Dispatch from Damascus: The Shia Shrine That Could Define the Future of Syria

The Syrian government has vowed to protect Sayyida Zeinab, but threats are mounting

A couple notes before the story. Murtaza Hussain was a guest on Counter Points with Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky this morning to discuss his recent trip to Syria. Watch it here.

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Sayyida Zeinab shrine, outside Damascus, Syria. Photo: Murtaza Hussain.

DAMASCUS—The fate of a Shia shrine in the suburbs of Damascus has become a litmus test for the stability of the new Sunni Islamist government in Syria—and, in particular, its ability and willingness to hold together Syria’s fragile social fabric.

Sayyida Zeinab, as the shrine complex and its surrounding neighborhoods are known, is an ornately decorated complex built in a Persianate style with blue tiling and a golden dome. According to tradition, the shrine houses the tomb of the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad, and it has long been a major attraction for Shia religious pilgrims to Syria.

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Sayyid Zeinab has been the subject of heated rumors, with stories circulating on regional news websites, social media, and WhatsApp claiming that it had been shut down or damaged by extremists. At one point, these rumors even led to threats of military intervention by Shia militants in neighboring Iraq.

The shrine has not been damaged and remains open to worshippers, Drop Site News verified during a trip to Syria last week. But its defense is now a major issue for the new Syrian government, which is led and largely controlled by the hardline Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The group, and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, the de facto ruler of Syria, were formerly linked to both Al Qaeda and ISIS, and had been designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization for suicide attacks, assassinations, and other operations that had killed civilians in Syria. In recent years, al-Sharaa publicly renounced HTS’s ties with those groups and is now attempting to reassure the international community that the interim government is committed to stability and preserving the rights of minorities inside Syria.

Abu Mohammed, the nom de guerre of an HTS commander stationed at a military checkpoint near the shrine that had been captured from allies of the former regime, told Drop Site that since taking power, HTS forces had foiled two attempts by extremists opposed to the new government to attack the shrine. One of those attacks included a reported attempt by extremists linked to the Islamic State just weeks ago to carry out bombing and shooting attacks against pilgrims at the site. The commander added that Sayyida Zeinab was “fully open to whoever wanted to visit and come and pray there,” and said that the group had vowed to uphold its commitment to protect the shrine.

Worshippers at Sayyida Zeinab shrine. Photo: Murtaza Hussain

New Defenders of the Holy Shrine

Claims have circulated both online and by word of mouth in Damascus that access to the shrine, which had become a base of activity for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) during the war, had been shut down when HTS took power.

In reality, access to Sayyida Zeinab is currently open under the new regime. On a recent weekend, men and women could be seen filing in and out of the shrine to offer prayers and respect at the tomb, while children played in the enclosed courtyard. Several checkpoints and walled military bases in the area, previously staffed by armed Shia militia, have now been requisitioned and repainted in the colors of the Syrian revolutionary flag. Images of Bashar al-Assad, as well as Shia leaders like the late-Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomenei, once ubiquitous in the neighborhood,have been torn down or defaced.

A number of armed men affiliated with HTS, who are now based at a military compound surrounded by blast walls and several checkpoints near the shrine, spoke with Drop Site. Abu Mohammed, the HTS commander at Sayyida Zeinab, said that he was part of an armed unit tasked with defending the shrine and protecting worshippers at the site. The atmosphere was relaxed as a small stream of pilgrims made their way to and from the site, unmolested by HTS guards at the checkpoint.

Abu Mohammed and several other HTS guards said that visitors were welcome to Sayyida Zeinab, and rejected claims by Iran-linked media outlets that it had been shut down, attacked by armed men, or even subject to a false-flag attack, saying it was “propaganda” intended to spread panic about the agenda of the new regime.

“This was totally untrue,” he said.

Entrance to a graveyard for Shia fighters. Photo: Murtaza Hussain

During the Syrian civil war, Sayyida Zeinab became a rallying point for armed Shia groups fighting under the banner of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance—the major foreign supporters, along with Russia, of the deposed regime of Bashar al-Assad. Once a tidy neighborhood focused around the shrine as a religious site, the war transformed the area into a military garrison.

Iran had justified its controversial presence in Syria as a defense of Shia shrines in the country—Sayyida Zeinab foremost among them. During the civil war, Shia militants from Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan came to Syria to fight to defend the Assad government against rebel groups that they believed to be committed to Sayyida Zeinab’s destruction, with these fighters referred to as “Defenders of the Holy Shrine” in official communications.

The Shia militia groups that once flocked to Sayyida Zeinab fled the country with the collapse of the Assad regime as part of a negotiated deal between Iran and the new Syrian authorities to withdraw peacefully in exchange for an agreement to protect the shrine and other Shia religious sites from attack.

Over the years of the war, the presence of Iranian officials and their allied militias had become entrenched in the neighborhood surrounding the shrine, as well as within the complex itself, which was used as a meeting point by the IRGC. In the aftermath of the stunning fall of the Assad regime, Shia groups feared that Sayyida Zeinab might be subjected to revenge attacks by locals who had objected to the presence of Iran and its allies, or by Sunni extremist groups hostile to Shia Muslims in general.

Abu Mahdi, a local Syrian Sunni man who lives in town and close to the shrine, told Drop Site that the town businesses thrived by the presence of the Iranian, Iraqi and Hezbollah fighters who often shopped in the local market and stayed in local hotels. But he said the fighters’ presence was dangerous for the community because of the civil war.

