By Fabio Bosco
On July 11, a group of Bedouins [1] attacked a vegetable merchant traveling on the road between the city of Sweida [2] and the Syrian capital, Damascus. The merchant was assaulted, and his merchandise was stolen.
The next day, Druze militiamen [3] kidnapped eight Bedouins, who then kidnapped five Druze in retaliation. The situation deteriorated further with more kidnappings and exchanges of gunfire in Sweida and the surrounding area [4].
On July 14, national government security and military forces intervened, arguing that they were restoring public order. The intervention was a political disaster. Druze militias resisted, and the number of casualties increased, along with other human rights violations committed by all sides, including local militias (Druze and Bedouin) and national government forces. The intervention demonstrated the continued presence of sectarian Salafists within the security forces, contributing to the climate of war between communities.
On July 16, the Israeli army bombed government forces in Sweida, as well as the Syrian Ministry of Defense and the Presidential Palace in Damascus. They claimed to be defending the Druze population. Additionally, around 1,000 Druze living in Palestine and Israeli-occupied Syria entered unoccupied Syrian territory to support the Druze militias.
The same day, the national government reiterated the ceasefire agreement with local Druze leaders who are not hostile to Damascus. The government then ceded control of the region to the leaders and withdrew all national forces by midnight.
Despite the withdrawal of national forces, the local conflict continues. According to the London-based NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, there have been more than 500 deaths since the July 11, most of whom were fighters from local and national forces. However, 154 of the deaths were civilians, 83 of whom were summarily executed by government forces.
Druze and Bedouins are fighting over land
The province of Sweida, located in southern Syria on the border with Jordan, has always been neglected by national governments. Agriculture is its main economic activity, but during the final years of Assad’s dictatorship, the smuggling of a synthetic drug called Captagon gained momentum. The majority of the population is Druze, a religion that originated from the Shiite and Ismaili branches. There are also six large Bedouin tribes, some Muslim and some Christian.
Conflicts between these communities predate the fall of the regime, and resolving them depends on guaranteeing access to land for all through agrarian reform and incentives for agricultural production. Additionally, those involved in acts of revenge must be tried and punished, and militias linked to drug trafficking must be disarmed.
Any agrarian reform will face opposition from large landowners, whether Druze or Bedouin, as well as from militias involved in trafficking and smuggling along the border. Thus far, the national government has not taken a position in favor of agrarian reform.
The success of agrarian reform depends on poor peasants, whether Druze or Bedouin, joining forces with urban workers and youth.
Druze Zionism?
The Druze community in Syria is divided over Damascus and Israel. Some important religious leaders, such as Sheikh Youssef Jaboua, advocate full integration into the new Syria and oppose any Israeli interference. Conversely, Sheikh Hekmat al-Hijri and the Military Council of Sweida, which unites 160 militias, oppose Damascus and are allied with the Zionist state.
In April, Sheikh al-Hijri called for foreign intervention in Syria. He now opposes the national government’s intervention in Sweida and advocates normalizing relations with Israel. He claims that “the enemy is not in Israel; it is in Damascus” and supports Israeli attacks. His position is a minority view among the Druze, but the national government’s disastrous intervention in Sweida has increased al-Hijri’s popularity. Videos circulating on the internet show an Israeli flag alongside Druze flags.
This stance has earned Sheikh al-Hijri the nickname “the Syrian Antoine Lahd.” Lahd led the infamous “South Lebanon Army,” a militia financed and armed by Israel. The militia operated and occupied southern Lebanon from 1975 until 2000, when Israeli troops were expelled from Lebanon, and Lahd fled to Israel. Lahd collaborated with the Israeli occupation and aggression against Lebanon, and he was tried as a traitor by Lebanese courts [5].
Outside of Syria, the Druze community is also divided. In Lebanon, the main Druze leader, Walid Jumblat, expresses an anti-Israel stance. In occupied Palestine, however, some 150,000 Druze hold Israeli citizenship and serve in the Zionist armed forces, the IDF. Some 26,000 Syrian Druze remain in the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in 1967. The vast majority reject Israeli citizenship and assert their Syrian citizenship under occupation.
On July 16, amid the conflicts in Sweida, approximately 1,000 armed and unarmed Druze entered Syrian territory to support their fellow Druze. There is no information confirming whether the majority were Zionists or Syrians living in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israel and the partition of Syria
Since 1974, the State of Israel had a non-aggression agreement with the Assad dictatorship. In practice, Assad protected the Israeli border from anti-Zionist actions. Furthermore, there are indications that Assad provided the Israelis with information about the location of weapons depots and convoys on Syrian territory. This is why the State of Israel did not support Assad’s fall.
After his fall, Israel realized that rebuilding Syria would lead to Zionist atrocities in the future. This explains why Israel destroyed all Syrian weapons depots, as well as air bases and intelligence service buildings. Israel also pressured the United States to maintain sanctions against Syria and to keep troops in the northeast of the country. This would promote a partition of Syria into zones of Israeli (south), U.S. (northeast), and Russian (coast) influence.
However, under pressure from his Saudi and Turkish allies, Trump withdrew the sanctions, reduced troops, and did not give Israel the green light to proceed with the partition plan. He also advised Israel to negotiate with Syria to normalize relations. This does not mean that Trump disagrees with Israel’s ambitions to become the sole regional power to which all countries must submit and take Arab lands in accordance with its interests.
