Le Monde, November 24 2025

The Collective Punishment of the Alawites in Syria
The trial of several people accused of committing massacres against Alawite populations on the Syrian coast opened on Tuesday, November 18. However, this is nothing more than a charade: the judge and the defense are both implicated in the massacres and are neither guarantors of the impartiality of justice nor of its independence. This trial lacks both transparency and integrity, and we will not be fooled.

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At the Mercy of Islamist Militias
All of this was initially blamed on individual errors. Instead of starting a real transfer of power, implementing transitional justice, and punishing those who were guilty of war crimes during the Al-Assad years, the new power collaborated with the henchmen of the former regime, namely gang members and authors of massacres, all of whom were well identified. This collusion gradually drew the outlines of an idealized image intended for the Western community, to the detriment of the Syrian people, who were left at the mercy of the Islamist militias. At the same time, the country was governed by a clan-based system prone to settling scores.

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After the massacres perpetrated in the coastal cities from March 7 to 9, the Alawites lost confidence in the new regime, which was judged to be complicit in these abuses. According to recent estimates, more than 1,400 people are believed to have been murdered for religious reasons. However, according to the testimonies of the 60 families who survived the massacres whom I was able to interview, these figures are well below the reality, and the true toll likely exceeds 2,000 victims.

Since the mass killings, the Alawite community has been left to fend for itself, abandoned to its tragedy, wandering through the wild forests and mountains, while corpses litter the streets and houses are burned. The Alawites have received no aid for rehousing or care, whether from the authorities or civil society. The victims have received very little empathy, even though they were, for the most part, civilians belonging to the impoverished strata of the cities and countryside, others being residents of Jableh and Baniyas. The international community has not even recognized the existence of these massacres, and no body, whether political, diplomatic, or humanitarian, has visited the disaster-stricken areas of the coast – this also applies to members of the current French government.

As for the Syrian civil opposition, it has shown extreme restraint on this matter. Thus, this new category of victims recorded in the history of Syrian massacres – the Alawites – has been abandoned, neglected by everyone, without exception. The Alawites are subjected to a gigantic collective punishment, at all levels: they are starved, expelled, assassinated, or kidnapped. This irreparably hinders the possibility of restoring national unity.

Slow Extermination
The kidnapping, torture, and rape of Alawite women by individuals affiliated with factions considered allies of the power or of what the latter calls the “Syrian Ministry of Defense” is a fatal rupture in the country’s social fabric. Some were sent back to their homes, then explicitly threatened, they and their families, with being killed if they spoke about what they had suffered. Others, after being torn from their husbands and children, were forcibly married to members of the militias. Still others have disappeared without return, and we discovered, following investigations undertaken with other activists, that these women had also been raped and then sold. As for those who have not been found, we can imagine that they suffered the same fate.

Women who return home often keep silent but cannot hide the stigmata, clearly visible on their bodies, of the tortures they have endured. The Alawites are like prey offered up, delivered to a slow, programmed, and undeclared extermination. The bodies of women are reduced to being instruments of a collective punishment that targets the entire community. Everyone must be aware that these actions, perpetrated by the militias against women, are liable to multiple criminal qualifications: human trafficking, assassination, and rape.

More than two million human beings cannot be punished by terror, assassination, forced exodus, rape, and imposed famine, all because the family of Bashar Al-Assad belonged, by their very birth, to the same denomination as them. The new power cannot build a state on such foundations. Those who want to protect Syrian national unity must put an end to the terrible collective punishment that the Alawites are suffering today.

Photo credit (c) 2025 Astrid di Crollalanza