Residents of Damascus – particularly bar, pub, and night club owners – fear that the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seizing power in Syria will lead to a nationwide ban on the consumption of alcohol, the Kurdish outlet Rudaw reported on Wednesday.
HTS is a jihadist terrorist organization that has been at war — initially in its prior form, the Nusra Front — with the toppled regime of dictator Bashar Assad for years. Assad fought a civil war against HTS and similar Syrian rebel groups since 2011, when his decision to impose a brutal crackdown on political dissidents protesting against his then-decade-old regime escalated the situation into one of all-out war. In the greater context of this war, a host of actors – including nation-states, terrorist organizations, and separatist militias – fought their own battles, often independent of the greater war between Assad and his opponents.
Assad fled Syria between December 7 and 8 as HTS encircled Damascus. While widely recognized as a murderous dictator responsible for massacres, extensive torture, and other atrocities, Assad did not govern as a fundamentalist Islamist; he allowed women to exist in society and minority religious groups to practice their faith – so long as their adherents did not criticize his regime. As a result, Damascus has long been home to a significant nightlife community that now finds itself in peril under the new rule of HTS.
Bar owners and others in the nightlife industry in Damascus told Rudaw this week that HTS has not directly intervened in their businesses – on the contrary, for now, they have assured business owners their priority is not damaging the devastated Syrian economy any further. Despite this, pubs and liquor stores reportedly shut down for the first four days after Assad fled the country and, even after they reopened, reports indicate locals are scared to be seen drinking in public, lest the jihadis begin a campaign to punish haram behavior. (Haram behavior is anything forbidden for an observant Muslim.) Islam generally forbids the consumption of alcohol.
“In general, there’s fear about whether traditions and the nature of work will be accepted or rejected. People are reluctant because there’s nothing certain as of today,” a bar owner identified as Jad told Rudaw. He noted that the hesitancy is not the result of any direct ban on alcohol on the part of HTS terrorists.
“Last Thursday, we, as bar owners, approached the officials in charge of the neighborhood to inquire if we are allowed to open our bars and resume a normal life,” Jad continued. “They told us that there’s no decree prohibiting bars and the situation is normal. Based on this, we decided to reopen our bars, and fortunately, customers are gradually returning.”
Speaking to France 24 last week, the owner of another bar in the nightlife area of Damascus similarly said that he approached HTS terrorists following the spread of rumors that they would ban alcohol consumption, asking about the fate of his business.
“I told the them that I own a bar and would like to hold a party and serve alcoholic drinks,” the owner said. “They responded: ‘Yes, open the place, there is no problem with that at all. You have the right to work and live your life as you did before.’”
That approval did not translate into any confidence on the part of the bar’s patrons that they would be allowed to freely drink and party. The owner who spoke to France 24 told the outlet that he held a “reopening” party shortly after receiving approval from HTS, but only a small number of people came to celebrate.
“The people who attended the party were confused and afraid. They were at the party, but they were not happy,” he lamented. “But if there is reassurance … you will find the whole world staying up late and happy because we are now in the month of Christmas, the month of celebrations.”
Syria has a sizable Christian population that Assad, an Alawite Shiite Muslim, tolerated. Assad often made large propaganda displays of attending Christmas events throughout the country to contrast his rule with the potential imposition of a Sunni Islamist state. Christian communities and international Christian persecution experts have expressed alarm at the potential rise of an Islamist government under the control of a terrorist gang in the country, potentially leading to genocide as it did during the rise of the Islamic State “caliphate.”
“The new rebel government is deadly and dangerous and will be a disaster for Christians,” Jeff King, the president of International Christian Concern (ICC), told Breitbart News shortly after the fall of the Assad regime, describing HTS as “radical Islamists” who have “rebranded to obscure their nature and past.”
Unnamed HTS terrorists told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) last week that they have no interest in banning alcohol because they had “bigger issues to deal with.” The head of HTS, Ahmed al-Sharaa (previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), has been more hesitant to confirm he would not interfere with alcohol consumption. Asked in an interview with the BBC this week whether he would ban alcohol, he claimed there were “many issues” he could not discuss because they were “legal issues” that he did not have authority over. That authority, many fear, will go to radical Islamist clerics who will have free reign to impose sharia on the entire population.
Damascus locals have already begun to organize against the potential imposition of sharia. On Thursday, hundreds of people flooded Umayyad Square demanding equal rights for women and specifically protesting comments made by an HTS spokesman in which he said that women were not “biologically” capable of practicing law or working in a defense ministry.
