Sharaa did not name, but clearly blamed, the Druze for the killings in Sweida, when by all reports it is the Druze who are being killed, and mainly by soldiers of the Syrian army. Al-Sharaa blamed “armed groups from Sweida” for “launching retaliatory attacks against the Bedouins and their families.” He also said that Israel’s protection of the Druze “pushed the country into a dangerous phase.”

In other words, he denounced not the killing of Druze civilians, but those Druze who had struck back, in self-defense, against the Bedouins — and the Bedouins are not only those from Sweida. They have been streaming into the city from all over Syria, eager to kill the non-Muslim Druze.

About that, not a word from al-Sharaa. Nor does he demand that the Bedouins now in Sweida who arrived from elsewhere should return home. Nor does he forthrightly say that the government will, with all of its armed might, “protect the Druze and all the country’s minorities from attack.”

Isn’t it time for the American government to demand that al-Sharaa make such a televised address, and back up his words with troops that this time will go back into Sweida and proceed not to slaughter the Druze, but to protect them? Trump should also demand that al-Sharaa find and punish all those involved in the killings of the Alawites, including members of his army and the rebel militias. Otherwise, the sanctions will promptly be re-imposed.

And when Israeli intelligence warns us about al-Sharaa’s jihadist views, instead of dismissing those warnings, let’s recognize that the Mossad knows more than we do about the Muslim Middle East.