From allies to adversaries: Attacks on minorities increase as hardline Islamists turn on Syria’s new leader

Deadly Damascus church attack deepens challenge to Ahmad Al Shara’s authority

Security troops stand by as people inspect the aftermath of a suicide attack at the Mar Elias church in Damascus. AFP

The suicide bombing at a Mar Elias church in Damascus on Sunday has laid bare the difficulties Syria’s new President Ahmad Al Shara faces in dealing with the very militants who helped him to overthrow the Bashar Al Assad regime six months ago.

Mr Al Shara, a former militant of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the leader of Syrian offshoot Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, assumed power in Sunni majority Syria after a decade of fighting against the former regime, which was dominated by Mr Al Assad’s minority Alawite sect, as well as the extremist group ISIS, to whom he is ideologically opposed, and other Islamist militant groups who stood in his path.

Now, the claim by a group calling itself Saraya Ansar Al Sunnah that it carried out the attack on the Syriac Orthodox church presents a major challenge to Mr Al Shara as he seeks to establish government control over the entire country and attract foreign investment and support from regional neighbours and the west.

Who are Saraya Ansar Al Sunnah?

Saraya Ansar Al Sunni, which splintered from HTS after it led the rebel offensive that toppled Mr Al Assad in December, has claimed responsibility for several sectarian attacks on minorities in Syria, but there is little concrete information about it.

Since February, the group has claimed responsibility for attacks of minorities across Syria, mostly Alawites and Shiite Muslims – and, most recently, the suicide bombing at the church in Damascus that killed at least 25 people.

It also claimed to have taken part in the retaliatory killing spree against Alawites in March by HTS-linked factions and other armed hardliners. More than 800 Alawites, mostly civilians, were killed in the community's heartland along the Mediterranean coast, according to an estimate by the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

“There’s not enough information about the Saraya Ansar Al Sunnah group,” said Waiel Olwan, senior researcher at the Jusoor Centre for Studies, which specialises in Syrian affairs. “You can consider them to be among a set of secret, radical, jihadist organisations. They may be connected to ISIS – either a fringe group or one at the core; they may be connected to Al Qaeda; or they may be part of a rising wave of radical cases following the fall of the regime.”

The group reportedly operates in a decentralised structure of autonomous cells, similar to ISIS, and appears to be highly critical of Mr Al Shara. In early June, it boasted on its Telegram channel that “hundreds of letters seeking to join are pouring in” and that it had already attracted “nearly 1,000 mujahideen” in the Levant. Another post declared that “politics is contingent upon compliance with Sharia, not the actions of Ahmad Shara!”

Many of the group's online declarations consist of calls for violence against Alawites and other religious minorities through “liquidation” and “purification” operations.

“Such radical cases are expected and need to be addressed within the scope of the fight against terrorism,” Mr Olwan said.

The Interior Ministry said after the church bombing that “dark” and criminal groups would not “have a place on Syrian territory”. It has so far identified ISIS as the perpetrator of the church attack, with a spokesman dismissing suggestions that it could be another group.

HTS ties

Two HTS sources said Saraya Ansar Al Sunnah comprises of fighters who had fought alongside HTS in the north-west governorate of Idlib, and even participated in the 11-day offensive that toppled the Assad regime.

“They were ideologically in line with Al Shara and helped him in his political objective,” one of the sources said.

However, posts on the group's Telegram channel show that it considers Mr Al Shara’s apparent willingness to accommodate Syria’s vast ethno-religious diversity and placate western governments as apostasy.

Its opposition to the new order under Mr Al Shara is political, and not necessarily ideological, the source said.

One source in Idlib said the group has exploited a vacuum left by Mr Al Shara’s relocation to Damascus along with many HTS cadres after toppling Mr Al Assad. It has also taken advantage of his accommodation of the country’s 5 per cent Christian minority in his quest for normalisation with the west. This was partly to repair damage to Syria’s foreign policy position following massacres of Alawites and Druze civilians in March and April.

“There are 2 million impoverished people still in camps in Idlib; meanwhile, many see Al Shara as obsessed with assuaging the Christians, who were on the side of Assad,” the HTS source said.

Al Shara's dilemma

Throughout Syria’s 13-year civil war, Mr Al Assad gathered members of his Alawite sect and other minorities, as well as foreign militias, to prop up his regime – effectively engineering public resentment against minorities among the majority Sunni population.

Many minorities either remained neutral or sided with the Assad regime out of a desire for self-preservation, particularly as Sunni rebel forces increasingly shifted towards hardline ideology.

The Syriac Orthodox church, Syria’s largest Christian denomination, supported the former regime. It did not oppose the formation of sectarian militia that many Christians joined, although many others stayed on the sidelines or fled the country.

The HTS source said that if Mr Al Shara continued to “neglect” Idlib, disillusionment among his core constituency would grow and drive recruitment by Saraya Ansar Al Sunnah and other groups.

And if he fails to address attacks on minorities by extremist groups, civil unrest will expand.

A senior member of the Orthodox clergy, who did not want to be named, said Christian former members of Assad's auxiliaries, who had mostly gone underground after his ouster, had re-emerged and begun agitating against the new government after the church bombing.

“Some of them showed up at the funerals and are trying to lump the government with the bombers,” he said.