Guest Post: The Twelver Shia in Syria

Generally speaking, the Twelver Shia in Syria find themselves in a precarious position since the fall of the Assad regime. Associated heavily with support for the Assad regime as well as the intervention of Iran and Hezbollah on its behalf, Twelver Shia communities have disproportionate numbers of ‘martyrs’ who died fighting within the ranks of the regime’s army and the ‘forces of the friends’ that were affiliated with Iran and Hezbollah. In addition, Twelver Shia communities do not constitute large geographical continuums akin to the Druze of al-Suwayda’ or the Alawites of the coastal regions.

Their situation is thus largely at the mercy of the ruling authorities, with a rather mixed picture. On the one hand, the situation in the Aleppo villages of Nubl and al-Zahara’ is relatively good, but in Homs province, there have been multiple reports of assassinations and violations against Shia, with many of them now displaced as a result.

In this guest post, a person from the Twelver Shia village of Tel Aghar in Homs province gives an overall view of the Twelver Shia situation in Syria, bitterly complaining of how Bashar al-Assad and his allies used the Twelver Shia in a pointless war and essentially abandoned them, while also noting how other Twelver Shia in Lebanon and Iraq have failed to help their brethren in Syria, with the displaced Syrian Twelver Shia in Lebanon facing mistreatment at the hands of the Lebanese. I should note that this perspective does not necessarily reflect that of all or most Syrian Twelver Shia inside and outside the country, but this feeling of bitterness is worth noting.

Below is the post translated by me with some light editing. Parenthetical insertions in square brackets are my own.