Syria: Hope in ashes

L'Orient-Le Jour

2 days ago

On the morning of Sunday, July 20, after several sleepless hours — as has been the case for many nights now — I learned of the death of my great-uncle, Hayel Kontar.
Hayel was 82 years old. He had spent his life in Sweida, where he worked for the Red Crescent. An educated, cultured man, he was respected by all for his kindness and humanity. He was killed by Islamists of Syria's new regime, solely because he was Druze.
I have lost count of the deaths in my family. So far, the toll has already passed 15, and it is still impossible to know the true number of victims of this barbaric invasion launched against the Druze-majority province.
Sweida lies in devastation. Every town and village — about 30 — crossed by the army and militias linked to Damascus, has been set on fire. Residents who did not flee were massacred.
In my village, Dama, in the Lajah region, homes were looted, then torched one after another. One of the fighters even filmed the scene, posting a video in which he can be heard rejoicing: 'All the Druze houses in Dama are burning.'
The death toll remains impossible to determine. There is no water, electricity, fuel or functioning hospital. Sweida's main hospital is out of service. Corpses piled in body bags line the streets. The so-called "valiant" army of Sharaa looted supermarkets before setting them on fire.
The city has only a few days' worth of food left. Vehicles that were not stolen have been burned, making any movement nearly impossible. The ravaged towns have been abandoned, cut off from the world. Relief efforts cannot be coordinated. Residents organize however they can, discovering the horror as they gradually regain a foothold in the neighborhoods that had been occupied by government forces.
Among the atrocities recorded is the massacre of the family of Khaled Mazhar, head of the Evangelical Church of the Good Shepherd in Sweida. He, his brothers, their children — 20 people in all — were executed in their home.
Why this bloodbath?
Buoyed by the lifting of sanctions, and by the removal of his name from the U.S. terrorism list, the interim president wanted to assert his authority by brute force in Sweida, as he had in Idlib: by crushing all political and social forces. In talks with Israel for a peace treaty, and with his international legitimacy strengthened, he felt the time was ripe to bring the Druze province under control by force.
He exploited the recurrent tensions between Druze and Bedouins — tensions usually settled through mediation by local elders — to send his army on the pretext of intervention.
This tragedy reveals above all the mindset animating Syria's new rulers. To the new masters of Damascus and their supporters, who always refer to the Islamic era of the Umayyads, the minority's son, even if national and 'honorable,' is only a dhimmi, who should only speak to thank the wisdom of the regime that allows him to live on his land. But if he demands equal rights, then he becomes a traitor, a foreign agent.
This ideology comes through in statements by regime supporters: to them, the nation is synonymous with the Sunni majority. Minorities are merely tolerated, and this tolerance is presented as evidence of openness, even generosity. The current phase of the transitional regime is nothing more than a demand for forced allegiance (al-mubaayaa) to President Sharaa.
It is with this sectarian vision of Syria that Sharaa sent in his troops, made up exclusively of former Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists and rebel fighters once affiliated with Turkey, to invade Sweida. The bloodbath we're witnessing today was, unfortunately, predictable.
And why? To impose his power on a province whose sole wealth is its educated population and its diaspora. Sweida has neither oil nor gas nor vital infrastructure. All government offices are already under the authority of Damascus' ministries.
If residents refused the entry of security forces, it was because of the crimes committed on the coast last March against the Alawite minority, and the abuses suffered by the Druze in April and May, following the spread of a fake recording in which a Druze sheikh allegedly insulted the Prophet.
It was probably the impunity for these earlier massacres that convinced the interim president that the invasion of Sweida would provoke little reaction. But these events deeply shocked the entire Druze community, who no longer wished to see those with blood on their hands inside their province.
Upon arrival, regime troops targeted the men's beards and mustaches — an act of extreme humiliation — before massacring them. The trampling of Sultan Basha al-Atrash's portrait as troops entered Sweida is a powerful symbol. Al-Atrash, a hero of the Syrian revolt against the French mandate, embodies the Druze's belonging to the Syrian nation. By trampling this symbol, the new regime marks a rupture with post-independence Syria. They wish to rebuild a new Syrian identity fashioned after themselves: exclusive, homogeneous and authoritarian.
The regime and its supporters are in total denial regarding the massacre that occurred. They shift the blame onto Sheikh al-Hijri and onto abuses committed by certain Druze militias against the region's Bedouins, forgetting that there can be no equivalence between the crimes of militiamen and those, based on religious criteria, perpetrated by a regular army meant to protect all citizens.
Al-Hijri, a controversial Druze religious leader for his ties with Israeli Druze, has become the pretext for a widespread hate campaign against an entire community. From the regime's inner circle to influencers on social media, he is labeled a Zionist agent, a claim his accusers say justifies the subsequent massacres. The rupture is now total.
How can these wounds heal?
The gaping wounds inflicted on Syrian society by this invasion weigh heavily on me. Millions of us placed our hope in this transitional president, in the euphoria that followed Assad's downfall. Hope had swept across all Syrians, and I myself quickly called on the European Parliament to lift economic sanctions against the country. We wanted to open up to this new regime to heal the country's wounds and rebuild what Assad had destroyed. Nearly 14 years of struggle against tyranny led me, like many others, to extend a hand to the transitional president. The conclusion today is grim.
The interim president chose to stoke the most primal instincts of society, encouraging a communal war waged by Arab tribes against the Druze. Thursday, July 24, as the province of Sweida continued to agonize, Sharaa inaugurated projects as fanciful as they are unrealistic — like a media city estimated at $1.5 billion and an amusement park at $400 million — with a Saudi delegation, solely to make a starving population believe the future is bright.
How can those who experienced Assad's sieges of Homs, Aleppo or Deraa now use the same methods against other Syrians?
How could this government possibly heal a country wounded by 14 years of war, which Assad made sectarian, if it adopts these same mechanisms of division and hatred? Between 1,000 and 2,000 Syrians of all faiths have died in recent days. It's a national tragedy, just as the massacres on the coast were in March. Not acting accordingly is to plunge the country into a new cycle of violence.
It would take a miracle for hope to be reborn in Syria. A miracle in which the current president would renounce absolute power, and his clan's grip on the security, judicial and economic institutions. A miracle to establish a new social contract based on equal rights for all Syrians, regardless of religion or belief. A miracle that would make it possible to rebuild a Syrian identity that is inclusive, based on everyone's agreement. A miracle in which those in power would understand that decentralizing the country is not a betrayal, but a way to save Syria.
But is such a miracle possible? Is someone who sends his extremist troops to "liberate" a province from its inhabitants even capable of it?
The answer is in the question.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.