The world witnessed an extraordinary moment when Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa took the podium at the UN General Assembly and declared the restoration of Syrian sovereignty after nearly sixty years. His speech, delivered with the confidence of a leader reclaiming his nation’s place in the international order, coincided with the return of more than one million Syrian refugees. Yet behind the symbolism, Sharaa’s image as a unifying leader remains deeply contested. Since Hayat al Tahrir al Sham (HTS)-led rebels ousted Bashar al Assad in late 2024, Sharaa has struggled to consolidate power. Governing a country fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines poses the greatest challenge for his transitional government, as recurring outbreaks of communal violence continue to cast a grim shadow over Syria’s post-Assad security landscape. To step out from under that shadow, Sharaa will need to pursue targeted, effective accountability measures – for both perpetrators of violence against Syrian minorities following the fall of Assad, and against former Assad officials complicit in war crimes, impunity for which further inflames internal tensions.
Intercommunal Violence and the Epicenter of Conflict
Uncontrolled sectarian violence and the transitional government’s failure to integrate independent armed groups threaten to destabilize Syria in the immediate future. Semi-active insurgency along the coast, unresolved integration of Kurdish militias in the northeast, fragile security arrangements in the south, and the looming threat of Salafi-Jihadi hardliners all contribute to Syria’s top security concerns.
Sectarian violence has increased since March, when first former Assad regime remnants, and then transitional government-affiliated forces, committed mass murders of civilians along Syria’s coast. On March 6, pro-Assad insurgents launched a coordinated assault against transitional government forces and Sunni civilians in Latakia and Tartous provinces. Former regime officers from the Fourth Division — linked to Bashar al Assad’s brother Maher al Assad — and Assad loyalist Muqtada Fatiha’s Coastal Shield Brigade, along with other Alawite insurgent cells, attacked and seized transitional government positions. The coordinated assault triggered reprisal killings from the predominantly Sunni majority transitional government forces, which massacred Alawite civilians along Syria’s coast. Sunni Islamists, including transitional government-linked fighters, carried out mass executions of Alawite civilians. The coastal uprising left at least 1,400 Syrians dead, mostly Alawite civilians. The Alawite massacre highlights a broader trend of sectarian violence driven by Sunni hardliners, with the appearance of seeking to punish the entire Alawite community for crimes committed by the Assad regime.
In the south, violence between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes in July 2025 left more than 1,000 dead and displaced over 128,000 civilians. The conflict was sparked by the abduction of a Druze merchant but spiraled into retaliatory massacres. Transitional government forces sent to restore order were accused by human rights groups of siding with Bedouins, conducting summary executions, and looting Druze property. The result has been what local leaders describe as “irreversible damage” to Druze-Damascus reconciliation efforts. Tensions between transitional government forces and the Druze community have been deepening against the backdrop of President Sharaa’s repeated attempts to negotiate security arrangements with key Druze militias in southern Syria. In April, the Syrian transitional government reached an agreement with prominent Druze factions in Suwayda Province to reintegrate local Suwaydawi forces into the Ministry of Interior and to authorize joint deployments with General Security Service (GSS) personnel. Yet, despite these efforts, repeated clashes between Druze militias and pro-government entities continue to undermine trust and fuel communal animosity.
Meanwhile, in the northeast, promises of power-sharing between Damascus and the U.S.-backed Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) remain unfulfilled. Despite initial agreements, the transitional government has stalled on constitutional guarantees for Kurds that would recognize the Kurdish language and ensure full citizenship to displaced Kurds. Moreover, sporadic clashes between SDF units and transitional government forces persist. Here too, mistrust born of past abuse undermines any prospect of sustainable integration. During the Syrian civil war, Salafi-jihadist groups and the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) — which are now part of the new Syrian army — displaced Kurdish families, destroyed towns, and justified massacres by portraying Kurds as collaborators with the West. This difficult and complex history is another challenging aspect that Sharaa must contend with effectively in order to advance long-term stability in Syria.
