Optimism Over Syria’s New Leader, a Former Jihadist, Could Prove Misplaced

In the annals of American foreign policy, there are moments when hope for stability tempts policymakers to give new leaders the benefit of the doubt. Such moments are understandable, especially after years of bloodshed and chaos. Hope, though, must ultimately be judged by outcomes—and in Syria today, the outcomes are impossible to ignore.After the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2024, the world watched warily as a former al-Qaeda jihadist, Ahmad al-Sharaa, emerged not in a battlefield balaclava but in a tailored suit, smiling across tables at Riyadh, Washington, and beyond. To some, this was “stability.” To others, it was a grotesque betrayal of everything the West once stood for in Syria.The truth is that putting a blazer on a jihadist does not alter his track record. It merely obscures it.That reality should have been obvious even after Mr. al-Sharaa’s highly publicized outreach to President Trump. During meetings and indirect diplomatic engagements aimed at securing American recognition, sanctions relief, and legitimacy, Mr. al-Sharaa reportedly pledged restraint, minority protections, and a break from jihadist excesses. He spoke the language Western leaders wanted to hear. He promised order, moderation, and responsible governance.Those promises are now lying in the dust alongside the bodies of his regime’s victims.Since seizing power, Mr. al-Sharaa’s government has overseen a string of atrocities against Syria’s most vulnerable minorities, including the Druze, Kurds, and Christians. Washington’s continued engagement in the face of these crimes risks turning those commitments into an international punchline.The carnage against Syria’s religious minorities did not begin under the new regime. It has, though, sharply escalated under it.In July 2025, Syrian government forces moved into the southern Suwayda province, the Druze community’s heartland, unleashing sectarian violence that left hundreds dead, including at least 67 Druze civilians in unlawful killings documented by human rights groups. Buildings were looted, homes burned, and families driven from their ancestral lands, prompting calls for accountability that have gone unanswered.Christians, a community that predates Islam in Syria, have not been spared. In mid-July 2025, amid the chaotic push to consolidate central control, the pastor of the Good Shepherd Evangelical Church in Suwayda and eleven members of his family were slaughtered in violence tied to government and allied forces. Witnesses reported that the family was deliberately targeted, a chilling reminder of how jihadist-style brutality spills over into communal persecution.Nor are Syria’s Kurds safe, even though they have been longtime American partners in the fight against ISIS. Throughout late 2025 and January 2026, government forces launched offensives in northern Syria, capturing strategic cities including Raqqa and parts of Deir ez-Zor, while Kurdish-led forces were compelled into ceasefire agreements that stripped them of autonomy and control over vital oil fields.And then there are the Alawites, a sect which follows an offshoot of Shia Islam and to which the Assad family belonged. In March 2025, Mr. al-Sharaa’s forces attacked their stronghold, massacring over 1,000 people in just ten days.These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a pattern that makes America’s continued engagement with al-Sharaa all the more mystifying and dangerous.To hear some in Washington tell it, Mr. al-Sharaa’s “transition” makes him a pragmatic partner. The record and the bloodshed tell a different story. In April and May 2025, armed clashes and extrajudicial executions swept through rural Damascus and Suwayda, with Druze civilians deliberately targeted. Bodies were burned and mutilated in ambushes that bore the unmistakable hallmarks of sectarian terror rather than disciplined military engagement.The violence did not abate with time. In October 2025, clashes at Aleppo between Kurdish forces and Syrian government units left civilians dead and families displaced, deepening mistrust as government troops pressed into historically autonomous neighborhoods.For all the gloss of diplomacy, Mr. al-Sharaa’s past is impossible to ignore. Under his leadership of al-Nusra Front and related factions, jihadist forces committed horrific sectarian massacres against Druze, Christians, Shia, and Alawite minorities, from the Qalb Loze massacre of Druze in 2015 to suicide bombings that ravaged Damascus and targeted civilians throughout the conflict.What makes the current moment especially damning is that Mr. al-Sharaa is not merely reverting to form; he is actively mocking the assurances he gave to Mr. Trump. The gap between what he promised in diplomatic settings and what his forces are doing on the ground is no longer deniable. It is deliberate.Senator Lindsey Graham has emerged as one of the few American voices willing to publicly challenge this charade, warning that Syria cannot be “united at the barrel of a gun” and that continued offensives against Kurds and other groups will carry consequences.This is not merely about Syria’s minorities. It is about credibility, including commitments made directly to a sitting American president. And it is about whether jihadists who rebrand themselves are ever held accountable when the mask slips.To recognize Mr. al-Sharaa’s brutality is not to reject diplomacy. It is to insist that diplomacy have consequences.President Obama learned this lesson in Iraq’s chaos, and President Biden in Afghanistan’s collapse. To relearn it in Syria — over the bodies of Druze, Kurds, and Christians — would be a moral failure as much as a strategic one.

Optimism Over Syria’s New Leader, a Former Jihadist, Could Prove Misplaced

Optimism Over Syria’s New Leader, a Former Jihadist, Could Prove Misplaced

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