Key players in Syria's latest eruption of violence, from the Druze and Bedouin to government forces

Winnipeg Free Press

17-07-2025

BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes that shook southern Syria this week killed hundreds of people, including civilians, and drew in an array of local and international players, harking back to the dynamics of the country's yearslong civil war.
The violence underscored the difficulties facing the Syrian new government struggling to consolidate control over the country, months after Islamist-led insurgents ousted longtime autocrat Bashar Assad in a lightning offensive last December.
Some key players and alliances in Syria are different now than during the civil war, but the landscape remains complex.
Here's a look at the main parties in the four days of violence in Sweida province before a ceasefire mediated by the United States, Turkey and Arab countries took effect. The truce mostly held on Thursday, though scattered violence was reported.
The government
Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa leads the new government and is Syria's international face. His Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, once an al-Qaida affiliate that later split from it, spearheaded the anti-Assad charge.
Since taking power, al-Sharaa has taken a more moderate tone, preached coexistence and formed diplomatic ties with Western countries, including the U.S.
His government has faced suspicion from minority communities — including Assad's Alawite sect, Christians, Syrian Kurds and the Druze — and there have been outbreaks of sectarian violence. Damascus also struggles to turn a patchwork of former rebel groups — including some extremists — into a professional army.
In Sweida, al-Sharaa's government forces intervened in clashes that started between local Bedouin tribes and Druze militias, but ended up themselves clashing with the Druze, drawing Israeli airstrikes, purportedly in defense of the Druze. Some government fighters allegedly killed Druze civilians, and looted and burned houses.
The Druze
The Druze sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Others mostly live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
During Syria's civil war, the Druze were split between supporting Assad, who offered them a degree of autonomy and exemption from army conscription, and his opposition. They established their own militias, partly to defend against Islamic militants who consider them heretics.
Until this week's clashes, the Druze were split between those who wanted to integrate with the new government and those seeking to maintain autonomy.
The Bedouins
While predominantly Druze, Sweida is also home to Bedouin tribes who are Sunni Muslim and who have on occasion clashed with the Druze.
In 2000, unrest broke out after a Bedouin killed a Druze man in a land dispute. Assad's forces intervened, shooting Druze protesters. After a 2018 Islamic State group attack on the Druze in Sweida that killed more than 200 people, the Druze accused the Bedouins of helping the militants.
The latest escalation began with a Bedouin tribe in Sweida setting up a checkpoint and attacking and robbing a Druze man, which triggered tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
Al-Sharaa's forces then intervened, ostensibly to restore calm, but sided with the Bedouins. Some Druze groups allegedly carried out revenge attacks against Bedouins after a ceasefire was reached.
Israel
Israel frequently launched strikes on Iranian and Iran-backed forces who were Assad's allies during Syria's civil war. Since Assad's fall, Israel has been suspicious of the new Islamist authorities in Damascus.
Israeli forces seized have control of a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in Syria and carried out airstrikes on military sites in what officials they was a move to create a demilitarized zone south of Damascus.
Washington has been pushing for Syria and Israel to move toward normalizing relations. Syrian officials have acknowledged holding indirect talks with Israel to defuse tensions.
Israel stepped up its intervention during the Sweida escalation this week, saying it was acting to protect the Druze, who are seen as a loyal minority in Israel and often serve in the military. Israel launched dozens of airstrikes on convoys of Syrian forces around Sweida and struck the headquarters of the Syrian Ministry of Defense in the heart of Damascus.
The U.S.
In a watershed moment, President Donald Trump met with al-Sharaa during a visit to Saudi Arabia in May, a major boost from Washington as the new Damascus authorities try to consolidate control.
Amid the Sweida violence, the U.S., which has been pushing to broker ties between Syria and Israel, launched a flurry of diplomacy to push for a ceasefire.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. was 'very worried' about the violence, describing it as a 'direct threat to efforts to help build a peaceful and stable Syria,' and added that Washington was in 'repeated and constant talks with the governments of Syria and Israel' to deescalate.
Turkey
Turkey, an ally of both the U.S. and al-Sharaa's government, was also part of the mediation efforts over Sweida.
Ankara wants a strong state in Damascus and is primarily concerned with curtailing the influence of Kurdish groups in Syria along the border with Turkey — specifically, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
While the Kurdish SDF fighters are allied with the U.S. and were key in defeating the Islamic State militants, Ankara considers them terrorists because of their association with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey.
The Kurdish-led forces
The Kurdish-led SDF controls much of northeast Syria and was not part of the Sweida violence. But its fighters have in the past clashed with Turkish-backed groups that are now part of the new Syrian government forces.
In March, the SDF and Damascus signed a landmark deal — backed by Washington — under which the Kurdish-led forces would merge with the new Syrian national army. The deal also said Syria's border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, as well as airports and oil fields in the northeast that are now under the SDF control would be turned over to the central government.
But the details of the deal were left vague, and the two sides have been at odds over how to implement it. The Sweida escalation could further sideline those discussions.