In light of the current offensive against forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Sunni Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, has promised not to crack down on minorities in areas that are now under their control.
Last week, HTS, which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US and the UN Security Council, seized swathes of villages in Syria’s north as well as Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city in a surprise attack.
“When they took over Aleppo, they reassured members of minority groups that they would allow them to coexist,” Chrissie Steenkamp, an associate professor in Social and Political Change at UK’s Oxford Brookes University, told DW.
“HTS do like to portray themselves as being not quite as oppressive to minority groups and other religions,” Steenkamp said.
As a consequence of Syria’s almost 14 years of civil war, during which half a million people have been killed and which has left the country deeply fractured, there are neither accurate nor up-to-date statistics about ethnic and religious minorities in Syria.
However, estimates are widely similar in stating that Syria’s population of close to 25 million people comprises around 70% Sunni Muslims, 13% Shia Muslims of which around 10% account as Alawites, as well as the country’s Kurdish, Christian and Druze minorities.
Room for religion
For the past five years, HTS, which translates into “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant,” has already been acting as de-facto administration of Syria’s last major oppositional stronghold in the country’s northwestern region of Idlib with around 4 million mostly displaced Syrians.
“Over this time, HTS has been opening up to religious minorities,” Jerome Drevon, an International Crisis Group analyst who has met HTS leaders, told DW.
For example, HTS commanders have met Christian representatives to address their concerns, he said.
“The main issue was about housing as many Christian houses [in the Idlib region] had been seized by refugees from elsewhere in Syria,” he explained, adding that “HTS has restored those houses and lands to their Christian owners.”
Since 2018, Christians in the Idlib region have also been able to celebrate their religious holidays such as Easter or Christmas.
“Their rights have improved to a large extent,” Drevon said, highlighting a similar process with the Druze minority.
Strategic goals only for Syria
The pro-Turkish HTS, which was founded in 2011, was initially linked to al-Qaeda militants, however, the groups split again as HTS is not seeking to build a global caliphate.
“They want to take over the Syrian regime [of President Bashar Assad] and create a new regime instead,” Drevon told DW.
“For this, they have expressed their readiness to create strategic relations with Turkey, Iraq, and only a few days ago, they even had a communique saying that they could have relations with the Russians as well,” he added.
Russia, as well as Iran, are Assad’s key allies while Turkey is among the supporters of the oppositional rebel groups.
“However, none of this changes the fact that there are many jihadists in its [HTS] ranks, and we must therefore expect that the organization also acts like a jihadist group that commits acts of violence against religious and ethnic minorities,” Middle East analyst Guido Steinberg told the German news outlet tagesschau.de earlier this week.
In his view, this could mean “a reign of terror for the population, especially in the districts of Aleppo populated by Christians and Kurds.”
Poor human rights record
Hiba Zayadin, a senior researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, doubts that HTS could go down in history as tolerant Islamists.
“The fear that minorities including Shias, Kurds, and Alawites might be feeling right now, stems from the poor human rights records of both HTS and factions of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army who have joined HTS in its recent operation,” Zayadin told DW.
“Previous abuses of both groups include mistreatment of religious and ethnic minorities including violence, forced displacement, as well as destruction of cultural and religious heritage,” she added.
However, Syria’s minorities and political activists or dissidents are not only under threat in areas governed by Islamist rebels.
“In government-controlled areas, those perceived as opposing the regime, including because they hail from formerly or currently opposition-held areas or who are part of marginalized sects, including Sunnis and Kurds,” also risk arbitrary detention, forced disappearance, and ongoing repression, Zayadin said, and she does not harbor much hope for a new dawn of human rights in Syria.
“Sectarian dynamics significantly shape the lived experiences of ethnic and religious groups who are often caught in a cycle of fear, displacement, and repression,” she said.
Edited by: Rob Mudge
