Druse Leader Aims to Secure Place for Syrian Minorities

As Western diplomats explore establishing ties with the rebels who took power in Syria, a religious minority has been conducting its own diplomatic push to ensure protections for its members as the country rebuilds.

A representative of the group, the Druse, recently went to Washington to meet with lawmakers, members of the Biden and Trump administrations and diplomats to plead their case.

“We are very worried about the future,” Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif said in an interview in Washington, where he urged U.S. officials to prioritize protections for Syria’s 1.2 million Druse as part of their engagement with the country’s new government.

In December, after a long civil war, a coalition of Syrian rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad and established an interim government. The rebellion put an end to a brutal regime, but for Western nations there remained a problem: The Islamist group that led the uprising once had ties to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and as a result was officially designated as a terrorist organization.

The rebel leaders have forsworn their old alliances and have pledged to build a Syria that is tolerant of other beliefs. And Western officials, eager for reconstruction to begin, have expressed their openness to working with the Islamist group now in power, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

But members of Syrian minority groups like the Druse, who practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam and can also be found in Lebanon, Israel and Jordan, remain skeptical. The spiritual leader of the Druse in Syria, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari, expressed wariness in a recent interview with a German broadcaster over the promises of tolerance offered by Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad al-Shara.