Syria’s new Sunni Islamist authorities are consolidating power by force, and the people paying the price are the country’s Druze, Alawites and Kurds. Over the past few months, President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s regime has moved to broaden its rule, after first destroying the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria in January, ending the autonomous area that had ruled east of the Euphrates since 2019.
Who Gets Crushed
The collapse of that Kurdish autonomous zone did not bring reconciliation. Instead, Syria remains deeply divided, with a series of ongoing “cold wars” between minority communities and the new Sunni Arab authorities. The article identifies the Druze, the Alawites and the Kurds as the three minorities worthy of close observation, and the pattern is unmistakable: violence has gone in one direction, with the newly ascendant Sunni Arab majority asserting itself and settling accounts with communities that were once dominant, or were suppressed under the old order.
Four instances of serious ethno-sectarian violence have taken place since December 8, 2024, when the Assad regime fell. In February and March 2025, widespread killings of Alawites took place in the western coastal area by armed Sunni gunmen after Alawi attacks on a government checkpoint. In late April 2025, Druze were targeted by Syrian transitional government military units and affiliated irregulars. Then came a much larger massacre of Syrian Druze in Sweida province in July 2025.
What the Authorities Call Order
That July violence began with the kidnapping of a Druze merchant by Bedouin and ended only after widespread violence against Druze civilians and an Israeli air intervention that forced government fighters back. The series of incidents killed some 1,700 people. The last major clashes took place in January 2026 between government forces and Kurdish/Syrian Democratic Forces fighters, after the latter were abandoned by their erstwhile American allies.
The article says the Druze, who comprise around 4% of the Syrian population, are currently the most notable minority mobilization against the authorities in Damascus. Geopolitical realities have allowed them to maintain an enclave that Syrian central authorities are not able to enter, and that enclave is maintained under a de facto Israeli guarantee. In Sweida city’s Karama Square, demonstrations regularly take place where Israeli flags and portraits of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are raised.
There is no single Druze line. Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri leads the most separatist element and the most openly pro-Israeli stream. His call is not for total separation of Sweida from Syria and annexation by Israel, but for a strong, permanent and institutionalized autonomous status for the province. A rival stream, led by Sheikh Yusuf Jarbou, opposes cooperation with Israel and supports greater cooperation with the Damascus authorities. Another current, led by Sheikh Hammoud al-Hinnawi, holds an intermediate position. All these streams have armed factions that stand with them. For now, Sweida remains off-limits to government forces.
Minorities Under Pressure
In the western coastal area, the Alawi communities, around 12% of the total population, have not managed to organize an effective or united communal response to the new authorities. Credible evidence exists to suggest that the March 2025 massacres were an overreaction to efforts by armed elements associated with the former regime to attack the security forces of Sharaa’s Syrian Transitional Government. The response was brutal and indiscriminate, as armed Sunni tribal elements entered the coastal area and began to slaughter civilians. Low-level harassment of Alawites by Sunni Arabs has continued, including the abduction of young Alawi women.
Alawi efforts at communal organization take two forms: the association of religious and communal leaders in the framework of the Alawite Supreme Council, and networks of armed men organized by officials of the former regime. These include the Syrian Popular Resistance, led by Miqdad Fatiha, and the Military Council to Free Syria, led by Brigadier-General Ghaith Dala. Both groups have carried out sporadic attacks on government forces present in the western coastal area. Many former regime officers are now present in Lebanon and remain committed to this cause. For now, however, it remains a latent threat and a relatively minor problem for the Damascus authorities.
Finally, the Kurdish military and governance structures in the northeast are being forced into “integration” into the Syrian state after their military setbacks in January 2026. Kurds constitute around 10% of Syrians. The Syrian Democratic Forces still exists and maintains a kind of de facto autonomy in the Kurdish heartlands of Qamishli, Kobani and Hasakah. But the direction is clear enough: eventual absorption into government structures, with some allowance for Kurdish cultural representation and local rule, though the level is not yet finally clear. Many issues remain unresolved. A certain amount of de facto local administration is likely to remain, but the dream of maintaining de facto Kurdish rule over large areas has moved beyond reach. Most SDF fighters have been integrated into the state security forces, with only about 8,000 remaining outside these structures.
The Bigger Machine
The ongoing ferment among minorities in Syria has found no major international echo, except for Israeli support for the Druze. The US administration summarily abandoned the Kurds in early 2026. Iran and its allies are not placing a major focus on the remnants of support among Syrian Alawites. Meanwhile, the Sharaa government is favored by the main apex of influence regarding Middle East affairs in the US administration, namely Ambassador Tom Barrack and other senior officials sympathetic to, and influenced by, the Turkish and Qatari positions.
For as long as that arrangement holds, the Syrian government’s combination of alignment with Washington while allying with Sunni Islamist and jihadi forces on the ground, and using these when desired as tools of state policy, looks set to continue, to the ongoing detriment of non-Sunni and non-Arab Syrians.