Syria’s Time of Epuration

By Hugh Fitzgerald | July 20, 2026

The Sunni regime that has ruled in Damascus since December 2024 has been a mixed bag. Its army has attacked both the Alawites in Latakia, who had been the mainstay of Bashar Assad’s regime, and the innocent Druze in Sweida Governorate who inhabit the territory between Damascus and the Golan, showing its determination to keep the minorities in Syria down. In addition, Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s troops have taken part in attacks on the Christian minority and on the Kurds in Aleppo and southeastern Syria. All this makes clear he is determined to persecute Syria’s many minorities — the Alawites, Druze, Kurds, and Christians. He nonetheless has managed to present himself as a “moderate,” even hinted at being ready to make peace with Israel, but his treatment of the country’s minorities suggests he is still an unreformed jihadist. Trump has been impressed with al-Sharaa’s makeover, and approvingly calls him a “strong leader.”

But in al-Sharaa’s favor is his unrelenting campaign to locate and punish the war criminals of the previous regime. Now he has caught in his dragnet the man who oversaw the production of sarin, a deadly chemical that was used to mass murder Bashar Assad’s opponents.

More on the arrest of Col. Ahmad Habib Ali can be found here: “Syria arrests former officer accused of overseeing production of sarin bombs,” by Rizik Alabi, The Media Line, July 17, 2026:

Syrian authorities have arrested a former military officer accused of supervising the production of sarin-filled bombs used in chemical attacks between 2013 and 2017, opening a legal process that rights advocates say could expose the wider structure behind Syria’s chemical weapons program.

For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org

The Syrian Interior Ministry said Col. Ahmad Habib Ali, a former chemical weapons specialist, headed a department at the Scientific Studies and Research Center and oversaw sarin storage and chemical production at Unit 417.

Preliminary investigations indicate Ali supervised the production of about 20 aerial bombs, each containing roughly 250 kilograms (550 pounds) of sarin, authorities said. The munitions were allegedly used against Syrian towns and cities from 2013 to 2017.

The investigation remains underway before the case is referred to the judiciary. Syrian Interior Ministry sources declined to provide The Media Line with details beyond the official statement, while a Syrian Justice Ministry source said the case remained with the relevant authorities….

As I noted above, Ahmed Al-Sharaa has been a mixed bag. The arrest and judicial proceeding against Ahmad Habib Ali — rather than simply executing him on the spot, as so many Muslim dictators, as well as the Alawite Bashir Assad, would have done — is certainly a point in his favor. Perhaps he will prove the skeptics — such as I and you — wrong, and live up to what Trump imagines him to be.