Sharaa’s Balancing Act: Hardliners vs Moderates
The transitional government’s responses to these incidents have been lackluster, at least from an accountability perspective. Although the transitional government has attempted responsive measures, detailed further below, the government has not yet effectively conducted prosecutions against those responsible for sectarian violence – nor against former Assad officials responsible for war crimes. This lack of clear, concrete prosecutorial action highlights Sharaa’s failure to balance hardliners while projecting a moderate image to broader audiences. Although Sharaa did not directly order the massacres of Alawites or Druze (so far as open-source information indicates), his failure to prioritize meaningful accountability for these atrocities enables him to preserve ties with the most hardline elements of his support base. Sunni Islamists with strong sectarian tendencies occupy key positions within his government, many of whom fought alongside Sharaa during his HTS days in Idlib. For instance, Sharaa’s defense minister and chief of staff are both former HTS commanders, while the justice minister—a former HTS cleric—has a long record of sectarian rhetoric targeting Syrian minorities. This makes the prosecution of pro-transitional government extremist militias politically risky, as any attempt to implicate such groups would likely be blocked by Islamist figures within Sharaa’s cabinet, particularly the justice minister, who oversees the country’s investigative and judicial bodies. These extremists, often at the cost of minorities, form a key support base of the Sharaa-led transitional government.
Keeping in mind his support base, Sharaa has withheld constitutional concessions to Kurds and Druze by refusing to recognize their distinct religious identities in the new draft constitution, which defines Syria as an “Arab Republic.”
Such exclusion undermines efforts to promote inclusivity in Syria’s complex post-Assad sectarian landscape. Additionally, Sharaa has avoided commitments to the minority Kurdish SDF that would allow them to retain their individual command structure and semi-autonomous governance structure after integrating into the new Syrian army. Sectarian tensions among Sunni extremists are further exacerbated by Sharaa’s failure to hold former Assad regime officials accountable for their past war crimes. Syrian forces have arrested several high-profile Assad-era officials accused of war crimes, but the absence of clear legal frameworks and the limited capacity of the judiciary have delayed their prosecution. These delays in delivering justice have fueled frustration among Sunni extremists, who have taken matters into their own hands by executing alleged Assadist informers and former regime officials, targeting Alawite civilians, and carrying out waves of sectarian revenge killings. This cycle of violence has also given rise to new Salafi-Jihadi formations such as Saraya Ansar al Sunnah (SAS), which exploit anti-Alawite and anti-Assadist sentiment among Sunni extremists to organize large-scale assassinations and terrorist attacks against minorities.
Transitional Justice: A Fragile Experiment
To his credit, Sharaa has attempted to establish a framework for transitional justice. Two investigative commissions were formed in 2025 to examine the coastal massacres and the July violence in Suwayda. In May, the government also created national commissions to address Assad-era human rights violations and investigate the fate of forcibly disappeared Syrians, composed of lawyers, legal scholars, and international human rights advocates. These commissions were intended to project impartiality. But the commissions have already stumbled.
In July, the coastal commission dismissed sectarian motives behind the killings of Alawites, attributing them instead to “revenge-based” violence caused by weak State control over armed groups. The report’s claim that the killings were “revenge-based” (rather than sectarian) overlooks the reality that sectarian violence often manifests as revenge for perceived attacks by another community. The commission claimed that the violence targeted Assad regime supporters specifically, as opposed to Alawites as a sect. In practice, however, many Sunni extremists conflate individuals with an Alawite identity with supporters of the Assad regime, making sectarian identity the primary basis for selecting victims, even when framed as retaliation for Assadist violations. Moreover, the report’s conclusion is inconsistent with compelling evidence to the contrary: most victims were Alawite civilians, and survivors insist the attacks were explicitly sectarian.
Additionally, the commissions suffer from transparency issues. Although the coastal commission did identify 298 suspects, it refused to disclose the identities of those suspects and has publicly acknowledged the arrest of only one Ministry of Defense official. Human rights watchdogs have demanded the publication of commission findings, but Damascus has so far resisted. The Suwayda commission risks following the same trajectory, with critics warning that it too will absolve the State of responsibility for siding with the Bedouin tribes in extrajudicial executions of Druze civilians, as pointed out by Amnesty International. Without transparency and accountability, these mechanisms risk becoming tools of political expediency rather than vehicles for reconciliation. Recently and potentially positively, the Syrian Minister of Justice announced that public trials relating to the coastal violence will take place. This remains an area to watch: if these trials do move forward and they are both transparent and compliant with key rule of law norms, it will be a step in the right direction. If not, observers may rightly raise concerns about the precedent set for effective and crucial accountability measures necessary to effectuate meaningful transitional justice in the Syrian context.
