The fate of minorities in post-Assad Syria

For years Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new de facto leader, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Sunni jihadist group he commands, besieged Nubl and Zahraa, two Shia towns in the Sunni heartland half an hour north of Aleppo, Syria’s second city. Yet within days of HTS’s toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December, busloads of Shias flocked back there. The jihadists at the gates searched their luggage with rare politeness. In return, the Shias paid obeisance to their erstwhile foes by draping the town hall in the rebels’ tricolour. “We were all Assad’s oppressed,” explains the local imam.