Sweida running out of supplies under Syrian government siege
Israeli strikes and US diplomatic efforts have curbed an offensive by the government and allied militias on the heartland of the Druze minority, particularly Sweida city, the provincial capital, which is near Jordan.
However, meagre supplies have kept up pressure on the area, which has resisted being placed under the control of the new central authorities, which are drawn from Syria's Sunni majority, although the Syrian Red Crescent has sent three aid convoys from Damascus.
Syria's Information Minister Hamza Mustafa said that 'humanitarian aid heading to Sweida has not stopped', and pinned the blame on 'an outlaw group who wants to exploit the suffering of people for its separatist goals'. He was referring to the Druze spiritual leadership, which has coalesced in recent weeks under Sheikh Hikmat Al Hijri.
The conflict in Sweida is the latest pitting the government against Syria's minorities since Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, a splinter group from Al Qaeda, ousted the dictator Bashar Al Assad in December. In March, hundreds of civilians were killed in a campaign against the coastal Alawite heartland. Tensions with Kurds in northern and eastern Syria are also high.
Suhail Thebian, a civil figure in Sweida, told The National that, in addition to the almost complete absence of electricity, there has been no water for days because the attacking forces blew up the water wells in the nearby area of Thaala, on which Sweida city depends.
'Remaining wells are not functioning because there is no diesel to operate them. There is no flour either,' he said. He pointed to the destruction of a major mill north of Sweida, an area where government attacks have not stopped, and the near halting of supplies from Damascus.
'As far medicine, what can I tell you? There is none.' Mr Thebian said that even if the government reactivates energy supply to Sweida, its forces surrounding the city have been attacking the high voltage lines, making electricity a rarity.
'Don't forget that baby milk has long run out. The shops are empty or have been looted,' Mr Thebian said. At Sweida National Hospital, a doctor who gave his name as Khaldoun said that 'serums, painkillers, surgical thread, antibiotics, are critically low. We need all this to operate. There is nothing left to treat bone wounds, my speciality,' he said.
A Syrian Red Crescent official said a convoy with 1,000 food baskets as well as 200 tonnes of food should enter Sweida on Monday, the third such convoy since clashes subsided last week. On Thursday a convoy with 30,000 litres of fuel arrived in the besieged city. 'The priority is to keep the main hospital (Sweida National) in service,' he said.
The official said 4,000 baskets for use by the displaced, containing household disinfectants, nylon separation barriers and other items to cope with minimal shelter, were also sent to Sweida on Monday. The aid also included a consignment of medicine, he said.
The area came under several attacks by the government, starting on June 11, days after talks failed between the central authorities and Mr Al Hijri on admitting security forces into Sweida. The government sent in tanks and troops anyway, after clashes broke out between Druze and Sunni residents of Sweida on June 9, following the kidnapping of a Druze trader on a government-controlled road north of the city.
A source in Jordan said that Syrian government forces had entered more than a dozen strategically important villages in the west and north of the city. This has deprived hundreds of thousands of Sweida residents of access to Damascus, and to the nearby province of Deraa, birthplace of the 2011 Syrian revolt. East of Sweida lies the Syriac desert, leading effectively to nowhere.
In the 1950s, the Syrian government closed a crucial southern border crossing between Jordan and Sweida, part of attempts to to pressure the Druze to be subservient to Damascus.
'By waging this war, and now this crisis in food, water and medicine, Al Jawlani has struck the death knell in Syria's national unity,' said Mr Thebian, using the former nom de guerre of President Ahmad Al Shara.
'Sweida was the conscience of Syria,' Mr Thebian said, referring to a civil disobedience movement waged by the Druze against Mr Al Assad in the last year and a half of his rule. 'I don't think it will continue this way.'
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