Even as many Syrians celebrate the end of the Assad dynasty, others seem keen to “rain on the party.” Minorities in particular are warning that there will be massive repercussions for non-Arabs and non-Muslims in Syria if the change of regime does not leave room for the continuation of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). While many foreign commentators are focusing on the Islamist past of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the party governing Syria since December last year, the problem is national as well as religious. Flags with the image of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator deposed in 2003, are being waved from Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor all the way to Vienna. Ba’athism and Islamism are not rivals as so many, particularly in the West, have portrayed them. Rather, Ba’athism, with its emphasis on radical Arab nationalism, and Islamism have been deeply entwined in the region for decades. Thus, to understand the challenges that minority groups in Syria face today, one must comprehend the development of Syrian Ba’athism, its relationship to Iraqi Ba’athism, its ties to Islamism, and its enduring popularity. The survival of AANES is a key test for determining whether the current Syrian government will turn the page regarding its minorities, or whether it will continue the Ba’athist agenda and implement genocidal policies as it has in the past.
Today’s Syria is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state. That said, minority groups suffered disproportionately from the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011. The majority of the current Syrian population are Arabs, primarily Sunni Muslims; but there are also significant minority groups, including Alawites, Christians, Druze, Kurds, and Assyrians. These groups today represent approximately 25–30% of the population, with Kurds comprising the largest group at around 10–15%. While still significant, these percentages nevertheless reflect the dramatic decline of some of the communities due to the Syrian Civil War, which hit minorities the hardest. The Christian community, in particular, 10% of the population in 2011, now stands at 2%. The minorities who remained (or could not flee) are dispersed geographically. Kurds live in the north and northeast, and Alawites in the coastal regions such as Latakia and Tartous; Christians, who are comprised of Greek Catholics, Maronites, Armenians, and Assyrians, live in cities like Qamishli, Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs, as well as in rural areas such as the Wadi al-Nasara and parts of Hasakah. Up until recently Kurds also resided in the northwest, but were ethnically cleansed from the region following the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) is currently the most minority-friendly region of Syria. It has operated since 2012 with a decentralized governance model, implementing policies favoring pluralism and self-administration. It came into being early in the Syrian Civil War, expanding its areas of control during the war against the Islamic State in particular. It is governed by local councils representing all of the ethnic groups in the region. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the military arm of the AANES, is likewise a coalition composed of various ethnic and religious groups. Although the core of the SDF comes from the People’s Defense Units (YPG)—a Kurdish unit—other groups are also represented. The Syriac Military Council represents Assyrian interests, while the Martyr Nubar Ozanyan Brigade defends the Armenian community and its heritage. The Manbij military council, which was and continues to be central to the war against ISIS, is mainly comprised of Sunni Arabs.
In December 2024, a rapid offensive by rebel forces led to the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, ending over five decades of rule by the Assad family. Assad fled to Russia; HTS, along with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), have since taken control of most of Syria. Ever since, however, incidents of violent attacks on minorities, women, trans-people, and innocent civilians have grown. While many portray this onslaught as motivated by Islamism, the proliferation across Syria of posters of Saddam Hussein, a hero of the Ba’ath movement, tell a different story. They testify to the strong influence of Iraqi Ba’athism, with its ideology of Arab supremacism, and its accommodations with Islamism on Syrian politics.
The rise of Ba’athism to power in Iraq and Syria throughout the 1960s is inseparably connected with Arab supremacism. After the collapse of the short-lived United Arab Republic of Syria and Egypt in 1961, the divided Arab nationalist leadership sought out ways to unite. The most effective means of doing so up until then had been through antisemitism; however, Jews had been almost completely pushed out of the region by then, and anti-Zionism alone had not been sufficient to create internal unity. There was, however, another ethnic group that could be targeted, due its historical enmity with Arabs and political aspirations: the Kurds, the largest minority group in the region. As a result, when Iraq’s Ba’ath party came to power under Ahmad Hassan al Bakr following the 1963 coup against Abdul Karim Qasim, the first thing it did was to militarily suppress Kurdish resistance in northern Iraq. Unlike their predecessor Qasim, who had tried to broker with the Kurds by offering them official recognition as an ethnic group and some degree of representation within the central state during the 1959-1960 Kurdish-Iraqi negotiations, Bakr led a military and ideological campaign against them.
