The Druze of Sweida

The massif of Jabal al-Arab, also called Jabal al-Druze, rises out of the wider Hauran plateau, as a highland of reddish valleys and hills. It lies at the heart of Sweida province, about two and a half hours southeast of the capital Damascus, on the border with Jordan. Around 90 percent of the population are Druze, a largely endogenous group of Levantine Arabs who practice a millennium-old faith often but not always understood as a sect within Islam. They also live in Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan — but the largest population is in Syria, where they number around 700,000, roughly half of them in Sweida.

Sweida has, in its past, had relative cultural and geographic autonomy, but it has also been a historic bastion of Syrian national unity and anti-colonial pride. In 1921, the state of Jabal Druze was created in Sweida under the French mandate, with the aim of dividing the nascent nation. However, in 1926, under the leadership of the Druze chieftain Sultan al-Atrash, Sweida became the cradle of the Great Syrian Revolt, which united the Alawite State, the State of Damascus, and the State of Aleppo, all created by the French, into what would become the modern nation of Syria.

Despite this, Sweida often had a very difficult relationship with the central authorities in Damascus, most notably under the rule of Adib Shishakli (from 1949 to 1954). He regarded Sweida’s local Druze authorities as a threat to his power, accused them of conspiring with foreign powers, and — in ways that echo today’s events — brutally sent the military against them in 1954, hastening his own downfall.

Like much of Syria, Sweida participated heavily in the 2011 protests against Bashar al-Assad’s rule, as part of the wider Arab Spring. Yet as the initial peaceful revolution descended into armed revolt and sectarian tensions rose, the region remained nominally under Assad’s control. However, with all the overall fragmentation of state control, Sweida gained a sort of informal autonomy, with authority held by a patchwork of local activists, armed groups, and traditional power structures.

These traditional structures took on new responsibility amid the relative power vacuum, with the most important position within them being held by the sheikh al-aql, a seat of communal, political, and religious leadership held simultaneously by three individuals usually appointed from the same three families. Though the religious establishment, as well as many of the armed groups, wavered between support for Assad and cautious neutrality, anti-regime sentiment in Sweida simmered beneath the surface, bubbling forward in protest movements and general strikes.

The most significant of these was the uprising that began in Sweida in August 2023 and spread throughout regime-controlled Syria. Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, one of the three sheikhs mentioned earlier, took a firm stand in favor of the protests. It was then that his popularity and perceived status as an informal spokesperson for the province began to grow.

Tensions After the Fall

On December 8, 2024, the already fifty-four-year-old Assad regime, abandoned by its Russian and Iranian allies, collapsed after an eleven-day offensive led by rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, formally Jabhat al-Nusra). The reaction in Syria was generally positive.  Even among those most skeptical of the group’s Salafist ideology and jihadist origins (Jabhat al-Nusra had previously been part of al-Qaeda), there was also general relief after the end of Assad’s brutal rule. This also implied a certain openness to giving a chance to the group’s leader and now transitional president of Syria, al-Sharaa (formerly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani).

One of the biggest challenges of this new transitional government has been the disarmament and formal incorporation of regions, and communities, understood to be partially or completely outside state control. These include Sweida, the Kurdish-controlled territories of the northeast, and the Alawite communities in the coastal part of Syria.

Within Sweida, much of the military and religious leadership, including the other two sheikh al-aql, stressed cooperation with the new Syrian government. However, as negotiations over disarmament waxed and waned, Sheikh al-Hijri began echoing demands popular in Sweida, as well as among many Syrians, for a democratic, decentralized, and civic state. As time passed, these larger aspirations were disappointed. The National Dialogue Conference on February 24-25 was poorly planned, perhaps purposefully so, and failed to take opposition voices seriously into account. Even when it comes to elections for the new transitional parliament, the People’s Assembly of Syria, one-third of the seats will be appointed by President al-Sharaa himself, while the remaining two-thirds will be appointed by committees formed by the government.

The interim constitution unsurprisingly preserved and strengthened the Islamic references, in regards to Syria’s jurisprudence, of the previous constitution. Finally, the transitional government has repeated the mistake of countless past governments in the region by insisting on centralization in the name of national unity.

However, massacres on the Syrian coast between March 6 and 17 marked a decisive turning point. In response to a violent uprising by former elements of the Assad regime, the new Syrian military was sent in. Reports vary, yet according to figures from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), it is safe to say that over one thousand civilians were killed by government or government-affiliated forces.

The incident betrayed the government’s seeming inability to bring other Sunni militias operating alongside it under control — or worse, its own potential willingness to unleash sectarian violence as a means of domination. Further violence on the part of government-affiliated forces in the Druze neighborhood of Jaramana in the capital Damascus, as well as the mixed neighborhood of Achrafieh Sahnaya, only helped to confirm these suspicions.

A Massacre

The events that led directly to the massacre in Sweida can be traced to July 11 when a Druze fruit vendor was beaten and robbed by local Bedouins, prompting the Druze to detain a number of Bedouins, provoking a cycle of retaliatory kidnapping and clashes between armed factions in which many civilians from both sides were also killed. On July 14, government troops were sent in, ostensibly to bring the situation under control. Soon videos of sectarian crimes began to circulate, alongside news of villages being systematically burned and scores of civilians being executed by government-allied forces.

One man who was injured in the clashes, a political satirist and cartoonist opposed to most of the armed groups and religious authorities in Sweida, describes why he choose to bear arms. “When we realized that this had gone beyond clashes, and that civilians were being executed, I decided to go down as part of a convoy to evacuate women and children and I asked to borrow my friend’s rifle.” He made sure to emphasize, “When I went down, it was not as a Druze that I bore arms, but simply as someone defending myself and my community.”

