How Syria’s Ismaili community keeps a fragile peace

SALAMIYEH — Sham, 17, holds a glass of mate in her right hand, reaching out for a big bowl of popcorn as she chats with neighbors and family members seated around her on plastic chairs. The gathering under the starry sky is a regular occurrence for her family in the central Syrian city of Salamiya.

The atmosphere is silent, punctuated occasionally by the giggle of a child or the growl of a motorbike in the distance. “Here in Salamiya, we love peace,” Sham says. But the city has not always been peaceful. 

“During the civil war, we heard airstrikes often from clashes around the city. It scared us, as did the presence of intelligence officers among us,” she explains. Salamiya was held by the Assad regime for the duration of Syria’s 14-year civil war. 

Today, her Hama province hometown holds a unique position in post-Assad Syria. Unlike many other cities, there are no weapons in sight. Government security forces are rarely seen, and there are no checkpoints in the heart of town.

Most of those who live in Salamiya are Ismailis, members of an offshoot of Shiite Islam led by a hereditary Imam, the Aga Khan. The city is home to most of Syria’s Ismaili community, who make up less than three percent of the population and also have a notable presence in the city of Masyaf and villages in coastal Tartous province. The Syrian National Ismaili Council, a longstanding civil body that guides and serves the minority, is also based in Salamiya.

Salamiya sits around 30 kilometers southeast of Hama, and 45 kilometers northeast of Homs, both sites of heavy fighting during the war. While the city never became a battlefield itself, it experienced its share of fallout from the grinding conflict—memorably in the form of nearby attacks by the Islamic State (IS). 

Rania Qassem, President of the Ismaili Council, remembers massacres in Salamiya-area villages—Mabouja in 2015 and Aqareb in 2017—as painful and unforgettable events. Missiles landed in the city and its countryside, leaving some villages largely destroyed. Car bombings by IS and Jabhat al-Nusra targeted government forces in the city, where damage from some attacks is still visible today. 

Most recently, Israeli airstrikes hit northwest of the city in late 2024 as Tel Aviv targeted members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah—a staunch ally of the Assad regime.

The ‘first step’

In late 2024, as opposition forces spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) pressed south towards Damascus in a military operation to topple the regime, community leaders in Salamiya had a decision to make.

The city held strategic importance for the opposition’s advance, as it was home to the headquarters of several significant regime militias. HTS reached out to the Ismaili Council in early December to initiate talks, after which Ismaili institutions maintained “close coordination” with advancing armed opposition factions, Mamoon Alkhateeb, a member of the Ismaili Council who is responsible for regional safety and security, tells Syria Direct. 

“Official communication with them began on December 3, 2025,” Alkhateeb says. “A coordination and follow-up committee representing the region was formed, and their passage [through Salamiya] was approved without opposition.”

By December 4, regime forces had withdrawn from Salamiya, and some of the city’s residents accompanied the opposition forces as they entered the city on December 6. After entering without incident, “they left some HTS members in the city as they headed south to Homs, and we continued to cooperate with them,” Alkhateeb adds.

In the days after the regime fell on December 8, the Syrian Salvation Government—an HTS-backed government that ran much of the opposition-held northwest since 2017—reached an agreement with the Ismaili Council stipulating that all armed factions in Salamiya surrender their weapons. 

Alkhateeb calls the agreement, which was enforced before the transitional government in Damascus was formally established in late March 2025, the “first step that ensured the security of the region.”

“People trust the Ismaili Council, so they followed its vision. The new leadership guaranteed the  security of everyone in Salamiya and its countryside, as well as in other areas where Ismailis are present,” he says. 

In the Tartous town of Qadmus, also home to many Ismailis, there are strong relations between the government and local administration, with local volunteer forces helping enforce security. 

Ibrahim al-Mawass, the head of the Damascus government’s Internal Security Directorate in Salamiya, says a large proportion of the city’s weapons have been handed in under the agreement. Some individuals may hold out for reasons “like the arms trade, not necessarily anti-state sentiment,” he adds. 

“We want to continue with our operations for weapons surrender, so that no weapons remain except in the hands of the state,” al-Mawass explains, adding that disarmament was one of the “most important” steps towards ensuring public safety. 

Community volunteers

Soon after Salamiya residents began to relinquish their weapons, the Ismaili Council recruited community members to stand guard as unarmed volunteers at locations including mosques and administrative buildings. 

The role of the council and volunteers—numbering about 2,000 individuals—is to protect neighborhoods and inform public security forces of any security threats to the area and its residents, Alkhateeb explained. 

Al-Mawass, points to “cooperation with local bodies” as a key element for maintaining stability—something that is a priority for the transitional government and locals alike.

In the first months after the regime fell, Salamiya saw a few cases of kidnappings and livestock theft, particularly in its countryside, Alkhateeb adds. The Ministry of Defense subsequently unified all armed factions, and the General Security Forces increased their presence in the area. “Things gradually became more organized, and we were able to distribute responsibilities,” he says.

