And Calls for the Protection of Minorities
The American Mideast Coalition for Democracy condemns the attempts of the HTS regime in Damascus, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to march towards areas inside Syria opposing the Jihadi regime to annex them by military force to the regime in power.
Red: Alawite areas occupied by HTS, green: mostly Sunni areas HTS controlled, and yellow: Druze and Kurd controlled areas with a potential land bridge across the desert.
AMCD calls on the United States and the international coalition to pressure HTS militia to maintain the status quo after the fall of Assad and to prevent the involvement of its forces from invading areas outside its control, such as the Kurdish areas under the command of the SDF in the northeast or the Druze areas in southern Syria, and also to withdraw from the Alawite zones in the northwest after crimes and massacres were perpetrated against the Alawite community that are still taking place at the hands of HTS while claiming these are “individual acts.”
HTS is an extremist jihadist militia that originally operated under the name of al-Nusra and is ideologically linked to al-Qaeda.
We, as American citizens of Middle Eastern origin, ask our administration to send a strong message to the ruling militia in Damascus not to move against communities and sects that are protecting themselves at this stage until a comprehensive solution is found through referendums and elections.
We warn that the attempts of the HTS militia to invade areas especially in the south, including Druze towns, does not mean that there is an exclusive Druze problem with this regime, as HTS does not represent Sunnis at all, and it had killed many more Sunnis in Syria during its rule of Idlib throughout the years before the fall of the Assad regime, and imprisoned thousands of young Sunnis in its prisons known as “Iqab” (Jihadi punishment jails), as well as fighting the moderate factions that were facing the fallen Syrian regime, and tightening the noose on Christians which prompted the vast majority of them to leave.
The coalition declares that the Syrian state with its current borders is still the one recognized internationally until an appropriate solution to the crisis in Syria is reached, and this solution will be decided by the major Syrian parties and communities in the country, Therefore we call on US and the international community to reach a solution that guarantees the participation of all Syrian parties and region because the current “Syrian government” is a militia regime that defeated Assad in December 2024, but does not represent the majority of the Syrian people.
Hence, what is required is a mechanism to establish a body supervised by the United Nations that includes the current regime, representatives of moderate Sunnis, the SDF, the Druze, Christian communities, the Alawites and all minorities to run the country in a federal form, before a referendum is organized to be held for these parties to decide on the future of Syria. And based on the results of the referendum, general elections will be held based on a federal project for Syria.
Syria has the recognized borders but the new regime in Damascus does not represent the majority of a multiethnic Syria, yet.
