Syria’s Circassian Community Is Finding Its Voice, by Pauline Vacher and Charles Cuau – 7 January 2026

From New Lines Magazine

Long forced to suppress its culture and history, the minority group is embracing its traumatic past while maintaining its allegiance to the state

On May 21, 2025, under the blazing sun of a Damascus spring, a few hundred people gathered near Umayyad Square. The air shimmered with heat, yet several men at the head of the procession wore fur hats and heavy coats, a deliberate echo of their homeland, the Caucasus. Green banners rippled above the crowd, bearing the 12 golden stars and three arrows of the Circassian flag.

It was the first time in more than half a century that Syria’s Circassians were able to mark their Day of Mourning in public, commemorating the expulsion from their ancestral lands by tsarist Russia in 1864. For decades, Circassians’ own story of exile had been politically inconvenient in Syria, suppressed by the now-ousted, Russia-allied Assad regime. Now, as Syria redefines itself — and the country’s new government renegotiates its relationships with Russia and Israel, which also displaced Circassians — that silence has begun to lift, and multiple generations within the community are redefining what it means to be both Circassian and Syrian.

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Pauline Vacher is a freelance journalist currently based in Damascus, Syria.

Charles Cuau is a freelance photographer and journalist based in Damascus, Syria.

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