Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, long repressed under President Bashar al-Assad’s leadership, say they hope for inclusion in political decision-making on the war-ravaged country’s future.
Bassam Said Ishak, president of the Syriac National Council of Syria, is calling for what he calls inclusive negotiations. His organization, based in northeast Syria, aims to defend the rights of Christians and all minorities in a post-Assad government in the hope of building a new Syria that is democratic, secular, and pluralistic with equal rights for all citizens.
“I would like to see real negotiations in Syria over a new constitution because the rebels said they want to start such negotiations. What I mean by real negotiations is that nobody is excluded,” Ishak said. “All groups who have a say about the future of Syria and have their own concerns, visions, and hopes to sit and voice what’s on their hearts and minds without intervening from outside powers to decide who can sit or not sit in these negotiations.”
Meanwhile, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hajri, the spiritual leader of Syria’s Druze community, issued a statement urging all Syrians to maintain vigilance, saying “the journey ahead is long and the battle is not over.”
He said his group is calling on “everyone to protect both public and private property as a national and moral duty, prevent acts of vandalism and block any attempt to undermine security and stability in Sweida."
Mazloum Abdi is commander of Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led armed group that includes Christian fighters instrumental in taking down Islamic State militants. He expressed hope in a new leadership.
“This change presents an opportunity to build a new Syria based on democracy and justice that guarantees the rights of all Syrians,” he said in a statement.
The rebel offensive begun on November 27, led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, ended the five-decade rule of the Assad government characterized by violent suppression to crush dissent.
The U.S. and other countries designated HTS a terrorist group because it was once part of al-Qaida, but the Islamist group has since broken away and appears to have moderated its stance. Since its takeover of Aleppo and other areas, it announced that it would protect Syria’s minority populations. But that might not be the case with other rebel groups.
Nadine Maenza, president of the Washington-based International Religious Freedom Secretariat, said she received eyewitness accounts of atrocities committed against a dozen Syrian religious and ethnic minorities in recent days in the Shebha region outside of Aleppo.
She will present the concerns in a report to the U.S. Congress.
“Our concern is for the safety of all religious and ethnic minorities,” Maenza said. “With the track record of both HTS and the Turkish-backed militias having a history of severe religious violations against these groups. Atrocities are continuing against Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and other religious minorities, but particularly we are seeing them from the Turkish-backed Islamist militias.”
Julien Barnes-Dacey, director of the European Council of Foreign Relations Middle East program, said, concerns are already emerging about what comes next in Syria with fears about the HTS and the prospect of new chaos, violence and fragmentation amid a possible contested transition.
“There are also concerns that the conflict between Turkey and Syrian Kurds could give ISIS new space to exploit,” Barnes-Dacey said, in a written statement.
But he added that “the biggest hope should lie in the agency of Syrians themselves.”
“They, more than any outsiders, long for a stabilizing transition, having already internalized the cost of conflict,” he wrote.
Assad’s brute force against pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011 ignited a 13-year civil war along sectarian lines resulting in 500,000 Syrian deaths and the displacement of half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million.
