Historical Background: From Persecution to Power

The Alawites are the largest Muslim minority in Syria, accounting for approximately 12% of the Syrian population, with the majority residing in Latakia and Tartus coastal regions. The religion of Alawites is Alawism, which is classed as a version of Shia Islam with a core belief in the transfer of souls, which both the Sunnis and Shias reject. Alawite Sheikhs themselves claim that their faith is “solely based on the idea of worshipping God”  and “the Koran alone is their holy book.” While the Alawites acknowledge that their faith is closely linked with Shiism as they share similar religious sources, their leaders stress that Alawism is distinct from Shia Islam and reject Shia scholars who try to claim they are a branch of Shia Islam. For years before the state of Syria was formed, Alawites were historically persecuted and were considered apostates by the influential Syrian theologian Ibn Taymiyyah, who also called for the group’s eradication. 

Things slowly changed when, in 1920, France established an Alawite state in Syria in line with its “divide and rule” strategy, viewing it as an effective way of establishing and maintaining French control over Syria. However, the Alawite state lasted only 16 years from 1920 to 1936, when the Alawites were incorporated into the Syrian Republic. While many Alawites objected to this, they were mostly peasants and could therefore not challenge the upper- and middle-class Sunnis, who were able to politically organize themselves more effectively. After this, the situation of Alawites would be bleak, with Syria being dominated by Sunnis. It was common during the 1950s that most Alawites worked as servants for the urban upper-class Sunnis, with the Alawites being considered the poorest and least educated societal group within Syria.

This situation changed in 1971, when the Alawite Hafez al-Assad became the president of Syria, ending the succession of Sunni leadership and elevating the Alawites from a persecuted and economically backward group to a minority with high status and a significant position within the new Syria. From there on out, the Alawite population’s significance and power were tied to the Assad regime. For the Assad regime to survive, Assad attracted the support of minorities, especially the Alawites, to build up the regime’s support base. Out of fear of Sunni extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Alawites supported the Assad regime, creating a bond based on survival between the Assad family and the Alawites. Assad also moved many significant Alawites to Damascus, the heartland of economics and civilization in Syria, while other Alawites stayed in the coastal regions. These developments caused resentment among Sunnis as the Alawites, whom the Sunnis historically viewed as both socially backward and religiously deviant, were now the ones ruling over the people of Syria, including the Sunni community.

This led to an insurgency between 1979 and 1981, when the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria launched attacks against Syrian armed forces, killing over 300 members in Aleppo alone. The Syrian government at first responded by trying to give concessions, but the minor concessions failed to quell the insurgency, leading Assad to call for harsh measures. What unfolded was probably one of the worst massacres to occur during the 20th century, known as the Hama massacre of 1982. Rifat al-Assad, the brother of Hafez al-Assad, besieged Hama, which was a city that hosted the Muslim Brotherhood, from where they launched attacks against the Syrian government. To contain this threat, Rifat Al Assad, under the orders of Hafez Al-Assad, was sent to quell the uprising using 12.000 troops. For three weeks, government forces launched attacks and levelled the city, after which they crushed any remaining opposition, indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of innocents in the process. Rifaat al-Assad would later even boast about the number of casualties, as he wanted to send a signal to the Syrians that he would not tolerate any dissent, which worked, as the uprising was quelled. The Assad regime tightened its grip on power for another 30 years. In these operations, the Alawites provided the bulk of support for the Syrian Armed Forces, with the 3rd Division’s 47th Armoured and 21st Mechanized Brigades providing the backbone of the assault, being three-quarters Alawite. Hafez al-Assad built a cohesive and loyal army and intelligence apparatus by creating new Alawite-dominated institutions, which proved to be highly ineffective against external forces (e.g., the Israelis) but effective against homegrown opposition. 

