For centuries an old, severed head helped hold Syria together.

Pilgrims from across the Middle East journeyed to Damascus to venerate the skull buried beneath the storied eighth-century Umayyad mosque – a relic Christian and Muslims alike believe belongs to John the Baptist, beheaded to reward Salome for her sensuous dance before Herod Antipas.

The site could scarcely be more apt for cross-community worship. Blending Corinthian columns, Byzantine mosaics and Islamic arches – in a building incorporating a Roman temple and a Christian church – few mosques anywhere are as inclusive.

But harmony has been rare of late.

In June, an Islamist gunman killed 25 worshippers at an Orthodox church in Damascus, opening fire before blowing himself up in the middle of a Sunday service.

A month later, fighters from the new Syrian army stormed the home of Khalid Mezher, an evangelical pastor in southern Syria’s Sweida region, murdering him, his parents, his siblings, their young children and even the family dog.

Activists say the attackers were motivated less by Mr Mezher’s religious beliefs than by sectarian animosity towards the Druze minority to which he belonged, hundreds of whom were slaughtered in clashes with Sunni Bedouin tribesmen.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, dispatched troops to restore order, some of whom are accused of rounding up Druze and executing them.

It is not the first time sectarian violence has shaken Syria since Mr Sharaa came to power nine months ago. In March, Sunni fighters descended on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and massacred hundreds of Alawites, the minority sect of Bashar al-Assad, the dictator who was toppled in December.

Euphoria initially greeted Assad’s downfall, uniting communities. But minorities – Alawites, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Ismailis and Shias – now question whether a Syria dominated by its Sunni majority can hold together. To prevent disintegration, many say Mr Sharaa must shed his Jihadi past and become a national leader, rather than merely head of his own Sunni sect.

“After what happened in March, every Alawite is scared,” said Zaki, an IT technician in Tartous, an Alawite port city. “We don’t know when we will next be slaughtered — and we don’t trust Sharaa to protect us. It feels like there’s no place for Alawites in the new Syria.”

Despite recent bloodbaths, Syria is no longer at war – for now. The Assad regime, which killed perhaps 200,000 civilians and tortured to death at least 15,000 more, is gone.

The United States has led efforts to lift the sanctions that crippled Syria’s economy. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have repaid its World Bank loans and pledged billions of pounds in investment. Turkey is helping rebuild the country. Minorities hold cabinet posts in the transitional government and an interim constitution promises inclusion.

Yet as Syria comes under Sunni majority rule for the first time in half a century, sectarian tensions threaten these fragile gains. Many question whether a Sunni-dominated Syria can be both democratic and pluralistic, protecting, its minorities rather than subjugating them.

The weight of history

It may even be that the task facing Mr Sharaa is all but impossible, with some arguing that present-day Syria is doomed to failure by its Western imperial legacy that imprisoned the country within artificial borders, setting it up for failure from the outset.

According to the romantic view, Greater Syria – encompassing present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories – enjoyed a golden era under the Ottoman Empire, with its sects protected by the Sultan.

But in 1916, Britain and France secretly divided the empire’s Arab lands under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, giving France modern Syria and Lebanon, and Britain Palestine and Transjordan.

“For minorities it was a zero-sum game,” says Joshua Landis, director of the centre for Middle East studies at the university of Oklahoma. “New national borders were drawn around people who didn’t want to live together.

“In Lebanon, it was the Maronite Christians who got the lion’s share of power; in Syria, it was the Alawites who were elevated, allowing them later to take power at the expense of the Sunni majority who were brutally repressed.”

Syrian nationalist Adib al-Shishakli, who seized power in 1949, complained that “Syria is the current official name for that country which lies within the artificial frontiers drawn up by imperialism”.

Between independence from France in 1946 and 1970, when Hafez al-Assad – Bashar’s father – seized power, Syria was ruled by 16 presidents and experienced ten military coups. Many doubted it would survive as a nation-state.

Stability came under Hafez and, initially, Bashar al-Assad, but at enormous cost. They imposed order through violent repression and sectarian manipulation, making minorities dependent on them and leaving most Syrians deeply divided, according to Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington.

“This is the hornet’s nest that has been opened up now that Assad is gone,” he says. “After 14 years of debilitating conflict and a very fragile transition, distrust runs deep across every ethnic, sectarian and political line.”

The sectarian volcano

That distrust has already erupted. In March, Sunni fighters – enraged by years of minority privilege and Assad’s wartime brutality – mobilised en masse after pro-Assad insurgents staged attacks on government forces. Up to 200,000 armed Sunnis joined in, many driving across the country after hearing calls to jihad issued in mosques.

In some villages, they filmed themselves forcing their victims to bark like dogs before shooting them dead.

Hundreds of thousands of Alawites fled through corpse-strewn streets and charred towns into Lebanon, which had mostly sheltered Sunni refugees during the war. More than 1,400 people were killed, according to government figures.

