Representatives of Syria’s Druze, Christian and Alawite communities warned members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Thursday about the systematic targeting, persecution and atrocities their communities have endured under the new Syrian government led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

They urged the U.S. to condition the removal of remaining sanctions on Syria and its evolving partnership with the Syrian government on the government’s efforts to protect religious minorities and prevent further atrocities. Members of the commission, an independent body created by Congress, likewise expressed alarm about the pattern of violations against Syria’s minorities.

The Trump administration is currently urging Congress to fully repeal the remaining sanctions on Syria under the Caesar Civilian Protection Act, but some key players on Capitol Hill remain reticent given the human rights situation for minorities and other concerns inside Syria. The Senate passed legislation repealing the sanctions in its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, and the provision could be included in the final bill.

Rita Khairbek, a Syrian Alawite therapist and activist, said that the Alawite community has faced discrimination in various aspects of public life, as well as disappearances, abductions, beatings, murder, rape and executions and frequent incitement to violence against them.

During an attack on Alawite communities earlier this year, Khairbek said that more than 5,000 people were killed in two days, including 300 children, a figure that could not be independently verified by Jewish Insider and is higher than other documented estimates that place the toll at around 1,500.

She described the attacks as a “genocide,” going on to describe a range of other violations —  “dehumanization, discrimination. … [We are] isolated … massacres, the long destruction of our community life. Women abducted, children orphaned and shrines destroyed.”

“As a therapist, I see the after image: chronic fear, sleepless children, maps where our presence is rubbed out,” she continued. “Genocide is not only by body, it’s by symbol and by the slow destruction of our name.”

Khairbek urged the United States to condition its future work with the Syrian government on its protection of minorities, support an independent investigation of the attack on the Alawite community, protect survivors and work to support Alawite civil society.

Nuri Kino, a Syriac Orthodox Christian investigative journalist, emphasized that the Syrian Christian community has shrunk dramatically since the start of the country’s civil war, a situation faced by other minority groups in Syria as well, and that the shrinking of minority communities has not stopped since the fall of the Assad regime.

Kino said that churches have been attacked and burned, families kidnapped, their homes destroyed and grave sites desecrated. And he said that the international community has responded with sympathy but no action.

“What is happening now is ethno-religious cleansing, a slow, systematic removal of indigenous minorities through fear, violence and dispossession,” Kino said. “Yet the international community has largely responded with silence. Sanctions were eased without guarantees for minority protection.”

He said that the U.S. must put pressure on the Syrian government, including conditioning aid and sanctions relief, on “clear measurable religious freedom benchmarks” to be verified by an independent international monitor, secure guarantees that the government will protect religious sites, fund Syrian aid and human rights groups led by minorities and establish a U.S. special envoy for religious freedom in Syria reporting directly to the secretary of state.

Jamil Ammar, a Druze activist, said that the campaign of violence against the Druze community in the southern Syrian city of Suweida was deliberate, planned and even rehearsed in a smaller Druze community. 

The attacks began, Ammar said, with a disinformation campaign to incite hatred against the Druze community, followed quickly by an assault by armed forces from both the government and Bedouin tribes. The massacres, he added, have come immediately after disarmament operations by state forces. And he accused al-Sharaa of publicly thanking and supporting those responsible for the massacres.

Ammar said that the attacks have included an ISIS-style campaign of psychological warfare, where fighters have raped and killed victims and left their bodies in public places to intimidate the Druze and attempt to chase them off the land.

He characterized the current U.S. approach to the Syrian government as “wishful thinking” that was ultimately “transactional” and would create a “security risk.”

He urged the U.S. to monitor the new school curricula in Syria — through which he accused the government of attempting to indoctrinate a new generation of extremists — to consult with the entire array of the Druze community and to work to empower moderate Syrian Sunnis at the expense of the Sunni extremists he said currently control the Syrian government.

The witnesses differed in their recommendations to the commission on whether the U.S. should support a program of decentralization in Syria, in which local sectarian groups would be empowered at the expense of the central government and would be armed to maintain their own security.

Some argued that would be the only way to ensure the safety and protection of the minority communities, while others said that decentralization is not a viable solution and might only further exacerbate the existing problems and create more conflict.

Commissioners Meir Soloveichik and Steven Schneck also expressed concerns about the situation for religious minorities in Syria.

Soloveichick said he was “alarmed” by the Syrian government’s “lack of will or ability” to stop the attacks against a range of religious minorities, and noted that reports indicate that the Syrian government authorities were involved in and exacerbated the violence.

He also highlighted that HTS, the rebel group which al-Sharaa formerly led, has long been a cause for concern for the commission given its violations of religious freedom in the territory it controlled.

Schneck said he was also concerned about the “pronounced deterioration” of conditions for religious minorities in Syria. He further noted that, as of 2024, the commission found that nonstate actors like HTS had been, prior to the Assad regime’s fall, worse violators of religious liberties than the regime itself.

Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who also testified before the commission, painted a more complex picture of the situation, arguing that some incidents should be seen as political or acts of vigilantism targeting those involved with the Assad regime rather than sectarian violence, though he also acknowledged there have been real and serious massacres and other incidents.

“This goes to a fundamental issue related to Syria’s transition thus far, the incomplete and slow transitional justice process,” Zelin said. “The biggest issue today now in Syria is a lack of trust amongst many communities, and therefore a lack of transparency is undermining all of this. It’s worth noting, because there is no process to deal with bringing people involved in war crimes during the war to justice.”

Zelin also said that al-Sharaa has expressed a commitment to the rule of law and its equal application to all groups and that the Syrian government has attempted to engage at some levels with minority communities. But he acknowledged al-Sharaa himself has not met with the Alawite community.

Zelin said the the U.S. should urge the Syrian government to limit access to weapons and decommission nonstate forces, be more transparent about transitional justice processes and implement a long-term national and local dialogue project among majority and minority communities — rather than the brief, one-time dialogue convened by the new government.