How Bedouin-Druze tensions are rattling Syria's Suweida

Suweida, Syria - For over a year before the dramatic collapse of the Assad regime last December, the people of Suweida - a Druze-majority region in southern Syria – had gathered in Al-Karama square, calling for the overthrow of the brutal dictatorship.

Very few believed it was a realistic possibility, and no one thought it was imminent.

Omar Al-Sabra was there. The 35-year-old Bedouin from the Al-Zubaid tribe stood arm in arm with his Druze compatriots, demanding their freedom. “It was a good time, we were unified,” he recounts.

“But now it's not so easy, tensions have emerged caused by troublemakers on the extremes,” he added.

“Blood has been spilled between our peoples. It is a problem created by a small minority, but now everyone is feeling this distrust.”

A spate of sectarian attacks against Druze communities in Damascus’ suburbs has heightened tensions between Druze and Bedouin in southern Syria. The Bedouin community make up only 3% of the population in Suweida, a small minority compared to the Druze, who constitute over 90%.

In modern Syria, the “vast majority of Bedouin are settled,” says Dawn Chatty, an emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

“There’s still this notion that if you’re not moving around in the desert, you’re not Bedouin. Today, being Bedouin is a form of self-identification, characterised by segmented bonds of kinship.”

Following the attacks in Damascus, several violent incidents between the two communities have occurred in Suweida, which members of both blame on outsiders.

“Historically, tensions have frequently erupted due to competing land patterns between Bedouin pastoralism and Druze agriculturalism,” Haian Dukhan, a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Teesside University, tells The New Arab.

“However, these groups have also coexisted for long periods due to the mutual benefit of trade, shared security arrangements, and intercommunal respect.”

Since the fall of the regime, local authorities in the region have signed an agreement with the new government in Damascus that limits the role of external security forces whilst setting out a long-term aim of integrating local Druze factions into the state.

As a result, the Druze’s most powerful faction - the Men of Dignity - have become the region’s primary security providers.

For Sheikh Qassem Mazlouma, the commander of a division of the Men of Dignity, their autonomy is necessary to protect the rights of the Druze minority.

“We have seen what happened in the Sahel and Sahnaya,” he explained, referencing the two most high-profile incidents of sectarian violence against Alawites and Druze, respectively. “We are here to protect our people, so any external armed factions are prohibited from our land.”

Yet many Bedouin feel increasingly under suspicion from their Druze neighbours and face growing prejudice.

“I’ve been exposed to racism many times,” explains Omar. “It used to happen, but in a less significant way, we are now facing a new form of prejudice.”

Since the fall of the regime, Druze militias have dramatically increased their security operations in the region. Trucks mounted with heavy machine guns frequently patrol the neighbourhoods of Suweida city, and checkpoints have cropped up along most major roads.

The checkpoints have become a particular source of anxiety for many Bedouin. “Once they see I’m Bedouin, they ask where I'm from, what I'm doing, who I know here," Omar told The New Arab.

“When I tell them I’m from Sahba [a local village], they don’t believe me and demand I call someone to verify my identity. They take our phones and search through them looking for proof we are bad guys.”

Many Bedouin have stopped entering the city limits altogether as a result. For Abu Qutaiba, these checkpoints have created “a new border as if Suweida is now a completely different state,” he said.

“I think things have gone beyond racism; we genuinely fear for our lives if we go to Suweida city. We no longer send our ill to the hospital there. We have stopped sending our kids to school in the city due to the danger,” bemoans Abu Qutaiba.

Abu Qutaiba’s village of Al-Dara was caught up in a spate of communal violence after individuals, most likely from the neighbouring province of Daraa, launched rockets from a nearby hill against the neighbouring Druze village of Al-Thaala.

The Men of Dignity responded with a rocket barrage on Al-Dara directly. “Whenever there is a problem in this region, we always get blamed, and we always have to pay the price,” laments Abu Qutaiba.

The Men of Dignity refuse to enter Al-Dara for fear that their presence could trigger further sectarian violence. As a result, the community exists in a pseudo-lawless zone at the edge of the province, whose western border remains porous to criminal groups entering from Daraa.

“A lot of the problems are coming from the town of Al-Lajha in Daraa. The situation in the town is really bad, it is overrun with criminal groups involved in drug smuggling, robberies and kidnapping,” argues Omar. “They just come to stir sectarianism.”

Yet the reality is that many Bedouin, economically and socially marginalised, are forced to turn to crime out of desperation - sometimes with tragic consequences.

Ali Said snuck into the abandoned military airfield that borders his village of Shaqqa under the cover of night. He came, alongside seven other members of his tribe, to steal and sell for scrap old water pipes from the base.

However, within metres of entering the base, an explosion ripped through the group, injuring four and killing three others, including Ali’s youngest brother. The airfield was mined.

“I don’t know what happened, it was all so sudden, and I don't even remember seeing the explosion, he rasps, wrapped in bandages, his face bruised and bloody. His mother cuts in. “I also lost my youngest son, he had four children,” she laments. “We just use this work to try and survive, what else can we do?”

According to Haian Dukhan, “the lack of meaningful development initiatives by the state under the former regime has only served to entrench this marginalisation”. A phenomenon that some tribal leaders are seeking to redress in this new era of Syria’s history.

In a lavish office in Damascus’ upmarket neighbourhood of Kfar Sousa sits Sheikh Rakan Khaled Al-Khair, the leader of the Al-Zubaid tribe.

A prominent businessman and former leader of a southern Bedouin alliance aligned with the opposition, he has now returned to Syria to represent the interests of the southern Bedouin in the new government’s Shura Council - an important advisory body that helps shape government policy.

“We are working to maintain good relations with everyone, the new government and the Druze. My relationship with Sheikh Hikmat [the Druze spiritual leader] is also very good.”

Tribal leaders like Sheikh Rakan “play a key role in negotiating and arbitrating conflict and competing interests between individuals and tribes, but most importantly with the state”, says Dawn Chatty.

In Suweida, Sheikh Rakan is working to maintain stability, channelling his authority through respected members of his tribe like Omar Al-Sabra.

Omar refers to himself as a “social peacemaker”. He maintains close contacts with prominent political and military figures in both communities to act as a go-between to defuse tensions. “I work to connect both perspectives, to help us understand each other and find mutual solutions to our problems,” he explains.

“The vast majority of the communities want peace; it is only a small minority that is causing trouble,” he asserts.

“The solution now requires something stronger than dialogue. We need the leading sheikhs on both sides to come together and make a sacred commitment to keeping the peace on all sides.”

Cian Ward is a journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, migration, and humanitarian issues

Follow him on X: @CP__Ward