Communities and local armed groups in Syria’s southern Suwayda and Daraa provinces are taking the fight against drug traffickers and smugglers into their own hands. With Damascus and Hezbollah profiting from the trade, they face an uphill battle.
In Syria’s southern Suwayda province, suspected Jordanian airstrikes hunt drug traffickers and kill civilians. Regime-linked gangs operate with impunity and smugglers ferry drugs over the border. Local armed groups fight back. How did we get here?
When Suwayda’s protest movement began in August 2023, it met with echoes on the Syrian coast, where “a chorus of individual voices” openly criticized the regime from a region considered Assad’s base. But while Suwayda’s uprising continues, the voice of the coast has waned. Why?
Escalating Jordanian military operations along—and across—its northern border with Syria signal a retreat from Amman’s “soft diplomacy” policy towards Damascus, accompanied by a growing sense of Iranian efforts to spread chaos within the country’s territory.
A landmark torture case brought against Syria by Canada and the Netherlands began at the UN’s highest court on Tuesday—with Damascus absent. While it is not a criminal case, torture survivors and family members of Syria’s disappeared say it marks another milestone in their long, slow fight for accountability.
Damascus continues to outwardly ignore Suwayda’s uprising—the longest, most organized and widespread protests in the southern province’s recent history—while demonstrators believe their movement can hold strong.
As anti-Damascus protests in Suwayda move into a second week, they are developing and becoming more organized, while Druze religious leadership appears divided on what kind of change is needed.
Recent economic moves by Damascus impacted the cost of most basic goods and services, sparking a wave of protests in the country’s south and anger all the way to the coast.
In Suwayda, some view tensions between the Men of Dignity and Laith al-Balous—the son of the Druze faction’s assassinated founder—as part of an attempt by the son to lead in his father’s footsteps.
In 2022, Syria’s humanitarian, political and economic crisis reached new depths. How did the year unfold, and what can be expected in 2023?
