sectarian

The flare-up of violence in Syria’s southern province of Suwayda in July has once again raised fears that the country may slip back into conflict. Media headlines were quick to paint this as another episode in the region’s longstanding “sectarian strife” between Druze and Sunni Bedouin communities. But such framing obscures more than it reveals.

The reality is more complex. While sectarian identities have been invoked during periods of tension, the root causes of this conflict lie elsewhere: in historical disputes over land and pastures, in competition over smuggling routes and state patronage, and in economic collapse exacerbated by prolonged drought and climate change. To reduce this flare-up to a matter of religious hatred is to erase the deeper political ecology and social history of the region and obfuscate ways to resolve tensions.

Druze migration

In the 18th century, the Druze began migrating to Jabal al-Arab, a mountainous region in what was then the Hauran Sanjak of the Ottoman Empire, as a result of contestations among the various Druze tribes in Mount Lebanon. They established villages, cultivated land, and eventually asserted political and military dominance in the region.

The Druze saw their settlement of the area as reclaiming barren terrain — a land they described in their oral tradition as “empty”. But this narrative has been deeply contested by the Bedouin herding communities, who had a presence in the region centuries earlier.

The Bedouin were a mobile society and did not establish permanent settlements; they used the land seasonally to graze their herds, navigating ancient migration routes and relying on water sources that could not be owned privately. To them, these were not vacant spaces but ancestral landscapes, and the Druze tribes were the newcomers.

This inevitably led to conflict. Skirmishes over pasture rights, access to wells, and control of borderlands were a recurring feature of the region’s social fabric. Historical accounts refer to these confrontations as ghazawat — tribal raids and counterraids that were as much about resource competition as they were about honour and survival. Druze oral history tended to depict Bedouins as marauders, prone to betrayal. Bedouin narratives portrayed Druze expansion as a form of territorial encroachment.

And yet, the relationship was never exclusively hostile. There were periods of coexistence and cooperation: Druze farmers hired Bedouin herders, and Bedouin communities relied on Druze markets and grain supplies. But this fragile equilibrium often collapsed during times of stress, particularly during drought, state collapse, or political interference.

A history of political manipulation

Over the course of the past two centuries, successive regimes — from the Ottomans to the French Mandate and then the rule of the Assad family — exploited and entrenched local tensions to serve broader strategies of control.

To reassert its authority over the increasingly autonomous Druze of Jabal al-Arab, the Ottoman Empire turned to the Bedouin tribes and encouraged their raids on rebellious Druze villages. The aim was not only to punish dissent among the Druze but also to counterbalance their growing influence without committing large imperial forces. The result was a deliberate deepening of intercommunal hostilities between the Druze and the Bedouin at the turn of the 20th century.

France, which took control of Syria after World War I, also sought to control the region by exploiting existing fault lines. It gave special privileges to the Druze by establishing the Jabal Druze State, but that did not placate the community.

In 1925, a revolt broke out in Jabal al-Arab led by Druze commander Sultan al-Atrash. Bedouin groups joined forces with the Druze, fighting together in major engagements such as the battles of al-Kafr and al-Mazraa. This moment of cooperation between Druze and Bedouin communities was born out of shared grievances and a collective opposition to colonial rule. It demonstrated the potential for intercommunal unity in resistance.

After independence in 1946, this fragile relationship deteriorated once more when President Adib Shishakli launched a violent campaign against the Druze, portraying them as a threat to national unity. His forces occupied the Jabal and reportedly encouraged Bedouin tribes to raid Druze villages, rekindling fears of collusion and solidifying a narrative of betrayal.

During this same era of early independence, the Syrian constitution set out to settle all Bedouin communities and remove many privileges they had been granted during the French Mandate. In 1958, during Syria’s union with Egypt, the Law of the Tribes was repealed, and Bedouin tribes ceased to possess any separate legal identity. They were also seen as a threat to national unity alongside the Druze.

In the decades that followed, especially under the rule of the Assad family, the state maintained stability by suppressing open conflict without addressing underlying grievances. In the 1980s and 90s, Druze and Bedouin communities coexisted uneasily, having minimal interaction and occasional land or grazing disputes.

This uneasy calm collapsed in 2000, when a localised altercation escalated into deadly clashes in Suwayda. The violence reignited historical tensions, hardened communal boundaries, and exposed the limits of authoritarian stability.

