In Suwayda, Syria's Druze confront the pull of Israel
With its cannon pointed toward the desert horizon, an aging tank, hidden behind mounds of earth, awaited the enemy's approach. At the entrance to Suwayda Governorate, obstacles erected across the road from the outskirts of Damascus forced the few motorists traveling this route to slow down. About 10 heavily armed Druze militiamen nervously watched the comings and goings. Since the intercommunal violence that struck the Druze population from April 28 to 30 – leaving 134 dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – this region, the heartland of Syria's Druze community, had barricaded itself in anticipation.
Just a hundred meters away, the small hamlet of As Sawara Al Kubra, emptied of its inhabitants, bore the scars of the fighting. On Khaled Alaoui's terrace, the spring breeze that swept the arid hills and orchards of the country's south stirred up ashes. His three-story home was consumed by flames, after being looted and set alight amid the violence. "When they entered the village, they destroyed cars, looted houses and stole whatever they could – even the children's toys," Alaoui, a 40-year-old Druze businessman with light eyes and a graying beard, said indignantly.
Who are "they"? Radical "takfiri" and "Salafist" groups, he explained, who came to support local Bedouin who had stopped Druze militiamen from Suwayda trying to join their coreligionists in Damascus – with, according to him, the blessing of the Interior Ministry's security service. Many buildings were ransacked or destroyed, including the village's Druze shrine and the mausoleum of Issam Zahreddine – a former Druze commander in the Syrian national army, killed in 2017 by a landmine explosion. For Alaoui, it did not matter that Zahreddine had been a key figure in suppressing the Syrian opposition, the executioner of the Damascus suburbs and central Homs. The destruction of his tomb was nothing more than an "excuse" to "attack us," he said.
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