Syria’s Minority Killings Aren’t Accidents – They’re Strategy

Introduction

In the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s fall in Syria, the U.S. and several European Union countries legitimized Ahmed al-Sharaa. Better known as al-Julani, he is a Sunni Muslim and former Al-Qaeda and ISIS commander leading Syria’s postwar government. At first, Al-Julani appeared able to achieve stability. Foreign governments lifted sanctions, resumed aid, and normalized diplomatic ties. In recent months, al-Julani’s forces have carried out brutal campaigns against Syria’s Alawite and Druze communities. Al-Julani did not target these minorities at random. The real story behind the recent violence against minorities in Syria paints a much more gruesome picture of Al-Julani’s leadership. 

Alawites, a minority group that made up roughly 15% of Syria’s population under Assad, shared his ethnic background. As a result, the Alawites had privileged status within Assad’s regime. Like the Alawites, the Druze, an even smaller group concentrated in the south, resisted al-Julani’s military from entering their areas. Community leaders saw securing autonomy as protection from retribution, or more broadly, to avoid living under a rebranded Islamic State.

Plausible-Deniability Strategy

And yet, the violence against minorities in Syria is not a story of sectarian chaos. Rather, it exemplifies plausible-deniability repression – a strategy of state violence that deliberately relies on non-state actors to obscure responsibility. Governments use militias and auxiliaries—armed groups with minimal or officially unacknowledged ties to the state—to deny responsibility for violence, since observers cannot directly trace these groups back to the regime. Although presumed to be unaffiliated with the state, these organizations often maintain informal or semi-official ties and sometimes operate under little more than shifting bureaucratic labels.  

Governments use militias and auxiliaries—armed groups with minimal or officially unacknowledged ties to the state—to deny responsibility for violence, since observers cannot directly trace these groups back to the regime.

 When militias or “local groups” commit atrocities, this allows regimes to deflect blame or attribution. Later, formal government forces – sometimes even the same troops wearing formal uniforms – return, heralded as restoring order. International observers adhere to the apparent separation between state and nonstate actors, hesitating to act, while media coverage softens. The regime ends up facing few consequences.  

This kind of repression, which centers on militias and officially unaffiliated auxiliaries, is how the al-Julani regime “eats its cake and has it too”; it gets the benefits of violent repression while shielding itself from the political costs. The new Syrian president is no stranger to weaponizing nonstate violence against civilian populations to cement power – this was a standard ISIS strategy in its attacks on Christians and Yazidis in Syria and Iraq.  Similarly, in al-Suwayda, Syria, the regime relied on Sunni groups, including former Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham jihadists and local Bedouin auxiliaries, who provided a local edge in Druze areas due to their familiarity with the terrain and population. 

In Alawite coastal areas, villages and towns were violently attacked and terrorized by militants prominently wearing the black patches of the Islamic State, only to see some of those same men return in Syrian military fatigues days later. From the outside, it all appears fragmented: irregular forces here, formal troops there, vigilante justice in between.  

Narratives that Obscure Accountability

The fragmented security environment creates confusion, which is exactly the point. In the case of the Druze, international attention was briefly focused due to Israeli intervention, which helped blunt the scope of violence. Even then, many headlines originally toned down the repression aspect. A recent article in The New York Times  (7/19/2025), for instance, framed the violence as “sectarian–tinged clashes,” downplaying the extreme violence leveled against the Druze (including beheading, mass executions, burnings) or its scope. Similarly, a formal statement by U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and regional envoy Tom Barrack placed the responsibility on “warring factions on the ground,” which he said “undermine the government’s authority,” rather than holding the government itself accountable.  

Shifting narratives in the U.S. and in many EU countries – which increasingly seek to recast even violent terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in a more favorable light – have created space for ISIS-linked figures to be reframed positively.

It is important to acknowledge that violence in Syria has not flowed in only one direction. Alawite factions in the coastal regions have launched attacks against al-Julani’s forces, including a high-profile declaration of open rebellion. In southern Syria, Druze leaders warned that attempts to forcibly reincorporate their communities would be treated as declarations of war. Some Druze groups have also carried out attacks against Bedouin communities.

These developments don’t undermine the logic of plausible-deniability repression; rather, they confirm it. Al-Julani’s deliberate targeting of thousands of minority civilians, not just combatants, reveals these attacks were not about restoring order but sending a political message. In that context, using militias and auxiliaries is not incidental – it is the strategy’s core feature.

In my own work on political violence, I have shown how regimes deliberately deploy semi-official or informal organizations to blur the lines between these groups and the formal security apparatus and shield themselves from accountability. For example, Iran’s use of the Basaij militia to repress the 2009 and 2022 protests, or in enforcing sharia law. In Iraq, the “Sons of Iraq” militia was implicated in numerous civilian deaths. Additionally,  in Hong Kong, “thugs for hire” were used by the authorities to intimidate protestors and mask regime accountability. Like similar cases, Syria is no anomaly but a textbook example of regimes minimizing international costs while violently suppressing dissent.

Shifting narratives in the U.S. and in many EU countries – which increasingly seek to recast even violent terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in a more favorable light – have created space for ISIS-linked figures to be reframed positively. This development has potential implications for both emerging and established regimes across the Middle East and Central Asia. Al-Julani is a clear example of this trend.  

Conclusion

Western governments and the media should learn to decode these tactics. Focusing only on organizational labels such as militia vs. military, state vs. nonstate actors misses the intentional dynamics at play. States and international actors must hold leaders accountable, especially those who come to power through extremist groups and use severe violence to achieve political goals. Not only to reduce political violence, it can also help increase internal stability and the long-term viability of the regime.