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Joshua Landis, an American academic who specializes in the Middle East and is an expert on Syria, warned on April 27 that members of the Alawite religious minority were still being targeted amid silence from the country’s Islamist-led interim government.
In a post to the X social network, the researcher said that 13 Alawite civilians were killed in Homs and four others were killed in the capital, Damascus, in the last 24 hours, describing the murders as “summary executions.
“President [Ahmad] Sharaa is not speaking out about this,” he added.
Landis also noted that over 50 Alawite women have been abducted over the last two months. This was previously reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The London-based monitoring group said that most of the abductions took place in Tartus and Latakia on the coast, the heartland of the Alawites, with the rest taking place in Hama and Homs.
“This is not to mention the 1,800 Alawite civilians killed on the coast in March, or the 8 Alawite villages north of Hama that have been completely cleansed,” he said.
“The government has done little if anything to stop these killings, many of which have been carried out by government forces,” he added.
The government crackdown in March displaced more than 20,000 Alawites to northern and eastern Lebanon with around 10,000 others taking shelter at Russia’s Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia. The numbers of refugees continue to grow.
Landis also published a video showing gunmen walking between two Alawite neighborhoods in Homs and chanting: “Homs is for Sunnis, Alawites get out of it.”
The researcher warned that sectarian killings complicate efforts by Western government to lift sanctions or to affirm that the interim government is doing “the right thing.”
In addition to all the violations mentioned by Landis, the government continues to imprison thousands of former soldiers and officers, mostly Alawites, who laid down their arms before the fall of the Assad regime last December. Many have been already reported to be dead as a result of torture or even summary executions.
So far, the government has done nothing to stop violence against Alawites. There is also no real dialogue between the government and the group.
In the face of this situation, Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal, head of the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council in Syria and Diaspora, and several other prominent leaders of the group renewed calls for international protection earlier this month. Some went as far as demanding the right of self-determination for the coast, hinting at the possibility of separating from Syria.
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