The Druze under attack

Telegraph

3 days ago

While the usual pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through London on Saturday preaching hatred of Israel, another group was staging a less prominent gathering in the capital.
Dozens of Syrians from minority communities took part in a rally calling for action to protect the Druze in their Sweida heartland in the south of the country, where sectarian violence has killed hundreds. Around 80 protesters chanted 'Stop supporting Jolani.' This was a reference to the nom de guerre of the Syrian interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. His Islamist group, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took over in Damascus late last year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Yet despite pledges to abandon the hard-line fundamentalism previously espoused by Islamic State and other bodies, the new government is showing it is every bit as intolerant.The Druze minority are not the first to be targeted but their experience is especially grim. They fear their small community is being set up for ethnic cleansing and other minorities will suffer the same fate.
Israel, which harbours some Druze communities in the Golan, have become involved, bombing Syrian positions while the US fears the violence will wreck its efforts to bring peace to the region. Several attempts to impose a ceasefire have so far failed.
Western nations, including the UK, have invested a great deal of political and diplomatic capital in propping up the new regime in Damascus and will be reluctant to admit this might be a mistake.
HTS was founded as an affiliate of al-Qaeda and continues to espouse its Salafi-jihadist ideology. Their efforts to present a secular, non-threatening front to the rest of the world is in danger of falling apart amid the bloodshed of Sweida.