“The town now has no foreign fighter presence, and its businesses are slowly recovering.” He added that the local population “feels free to speak and more secure than before, and can move in and out of the town which generates economic activities.”

The political and religious importance of the shrine regionally is such that its fate may determine whether peace holds between the new Syrian government and its neighbors, particularly Iraq and Lebanon, both home to large Shia populations. Hardline groups seeking to restart a sectarian conflict have already made it a target. A planned attack in mid-January by militants associated with the Islamic State was narrowly averted after HTS claimed to have arrested a group of armed men. Photos later released by Syria’s new interior ministry showed four alleged ISIS members in custody alongside grenades, modified landmines, explosive backpacks, and rifles that they said had been collected for an imminent attack against the site.

Later reporting indicated that the U.S. government had provided intelligence to HTS that helped its forces foil the attack. A former U.S. official later told the Washington Post that sharing the intelligence with HTS, which is still designated as terrorist organization by the U.S. government, was, “the right, prudent and appropriate thing to do, given that there was credible, specific information [about Islamic State threats], and coupled with our efforts to cultivate a relationship with these guys.”

Sayyida Zeinab has been targeted numerous times over the course of Syria’s long civil war. ISIS and other extremist Sunni factions launched deadly attacks nearby, including a series of bombings in 2016 that killed dozens of civilians as well as Shia militants based in the district.

In addition to periodic mortar strikes targeting the area, over the past year Israel has also carried out airstrikes allegedly targeting IRGC officials based around the shrine. Although the violence has largely abated since the fall of the Syrian government and exodus of the Iranian-backed militias, the road leading to the neighborhood remains heavily damaged. Rows of destroyed and abandoned buildings line both sides of the thoroughfare leading to the area, with some buildings completely flattened by explosions.

The Suburb of Sayyida Zeinab

The area immediately surrounding the shrine is lined with small stores selling food and other products catering to visitors to the area. Like much of Syria, a combination of war, economic sanctions, and corruption has transformed the neighborhood into a zone of poverty. Just outside the gates of the shrine, and next to a cemetery where numerous foreign fighters are buried, dozens of Syrians were lined up to collect free rations of bread distributed from a local bakery at the time of Drop Site’s visit.

Hamzah, a shopkeeper who sells scarves, prayer mats and other souvenirs just outside the entrance to the shrine, told Drop Site that contrary to rumors that Sayyida Zeinab had been placed under lockdown by militants after the fall of the regime, “the shrine was never closed by the new Syrian administration, and worshippers have always been free to come and go as they please.”

Sayidda Zeinab neighborhood. Photo: Murtaza Hussain

In years past, he added, the area was heavily frequented by Iranian military officials who had come to Syria to support the Assad regime, and who would occasionally come to purchase trinkets from the shops nearby. Today, local Shias continued to attend prayers at the shrine, including some foreigners, like a group of Pakistani Shias who live and operate a school in the Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood.

Hasan al-Shami, another resident of the area surrounding the shrine, said that the complex is protected by the majority Sunni Muslim community in the area, and is a symbol of pride to people of all sects. A longtime resident of the neighborhood, he said that in the past Sunni Muslims also used to visit the shrine to commemorate special occasions, and to organize charitable campaigns for the poor.

Following the collapse of the regime and flight of its allies from Syria, al-Shami said that the situation in the area for locals had improved. For years prior, many of the main roads leading to the shrine were manned by Assad’s forces, who regularly demanded bribes from local residents to pass through, inflicting a major daily stress on an area that had already been devastated by war and sanctions.

Syria is home to a relatively small Shia population estimated to number roughly 250,000 people in a country of 23 million. The country had previously been ruled by a clique around Bashar al-Assad, whose family drew from the Alawite sect—an offshoot of Shiism considered heretical by many orthodox Muslims, including the Sunni Islamists who now compromise the new ruling faction in Damascus.

Despite official assurances from HTS that they would protect Sayyida Zeinab as well as the free access to the site that continues to exist on the ground, many in the region continue to hold the group in deep suspicion. Many other Shia holy sites in the Middle East have been destroyed by extremists over the past two decades. These attacks were often driven by ideological differences, but were at times also deliberate provocations aimed at heightening chaos and triggering the collapse of local governments.

HTS is currently engaged in a publicity campaign aimed at convincing the international community to lift sanctions on Syria and allow the reconstruction of the country, with promises to protect the rights of minorities featuring prominently in these efforts. The group has held meetings with minority communities, made statements about holding elections in the future, and promised to include the views of diverse segments of the Syrian population in drafting a new constitution. Yet it also has a history of ruthlessly suppressing dissent in the northwestern province of Idlib where it held authority for several years. HTS has also been accused in the past of assassinating other Syrian dissidents, including the 2018 killing of prominent anti-regime activist Raed Fares.

The will and ability of HTS to protect Sayyida Zeinab may ultimately play a defining role in how successful the group is in mending its own international standing, while preventing the country from plunging into the same cycle of sectarian violence that ravaged neighboring Iraq.

“We are working to protect sects and minorities from any attacks, whether they come from within or external forces attempting to exploit the situation to stir sectarian discord,” Syria’s current de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said in a statement issued last month. “Syria is a country for all, and we must coexist peacefully.”