Initially Mr Sharaa, once an affiliate of both Islamic State (IS) and al Qaeda, praised the fighters. But he reversed course, calling for peace, ordering an investigation and giving Alawites posts in his government.

He has since won the support of Donald Trump, the US president, who praised Mr Sharaa’s toughness and good looks before lifting sanctions on Syria under the prodding of Sunni Arab states in the Gulf.

Calm was restored, but with Syria awash in weapons and vigilantes bent on revenge, low violence persisted and then exploded again in Druze areas last month.

“I don’t think Sharaa or the government want these massacres,” says Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. “But because it can’t control everybody that has a weapon, these crises spiral into far greater levels of violence.”

The new army is also clearly unstable. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Mr Sharaa’s former militia, has given it a disciplined core, despite its jihadi roots. But other ex-militias, nominally absorbed into the military, act almost autonomously, committing atrocities and defying orders.

They spearheaded last month’s bloodshed, executing 182 people, including women and children. Bedouin gunmen joined from across Syria, turning vigilante revenge into another sectarian massacre. Druze and Alawite fighters have also been accused of killing civilians.

Syria thus simmers like a volcano: a vengeful Sunni majority, fearful minorities resentful over lost privileges and a weak state unable to restrain rogue elements bent on destroying the country’s fraying cohesion.

An interim constitution adopted in March meant to reassure minorities instead deepened mistrust by requiring the president to be Muslim and making Islamic Sharia the primary source of law – alarming communities deemed apostate by hard-line Sunnis.

“Sunnis are in power now – and many of those in power are real Salafists in the Jihadist tradition,” said Mr Landis. “Some in the security services regard Druze, Ismailis and Alawites as pagans and therefore guilty of the worst crime in Islam.

“So there are really two Syrias today: the 70 per cent who are Sunni Arabs and the rest. Sunnis are optimistic; minorities are terrified.”

The International Crisis Group, a conflict-monitoring think tank in Brussels, warned last month that minorities are increasingly arming themselves for self-defence, fearing government forces will not protect them.

“The violence deepened a sense of alienation and existential dread among many Syrians,” it wrote. “If these patterns continue, social relations, the Syrian state’s stability and the transition to a post-Assad political order will all be in jeopardy.”

Regional crossfire

Regional powers are adding to the upheaval. Israel has launched airstrikes on Syrian forces, destroying part of the defence ministry in Damascus last month after intervening on behalf of Druze communities.

Israel’s motives are partly domestic: its own Druze population serves in the Israeli armed forces under a “blood covenant” with the Jewish state and has asked it to protect their kinsmen across the border.

Credit: @AJEnglish/X

But its involvement risks deepening sectarian tensions. Israeli troops have seized parts of southern Syria, violating a 1974 disengagement deal brokered by Henry Kissinger. One notable Druze leader, Hikmat al-Hijri, has openly sought Israeli protection, but others fear being branded traitors and sparking further reprisals.

Israel has also courted Kurds in Syria’s north-east. For now, the main Kurdish militia, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has struck a deal to integrate into the national army.

Under pressure from Turkey, which recently ended a 40-year war with its own Kurdish rebels, the pact may hold. But spreading sectarian unrest threatens to unravel it, leaving Kurds – who, crucially, guard IS prison camps – wary of marginalisation in a Sunni-dominated Syria.

“There is a crisis of confidence brewing,” says a Kurdish official in the primarily SDF-held city of Qamishli. “[Sharaa] has to decide whether he wants to oppress or defend minorities. If he cannot defend all Syrians then Syria is heading for anarchy. It’s his choice.”

Can Syria hold?

Syria’s history has rarely been harmonious. Coups, dictatorship and civil war hardened sectarian lines.

Yet the country has survived predicted collapse before – held together not by trust or unity, but by brute force.

Analysts say Mr Sharaa faces a stark choice: continue that tradition by terrorising minorities into submission or attempt something no Syria leader has yet achieved – forging a genuinely inclusive national identity that transcends sect and ethnicity.

Not everyone is convinced he will choose the latter. Mr Landis believes Mr Sharaa is more likely to subjugate minorities rather than share power with them.

But others see reason for hope.

“Syria is going to be very unstable for years to come,” says Mr Lister of the Middle East Institute. “But the ingredients to reunify the country are all in place. The transitional government is attempting to engage constructively with minority communities.

“Crucially, the US, the Europeans and the wider Middle East – except Israel – are united behind the idea that Syria’s central government must control all its territory. That shared vision may be what holds the country together.”

Whether Mr Sharaa can turn that vision into reality will decide more than Syria’s borders. It will determine whether a country long defined by sectarian bloodshed can one day return to being the kind of place where Christians and Muslims kneel side by side before an ancient skull, believing, however improbably, that Syria belongs to all of them.