Al-Sharaa, the Minorities, and the Syrian State

Al-Sharaa, the Minorities, and the Syrian State

Hugh Fitzgerald

Ahmed al-Sharaa has a fan in the White House. Donald Trump has convinced himself that al-Sharaa, a “strong leader,” is the right man to rule in Syria. But there are many reasons to suspect that al-Sharaa is not the moderate he pretends to be, and that his rule will harm all of the many minorities —the Kurds, the Druze, the Alawites, the Christians. The Israelis remain deeply distrustful of al-Sharaa; they have seen other pretend “moderates” before — such as the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. And their long experience of dealing with Muslims suggests they know more than Donald Trump about the telltale signs of an unrepentant jihadist.

More on the future of the Syrian state, and its minorities, can be found here: “Legitimizing Syria’s jihadists threatens Israel and the West – opinion,” by Veysi Dag, Jerusalem Post, December 20, 2025:

Despite ISIS’s military defeat in 2019, its members dispersed into numerous splinter groups. In Syria, these include al-Qaeda-linked groups, such as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Hurras al-Din, Ahrar al-Sham, and Jaysh al-Islam….

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is the rebel group that al-Sharaa commanded and led to victory over Bashar al-Assad when it took Damascus on December 8, 2024.

Kurds have long been their main targets, and attacks on Alawite and Druze populations have become more common recently. These abuses are not one-time events but part of a pattern of ongoing and planned violent behavior.

Each of these minorities, for different reasons, have become the targets of killings now that their protector, Bashar al-Assad, has lost his fourteen-year civil war and is living in Moscow. The Kurds are not Arabs. The Alawites are not Sunni Muslims. The Druze are not Muslims. And so the dominant Sunni Arabs in Syria believe that all three groups deserve to be targeted.

Despite their rebranding efforts, these jihadist groups adhere to a radical Salafist ideology, justify violence by appealing to strict interpretations of Sharia (Islamic) law, reject secular governance, and deny any form of pluralism. Their distinctions between “moderate” and “extremist” jihadi factions are largely cosmetic.

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