The southern Syrian town of Suwayda is like a base under siege.
The first checkpoint is 10 miles away. Drivers must navigate five more, further down the road, each staffed by a different militia group, though all fly the multicolor flag of Syria’s Druze community.
Large earthen berms force vehicles to swerve in a zigzag; at one checkpoint, an aging battle tank sits at the ready, its cannon pointing at surrounding Sunni Bedouin towns.
Why We Wrote This
Syria’s Druze community, important to the country’s prospects for peace, is deeply divided among those wanting to work with the government, those seeking autonomy, and others looking for outside aid. These differences will have to be resolved if Syria is to prosper.
Syria’s Druze community, the least impacted by the country’s 14-year civil war, and one of the last to enjoy postwar peace, is also finding itself increasingly isolated from the new Syria, and increasingly divided.
“The state has proven unable to protect us,” says Sheikh Qaydar al-Mirea, a senior member of the community in Suwayda. “We will not attack anybody, but we insist on keeping our arms because we will defend ourselves.”
The majority of Suwayda’s residents are Druze, an Arabic-speaking religious minority found across the Levant. In Syria, they number some 700,000 out of a population of more than 25 million.
Facing harassment and even death threats, confronting high unemployment, and deeply skeptical of the country’s new Sunni Islamist leadership, some Druze have begun to call for self-rule, international protection, or even alignment with neighboring Israel.
Unresolved, Druze grievances threaten to undermine the Damascus government’s ability to preserve internal peace, engage a suspicious Israel, and prove itself a stable regional partner.
Calls for self-rule
The Druze faith, an offshoot of Shia Islam that incorporates Judaic, Christian, and Eastern philosophies, preaches loyalty to the community and whichever state they belong to – wherever that may be.
The Druze play vital roles in political and military institutions in neighboring Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. In Syria, the community played a key part in securing the country’s independence from France in 1946.
Yet in modern Syria, where the political, security, and judicial institutions are being reformed in a five-year transition following the fall of autocratic President Bashar al-Assad, their place is unclear.
Syria’s Druze are divided over whether they should partner with the interim government in Damascus, pressure it for concessions, or threaten to secede.
Mistrust of Damascus has been inflamed by recent attacks on Druze by Islamist militias nominally aligned with the government. The violence broke out over a video of a man, alleged to be Druze, insulting the prophet Muhammad.
Clashes in April saw the killing of 27 Druze men in Suwayda and Jaramana and led to Israeli airstrikes targeting “extremists.”
Emerging as the Druze leader of the opposition to the Syrian government is Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, one of three holy men revered by Syrian Druze.
The Suwayda-based Mr. Hijri, who commands strong popular support and a militia, has called for international intervention to protect Syria’s Druze and has welcomed Israeli help.
“If the government won’t include us or protect us, then we demand self-rule and international protection,” says Mr. Mirea, a spokesperson for Mr. Hijri.
“We don’t want to join Israel; we want to reconcile with the government in a federal arrangement,” says Mr. Mirea. “Only if that doesn’t work out will we turn to Israel.”
Druze divisions
Some Druze factions, which are divided by both ideology and clan, support working with Damascus and are competing for influence with Mr. Hijri.
“Who are you to ask for self-rule?” Salam Nabwani, a veteran Druze women’s activist, asks rhetoricially of Mr. Hijri. “You are not a decision-maker, and you were not elected by us.”
Ms. Nabwani, like many Druze, finds herself caught in a power struggle between a former jihadist president in Damascus and Mr. Hijri in Suwayda.
“We are trying to distance ourselves from the language of religion and guns,” she says. “Civil society is fighting on two fronts at once for a democratic, civil state.”
Although working with the government has become taboo for many Syrian Druze, Ms. Nabwani takes a more nuanced view. “I disagree with the government but I want the state to succeed,” she says. “We all should.”
For his part, President Ahmed al-Sharaa appears to be holding out an olive branch. “Syria’s Druze are not pawns,” he stressed in a recent interview with the Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal. “They are citizens, deeply rooted, historically loyal and deserving of every protection under the law. Their safety is non-negotiable.”
Some Druze fear that outside forces, such as supporters of former President al-Assad, Russia, and perhaps Israel, are stoking divisions within their community.
“What we as Druze are doing now is not in our interests nor in the interests of Syria, they are the interests of outside powers,” charges Hassan, who works for an international organization and does not want to give his full name. “We must put our religious affiliations aside and move the country forward.”
Yet Omar, a university student who, like many, recently dropped out of class and returned to Suwayda after being threatened for his Druze faith, says that the promised safety has not materialized. If it had, he says, there wouldn’t be demands for international protection.
“The ideal is to receive all rights and freedoms and take part in the government,” says Omar, who withheld his last name. “None of these militias represent me.”
Way forward?
To calm tensions, Damascus and local Druze leaders in Suwayda reached a security agreement in early May. It would put the town’s security and judicial police entirely in local hands, reactivate Syrian government institutions in the province, and confiscate unlicensed weapons.
During a Monitor correspondent’s visit in late May, the agreement had yet to be applied.
This has left the Syrian government unable to reassert control in Suwayda, and has frustrated its efforts to stamp out the Assad regime’s illicit drug trade. Drugs are now reportedly flowing from Suwayda into Jordan.
Mr. Hijri’s call for international involvement, meanwhile, appears to be a long shot.
Neighboring Jordan is working to strengthen the Damascus government and is wary of drug smuggling from Suwayda.
The Israeli government has made gestures, such as allowing hundreds of Druze clerics to visit the Shrine of Shuaib, or Jethro, in the Lower Galilee, last April. And Einav Halabi, a veteran Israeli Druze journalist with Israeli outlets Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth, says senior Israeli security officials “have already expressed a willingness to assist the Druze in Syria” if the Sharaa government were to act in support of militia threats against the community.
“Israel cannot and will not remain passive in the face of such developments,” she adds.
But Suwayda and the Israeli-occupied Golan are separated by 50 miles of Syrian territory inhabited by 2 million Sunnis.
Suwayda residents worry that internal Druze differences are complicating the community’s chances of settling Druze relations with broader Syrian society.
“We Syrians need to know each other and end this fear of the other,” says Hassan. “Otherwise this blind loyalty to small groups will remain. And we will all suffer.”
