cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/7216958
On Christmas morning in Damascus, the sound of church bells rings hollow against a backdrop of fear. In a city once proud of its religious mosaic, Syria’s Christians now live as shadows of themselves – cautious, silent, and increasingly absent.
For decades, the Christian minority found uneasy protection under former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s staunch, though secular, rule. But after 14 years of war and the more recent ascendance of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its leader, self-appointed Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), that fragile security has shattered.
When a small group of Syrian Christians in Australia recently invited fellow Christians to apply for asylum, they were stunned by the response: 15,000 requests arrived within the first day.
The flood of applications revealed the depth of despair among Christians still living in Syria. They once made up nearly 10 percent of the population, but their numbers are dwindling fast.
The Syrian war left deep and lasting scars on Christian communities. Entire neighborhoods in cities such as Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus have been emptied, with churches damaged or destroyed and families forced to flee.
Thousands of Christians were killed, kidnapped, or displaced during the height of the conflict. The trauma of war itself was the first push toward emigration, a wound that continues to grow as communities shrink each year.
Promise and persecution
After Assad’s fall in December 2024, HTS attempted to reinvent itself. Its leader, former Al-Qaeda leader-turned-president Sharaa, who at the time went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, issued promises to protect religious minorities. But those pledges faded almost immediately.
With HTS’s history of extremism and intolerance, the group’s rise to power revived old fears. Even without new waves of violence, HTS’s rule has left Christians anxious about their future, forcing them to live in a constant state of uncertainty.
Despite this, Christians in the capital staged a protest over the burning of a public Christmas tree in the central governorate of Hama, reportedly carried out by militants affiliated with HTS.
As time passed, government security forces loyal to Sharaa carried out massacres in the coastal cities against Alawite communities. At least 1,600 Alawite civilians were killed in just three days.
Christians began to hear the chilling warning that they would be next to face slaughter.