June 2024 marked ten years since the Islamic State (IS) declared a caliphate in Syria. Years of brutal conflict including flagrant and well-documented human rights violations, including atrocity crimes, by a complex web of aggravators resulted in one of the highest death counts of any recent war and the highest number of displaced persons in modern history.
Yet in May of last year, Syria was welcomed back into the Arab League, the same government invited to participate in talks to further international cooperation that, just a decade earlier, had deployed chemical weapons against its own civilians. Furthermore, in summer 2023, Russia vetoed the renewal of a mechanism that had enabled the UN to deliver aid without the Syrian government’s consent to parts of north-west Syria not under its control – a resolution that had been in place for nine years. The year rounded out four months later with Syria present at the COP28 climate conference even as France issued an arrest warrant for President Bashar al-Assad over alleged complicity in the chemical gas attacks.
Additionally, the Turkish president currently appears to be working towards normalising relations with Syria, despite opposing the Assad regime for over a decade and the ongoing occupation of parts of northern Syria by Turkish forces and allied Islamist militia.
It is clear that the world is beginning to forget the atrocities of the Syrian Civil War as well as the chaotic campaign of IS that saw whole cities reduced to rubble, wreaking havoc on the nation. But beyond the short clips of media coverage that defined our news cycles for years, what exactly happened between 2012 and 2014, and why does it matter today?
The context
To understand the impact the civil war has had on religious minorities, we must first understand the context in which it took place.
Syria is officially a Muslim country, since its first constitution in 1930 requires that its president be of Muslim faith. Today, 87% of the country is Muslim and Islam plays a hugely significant cultural role in society. Freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) is enshrined in Syria’s constitution, but the reality on the ground is often different, with relatives and friends placing huge pressure on individuals to hold Muslim beliefs and practise Islam. While no official punishment exists for apostasy, the law states that conversion from Islam must be entirely private. One court judgement on apostasy concluded that ‘an effect must not even be felt by the closest family members’.1 Should their conversion become known, converts are likely to lose friends, be fired at work and be disowned by family. According to Syria Direct, honour killings have also been documented.
Ten years ago this year, IS had gained enough control to impose Shariah law in Raqqa in northern Syria. This followed three years of angered instability after the government cracked down on protests in Deraa in March 2011. In response, Assad had signed off on limited and insufficient reforms, escalating protests. By July 2011, the Free Syrian Army had been formed and jihadists, particularly those newly released as part of the government’s reforms, began to plan more Islamist-minded resistance factions to capitalise on protests. By winter, the Islamic State in Iraq had despatched a senior leader to form a Syria wing that went public in January 2012 and confirmed its links to al-Qaeda shortly after.
By February 2014, IS had established Shariah law in Raqqah against the calls for a ceasefire from al-Qaeda, who disavowed them soon after. IS reciprocated, launching a counter-offensive against key Islamist commanders and HQ and declaring al-Qaeda to be heretical.
Despite suffering setbacks in April, in June IS captured Mosul in northwestern Iraq as part of a large offensive that not only saw them take hold of American weaponry, but also spark a Sunni uprising against the Iraqi Prime Minister. As a result, tribes in Eastern Syria became prepared to pledge allegiance to IS. The group subsequently proclaimed a caliphate. This period marked the pinnacle of its insurgency in terms of controlled land.
Brutal fighting razed large parts of northern and eastern Syria over the following years, with Western powers seeking to fight IS while also standing against Assad due to the cruelty shown to his citizens. By 2023, a stalemate had cemented between the factions responsible for most of the fighting. As the dust finally settled, making a careful analysis possible of all that had taken place since 2011, the world instead decided to turn away from this ravaged land.
The fallout
Though the world forgot, Syria’s citizens, especially its religious minorities, could not. In what was formerly a relatively tolerant country of religious pluralism, one of the key characteristics of IS rule over northeastern Syria and northern Iraq was its maltreatment of minorities, especially those who it perceived disagreed with it.
Of particular note was its treatment of the Yazidi population in northern Iraq, who IS viewed as polytheist. The oppression and targeted attacks that this people faced are now classified internationally as genocide. Early in August 2014, IS captured the town at the base of Mount Sinjar, a predominantly Yazidi settlement, and within hours began demolishing religious shrines. An estimated 5,000 Yazidi civilians were killed for refusing to convert to Islam after it captured Mosul and the Nineveh Plains. Between 400,000 and 500,000 Yazidis were displaced, and 6,000 to 7,000, predominantly women and children were enslaved, with most sold or transferred to Syria. Even after the 2017 liberation of their region it is estimated that over 2,800 abducted Yazidis remain unaccounted for.
Another of the hardest-hit communities has been the Christian minority. As far back as 2003, the Protestant church in Syria came under pressure for proselytising to both Muslims and Orthodox and Catholic Christians. This was made worse by what the government viewed as an upsetting of the religious balance, when thousands of Iraqi Christians arrived in Syria, fleeing attacks in their home country perpetrated in the wake of America’s invasion.2
Near the start of the conflict, in April 2013, the Greek Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox Archbishops of Aleppo were abducted, reportedly by Chechen jihadis, and are now presumed dead. In July 2013, suicide bombings in Damascus targeted Christian and Alawite neighbourhoods.
Once the war began in earnest, jihadi groups sometimes carried out attacks on specifically Christian towns. Maaloula, an Aramaic-speaking majority Christian town, became the focus of battle in September 2013 and, two months later, on one of the final days of fighting there, the Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra took control of its monastery and its 13 nuns and three maids. Reports later emerged that it was not just the terrorists who committed atrocities there; Christians also suffered indiscriminate violence and the destruction of holy places during a period when the Syrian Army controlled the town.
Statistics released in the aftermath of the conflict suggest that Syrian Christians constituted most of the refugees who were forcibly displaced. By 2020, an estimated 650,000 Christians had fled the country, with many others displaced internally. Cities such as Homs and Aleppo, once home to large Christian communities, were left with a fraction of the previous Christian population. Statistics from the UNHCR’s Refugee Documentation website show the Christian population at 10.6% in 2005. Less than two decades later, it is at less than 2%.
The future?
The documentation of these human rights abuses is clear. We know the facts, we have the figures, and in some cases, we can even assign blame. And yet the world seems to be moving on from its moral outrage at the events of the past ten years, even as violations continue. According to Human Rights Watch, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Kurdish armed group that currently controls much of northeast Syria, continues to arbitrarily detain civilians. Though a large number of the estimated 60,000 incarcerated are IS suspects, their family members, including children, are also often imprisoned. Conditions are so poor that some citizens have subsequently died while being held.
To make matters worse, following the onset of the relief effort in the wake of the 2023 earthquake, CSW received reports of the Turkish government seeking to delay or block search and rescue teams as well as humanitarian aid from reaching north-west Syria. The Russian-backed Syrian government has also been implicated in this interference.
With Syria’s presence at November’s COP28 going unchecked by the West, a worrying message is being sent to militia groups and autocrats across the globe regarding a lack of accountability for atrocious attacks against individuals, civilians and even whole communities. With similar violations occurring in places like Myanmar and Sudan today, it is the time for democracies to become proactive, enforce sanctions against individuals who perpetrated these crimes, and emphasise the importance of pluralism and dialogue as universal values that buttress peace and stability.
By CSW’s Advocacy Intern Jonathan Downing
- Haitham Maleh, cited Marcel Stüssi, Models of Religious Freedom p. 375 ff. (Lit 2012).
- The Economist, ‘Don’t try too hard: Protestant Christians are under rare fire’, 18 November 2010 https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2010/11/18/dont-try-too-hard