The outbreak of civil war in 2011 further destabilised Druze-Bedouin relations as Islamist factions, particularly ISIL (ISIS) and al-Nusra Front, exploited Bedouin marginalisation to recruit fighters and establish footholds in the Syrian desert. While not all Bedouin communities aligned with these groups, the association between some Bedouin tribes and Islamist armed groups deepened Druze suspicions and intensified the perception of the Bedouin as a security threat.

The massacre in Suwayda in 2018, which was carried out by ISIL and reportedly facilitated by “sleeper cells” in nearby Bedouin communities, reinforced this narrative of betrayal. Islamist manipulation of Bedouin discontent thus served to fracture already fragile intercommunal relations, undoing years of fragile coexistence between two historically entangled groups.

Economic collapse and climate stress

While historical grievances and state manipulation set the stage, it is the present-day economic collapse and environmental stress that have exacerbated Druze-Bedouin tensions in Suwayda. The civil war brought the Syrian economy to the brink, which badly affected the south, long neglected by the central government. For both communities, survival has come to depend not on formal employment or agriculture alone, but on informal economies that intersect and compete in dangerous ways.

In the absence of state services, many parts of southern Syria have become reliant on smuggling routes, especially across the porous Jordanian border. Fuel, narcotics, and basic goods all move through these corridors.

Controlling a checkpoint or a smuggling route today can mean the difference between subsistence and destitution. For Druze factions in Suwayda and Bedouin groups operating on the desert fringes, this has translated into conflict over territory, disguised as security enforcement or tribal honour.

These are strategic contests over mobility and access. A Bedouin group accused of cooperating with traffickers may clash with a Druze militia that seeks to police the area, or vice versa. Accusations of betrayal, retaliatory killings, and road closures follow. What might appear externally as communal violence is, in practice, a struggle over the spoils of an informal economy in a lawless zone.

Compounding this is the region’s increasing vulnerability to climate change. Recurrent droughts have devastated traditional forms of livelihood. Druze farmers have seen crop yields collapse; Bedouin pastoralists can no longer sustain herds on shrinking grasslands. What was once a seasonal rhythm of co-dependence — grazing on open land in winter, planting and harvest in summer — has broken down. Both communities now compete over increasingly scarce and degraded land.

In this context, to frame the violence purely as a sectarian feud is not only inaccurate; it is politically dangerous. Such a narrative serves those who benefit from fragmentation. Portraying local conflicts as ancient hatreds justifies repression and delays any serious efforts to implement decentralisation or pursue reconciliation. It erases the long history of cooperation, trade, and even shared struggle between Druze and Bedouin tribal communities. And it silences the real, material demands at stake: secure land rights, sustainable economic opportunities, and an end to imposed political marginality.

Understanding this conflict as economic and political, rather than a religious or tribal one, is the first step towards ending it.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

More than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed in several days of sectarian violence in Syria’s coastal regions earlier this year, a government committee tasked with investigating the attacks has found.

The committee said it had identified 298 suspects implicated in serious violations during the violence in the country’s Alawite heartland that left at least 1,426 members of the minority community dead in March.

Tuesday’s findings come after a new wave of violence involving the country’s Druze community, raising further questions over the new government’s ability to manage sectarian tensions and maintain security after the December overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad – himself an Alawite.

The March violence took place in a predominantly Alawite region of Syria’s coast, where government forces and allied groups were accused of carrying out summary executions, mostly targeting Alawite civilians, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying more than 1,700 people were killed.

The committee’s report said there was no evidence that Syria’s military leadership ordered attacks on the Alawite community.

The committee’s investigation documented “serious violations against civilians on March 7, 8 and 9, including murder, premeditated murder, looting, destruction and burning of homes, torture and sectarian insults”, spokesman Yasser al-Farhan told a news conference in Damascus.

The committee confirmed “the names of 1,426 dead, including 90 women, with most of the rest being civilians” from the Alawite community, he said, adding that an unspecified number of further dead had not been verified.

The investigation also “identified 298 individuals by name” who were suspected of involvement in the violations, al-Farhan continued, describing the figure as provisional.

These have been referred for prosecution, and 37 people have been arrested, officials told journalists.

They didn’t say how many suspects were members of security forces.

‘Bigger than just violations’    

Authorities have accused gunmen loyal to al-Assad of instigating the violence, launching deadly attacks that killed dozens of security personnel.

