Bashar al-Assad is gone. Will the next tyrants please stand up?
It may not be long before the world looks back on the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad as a turning point for jihadist rule in the Middle East.
While no one will shed a tear for Assad, the so-called “opposition forces,” Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is little more than a reconstructed remnant of ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters. Considered a terrorist organization by the United States, they have, in less than two weeks, ethnically cleansed the northwest of Syria, including Aleppo and beyond, of Kurds and Christians. A storyline much of the mainstream media has refused to acknowledge.
Despite public protestations to the contrary, we can expect HTS to extend its campaign to the rest of the country. To use a historical reference — not to equate but to illustrate — it’s akin to Hitler being overthrown by Stalin: bad actors on both sides, just with different ideologies.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The Kurdish minorities, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and Christians in Syria are now in grave danger. A weeklong caravan of Kurds and Christians fleeing the region may soon become a mass exodus from Syria.
When the civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Christians comprised approximately 10% of the population, about 1.5 million people. After years of constant fighting and persecution by jihadist radicals, that number has dwindled to just 300,000.
Reports of Christians being forced to flee as hundreds of thousands are displaced and churches are being taken over have already emerged from Syria and mirrors what Global Christian Relief is hearing from partners on the ground. Men and women are being shot, burned, and beheaded. Roads are filled with dead bodies, and some 150 women have been kidnapped by Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish-backed militia, in the Shabha region. Jihadi groups are telling others not to upload human rights violations to their phones or social media like Hamas did because then the world would know who they really are. But we know who they are.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Leading the charge is certainly Turkey, who has been funding jihadist rebels for several years, undoubtedly in connection with other Sunni governments in the region. The SNA Coalition has many former ISIS members in it. We know what ISIS did to Christians and religious minorities, and we know the extreme danger having SNA in the area puts these groups in. Turkey’s President Erdogan wants to eradicate the Christians, Kurds and religious minorities from this region. And he’s simply using SNA to do it. According to the 2024 Annual Report from U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the areas controlled by Turkey and the SNA “target religious minorities, especially Yezidis for rape, assassination, kidnapping for ransom, confiscation of property, and desecration of cemeteries and places of worship.”
But there’s also an unsettling pattern of international inaction so far. Global powers have issued calls for de-escalation, yet no meaningful measures have been taken to ensure the safety of Syria’s most vulnerable populations — including Christians and Kurds.
The U.S. Government and international community must use all levers available to pressure Turkey and the SNA to stop all attacks and invasions on northeast Syria — otherwise, the atrocities will continue.
So, while there are no heroes in this story, there are plenty of victims. Pray for Syria. Champion the status and humanity of Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, and others.
Syria’s future, particularly that of its religious minorities, has never been more uncertain.
Dr. David Curry is the president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, an organization that advocates on behalf of those who are persecuted for their Christian faith throughout the world.
