A Christmas tree burned by masked figures in Suqaylabiyha, a small, predominantly Christian town in Hama province. Public protests that extended to Damascus. The announcement of the arrest of the arsonists and the reconstruction of the tree by fighters from HTS, the Sunni militia that took power. A representative of the provisional government brandishing a cross and addressing protesters to guarantee protection for Christians. Syrian Christmas was brightened by a gesture of hope.
Syria is a patchwork: a microcosm of the Middle East. In addition to the Arab majority, there are numerous ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds (16%), or small ones, such as the Turkmen (1%). Muslim Arabs are divided between Sunni (61%), Alawite (13%) and Druze (4%), but there is a Christian minority that emerged in the first century and traces its origins to the biblical story of the conversion of the apostle Paul. In the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750), the Christian population outnumbered the Muslim population.
Syrian Christians have suffered bloodthirsty persecution since before the existence of a Syrian state. In parallel with the Armenian genocide, between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman Empire massacred hundreds of thousands of Assyrian Christians in Mesopotamia. Christians made up 13% of the Syrian population in 1956, the date of the last religious census in the country. It is estimated that, at the beginning of the civil war, in 2011, they still represented 10%. Today, after the great exodus, it is no more than 3%.
National unity – this is the enigma that hangs over Syria. The Assad dictatorship tried to respond to it through permanent state violence, along with a secularism that, for a long time, guaranteed it the support of the Alawites and the neutrality of Kurds and Christians. Post-Assad Syria’s chance lies in choosing a different answer to the same dilemma.
The HTS has roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, but split with jihadism and, in the final phase of the civil war, governed the province of Idlib in a relatively moderate way. Its leader changed his nom de guerre to his baptismal name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, at the time of the capture of Damascus, replaced his military uniform with civilian clothes and promised to respect the rights of minorities.
They are the right words, designed to lift external sanctions and unify armed rebel groups under the command of the Ministry of Defense. The Christmas gesture, however, went beyond the limit of gratuitous rhetoric – and the world took note.
For 13 years, Syria has been the scene of clashes between the interests of external powers: Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, the USA. Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were expelled along with Assad, but other foreign actors are still present, in different forms. National unity depends on the regaining of territorial sovereignty.
The other condition for national unity is equality of rights: the full exercise of citizenship by ethnic and religious minorities and, above all, by women. The Suqaylabiyha tree suggests that Syria can avoid the fates of Iraq and Libya, swallowed up in vortices of disorder after the fall of evil dictatorships. Following the Christmas incident, however, there were clashes between an Alawite militia and provisional government forces on the outskirts of Tartus. The obstacle course has just begun.
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