The committee said 238 members of the army and security forces were killed in the attacks in the provinces of Tartous, Latakia and Hama.

About 200,000 pro-government military reinforcements then converged on the area, according to al-Farhan.

Jana Mustafa, a 24-year-old student from Baniyas whose father was killed during the violence, said she had not been waiting for the report “because the truth was clear to me”.

“The number of bodies, the mass graves and the screams of the victims were enough to clarify what happened,” she said, expressing disappointment that the committee’s announcements appeared to include “justifications for everything that happened”.

“The issue is bigger than just violations. It was directed against an entire sect,” she added.

The committee said it based its report on more than 30 on-site visits, meetings with dozens of people in the towns and villages where violations occurred, and testimonies from hundreds of witnesses and victims. It also heard from government officials.

Al-Farhan said the committee had identified people “linked to certain military groups and factions” among those involved in the violence, adding it believed they “violated military orders and are suspected of committing violations against civilians”.

‘Disappointed and frustrated’

Rama Hussein, 22, whose three sisters, two cousins and grandfather were killed in the Jableh region, said she was “sad, disappointed and frustrated” with the committee.

“No one listened to my testimony, no one visited us – I don’t know who this committee met or who they saw,” she said.

“I hope we see real accountability, not just reports and press conferences,” she said, calling for compensation for the families of those killed.

Human rights groups and international organisations have said entire families were killed, including women, children and the elderly.

Gunmen stormed homes and asked residents whether they were Alawite or Sunni before killing or sparing them, they said.

Committee chairman Jumaa al-Anzi said authorities had been consulted to identify individuals who appeared in videos on social media documenting violations, and that some of them were included among the suspects.

The body said two lists of people “suspected of involvement in attacks or violations” had been referred to the judiciary.

Al-Anzi, the committee’s chair, said that “we have no evidence that the [military] leaders gave orders to commit violations”.

The presidency had said new Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa had received the committee’s report on July 13, the same day that sectarian violence erupted in the Druze-majority province of Suwayda.

Those clashes broke out between Sunni Muslim Bedouin clans and Druze armed groups, and government security forces who intervened to restore order.

Druze armed groups launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities.

Hundreds have been killed, and the United Nations says more than 128,500 people have been displaced. The violence has largely stopped as a ceasefire takes hold.

The committee chair said the violence in Suwayda is “painful for all Syrians” but “beyond the jurisdiction” of his committee.

“Time will reveal what happened and who is responsible for it,” he said.

What started as a local conflict in southern Syria between local Druze and Bedouin communities over the weekend escalated on Wednesday into Israel bombing Syria’s Ministry of Defence and other targets in the capital Damascus.

At least three people were killed in the Damascus attacks, the Syrian Ministry of Health said. Other Israeli air attacks on Wednesday hit the southwestern provinces of Suwayda and Deraa.

Suwayda – where the majority of the population are members of the Druze religious group – had been the epicentre of the violence in recent days. Israel had already struck Syrian government forces there earlier this week.

Israeli officials claim their attacks on Syria aim to protect the Druze community in Suwayda, where scores of people have been killed in clashes involving local armed groups, as well as government forces.

However, local activists and analysts say Israel is fueling internal strife in Suwayda by continuing to bomb Syria – as it has done repeatedly since former President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December. And Israel has continued to attack Syrian government forces, despite ceasefire agreements between some Druze leaders and the Syrian authorities.

“Not only is Israel now painting the entire [Druze] community as pro-Israel, but they are painting them as supporting Israel’s bombardment of Damascus,” said Dareen Khalifa, an expert on Syria and a senior adviser with International Crisis Group.

Exploiting strife

The recent violence in Suwayda began after Bedouin armed groups kidnapped a Druze trader on the road to Damascus on July 11, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based monitor.

The abduction quickly turned into more widespread violence between the two communities – which have a longstanding rivalry due to land disputes – eventually dragging in Syrian government forces.

Syria’s new government has been attempting to impose its authority after a 14-year civil war and the end of half a century of al-Assad family rule. However, it has found it difficult to do so in Suwayda, partly because of Israel’s repeated threats against the presence of any government forces in the province, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Suwayda’s Druze initially welcomed the deployment of government forces following the weekend’s violence, but clashes soon began between some Druze fighters and those forces, with reports of the latter carrying out human rights abuses, according to civilians, local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria in an attempt to keep the country weak and divided, as well as to pander to its own Druze citizens who serve in the Israeli army, experts say.

