Hundreds of demonstrators have taken to the streets in Christian neighborhoods of Damascus after a Christmas tree burning heightened fears that the overthrow of former President Bashar al-Assad could presage crackdowns on Syria’s religious minorities.
The protests on Monday night appeared to have been sparked after footage, verified by NBC News, showed hooded figures setting fire to the tree at a traffic circle in the Christian-majority town of Al-Suqalabiyah near the city of Hama in central Syria on Monday.
A video circulating on social media and verified by NBC News showed crowds in Damascus chanting “Raise your cross, raise it!” and “We are with you to death, Suqalabiyah!”
Syria’s de facto new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has been trying to cast his leadership as one that will protect minorities in the Sunni-majority country, just two weeks after his rebel group led a quickfire offensive that ousted Assad.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based humans monitoring organization, identified the perpetrators as from the Islamist group Ansar al-Tawhid.
Talal Abdullah, a Christian and former member of the Syrian National Council from Al-Suqaylabiyah, said the burning led to clashes between the perpetrators and local residents, and “fights with stones.”
He told NBC News during a phone call Tuesday that a HTS official told him and others in the town that the behavior was not acceptable, and promised to put a Christmas back in its place and “punish those responsible.”
“That night, and under the rain, they set up a new tree in the same spot, decorated it, and arrested the attackers,” he said, saying that the official promise to support the community “in fighting against such unacceptable actions.”
In Syria, where the Assad regime was widely reviled but Sunni extremism has left deep scars, members of religious minorities such as Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Yazidis have are worried about HTS’ rule.
Because of its roots in radical Islamist movements, HTS remains a globally designated terrorist group. Al-Sharaa, however, has vowed to lead Syria into an era of change, promising an inclusive vision where all religious and ethnic groups are represented.
On Tuesday, the Syrian Presidency of the Council of Ministers granted a public holiday to “all employees in government institutions” on Christmas Day and December 26.
Al-Sharaa has also attempted to move away from his past as a jihadist leader with links to both the Islamic State terrorist group and Al Qaeda.
Following meetings between U.S. diplomats and HTS in Dasmacus last week, in which al-Sharaa committed to ensuring terrorist groups do not pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies, the U.S. said it was set to remove the $10 million bounty it had placed on his head.
The Biden administration has also said it is weighing whether to remove HTS from its list of terrorist organizations, but that will depend on whether it views al-Sharaa and his new leadership group as one that it can engage with.
“We’re watching what they do now,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday last week. “They want to be inclusive in dealing with other groups inside Syria, making clear that they respect women and minorities as they establish interim governing authorities—and making clear that Syria won’t be used as a base for terrorist groups.”
The U.S. military said Monday that it had conducted an airstrike in Syria that killed two Islamic State operatives and wounded another.
“The terrorists were moving a truckload of weapons which were destroyed during the strike,” it said on X. “This strike occurred in an area formerly controlled by the Syrian regime and Russians.”
Meanwhile, al-Sharaa made an agreement with rebel factions to dissolve their groups and merge them under the country’s defense ministry, part of the new leader’s ongoing efforts to build a cohesive state after 53 years of Assad family rule.
The need for a cohesive and discipled Syrian security force became acutely obvious on Tuesday when two people were killed and four others injured in the city of Manbij, eastern Aleppo, according the Syrian Civil Defense.
Sara Mhaidli and Matthew Mulligan contributed.