By contrast, the transitional justice mechanism tasked with prosecuting Assad-era crimes may hold greater promise. For decades, Assadists — predominantly from the Alawite minority — committed widespread and well-documented abuses against Syrians across society. Moreover, the top brass of Sharaa’s government is almost entirely composed of former opposition figures who fought Assad’s forces during the civil war. The collective political will to hold Assadists accountable will likely remain relatively higher, even if there remain a number of significant limitations within Syria’s domestic judicial system. Indeed, illustrating this point, over the summer, the Attorney General charged a group of former Assad officials with alleged war crimes, an effort that is positive but which observers have noted is likely to run into a range of implementation issues (such as the lack of provisions for war crimes in Syria’s current criminal code, limited judicial capacity, and potential conflicts with the mandate of the transitional justice commission since these charges were brought outside of its framework). Nonetheless, there is likely to be a great deal of attention and effort directed towards advancing accountability for former Assad regime officials accused of serious crimes, which, if done effectively, is a highly worthy undertaking. A credible process that holds such former regime officials accountable could break the cycle of vigilante justice, reduce Sunni hardliner violence, and undercut the recruitment appeal of Salafi-Jihadi groups like Saraya Ansar al Sunnah.
The Way Forward: Three Imperatives
Under Sharaa’s leadership, Syria has achieved notable diplomatic progress by forging ties with Western governments and securing substantial sanctions relief. The October 5 elections, which selected 119 members of the national assembly, marked another step toward building a Syria that reflects — at least to some extent — the country’s ethnic and religious diversity. For instance, all three legislators elected from Afrin in northern Syria are Kurdish. Nonetheless, there has been criticism about the limited inclusion of women and Christians in the final tally, as well as the postponement of voting in certain Kurdish and Druze areas (in part due to a lack of government control over those areas). Additionally, repeated violent attacks on religious minorities risk unraveling this momentum and damaging Sharaa’s credibility as a unifying leader. These incidents paint his administration as hostile to minorities and incapable of safeguarding human rights. For Sharaa to stabilize Syria and establish his government’s external legitimacy, he must pivot decisively toward accountability and inclusion. Three steps stand out:
- Commit to transparent inquiries and credible accountability measures: Damascus must release the coastal commission report and implement transparent, rights-respecting prosecutions of any transitional government-linked fighters, or State forces, implicated in the Alawite and Druze killings. Public trials are essential to reassuring minorities that justice will not be sacrificed for political expediency. Equally, the transitional justice mechanism investigating Assadists must move forward with visible, credible proceedings. By doing so, Sharaa would demonstrate to both Syrians and the international community that no actor is above the law.
- Renegotiate power-sharing and decentralization: Minorities such as the Kurds and Druze must see their political and cultural rights guaranteed in the constitution. Refusing to recognize the identities of these religious and ethnic groups outright alienates communities with a long history of persecution and established experience in autonomous governance. This alienation has slowed the integration process with both the Kurds and Druze, prompting Druze communities in Suwayda Province to establish a parallel quasi-governance system that calls for a decentralized political structure rather than one that concentrates power in Damascus. Consequently, the October 5 elections excluded Druze- and Kurdish-controlled areas in northern and southern Syria. To rebuild trust and strengthen national unity, Sharaa’s efforts to reestablish formal alliances with minority militias must respect their demands for sovereignty and autonomous identity.
- Rebuild trust through outreach and reconstruction: Sharaa must engage directly with conflict-affected regions, visiting minority communities and allocating reconstruction funds. A “hearts-and-minds” approach, backed by Western reconstruction aid, could help rebuild trust at the grassroots level. With an estimated 150,000 displaced by the Suwayda clashes alone, addressing humanitarian needs is both a moral obligation and a political necessity.
The survival of Sharaa’s transitional government and its credibility as a unifying authority depend on whether he chooses transparent and credible accountability over expediency. Violence against minorities not only erodes domestic trust but also jeopardizes the international support Damascus needs to stabilize Syria. Failure to confront Sunni hardliners and prosecute Assad-era war criminals will entrench cycles of revenge, empower extremist groups, and leave Syria permanently fractured.
But if Sharaa seizes the moment — by embracing transitional justice, empowering minorities, and committing to transparent governance — he has the chance to transform Syria from a State defined by fear into one shaped by reconciliation. Such a course will not be easy, but it is the only path that offers Syrians a future where minorities no longer dread the next outbreak of violence, but instead see themselves as co-authors of a new Syrian state.