In July, when members of Bedouin tribes in northern Syria headed south to fight Druze forces in Suwayda province, General Security forces stationed on the outskirts of Salamiya refused to allow them to pass, Alkhateeb recalls. The fighters took another route. 

While the city is calm, fears of the unknown persist in the community, Sham says. “We’re a little scared of individual bad actors, but we trust that the Ismaili Council will protect us.” 

A test

The most significant test for peace in Salamiya so far came in July, when men from the neighboring village of Taldara entered the Taldara Ismaili Council building as part of a land dispute and began demanding payment from the council. The incident was neither prolonged nor sectarian in nature, but some of the men used “sectarian rhetoric,” Qassem said. 

Ultimately, the situation was contained through high-level coordination between official authorities, district administration and government security forces, Alkhateeb says. The dispute itself “is a complex issue,” he admits. 

Al-Mawass, from the local security directorate, explains that the incident was driven by feelings of resentment held by those forced to flee their lands during the war, and characterized what happened in Taldara as “individual actions.”

“We conducted multiple meetings  to bring the area’s administrative bodies and locals together, and there was coordination between them,” he explains. “Things are going okay, and the matter is basically closed,” he adds, a point that the Ismaili Council reiterates. 

‘Success story’

In March 2025, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN)—a network of private international agencies that provide humanitarian support to developing countries—pledged 100 million euros to the new Syrian government to “scale up humanitarian efforts; to invest in renewable energy and other vital areas of the economy; to expand the provision of health care and education; to address food insecurity; and to restore and preserve Syria’s rich cultural assets.” 

The move from the foundation, chaired by Prince Rahim Aga Khan V, the hereditary Imam of the Ismailis, came about a week after an explosion of violence on Syria’s Alawite-majority coast, where a security crackdown following an attempted insurrection by pro-Assad fighters left more than 1,400 dead, including in sectarian massacres committed by government forces and allied fighters. 

Compared to the central government’s relations with other minority communities—such as the Alawites, Druze and Kurds—Salamiya’s Ismaili community has been a “success story,” Nanar Hawach, Senior Syria Analyst at the International Crisis Group, says. It is a story that, in turn, brings the state “external legitimacy and economic opportunities.”

“The community’s longstanding ties to the Aga Khan Foundation gave Damascus a credible story of pluralism abroad…[and] the Ismailis entered negotiations with an external patron prepared to invest,” he explains. “The 100 million euros recovery pledge reinforced the bargaining position with Damascus.” 

Joumana (a pseudonym), a woman in her 20s who lives in Salamiya, says this economic investment has been cause for occasional online harassment. “You often see Instagram and Facebook comments saying: ‘You got someone to pay for your lives,’ or ‘Get your Prince to pay for you’,” she says. “The region tries to keep peace as far as possible, and that’s the coping that’s going on here.”

Given the Ismailis’ “strong civil society with leadership figures,” it had the ability to advocate for itself, Hawach adds, “facilitating negotiating a new social contract with the new authorities after Assad’s fall.”

The Ismaili Council is the “most organized system in Salamiya,” which makes it the most trusted one, Joumana says. “They have good potential and do good work. [People] know they have someone in enough power, which is a good thing, as it makes us feel safe here.” 

The Ismailis’ limited presence in major cities also meant that they posed less of a “demographic or political threat” to the authorities, Hawach adds. In Salamiya, volunteers still play an important role in guarding institutions and keeping order—a responsibility that other communities have “largely been excluded from.”

Volunteers—men and women alike—often don white vests and caps with the Ismaili Council’s logo, and their role extends to helping out with administrative issues in the community. 

Still, “Ismailis have only been included as auxiliaries and not as members of the security apparatus, highlighting the limits of inclusion even in the ‘success story,’” Hawach explains.

The path forward for the new government, according to Hawach, is multifaceted, but necessary steps include integrating minority communities into governance and security provision, while ensuring real accountability for those who commit violations.

“The state needs to focus on trust-building,” he says. “They need finally to understand that the overreliance on the use of force and coercion as the sole tactic, and treating dialogue as an afterthought, is going to have negative consequences on the state’s legitimacy and its grip on the ground.” 

In Salamiya, communal harmony largely prevails, but it has not been without its challenges. This past Ramadan, skirmishes took place when government security forces saw people smoking or drinking alcohol. 

“We engaged in further dialogue with [the security forces] to emphasize the importance of non-interference in personal freedoms,” Alkhateeb recalls. 

Al-Mawass says that in the event of violations by the security forces, measures are taken through the “military police and security department, as well as a different department to deal with behavioral issues.” 

“Recently, we fired some individuals who had committed multiple violations and mistakes, which we can’t accept as the state, nor as members of the security directorate,” he adds. 

Alkhateeb is hopeful that the Salamiya model could be applied to other parts of the country.“It is simply a matter of time, acceptance, and coordination,” he says. 

While Sham is grateful for the peace her own community is experiencing, she has been troubled by the violence in other parts of Syria. “We feel sad when we hear about the bad things happening there—we do hope other cities can be safe like us; we want peace for everyone,” she says.