The Iraqi Ba’athist anti-Kurdish campaign drew on the energy and unifying potential of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, offering a model for Syrian Ba’athism. Muhammad Talib Hilal, a fervent Syrian Ba’athist military and police official and later minister in different functions observed the developments in Iraq in his work “A Study of the Jazira Province [a Kurdish-majority province] from National, Social and Political Aspects” The pamphlet openly stated that the creation of a free Kurdistan would be equal to the creation of a “Yahudistan”:
“Thus, it must be considered that the Kurds are a people who seek, with all their efforts and capabilities, to establish their illusionary entity and their alleged dream. This perspective treats them as enemies, with no difference between them and Israel, despite the religious connection. Indeed, Kurdistan is like ‘Yahudistan’ (a land of Jews), if these reports are accurate. Add to that all the imperialist factors, the concentration against Arab nationalism, and the Christian perspective, which emerge as part of the global map of resistance, aiming to harm the Arab and Islamic worlds.”
Consequently, he demanded manifold impositions on that the Kurds in Syria: that they be deprived of all education and employment, have their citizenship reevaluated, be encouraged to fight among themselves, be evicted, be forced into collective farms, have their former properties colonized by “pure and nationalist Arabs” under military supervision, be denied voting and office rights if they did not speak Arabic, and have their religious leaders replaced by Arabs. In other words, this minority population should be subjected to a vast anti-Kurdish campaign. He realized this policy in the 1962 special census of Hasakah region in Northern Syria which stripped thousands of Kurds of their citizenship, making them and their offspring foreigners and beginning a decades-long policy of oppression.
With other minorities, the Syrian Ba’athists used co-optation and exclusion to crush inter-minority solidarity. Taking their cue from their Iraqi neighbors, Sunni Arab Ba’athists in Syria divided and conquered. They elevated the Alawites—the minority group to which Hafez al-Assad belonged. They appointed Alawites to key positions within the military and government, enhancing their socio-political standing. In contrast to this, they limited Druze community representation in higher governmental roles, albeit without relying on overt persecution. Notably, Mansur al-Atrash, a prominent Druze figure and founding member of the Ba’ath Party as well as an active opponent of authoritarianism, participating in anti-government activities during Adib Shishakli’s regime, and was consequently sidelined. They also copied the Iraqi approach to Assyrians, which dated back to the British period: they allowed Assyrians to maintain certain cultural institutions, including private confessional schools where the Syriac language and religious traditions were taught, but constrained public acknowledgment and promotion of their distinct heritage. The Syrian Ba’athist state thus forced all of the minority communities into a singular Arab supremacist framework.
The influence of the Iraqi Ba’athists on their Syrian counterparts however ran deeper than policy initiatives alone. Many core Ba’athists in early Syrian history were not Alawite but Sunni Arab, from the border area between Syria and Iraq and sharing not only an ideology but also historic and ethnic ties. The first Ba’athist prime minister of Syria, Yusuf Zuayyin, under whom Hilal (the fervent ideologue who cautioned against “Yahudistan”) served, was, for example, from Abu Kamal, where tribal Arab populations considered the frontier between Syria and Iraq as artificial, dividing Arab and, just as importantly, tribal unity. While Hafez al-Assad succeeded in cementing his power, Sunni Arab Ba’athists viewed him with mistrust, due to his Alawite origins, but also because of his acceptance of the ceasefire after the Yom Kippur war and his support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Indeed, many Sunni Arab Ba’athists in Syria never accepted his leadership, instead continuing to look to Iraq.