After the Hama massacre, Hafez al-Assad managed to hold on to power through heavy surveillance and repression. As Robert Kaplan noted when he visited Syria in 1990 to write a story for the Atlantic, “Assad’s passing may herald more chaos than a chaotic region has seen in decades.” What Kaplan foreshadowed would prove right 20 years later, when the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011. The reason for this was that Syria never had any national unity, with the Assad family ruling over a fragmented but stable Syria through oppressive governmental control. This control was done through an Alawite-dominated government, and this eventually caused heavy resentment. As noted by the historian Daniel Pipes, “An Alawite ruling Syria is like a jew becoming tsar in Russia.” Eventually, it was inevitable that an uprising was going to occur in Syria, as waves of protest toppled the old regimes in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. However, unlike the other regimes, the Assad family would not be toppled so easily.

Syrian Civil War: From Assad’s near collapse to resurgence

In March 2011, the Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad faced a wave of protests demanding an end to a government that had ruled over the Syrians since the 1970s. When Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000, there was hope that he would modernize the country and allow more rights, which were prohibited during his father’s regime. However, this did not happen, with Assad reversing some earlier decisions to democratise Syria and reintroducing the authoritarian tactics of his late father’s administration, including pervasive censorship, state surveillance, and brutal violence against suspected opponents of the regime. 

Instead of listening to the demands of Syrians who wanted freedom and rights, Assad and his regime ruthlessly cracked down on the protestors. One of the Assad regime’s tactics was using the Shabiha. Shabiha, which means “ghost” in Arabic, was originally used to describe Alawite smugglers during the 1980s, but in the context of the Syrian Civil War would come to denote Alawite militias, vigilante gangs, and pro-regime civilians who were sent into cities to ruthlessly crack down on the demonstrators. An example of this were the events in the areas of Houla and Dariya, where Shabiha militias were sent in to quell the protests by ruthlessly employing tactics like summary executions of civilians and then disfiguring the bodies as a scare tactic. 

The use of the Alawite-dominated Shabiha militias by the Assad regime is interesting, as it was exemplary of a broader trend in the Assad regime’s power structure. From the beginning of the civil war, the Assad regime tried to paint the rebellion as a sectarian conflict with the opposition tainted as extremist Sunnis who are trying to kill the Alawites. This dynamic bound the Alawites inextricably to the Assad regime, which they enthusiastically supported as guarantors of their survival. It was the Alawite population that managed to save the Assad regime from collapse until Russia and Iran helped turn the tide in Assad’s favour. Unlike, for example, Gaddafi’s government in Libya, which was fragmented, the Syrian state apparatus was cohesive, as the Assad regime managed to create a security apparatus whose very identity binds them to the ruling class. For example, 70 percent of the Syrian army’s full-time soldiers and 80 percent of its commanders and generals were Alawite. The elite 4th Mechanised Division and Republican Guard, along with the influential Air Force Intelligence, were drawn entirely from the Alawite sect. This also explains why the Syrian Armed Forces did not see large-scale defections amongst its personnel, with the defections in the army usually coming from lower ranks and junior soldiers, who were predominantly Sunni.  

The survival of Alawites was thus seen as being tied to the Assad regime’s survival, which is why many Alawites supported the regime and fought to preserve the regime, as many Alawites viewed the war as an “existential fight against a Sunni Islamist threat”. In exchange for the security and political benefits provided by the Assad regime, the Alawites were largely loyal to the regime, providing the backbone of the Assad regime’s state apparatus and from 2011 onwards, including providing active fighters across Syria that kept Assad’s war effort afloat long enough for Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia to intervene, turning the tide and preserving the regime after its military setbacks between 2012-2015, with the Russian intervention in September 2015 providing decisive air power to Syrian and Iranian-backed ground forces, expanding Assad’s territorial control and solidifying the regime’s hold on power. 

