After SDF-Damascus truce, is Kurdish haven still safe for Syria's Alawites?

AL-QAMISHLI, Syria — In a pitch-black room on the third floor of an unfinished apartment building, two men sit cross-legged on a mattress. It’s bitterly cold. The men are hungry, penniless and filled with fear. They are among large numbers of Alawites who have sought sanctuary in this town on Syria’s border with Turkey and elsewhere in Kurdish northeast Syria. One clutches his head in despair, another sucks on a cigarette as he stares dazedly at a reporter. Both have just come from Sheikh Maqsud, the Kurdish-majority neighborhood in Aleppo that was wrested by government forces last month. “What are we going to do, where are we going to go, who is going to protect us?” one of the men who identified himself as Soman Soltani asked.

Fierce fighting erupted in early January between Syrian government forces and fighters linked to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The clashes raged on for three days and resulted in the deaths of dozens of combatants from both sides. At least 23 civilians died and over 100 were wounded, rights groups say. 

Soltani was on an errand when the shooting started and was unable to return to his wife and four children. “There was a tank parked outside our building’s door,” he said. He took shelter at Sheikh Maqsud’s only functioning hospital, the Martyr Khaled Fajr Hospital. Security proved fleeting. The hospital became the target of the Syrian army on the grounds that Kurdish militants were using it as a base. “They were striking the hospital with drones, and continued even after a humanitarian corridor for our evacuation [to Qamishli] was declared. The hospital was overflowing with corpses,” Soltani recalled.

Fearful and friendless

By Jan. 20, Syrian government forces had driven the SDF out of 80% of the territory it had previously controlled. They were prevented from moving into the Kurdish heartlands in the Jazira region only after President Donald Trump called Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, twice, on Jan. 19 and Jan. 28, to order a halt. A truce struck on Jan. 29 is still holding. Western governments, wary of prolonged conflict and a potential refugee influx, are determined to see it sticks. Overall, it represents the first time that Syria’s long-repressed Kurdish minority is being formally granted rights of any kind. Yet the longer-term implications of the deal for the Kurds and Syria’s other minorities are only just beginning to sink in.

Decentralized rule — a longstanding demand among Kurds, and since Assad's fall among Druze and Alawites — does not feature in the agreement, which includes provisions for the integration of Kurdish security and civilian structures into the Syrian state. Mazlum Kobane, the SDF’s commander-in-chief, told Amargi, a Kurdish-focused online news outlet, last week that the full terms had not been revealed, suggesting that some remain under debate.

The Alawites, who are one of Syria’s most vulnerable communities, are especially worried about what the detente between the SDF and Damascus spells for their security and burgeoning alliance with the Kurds. Will the Kurds continue to shelter them, or will government forces — who now have access to the Kurdish-run region — hunt them down?

“We have been treated very well here. But naturally we are very nervous,” Soltani said. 

One of the key tenets of the Jan. 29  accord is that Syrian military troops will not be permanently deployed inside Kurdish-majority regions and that the SDF will be allowed to establish four brigades, albeit under the Ministry of Defense's overall authority.

But “the Alawites don’t believe that the regime will be fair or intends to honor the [Jan. 29] agreement with a spirit of equality. There is little trust,” Joshua Landis, a professor of Middle East history and an expert on Syria at Oklahoma University, told Al-Monitor. “Most see the agreement to have been forced on the Kurds, who they believe will be squeezed by the regime once the Americans and foreign powers avert their gaze,” Landis predicted. Maybe so. 

However, the Kurds enjoy robust Western support, particularly in the US Congress where a bipartisan group of senators recently introduced the Save the Kurds Act. The legislation would reimpose US sanctions on Syria if government forces or foreign actors — namely Turkey — target the Kurds. Yet little if anything is said about the steady drip of atrocities committed against the Alawites. They began in earnest last March, when Syrian government forces and allied Sunni factions embarked on a killing spree that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Alawites, most of them civilians. The violence saw the mutilation of Alawite corpses rights groups say and came in response to a failed uprising by forces loyal to Syria’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite. 

Alawite women, perceived as fair game in the prevailing atmosphere of impunity, have become the top targets of abuse.  

The Syrian Feminist Lobby, an advocacy group for women in Syria, documented more than 80 disappearances between February and December of last year. At least 26 of the cases were confirmed as kidnappings. Nearly all reported as missing were Alawites. In November, Syria’s Interior Ministry claimed that all but one of 42 alleged kidnappings of women that it had investigated were “genuine.” 

“Sadly, the world remains silent because we are all tarred by the same brush as Assad, even though many of us had nothing to do with him or his regime,” said a US-based Alawite volunteer with the Alawite Association of the United States, who identified herself only as Shaza for fear of putting loved ones still in Syria at risk. “We were the first to give up our weapons when the Assad regime was overthrown, yet we continue to be cast as dangerous,” Shaza told Al-Monitor. 

Maria Fantappie is the head of the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa Program at Italy’s Institute of International Affairs in Rome and has closely studied the Alawites and the Kurds. Fantappie noted that the Kurds had “accumulated international legitimacy” through their fight against the Islamic State, whereas Syria’s other minorities lacked such credentials.

As such, the Jan. 29 agreement between the Kurds and Damascus “is not replicable for Syria’s other minorities,” Fantappie told Al-Monitor. 

A Kurdish safe haven

Soltani, a tall, slim man in his mid 30s, said he and his family had first fled his village in the coastal province of Jableh in March 2025.