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Ba’athism increasingly combined Arab supremacism with Islamism. While Assad maintained a solid hold on power in Syria (despite suspicions about him among Sunni Arab Ba’athists), Saddam faced much greater challenges. He endured significant losses of troops, means, and support throughout the 1980s, due to his misguided invasion of Iran. His genocidal campaign against the Kurds in the latter part of the decade was the cornerstone of his attempt to restore his control and power through the well-established Ba’athist strategy of unification through a common enemy. After Iraq was put under heavy sanctions in 1991, Saddam further sought to strengthen his ties with his own community, Sunni Arabs, both in and outside Iraq, on religious as well as ethnic grounds. This move was intended first and foremost to create a bulwark against increasingly disillusioned Shi’ite Arabs in the south, who resented having had to fight their Shi’ite brothers in faith in Iran. But it was also a means of extending and consolidating his leadership regionally under the new pressures of the US invasion. Knowing that Operation Desert Shield was a first warning, in 1993 Saddam launched the “Faith campaign,” implemented by his confidant Izzat al Douri. This campaign established links with the Muslim Brotherhood, strengthened the transnational core of supporters of Sunni Arab descent, especially at Iraq’s Syrian border, and created the ideological base to lead Iraq’s impoverished population through an era of international sanctions and isolation. He also added the phrase “Allahu Akbar” (in his own handwriting) to the flag, and staged horrific executions of people deemed apostates.
The Iraqi Ba’athist marriage of Arab supremacy and Islamism under Saddam Hussein would impact Syria, where it found already fertile ground. In the early 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood conducted the first great uprisings against Assad, especially in Homs and Hama. While the government brutally—and successfully—suppressed them, many Syrian Sunni Arabs looked at the uprisings favorably, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood clandestinely thereafter. During the same period, Syrian Sunni Arabs also consolidated their ties with their Iraqi brethren on the local level. Those living in the border area around Abu Kamal established smuggling routes supporting their Iraqi neighbors. This strengthened tribal and clan-based networks among Sunni Arabs in the two countries. By the 1990s, it had led to good connections between Sunni Arabs in Syria and the Iraqi state apparatus, itself increasingly staffed by Sunni Arabs loyal to Saddam.
Iraqi Ba’athism’s influence on Syrian politics continued into the 2000s, going on to determine the divisions in the Syrian civil war. When Kurds officially secured their autonomy after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, anti-Kurdish sentiment in Eastern Syria skyrocketed, as Sunni Arab supremacists feared this would happen in Syria as well. The Syrian Ba’athist forces’ violent suppression of the 2004 uprising in Qamishlo, a city in North Eastern Syria, must be understood in light of the Iraqi influence on Syrian politics. Sunni Arab football fans shouted racist slogans at their Kurdish opponents in the stadium, alluding to the gassing of Kurds and the fulfillment of what Saddam had failed to complete. In this context, it is unsurprising that the Kurdish movement in Syria quickly declared their own “third path” in the opposition to Assad, separate from the Arab supremacists and jihadis filling the ranks of the opposition in 2012. Indeed, Sunni Arabs in the Syrian borderlands formed the core of ISIS—the most extreme version of the marriage of Arab supremacy and Islamism fostered by Saddam.
AANES was brought into being by the forces that vanquished ISIS. The efforts of the SDF, with Kurdish YPG and YPJ fighters playing a central role alongside Assyrian militias like the Syriac Military Council and Sunni Arab units, defeated ISIS. Sunni Arab fighters were also instrumental in reclaiming their towns from ISIS, particularly in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa. Backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and military support, the SDF finally dismantled ISIS’s territorial hold, their endeavors culminating in the 2019 Battle of Baghuz. In the aftermath, AANES solidified its governance structure, emphasizing decentralized administration and pluralistic representation. While Kurds formed the backbone of the administration it has always been multi-ethnic, with Assyrians, Arabs, and other minorities taking on key roles in governance and security.