In essence, contrary to what the official Assadist narratives claimed, sectarianism in Syria was not started by the Sunnis alone but also perpetuated and supported by the Assad regime through using the Alawite population by playing into their existential fears and co-opting influential members of the Alawite community. An example of this was Ali Khazim, a colonel in the Syrian army and an Alawite sheikh. Testimonies from his brother and his victims show that Ali Khazim was a ruthless leader who used his connections to the Assad family and his charismatic public image to provide sectarian and religious justifications of the regime’s murderous repression, playing into the existential fears of the Alawite community.

However, it is also important to understand that not all Alawites supported the Assad regime. When the first protests started in Syria, virtually every ethnic and religious sect participated in the protests against the Assad regime, as they saw it as a corrupt and dictatorial regime. Alawites themselves also protested, with Alawite opposition members in Cairo gathering to express their desire to work with the rest of the anti-regime opposition. In the coastal areas of Latakia and Tartus, Alawite activists tried to stop young people from joining the army’s ranks. However, the Assad regime’s securitisation of the protests by labelling the protesters as radical Salafist Islamists, armed gangs, criminals, and terrorists, scared many of the Alawites who viewed the regime’s survival as their own. The story of Ali Khazim is an example of this, being representative of Alawite sheikhs who not only supported the regime but also took part in its repressive policy of subjugating the population. Their anxieties as minority religious leaders impelled them to commit violence they may have believed was defensive, on the basis that it would prevent future violence against their sect. This was the same for many other Alawites, as their anxieties about their minority status compelled them to support the Assad regime out of necessity. However, their support for Assad and compliance in committing crimes radicalised many Sunni communities against the Alawites, fuelling sectarian hatred mainly towards the Alawite minority, viewing members of the community as being affiliated with war crimes

Post-Assad Syria

In December 2024, following a surprise offensive by a coalition of opposition forces, including Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), the Assad government collapsed. This was largely surprising considering the seemingly stable position of the Assad government. However, during the surprise rebel offensive, key cities like Aleppo, Hama, and Homs fell largely within a week. On 8 December, the capital Damascus fell with Bashar al-Assad fleeing the country, ending the brutal 13-year civil war. For the Alawites, the fall of Assad brought mixed feelings and responses. While the fall of Assad brought celebratory feelings for many Sunnis, for the Alawites, it triggered wariness. While the new HTS government has vowed to protect Alawites and other minorities, the Alawites feared lingering resentments amongst other groups in Syria, with many Syrians pointing to the community’s complicity in the Assad regime’s torture and war crimes. 

These fears turned out to be warranted. On March 6, insurgents loyal to the former Assad regime launched an attack and ambushed HTS forces in the town of Jableh, killing about 30 soldiers, with some of them burned and executed. Many of the insurgents were Alawites from the coastal region, with likely support from Hezbollah smuggling networks, who desired to restore the Alawite-dominated economic and political structure of the Assad regime. It was predicted that their attack would trigger sectarian violence against Alawites, as their first attack was on the town of Jableh, entering mixed Sunni and Alawite neighbourhoods and killing all the Sunnis with some help from the Alawite neighbours. In doing so, the insurgents hoped to trigger a massive government response against the Alawites, which could trigger a sectarian war. Their broader strategy was based on the idea that a violent backlash would inflame Syria and polarize society based on ethnic and religious lines, forcing Alawites to support the insurgency.

The HTS government responded powerfully to this act of violence by mobilizing the male population and the army and sending them to the coastal areas to retake it from the insurgents. Clashes followed between Assad loyalists and government troops, with human rights groups and survivors stating that pro-government forces also attacked Alawite civilians, massacring them and burning their homes. It is estimated that a combination of pro-government forces and extrajudicial Sunni death squads killed hundreds of Alawite civilians, with eyewitnesses from the village of Shalfatiya claiming that they saw targeted executions. In the end, the pro-Assad insurgency turned out to be a massive failure. Instead of leading to a large Alawite uprising, it has left the community more vulnerable than ever, dooming the Alawites to massacre and persecution, with many now fearing for their lives and about 21,000 Alawites even leaving the country for Lebanon. If the EU wants to rebuild relations with the new post-Assad Syria and strengthen its regional influence, it will need to confront Syria’s unravelling sectarian order.

