Fighting between the Druze population in Syria’s Suwayda Governorate and local Bedouin tribes continues to escalate after breaking out Sunday in the Suwayda neighborhood of Maqus. The most recent figures suggest at least 89 people have been killed in the fighting as of Monday, and around 200 others wounded.
Though the fighting was confined to just a single neighborhood, one with a large Bedouin population in the most Druze city, it didn’t stay there for long. More recent reports suggest fighting has extended west to the towns of al-Tha’lah and Kanakir.
The fighting appears to have begun with tit for tat kidnappings. It’s not clear who actually started it, though both sides are citing it as an excuse for the fighting erupting. Local Bedouins within Maqus called on neighboring Bedouin tribes to help them, pointing to the kidnappings, and armed Druze factions from the surrounding area also flooded into the city.
Vehicles patrol the outskirts of Suwayda | Image from SOHR
Then the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) government’s forces arrived. The HTS largely has no full-time presence in Suwayda, and has delegated the governorate to a Druze governor. Reports are that security forces arriving in Suwayda came from Homs and Damascus, and were fighting on the side of the Bedouins. At least 14 HTS security forces were reported killed.
Beyond that, reports suggest that around 50 locals were killed, along with 18 Bedouins from the surrounding area, and 7 other fighters in military uniforms who as of yet remain totally unidentified. Two women and two children were also slain in the chaos.
HTS officials called for “restraint” and suggested that the troops they deployed were there to ensure the safety of corridors for the evacuation of civilians, though it appears that they are actively participating in the fighting.
A Suwayda armed faction claimed to reporters that a prisoner exchange was going to take place on Monday, though this has not been confirmed and for now, the situation appears to continue to worsen.
This is the first large fighting involving Syria’s Druze since late April and early May, when an audio recording which was claimed to be a Druze local went viral online. The recording was seen as blasphemous by Sunni, and while it was never conclusively proven where it came from, it led to a lot of violent attacks and eventually full-scale fighting in the area.
Though the Islamist HTS has presented itself as intending to create a fully inclusive government in Syria since seizing power in December, there have been myriad cases of violence against religious minorities across the country, and in many cases HTS-affiliated forces have participated in the violence.