While AANES has respected Sunni Arab cultural and religious autonomy, the Sunni Arab populations within it have not made their peace with a multi-national and multi-religious Syria. The much-reported discontent of the Arab populations now under AANES and not ISIS control runs much deeper than mere discontent with questions of AANES military conscription or service provisions, as reported by some Syria analysts in the West. On the contrary, many exceptions have been made for the Sunni Arab regions that became part of AANES. Military conscription does not apply to much of the Arab community, and tribal councils still have their relative autonomy outside of the grassroots democratic system of AANES, particularly with regard to personal status. Exceptions were made even in the school curriculum in these regions concerning the progressive and feminist content of standard of AANES—books that were deemed “too much” for these locals. Rather, it would seem that these communities have not accepted living in a region that has rejected Arab supremacy.
More than five years have passed since the territorial defeat of ISIS, but the question of Arab supremacy and Islamism remains. As Bashar al-Assad lost territory, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—a Kurdish-led coalition of U.S.-backed left-wing ethnic militias, including rebel groups mainly based east of the Euphrates—advanced into eastern Syria against Assad’s troops. However, these advances were not welcomed by the Sunni Arab locals. In the first days after the toppling of Assad, videos and pictures emerged from across the country, especially from the eastern Syrian regions of Deir ez-Zor province, of people holding the Syrian opposition flags with Ba’athist, and later Islamist and Arab supremacist, motifs.
On the flags, we mostly see Saddam Hussein, the number 505 (the postal code of Deir ez-Zor) and images of some other figures, including Abdul Baset al-Sarout (1992–2019). The latter, a Syrian football player turned revolutionary figure during the Syrian Civil War, emerged as a prominent leaders and symbol of the opposition in Homs. As early as 2013 he pledged allegiance to ISIS—a declaration which he later withdrew, claiming that he acted out of desperation and lack of resources in the fight. Nevertheless, while initially advocating for unity, his alignment with jihadist groups like Jaysh al-Izza later in the conflict stirred controversy. He died in 2019 from injuries sustained in battle.
Another common image is that of Abdul Qader Saleh (1979–2013), also known as Hajji Marea, who was a prominent Syrian revolutionary and military leader during the early years of the Syrian Civil War. Born in Marea, a town in northern Aleppo province, he worked as a grain and food trader before becoming a key figure in anti-regime demonstrations in 2011. Saleh transitioned from organizing peaceful protests to leading armed resistance, eventually founding and commanding the Liwa al-Tawhid brigade, one of the largest and most influential factions within the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at that time. Under his leadership, Liwa al-Tawhid played a pivotal role in battles across northern Syria, including Aleppo, and mediated conflicts between FSA factions and more hardline Islamist groups, such as ISIS. Saleh also sought to unify Islamist-leaning opposition groups while committing to the Syrian revolution’s broader goals.
These personae strikingly represent the world of Ba’athism, Arab supremacy, and Islamism. The “505 Mafia,” as they call themselves, does not limit their operations to eastern Syria. They are present in Europe as well, especially in cities like Vienna or Essen, where during anti-Assad protests, similar flags with Saddam pictures and 505 references were spotted. As the OSINT analyst Scharo Maroof has reported, they are also starting to threaten Kurds in Europe. On January 19, for example, a 25-year-old alleged Islamic State supporter, of Deir ez-Zor descent, stabbed a Kurdish protestor in the northern German city of Kiel while the latter was marching in a pro-AANES demonstration.