Europe’s stake in Syria and the future of the Alawites

The massacre of the Alawites in Syria has shown that the problem of sectarianism in Syria has grown after the fall of Assad and that the future of the Alawites in this new Syria looks bleak without the EU’s interference and help in controlling the problem. While the EU lacks a coherent strategy regarding the Alawite community of Syria, many individual European states have shown that they are willing to help the Alawites, providing support to stop the massacres through humanitarian efforts and a cautious diplomatic approach with the new government. 

While many EU states have long condemned Assad and welcomed the change of government, the Alawite massacres have meant that the EU has had to adjust its policy towards the new government. One way they have done this is by trying to use a diplomatic approach with the new government, with German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock visiting Damascus to support the new Syrian government under the condition that minorities were safe and represented in the government, with Annalena Baerbock stating that “Ethnic and religious groups involving men as well as women must be involved in the constitutional process and a future Syrian government”, showing that Europe is leveraging the possibility of lifting its economic sanctions on Syria as a tool for negotiation. Another example of this was when three European envoys told Syria’s new president, Ahmad Al-Sharra, that he has a limited time to rein in the violent jihadists who took part in the massacres of the Alawites if he wants the EU to lift its economic sanctions on Syria. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine also condemned the massacres and told the new Syrian government that there will be no blank checks until the new government shows a willingness to find the perpetrators of this massacre, therefore putting extra diplomatic pressure on the government. These efforts have already led to some modest successes, as Syrian authorities announced after the massacre that a committee would be formed to investigate to perpetrators of this massacre. This is already a step in the right direction, as Syria, which has been decimated by war, needs the sanctions to be lifted. With a pragmatic European diplomatic approach, the EU can leverage the sanctions to ensure that the new government will work to curb sectarian violence in the future.

Despite these efforts, however, the EU’s influence in Syria remains limited, with Turkey supplanting Iran and Russia as the major external power influencing the country. This means that the EU will have to engage in a balancing act if it wants to help to Alawite community while also building closer ties to the new Syrian government. If the EU is too aggressive in pushing the cause of the Alawites through sanctions, it might strain its relations with the new Syrian government and Turkey, while abandoning the Alawite community could lead the Alawites to take up arms against the government and push them towards Iran and Russia. Russia still retains two military bases in Syria’s coastal regions, where many Alawites sought refuge when the massacres happened, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claiming that about 9000 Alawites sought refuge in the Russian base. The best course of action for the EU is thus to provide humanitarian support for the Alawites and ensure that the Alawites are not abandoned, while keeping a pragmatic diplomatic approach with the new Syrian government, ensuring that the territorial integrity of Syria is intact with Alawite participation.

Conclusion: The Future of Alawites and the EU balancing act

The fall of Assad has left the Alawites trapped between a vengeful people who blame them for historical crimes and Assadists claiming to fight in their name. For the Alawites, the violence committed by former Assadists exacerbated existing tensions and caused more problems for the community. Ultimately, the Alawites’ future in Syria depends on overcoming Syria’s violent sectarianism, which the EU can help with by engaging in a delicate balancing act. While having limited leverage within Syria, Europe can still use its diplomatic and humanitarian tools to ensure that Alawites are protected within this new Syria. By ensuring that Alawites are not abandoned and are protected, the EU can prevent the Alawites from turning to violence as a way of attaining their rights, which would likely push them to Russia and Iran. At the same time, the EU needs to engage in pragmatic diplomacy with the new government in Syria to be able to influence political developments in the country, as overaggressive use of sanction diplomacy and too many lectures could mean the Syrian government turns away from the EU and drifts towards other external powers, which would diminish the already small EU influence in Syria.