Summary: The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has upended Syria’s power dynamics, ushering in new political actors, sectarian fault lines, and external alignments. At the heart of this churn lies a community whose fate remains precarious: the Alawites. This commentary examines the rise of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the shifting regional landscape, and the silent suffering of Syria’s Alawite minority as geopolitical tides sweep over their existence.
Highlights
- Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s transformation from Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a jihadist leader, to Syria’s leadership after Assad’s fall, signalling a seismic ideological shift.
- Alawite minorities face targeted violence under Sharaa’s rule, with muted global and regional responses.
- The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Arab League (AL) remain conspicuously silent, revealing geopolitical complicity and selective activism.
- Sharaa’s rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and potential entry into the Abraham Accords reconfigures Syria’s strategic direction.
- The Alawites, long associated with Assad’s rule, face an uncertain future amid shifting alliances and sectarian revenge killings.
West Asian politics is like sand dunes. Just as sand dunes change shape with the wind, politics in West Asia (Middle East) is dynamic, unpredictable, shaped by outside forces, and always in flux. The region has been prone to conflicts due to its geopolitical landscape, making it a theatre of major power rivalries, the continued denial of statehood to Palestinians, sectarianism and a catalogue of many other security challenges. So, when Bashar al-Assad’s government fell in 2024, many analysts across the region viewed it as end of an era marked by authoritarianism, brutality, and sectarian dominance. Yet, the aftermath has unleashed darker undercurrents. The rise of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, earlier known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate and leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as Syria’s new power centre has redefined the country’s ideological and sectarian landscape.
Ahmed Al-Sharaa: From Jihadist Commander to Western Partner
The blue-eyed boy of the West in Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa is now reportedly bringing Damascus to normalise with Israel through Abraham Accords under US patronage. As the battle-hardened jihadist leader of HTS and a former ally of Al-Qaeda, Jolani is the product of a legacy rooted in radical Salafist ideology, predominantly shaped by his grandfather’s displacement from Israeli occupied Golan Heights of Syria and Israeli excesses against Palestinians during second intifada. Moreover, his family’s anti-Assad background traces back to his father’s association with Arab nationalism. He was imprisoned by Hafez Al Assad in 1970s.
Sharaa’s rise to power was anything but peaceful. Following his takeover of Damascus, his consolidation efforts saw HTS and its allied armed groups engage in sectarian violence against the minority Alawites, the group to which Bashar Al-Assad and most of his prominent supporters and government functionaries, including much of the army leadership, belonged.
Targeting the Alawites: A Cycle of Violence and Silence
Alawites are a sect which is considered an offshoot of Shia Islam, who have historically dominated Syria’s northwestern provinces of Latakia, Tartus, and Homs, with a significant presence in the capital Damascus. The cycle of violence against the Alawite community under Sharaa’s leadership has been marked by an unsettling silence.
According to Reuters, in March 2025 alone, approximately 1,500 Alawites were killed in Syria’s coastal areas, with dozens still missing. This violence has occurred even as the US and the EU passed executive orders lifting targeted sanctions on Syria. Reports indicate that government law enforcement agencies, such as the General Security Service under the Interior Ministry, have been complicit in these killings.
This silence came from all quarters: the United Nations (UN), prominent human rights organisations, Western powers including the US and EU that gradually sanitised Sharaa’s past jihadist image, and regional actors like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, among others. Perhaps most glaring was the silence of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC’s inaction reflected its selective moral calculus, often vocal only when strategic interests of its influential members, notably Saudi Arabia, are at stake.
OIC also became a forum for Sharaa-led Syria’s reintegration into the Muslim bloc when it reinstated its membership on 7 March 2025. This was pivotal to returning it to the global financial system and regaining domestic legitimacy. Yet this development coincided with intensifying violence against the Alawite minority, further raising questions marks on the new regime’s ability to consolidate its position without tearing apart Syria’s fragile social fabric. The silence of OIC member states in the face of such targeted atrocities revealed their own strategic predicaments and complicity, as their geopolitical interests override any humanitarian concern.
Rebranding Terror: Sharaa’s Western Makeover
Sharaa first captured international attention through his calculated rebranding. His interview with Martin Smith on Frontline PBS (1–14 February 2021) marked his public unveiling to Western audiences. Appearing in Western attire, he distanced himself from extremist Islamist symbolism. However, his rhetoric belied his earlier worldview as well as the violent actions of HTS in Idlib province, which it ruled through Turkey’s support.
Since his rise as Syria’s new political leader, buoyed by both regional and global supporters, the Alawites have become lambs marked for silence, punished collectively for their identity and their historical association with Assad’s brutal rule. The Alawites, who comprise 12–15% of Syria’s population, now face an existential crisis amid double standards and political hypocrisy.
The continued presence of radical Sunni militias such as the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade and the Hamza Division – despite EU sanctions – underscores that revenge killings and the othering of Alawites as Assad’s accomplices have not ceased. Amnesty International has called these massacres war crimes, though they remain largely ignored by global media and policy circles.
Sharaa’s government justified its crackdown by alleging an attempted coup by pro-Assad Alawite factions, ordering the elimination of so-called ‘fuloul’ – remnants of the regime. This terminology reflects the egregious characterisation of the entire Alawite population as enemies of the state, legitimising systematic violence and dispossession.
Syria’s Regional Realignments and Western Embrace
Sharaa’s visit to Saudi Arabia in February, during which he met Crown Prince and de facto Saudi ruler, Mohammad bin Salman, marked a significant turning point in Syria’s regional alignment. His outreach effectively signalled the end of Iran’s entrenched influence in Syria – a country long positioned at the heart of Tehran’s Axis of Resistance against the US-supported Israel, and serving as a critical conduit to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Significantly, Sharaa made a second visit to Riyadh in May 2025 on the invitation of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) during which he met US President Donald Trump, a first meeting between the leaders of two countries in two and half decades.
This shift is important in terms of redefining the geopolitical map of West Asia. A reconciliation between Syria and Saudi Arabia not only diminishes Iran's deep-state presence inside Syria but also advances Riyadh’s broader strategic objective of rolling back Iranian influence in the region. The direction of these developments points towards a possible revival of the Abraham Accords framework, with Saudi assistance paving the way for normalising Israel’s relations with additional Arab states.
The rewards for Sharaa have been swift. Both he and HTS were removed from several terrorist designation lists by the Western powers, enabling him to consolidate power with tacit regional and American approval. Simultaneously, Erdogan’s strategic interests facilitated Jolani’s outreach to the European Union under a new Mediterranean calculus. His closed-door meetings with Erdogan and potential engagement with Azerbaijan further signalled a realignment underway in the region.
The future of Alawites
But this realignment comes with stark warning to Syria’s Alawite minority that their existential crisis is far from over. It appears that they are being given an unspoken yet explicit message that they can either leave or die as there would be no middle ground. Such type of collective punishment upon the Alawites for their association with Assad’s brutal regime, even after his fall, goes against the very grain of Sharaa’s accommodative rhetoric.
His allies, regional and Western, particularly the latter, who are in the business of condemning rights violations across the world would need to shed their myopic worldview of accommodating a ruler without any commitment to safeguard the lives of all Syrian demographic constituents, including Alawites. Until that happens not only will minorities like Alawites continue to be persecuted but it will keep exposing the duplicity of not only regional actors but also western governments, multilateral institutions, global rights watchdogs.
Premanand Mishra teaches at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, JMI, New Delhi. Md Asad Uz Zaman is a Research Scholar at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, JMI, New Delhi. The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own.
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