The current popular Sunni Arab support for Ba’athism, with its combination of Arab supremacism and Islamism, is threat to all minority groups in the regions, at a time when the latter are no longer willing to be suppressed. The Druze community in particular, along with the Southern Operations Room—a significant faction of the Syrian opposition—played a crucial yet understated role in the advances against Assad from the south. The HTS leadership understands that they cannot afford to alienate this group. However the Druze, much like the Kurds, seek more than mere acceptance of their governance style. In a conciliatory gesture, HTS appointed Muhsina al-Mahithawi, a Druze woman, as the head of the Suwayda governorate. It is far from clear that the Druze are satisfied with these concessions, or for how long HTS will continue to make them. For Christians and Alawites, the situation is more worrisome. Unlike the Kurds and Druze, many of them face Sunni Arab violence; they are seen as collaborators of the late regime, due to the latter’s co-optation tactics. Gruesome videos of HTS executions of Alawites have begun to emerge, alongside reports of attacks on Christian neighborhoods. In addition, HTS is continuing Assad’s divide-and-rule strategy with the Christian minorities—more internally divided, both culturally and politically, than either the Kurds or the Druze. Thus, while some Christian leaders have already had talks with the HTS leadership in Damascus, others have allegedly been subjected to smear campaigns. One example is the case of John X, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, who has been accused of being an Assadist pawn. For all the minority groups involved, the bottom line is how they will survive in a society that has provided fertile soil for Sunni Arab supremacist and Islamist insurgency and violent excesses for decades, especially now with the HTS leadership announcing that it is considering the naturalization of foreign Jihadi fighters—these often hardliners.
Maintaining AANES in Syria is decisive for all its minorities, and indeed for the future of the Syrian state. Thus far, however, the US has balked, as it did in Iraq. Currently the US has circumvented any move to give any political status to the Kurds or any other minority group, or to push for them to be given a seat at any political table concerning Syria. At the same time, the US has given the Kurds and other minority groups on the ground the unpleasant role of selling a multi-ethnic and progressive mode of governance to Sunni Arabs neighbors—neighbors who, over the last decades, have been cheering for almost every political actor committing genocide against Kurds and enforcing Arab supremacy across Syria. Kurdish autonomy cannot be dependent on appeasing people who do not want to acknowledge the Kurdish presence in the region in the first place. This is precisely the mentality that set the Kurdistan Region of Iraq up for failure. Before any decision was made regarding the political system or the unification of forces, the Kurdish leadership of Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani had to pledge allegiance to Turkey in their fight against PKK, which most Kurds in Iraq did not agree to. Similarly, the US has yet to figure out how to wage their war against ISIS when the Kurds and their allies among the other ethnic groups—saddled with the role of service provider, post-conflict reconstructor, and ethnic moderator— have been subject to a continuous Turkish campaign of ethnic cleansing with help on the ground from Arab forces from the Syrian National Army (SNA). All too often, Turkish secret service elements worked with Arab tribes in the East in order to gather the intelligence necessary for their attacks. Sadly, this is not only a problem in northeast Syria.
AANES is a democratic and multi-ethnic region that can serve as a model for a new Syria. Yet it still faces a Sunni Arab majority, which for the most part, harbors Arab supremacist fantasies nurtured for decades under the Ba’athists. This majority questions the very foundation of legitimate Kurdish life in Syria, and portray Kurdistan as the second Israel. Many even question the right of Kurds to exist at all, a continuation of the genocidal Ba’athist ideology. The idea therefore that Kurds, together with the Druze, Assyrians, Christians, and Alawites. can transform Syria into a multi-ethnic haven is absurd. There must be acknowledgement by the international community that the problem in Syria is not simply one of Islamism, but also of the continuity of Ba’athist Arab supremacy among the Sunni Arab population, and their unwillingness to brook the autonomy of other ethnic groups in the region. If AANES is dismantled, then this will be rightly viewed as a victory for those Syrians who hold deeply racist ideology; and it will open the way for HTS to continue to violence of their Ba’athist and Islamist predecessors.
If Syria can turn the page, the implications for stability in the region cannot be overestimated. A Syria grounded in respect for minorities and cooperation expressed through concrete policies and governance structures can be both a model for its neighbors like Iraq and Lebanon, and a model for the Sunni Arab population in the whole Levant region, that one can be a proud Arab without Arab supremacism. This path, first tread by the Abraham Accord partners with Israel, could and should be extended to Kurds, Druze, Assyrians, Alawites, and all the other historical communities in the region, thereby reflecting its true multi-national heritage.