Syria’s minorities wait in fear of repression and retribution. EDMUND BOWER IN DAMASCUS. Most of the Alawites favoured by Assad’s regime have fled the capital, while Christians worry the Islamist HTS will restrict their freedoms. Rebel fighters outside the mausoleum of Hafez al-Assad after it was burnt by militiamenAAREF WATAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. Wednesday December 11 2024, 10.30pm, The Times. For the young Christian men and women of Damascus, Syria’s old and new regimes are the proverbial rock and the hard place.. In a cafe in the east of the city on Tuesday, young women at one table were joking over shisha pipes and cups of coffee.. “Imagine if this was the last time we were allowed to hang out like this?” one of them said. In this predominantly Christian neighbourhood on the edge of the old city, shops and cafés are reopening following the rapid rebel advance that ended half a century of Assad rule at the weekend.. The fighters who led the city’s capture, made up predominantly of Islamist militia, were on patrol with their AK-47s.. Led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an off-shoot from al-Qaeda that has since renounced its extremist roots, they have established a formal government with a prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir.. Advertisement. During his inaugural address to the country, he spoke in front of two flags: the ubiquitous Free Syria flag of the opposition, and a white flag associated with Islamist groups with the statement of faith: “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet.” The flag is associated in many minds with extremism.. “I won’t say they weren’t that bad — they were,” said George, a 34-year-old on the next table, of the Assads. But nor was he enthused by what he saw around him. “It’s all still a bit foggy,” he said. “But we are not seeing any good signs yet.”. Many Christians and members of other Syrian minorities, such as the Assad family’s own Alawite community, opposed the 2011 uprising, fearing what might take the regime’s place, whatever its corruption and brutality.. • The Times view on Syria’s new leaders: After Assad. George was only too aware of that. He comes from the town of Sednaya, known for its Christian community and monastery, and the notorious prison complex near by, where so many of the regime’s opponents were tortured and killed.. Advertisement. Throughout the civil war, he and his neighbours were forced to defend their town with small arms from Islamist attacks. He said they lived in fear of Assad, but that they feared extremist groups more. Having fought on the front lines, he has long dreaded the day minority communities came under the control of Islamist militias.. After taking the second city of Aleppo, before the fall of Damascus, HTS made a point of showing off the city’s Christian decorations that remained unmolested.. The group’s leader, the jihadist known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who has now begun using his real name, Ahmed al-Shara, has said that sectarian violence was a product of the old regime, and insisted that Syria’s diversity would be honoured. However, previous remarks he has made, including references to forced conversion to Islam, have caused concern among Syrian minorities.. In George’s neighbourhood, the streets were once again filled with people after two days in which he said “we didn’t leave our houses”.. Christmas decorations, put up before the panic caused when fighters marched on the capital, still hang from balconies. The now-ubiquitous revolutionary songs, which include lines like “Hold your head up high; you are a free Syrian” and “He fell, he fell, oh Bashar al-Assad”, blare out from shops and cars. Much of the city is in a state of palpable euphoria.. Advertisement. Still, many of the capital’s shops remain closed, including every one of the pubs and bars in the old city near George’s house. Rumours abound of liquor stores being ordered to shut under threat of ransack, prompting fears of radical changes imposed on Syrian society.. A nearby off-licence owner, who named himself “BD”, a lively 60-year-old Christian man, said that to his knowledge, no shops had been explicitly ordered to shut. Like other shops selling alcohol, BD said he had made the cautious decision to “wait until we’re officially told to open”.. He hoped that, even under an Islamist government, Christians would still be given an exemption to drink, although he worried about his wallet if abstinence were imposed. He said that of the desperate calls he had received for alcohol since he shuttered his shop, “all of them are Muslim”.. To his knowledge, only one shop has been damaged since the takeover. Tellingly, photos of the ransack show that the store’s shelves of wine and whisky were not smashed but stolen. There is a suspicion among store owners that the break-in was more to do with the shop’s Alawite affiliation.. Under Assad, the Alawites, who make up 10 per cent of the population, constituted an outsized proportion of the army and security apparatus, yet they also make up some of the poorest communities in Syria.. Advertisement. Ali, a 34-year-old Alawi dentist, compared it to an “army of slaves”. The Alawite community were controlled by poverty and fear, he said, in the belief that: “If we leave him, we will die.”. Ali was the only one of his Alawi neighbours who did not flee for the coast, fearing collective reprisals, when the rebels arrived.. Ali chose to stay in Damascus. He said he was delighted at the fall of the regime and the post-revolutionary excitement.. His Sunni neighbours had made a particular effort to reach out to him since the regime fell, he said. Despite his concerns about the future of the country, he said that his first interactions with the militias had been surprisingly pleasant.. Yet the political transition remains in an embryonic stage. Farid, a 34-year-old Christian NGO worker, worried the country could become like Afghanistan under the Taliban. Like others, he hoped that the fall of Assad would allow for an improvement in living standards and civil liberties.. Advertisement. “With the old regime, we would not sit and talk politics,” he said. “We would not meet with journalists, or we would end up in Sednaya.”. He also worried, however, that the liberal attitude of Syria’s new rulers was “all an act”.. “It is obvious that the soldiers have been told to act a certain way,” he said. “Will they continue to be nice?”. There have already been some scenes of reprisal, including the burning of the grave of Hafez al-Assad, the former dictator and Assad’s father, in Damascus. People were also concerned by videos circulating online showing lynchings of former regime soldiers, including the killing of a notoriously brutal pro-regime militiaman in Hama.. Armed rebel fighters on the burnt grave of Hafez al-Assad at his mausoleum in the family’s ancestral village of Qardaha. AAREF WATAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. AAREF WATAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. Anticipating the worst, Farid’s parents have begun applying for visas to Germany and Greece. “Everyone has a Plan B,” he said.. Their papers will take two to three months at least. If, before then, things got better, maybe they would change their minds, he said. “But for now, we’re working on leaving.”. After Assad. December 09 2024, 9.15pm. The Times Leading Articles. Video Icon. VIDEO. The family that put sadism at centre of their regime. December 09 2024, 7.35am. Richard Spencer. PROMOTED CONTENT. Previous article. Ignore activists and back defence firms, banks told. Previous article. Next article. 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