In these negotiations, the Syrian government sought to resume the non-aggression commitments signed by Assad in 1974. Israel, on the other hand, wants Damascus to surrender the Golan Heights, demilitarize the south of the country, allow Israeli attacks on Syrian territory, and open an Israeli office in Damascus.
With no agreement reached, Israel bombed Sweida and Damascus on July 16. Its goal remains to divide Syria by separating the south and northeast with the support of the Druze and Kurds.
Despite opposition from all regional governments to Israeli aggression, no one is doing more than engaging in diplomacy. This week, Turkey, one of the main allies of the new Syrian government, expressed its reluctance to support any military confrontation with Israel through its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan [6].
Mahdi Amel is against the sectarian state
The Israeli plan to divide Syria into small protectorates is a classic colonialist strategy. Emperor Julius Caesar used it to dominate the Welsh, and British imperialism used it to colonize India.
In the region, French imperialism used it to divide Lebanon from Syria. Then, to maintain its hegemony, France implanted the confessional system of government, which relates to religious sects. In this system, each individual is represented by the leaders of their religious sect. Lebanese bourgeois leader Michel Chiha theorized on this issue, claiming that there are no social classes in Lebanon, only religious sects.
Mahdi Amel, a leading Arab Marxist intellectual and member of the Lebanese Communist Party, criticized Chiha’s position. Amel pointed out that dividing the Lebanese people into religious sects is not “natural,” but rather a historical construct that maintains colonialist and bourgeois domination over the working class. Amel believed that the working class should reject intra-confessional class conciliation and fight against the sectarian state through socialist revolution.
In agreement with Amel, Syrian journalist Victorios Shams wrote: “What is happening today in Syria and in the countries of the ‘Arab Spring’ is similar in some respects to what Lebanon achieved after many years of civil war. In other words, capitalism is working to reproduce history in a way that guarantees the continuity of its interests. “That is why, in Syria and those countries, the issue of division along confessional, tribal, and other lines is urgently being fueled against the backdrop of brutal capitalist wars with exorbitant human costs. This fragmentation of the peoples of the region prevents their unity and development into political forces that can tip the balance and end existing colonial-comprador regimes” [7].
A sectarian state model based on religious identity will not serve the interests of the Syrian working class. On the contrary, it will only reinforce their domination and must therefore be opposed.
A constituent assembly with free elections should decide the future of the country
The conflicts in Sweida demonstrate that a Damascus dictatorship is not a solution and contradicts the objectives of the Syrian revolution. The sectarian state model in Lebanon (and Iraq) is not a solution either.
The formula to guarantee Syria’s territorial integrity against foreign interference and establish the relationship between the government and the national parliament and the 14 provinces must be decided democratically by a Constituent Assembly with free elections.
The constitutional declaration made by interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa on March 13, 2025, was neither discussed nor decided by the population.
It is urgent for a constituent assembly to legalize all parties that agree with the aims of the revolution and call for elections this year.
Revolutionaries must unite to establish a revolutionary party based on the working class and win the support of the working class for the independent organization of the bourgeoisie. This includes the self-defense of every neighborhood and city against Israeli aggression and sectarian violence, wherever it comes from.
Israel out! Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
Another issue for the Constituent Assembly is prohibiting the transfer of any Syrian territory to the State of Israel.
It is important to note that, parallel to the Constituent Assembly, the State of Israel will be a permanent obstacle for Syria. Israel does not honor agreements, and the only solution to Israeli aggression is to end the genocidal state.
Therefore, it is crucial that the Syrian government start creating conditions to confront Israel, such as arming itself or forming alliances with the Palestinian resistance and other regional countries.
There is no trust in the Syrian government. For the independent self-organization of workers!
It is necessary to immediately combat sectarian violence. The conflict in Sweida follows the massacres on the coast, when security forces clashed with Assadist militias, killing hundreds of Alawite civilians, as well as the events in Jaramana and Sahnaya in Damascus.
Ahmed al-Sharaa established a commission to investigate the massacres on the coast, but it has not yet presented a report. The commission’s findings must be made public, and all those responsible for human rights violations must be punished. All sectarian Salafists must be expelled from the security forces.
The same must be done in Sweida: an independent commission of inquiry must be established, and all those responsible for human rights violations must be punished, starting with the security forces and the army.
However, there is no guarantee that al-Sharaa will expel Salafists from the security forces and army or punish those involved in human rights violations.
Al-Sharaa seeks to rebuild a bourgeois state, and these Salafist sectarian groups may be useful to him.
This is why promoting the independent organization of the working class in workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods is crucial. The working class is the main victim of sectarian violence and therefore has an interest in combating it.
Notes:
[1] Nomadic Arab peoples inhabited the deserts of the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa. They spread throughout these regions during the Arab conquests of the seventh century. ↩
[2] This city, located in southern Syria, is considered the “capital” of the Druze people in that country.
[3] The Druze are an esoteric, ethno-religious group of Arabic speakers who originated in the Middle East or Western Asia.
[4] https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1469872/what-we-know-about-the-atrocities-committed-in-sweida.html
[5] https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1469652/enemy-or-not-southern-syrians-torn-over-israel.html
[6] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-doesnt-have-many-options-against-israel-syria
[7] https://litci.org/pt/2021/07/09/64412-2/
