Pro-Israel US Congressman Brian Mast warns Syria over SDF clashes

US Congressman Brian Mast, who chairs the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, appeared to issue a warning to the Syrian government on Tuesday, saying that there were “too many incidents of security and violence against religious and ethnic minorities”.

Mast added at a congressional hearing that recent fighting between Syrian government troops and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, whom he called “our long-standing counterterrorism partner”, was “unacceptable”, saying that the US’s Centcom command had to move 7000 detained Islamic State militants from formerly SDF-run facilities in Syria to neighbouring Iraq.

Mast also expressed concerns about Russia’s continued military presence in Syria, saying that it was “definitely an issue to contend with”.

He also noted Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s previous links to Al-Qaeda. Sharaa’s now-dissolved Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham militia severed all ties with Al-Qaeda in 2017. Since assuming the Syrian presidency after the fall of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, he has tried to present a more moderate and inclusive face.

Sharaa met with Mast, a Republican who is noted for his staunchly pro-Israel positions, when he visited the US in November last year, in an effort to get crippling US sanctions passed under the Caesar Act in 2020 removed.

The US Congress removed Caesar Act sanctions the following month. Syria also joined the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State in November.

However, at the Congressional hearing, Mast said that Sharaa “does not have a blank check” from the US.

“The United States is not satisfied with the progress that he has made yet, and views many of his actions as steps backwards,” Mast said.

He said that “recent actions against Druze, Kurds and Alawites are all steps in the wrong direction”.

Since the fall of Assad, a member of Syria’s Alawite minority, in December 2024, sectarian violence has broken out on several occasions.

In March 2025, remnants of the Assad regime launched an insurgency is Syria’s Alawite coastal heartland, killing scores of members of the security forces.

Government forces and allied militias intervened but also committed crimes against Alawite civilians, killing hundreds. Syria has begun public trials for some of those involved in the abuses.

Sectarian violence also broke out in the Druze-majority province of Suweida last July, with hundreds of people killed, and government forces also implicated in crimes against civilians. The province is now under the control of Israeli-backed local Druze militias opposed to the Syrian government.

Last month, an integration agreement between the Kurdish-led SDF and the Syrian government also broke down, leading to clashes between government forces and the SDF, which saw most of the Arab-majority areas once held by the group taken over by the government.

A new ceasefire deal is in place now, amid renewed steps to integrate SDF fighters into the government.

Mast’s remarks came amid reports that the US is reducing its military presence in Syria. On Wednesday, US troops reportedly evacuated the Tanf airbase, near the border tri-point between Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, an area where they have long had a military presence.

Also on Wednesday, the UN warned that Sharaa and Syrian foreign minister Asaad Al-Shaibani and interior minister Anas Khattab had been the targets of five assassination attempts the previous year, most of them by groups affiliated with the Islamic State.