On July 16, as casualties mounted, Israel launched several strikes on the Syrian Army headquarters as well as in front of the Syrian Presidential Palace, in the heart of Damascus. As the Syrian military began withdrawing from Sweida, on July 17, Bedouin attacks, most likely coordinated with government forces, were renewed with Bedouin forces mobilized throughout the country to participate in the fighting.

Fighting, also including government troops, and numerous Israeli air strikes, continued for another six days, until July 23. Though figures still remain very unclear, according to numbers published by the previously cited SOHR and SNHR, the total number dead stands at no less than 1,600 from all sides, while around 500 civilians from Sweida have been known to have been killed by members of the Syrian general security forces as well as affiliated militia groups, though the real number is almost certainly much higher.  More than 145,000 Druze and Bedouins have either been displaced or have fled; hundreds are missing.

Sweida is still armed, for the time being, and thus the main road between Damascus and Sweida remains closed, forcing travelers to take an alternative back road through Daraa province, more than doubling the necessary travel time. Though people are technically allowed to enter and exit the province, only internationally sourced humanitarian aid is permitted into Sweida. Either way there is little security, with travelers facing potential harassment at government sponsored checkpoints, and travelers as well as humanitarian convoys risking detainment or kidnapping along the way. There are today also around eighty missing women and children from Sweida, most likely being held by government or government-affiliated forces.

Israel and the Druze

The controversial and ambitious Sheikh al-Hijri quickly gained new publicity and notoriety in the period after Assad’s downfall. Supporters see him as a defender of the Druze people of Sweida as well as the rights of all those opposed to the new government, including other minorities as well as secular Syrians. However, according to many critics, including Druze ones, the ambitious Sheikh al-Hijri has attempted to leverage the discussions to impose himself as a dominant representative of Sweida and an important stakeholder in the central government. Some supporters of al-Sharaa’s government have gone further: they accuse him of being a traitor who is collaborating with Israel against the interests of the greater Syrian nation.

Sheikh al-Hijri has made garnering foreign support, particularly from Israel, a pillar of his overall strategy. He has also maintained a very close relationship with Muwaffaq Tarif, the sheikh al-aql of Israel’s Druze. After the massacre, al-Hijri has, more than once, publicly thanked Israel and the Druze of Israel in particular, for their help and solidarity.

Beyond satisfying the demands of its own Druze citizens, who make up an important part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel sees building influence among the Druze as a way to establish a zone of influence in southern Syria. This gives it a hand in future developments, impedes the development of a strong Syrian state, and opens the road to creeping annexation. Indeed, the Golan Heights is another territory with a large Druze population in southern Syria that Israel illegally occupied, and later annexed after the 1967 war, as is the southern Syrian province of Quneitra, much of which today is also effectively IDF-occupied.

Future Separatism?

Though the government resisted sharing power with Sheikh al-Hijri in their negotiations, their broader actions served to drive the community further into his arms. Whatever diversity of opinion there has been, the present government atrocities have had the effect of isolating many in Sweida from the rest of Syria, delegitimizing Sheikh al-Hijri’s critics in the eyes of some members of the community and, at least temporarily, increasing openness among some toward working with Israel.

As a local journalist put it, “Just days before the massacre, 80 percent of the people in Sweida were completely opposed to Israel. However, when there are corpses lying in the street, the instinct towards self-preservation is all that’s left. It’s a disaster.” In this context, Shiekh al-Hijri has tried to cement his rule over the territory, most recently announcing the creation of a National Guard that unifies most of the local armed factions under his leadership, while also declaring Sweida to be a “separate province,” an ambiguous term that leaves the door open to demands for full independence.

For now, the events in Sweida have served to increase fears among the Alawite, Christian, Kurdish, and Ismaili minorities — reviving the notion of isolated minorities facing a Sunni Arab majority. While the government has largely refrained, for now, from instituting Islamist rule in civilian life, the character of Syria’s armed forces and associated militias are a different matter.

Many battalions are made up of Sunnis, who were radicalized by the Assadists’ genocidal war, which targeted working-class Sunni communities for collective punishment. As a result, they now feel aggrieved and see other groups opposed to their hegemony (Druze, Alawites, Kurds), as enemies, not partners in the rebuilding of Syria. Al-Sharaa, while maintaining the trappings of an inclusive and accountable transitional government, has been more interested in maintaining the loyalty of his own base, while currying favor among regional and global powers to secure his political longevity.

The consolidation of power by foreign-backed sectarian actors needs to be resisted. The logic that sets Druze separatists against Salafist jihadists, or religious and ethnic minorities against a Sunni Arab majority — a trope long used by imperialist powers to dominate Syrian territory and by the Assad regime to maintain its decades of dictatorship — must be understood as a vision of Syria that is actively created by political forces. It is not an inherent feature of its makeup.

An alternative vision is still possible. On July 19, a protest in solidarity with Sweida, with the participation of individuals from different sects, was held in Damascus. Though it was swiftly broken up by plainclothes thugs, it is exactly the spirit represented in that demonstration that needs to be built upon. This is the democratic, civic, and progressive spirit of the 2011 revolution.

Upon taking power in December, al-Sharaa declared the revolution over, saying that its goals were now achieved. Indeed, many Syrians, devasted by years of war and repression are looking forward to stability, to rebuilding their country, and are full of hopes and ambitions for the future. However, what really happened in December is that a window for true change, one that demands real participation from all elements of Syrian society, finally opened.

It would seem that the revolution’s real work has only just begun.