“From the Israeli perspective – and how they view Syria and how Syria should be – they prefer a weak central government and for the country to be governed and divided into sectarian self-governing enclaves,” said Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an expert on Syria who has extensively researched local dynamics in Suwayda.

Al-Tamimi added that reactions in Suwayda have been mixed regarding Israel’s conduct, which speaks to the lack of trust many in the province have in the new government in Damascus – which is led by members of Syria’s Sunni majority, many of whom, including President Ahmed al-Sharaa, were members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former affiliate of al-Qaeda.

Civilians in Suwayda said that part of the distrust stems from the government’s failure to hold fighters accountable for either allowing or partaking in the killing of hundreds of Alawites on Syria’s coast in March.

Alawites belong to an offshoot of Shia Islam, a sect that al-Assad and his family hailed from. The government has launched an investigation into the fighting, in which more than 200 Syrian government security personnel were also killed after attacks by pro-Assad forces, with the findings expected in October.

Abuses and fear

Government forces have been accused of carrying out human rights abuses in Suwayda, including carrying out “field executions,” according to SOHR and other local monitors.

“I personally wanted the government forces to restore order, but not like this,” said Fareed*, a young man from the Druze community.

The local outlet Suwayda24 reported that fighters believed to be linked to the government executed nine unarmed civilians after raiding a family compound on July 15.

Al Jazeera’s verification unit, Sanad, confirmed the reports.

Written questions were sent to Uday al-Abdullah, an official at Syria’s Ministry of Defence, asking him to respond to accusations that government forces carried out execution-style killings.

He did not respond before publication.

However, on Wednesday, the Syrian Health Ministry said that dozens of bodies had been found in Suwayda’s National Hospital, including security forces and civilians.

Ceasefires have been repeatedly agreed between Druze factions and the Syrian government. The most recent, on Wednesday, included an agreement that Suwayda be fully integrated into the Syrian state, according to Youssef Jarbou, a Druze leader.

However, as in the case of a ceasefire agreed on Tuesday, Israel has continued to attack.

What’s more, several Druze religious and armed factions retreated from the Tuesday ceasefire primarily because government forces continued to carry out violations in Suwayda, according to al-Tamimi.

During the civil war, clerics and armed Druze factions were able to negotiate de facto autonomy while repelling attacks by groups such as ISIL (ISIS).

After al-Assad fell in December 2024, one notable Druze religious leader, Hikmat al-Hijri, demanded that the new authorities in Damascus change the constitution to ensure greater regional autonomy for Suwayda and secularisation.

His position had significant backing, but not the majority, said al-Tamimi.

“His specific position – that the government needed to rewrite the constitution – was not the majority position in Suwayda,” he told Al Jazeera, saying there were pragmatists willing to engage with the government to safeguard a degree of autonomy and integrate with the new authorities.

“[But after these government violations], al-Hijir’s positions will likely enjoy more sympathy and support,” al-Tamimi warned.

Calls for intervention

As fighting continues in al-Suwayda, al-Hijri has controversially called on the international community to protect the Druze in Syria.

Critics fear that his call is a veiled request for Israeli intervention, a position that many people in Suwayda disagree with.

Samya,* a local activist who is living in a village several kilometres away from where the clashes are unfolding, said Israel’s attacks make her “uncomfortable” and that she doesn’t support intervention.

At the same time, she said she is increasingly worried that government forces will raid homes, endangering civilians.

“We don’t know what to expect,” she told Al Jazeera.

“We don’t know who may come to our house and who that person will be, and what he might ask us once he enters. We don’t know how that person or soldier might treat us, you know? So, there is fear. Honestly, we are all really terrified,” she added.

Al-Tamimi warned that Israel’s discourse of “protecting” the Druze of Syria could exacerbate internal strife, leading to collective punishment.

“[What Israel is doing] is inflaming sectarian tension, because it gives fuel to the suggestions that Druze are secretly working with Israel to divide the country,” he said.

Some names have been changed to protect sources from reprisal

Israel’s military has carried out air attacks against Syrian forces sent to a southern region where sectarian fighting has left dozens of people dead. Israel says it was acting to protect the Druze community after gun battles in Suwayda. On Tuesday, the Syrian defence minister announced a ceasefire.