He worked as a cook. One of his brothers was an officer in Assad’s army who had died fighting Sunni insurgents. His framed photograph had hung on the wall of the family’s two-story apartment building that was torched by government forces along with many others on March 7. That was the least of it. He saw neighbors killed “as the military began firing at them just randomly while they were trying to get away.” Soltani and his loved ones joined thousands of Alawites who sought refuge at Russia’s prized air base in Hmeimim.

The family stayed there for four months. It soon became clear that the Russians were only flying senior officers and other high-ranking Alawites back to Russia. The rest were being told to fend for themselves. “Russians are the same shit as the rest. The massacre took place because of them. They said ‘rise up,’” Soltani said.

Glasses of yerba mate in a derelict building housing Alawites in Qamishli, Jan. 23, 2026. (Amberin Zaman/Al-Monitor)

On Aug. 8, more than 400 representatives from Syria’s minority communities, including Druze, Alawites, Christians and Yazidis, gathered in the Kurdish-governed city of Hasakah for what was billed as a unity conference. Assorted leaders lashed out at the central government’s unilateralism and lack of inclusivity. It had sidelined the country’s minorities — and women — when it imposed its own constitution and established an interim government overwhelmingly drawn from Sharaa’s inner circle. This needed to be reversed.

Damascus was furious, not least at the participation — albeit virtual — of two prominent sheikhs, Ghazal Ghazal, head of the Supreme Islamic Alawite Council, and Hikmat al-Hijri, the Druze spiritual leader with close ties to Israel. The latter has been calling for an independent Druze homeland in southern Syria ever since government forces bloodied their hands anew last July, participating in the murders of more than 1,000 Druze civilians in the southern province of Suwayda. Israel’s intervention ended the onslaught. 

Many Syrian Kurdish leaders believed the episode spelled the end of Sharaa. “He is so weak on the ground. He doesn’t control much of the country. The economy is broken. He cannot last,” a senior Kurdish official told Al-Monitor last August. Such predictions fueled what critics say was Kurdish overconfidence during the integration talks with Damascus.

The Druze made their share of miscalculations. For them, turning to Israel for support helped staunch the government’s attacks but resulted in their being labeled as traitors by many Syrians. Moreover, their Suwayda stronghold is among the poorest regions in Syria, with no industry or agriculture to speak of and no common border with Israel, Fabrice Balanche, a French geographer and political analyst specializing in Syria, pointed out. “They will therefore be forced to rebuild relations with Damascus,” he told Al-Monitor. 

Meanwhile, a steady stream of Alawites shell-shocked by the mass killings migrated eastward to the Kurdish-run region, where the rights of women and religious minorities are better protected than in the rest of Syria. Soltani and his family made it as far as Sheikh Maqsud where life, much like in the northeast, was relatively calm. Not for long. 

Brothers in arms

On a recent morning, a young Alawite woman cradled her month-old daughter as her husband looked on. Her mother-in-law and assorted other relatives sat around a gas stove in yet another unfinished construction that houses dozens of Alawite refugees. The family, who sought anonymity and asked not to be photographed out of fear for their safety, had traveled to the northeast in June from the village of Beit Yashout in Jableh. Their village had endured its share of horrors in March. “At least 40 families from my village came here to the Kurdish area,” the woman told Al-Monitor. 

Her husband had returned from the frontlines in Deir Hafer, in Raqqa, where he had been fighting alongside SDF forces. “All the Arabs defected,” the man, a former Assad regime air force officer at Hama airport, told Al-Monitor. He was referring to the tens of thousands of Arab fighters who made up roughly 60% of the SDF. Many flipped over to the Syrian army during its advance on Kurdish-held territories, notably in the Arab-majority provinces of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. 

Estimates vary, but as many as 2,000 Alawites are thought to have joined the SDF over the past year. Siyamend Ali, a spokesman for the People’s Protection Units — the predominantly Kurdish force that forms the backbone of the SDF — confirmed in a recent interview that Alawites had taken up positions inside the SDF, without providing any figures. 

A senior Syrian Kurdish official speaking on background said the Alawites could remain in the SDF. Asked whether Damascus would agree to this, the official said, “Those details are still being worked out."

For many Alawites, the monthly $200 stipend paid to fighters was the sole means of supporting their families. The Kurdish-led administration provides Alawites and other internally displaced Syrians with free bread and some fuel. 

But with the loss of Deir Ezzor and its oil fields, the administration will have been deprived of the bulk of its income. Oil and other carbon derivatives made up roughly 75% of its budget. Further losses are likely to ensue if and when it hands over control of oil fields along the Turkish border to Damascus, as per the terms of the Jan. 29 agreement. It is also meant to cede the Semalka border crossing with Iraq, which accounted for 15% of the administration’s revenues. Against this background, the fate of the Alawites in northeast Syria is looking increasingly bleak. “We are terrified that Sharaa’s men will come and take us,” the former Assad regime air force officer said. 

Shaza, the Alawite activist in the United States, said her community remained grateful to the Kurds for their support. However, she does not believe there is much they can do. “The way things are, it is natural that they will just try to save themselves first. To keep their heads above the water to avoid drowning with the rest of us,” Shaza concluded. 

Correction: Feb. 18, 2026. An earlier version of this article incorrectly described decentralization as a longstanding demand among Druze and Alawites, rather than one that emerged after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, and said the Martyr Khaled Fajr Hospital was named after a slain Kurdish fighter.