In post-regime Daraa, insecurity overshadows the state

PARIS — Nearly 11 months since the fall of the regime, a steady drumbeat of violence continues in Syria’s southern Daraa province, where simmering insecurity and plentiful weapons destabilize communities and claim lives.

In October alone, Syria Direct tracked the deaths of 15 people, most of them civilians, in attacks by unidentified gunmen, revenge killings and accidental shootings across Daraa.

Among the dead were four Bedouins displaced to the province from neighboring Suwayda during clashes and sectarian violence this past July. Their killings were linked to a blood feud. 

While each month brings new deaths in Daraa, figures collected by Syria Direct for the period between January 2024 and late October 2025 show a slight decrease in the overall number of killings in the province compared to the first months after the Assad regime fell in December 2024.

The level of lawlessness and gun violence varies between Daraa’s cities and towns. While some enjoy relative calm and greater stability than under the regime, others grapple with continued gun violence and assassinations. The size and effectiveness of local security forces vary, and community efforts to curb the spread of weapons are limited in some areas. 

Against this complex security backdrop, Syria’s transitional government is working to build up its local security forces. On October 21, provincial authorities marked the graduation of a new cohort of 250 members of the Special Tasks Forces, part of the Internal Security Forces (General Security).

‘The regime fell, but the chaos continues’

Abu Muhammad (a pseudonym) does not leave his home in the western Daraa city of Tafas at night. He fears being assassinated or shot: the fate of a number of his friends in recent months.

Up until the regime fell, Abu Muhammad fought with opposition factions. Last December, he laid down his arms and returned to his original profession as a farmer. But even if his battle has ended, the threat to his life has not.

“We fought against [the Islamic State] IS, the regime and its militias for years. Today, IS cells and regime remnants are taking revenge,” he said, asking not to be identified for security reasons. “The regime fell, but the chaos continues, assassinations continue and weapons are everywhere, while security personnel are unqualified or corrupt.” 

“Uncontrolled weapons remain widespread in the Tafas area,” former opposition commander Abu Abdulrahman (a pseudonym) said. “A large portion of those who still have their weapons are thugs, bandits and thieves—people who never fought a single battle against the former regime.” 

“I do not know why the state does not act against them, despite legal complaints being filed over their involvement in violations and crimes,” he added, also on condition of anonymity. “Killers are left free among the people.” 

In the eastern Daraa countryside, “the security situation is [still] difficult, and a lot of work is needed to fix it,” one local journalist told Syria Direct on condition of anonymity. There, most killings are rooted in “clan feuds, factionalism, revenge and personal vendettas,” he said. 

In the northern Daraa city of Izraa, three displaced Bedouins from Suwayda were killed after a clan dispute spiraled into gunfire on October 10, in one of the bloodiest days of the past month. The same day, assassinations and attempted assassinations in the villages of Tabna, Nimr, Jabab and Saida left three men dead and one injured. 

“The chaos in Suwayda, and the displacement that accompanied it, fueled blood feuds [tha’r] and killing among clan members displaced to Daraa,” journalist Hamza al-Fahid, who lives in eastern Daraa, said. 

Arab tribal customary law includes “what is known as jalwa,” al-Fahid explained, a form of banishment in which the perpetrator of a crime and certain relatives are required to move a certain distance away to prevent further bloodshed. “With the [July] displacement, opposing sides of blood feuds ended up in the same location, leading to new incidents of killing and revenge.” 

“The government has a clear role when killings occur, in containing the problems,” al-Fahid added, but “there is no law to deter extrajudicial killings until now.” 

With each new revenge killing, a larger circle of people related to the killer or victim are affected, their movement restricted out of “fear of reprisal killings, disrupting their lives and work, alongside attacks on shops, vehicles and homes,” he added. 

The graph above shows continued deaths and injuries in Daraa province, which spiked during the fall of the regime in December 2024 and amid violence in neighboring Suwayda in July 2025. 

The picture is different in other parts of the province. In the northern Daraa city of Inkhil—which saw a significant number of assassinations over the years before the regime fell—security has markedly improved. 

“We haven’t seen Kalashnikovs in the streets for months, except for those carried by general security officers,” resident Abu Adnan told Syria Direct. “Some people keep personal handguns, especially at weddings, more for showing off than for actual use,” a phenomenon that is widespread throughout Syria. 

“The security situation in Inkhil cannot be compared with how it was before the regime fell. We can leave the house at night now,” Abu Adnan said. 

He has also noticed a “decline in [celebratory] shooting at weddings,” a common—and sometimes deadly—practice in Syria that persists despite official efforts to stamp it out. However, Abu Adnan recalled three exceptions in Inkhil, weddings in which guns were fired and local security forces did not intervene.

“These families have sons who held leadership positions in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham [HTS],” he explained. HTS, the nominally dissolved faction once led by Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Idlib, spearheaded the military operation that toppled the Assad regime last year, and forms the backbone of the country’s new administration. 

There have been no assassinations, kidnappings or robberies for months in Inkhil, he added. Today, he feels safe parking his motorcycle outside his house, without fear it will be stolen. Syria Direct has not tracked any assassination in Inkhil since the regime fell.

The local Internal Security Service center in the city has not conducted large-scale campaigns to collect weapons from residents, he added, taking a more targeted approach. Security measures include “confiscating the weapon of anyone shooting or openly carrying a weapon—imposing a fine worth the value of eight weapons in some cases—and pursuing arms dealers,” Abu Adnan said. “This helped improve security.” 

Sticking to their guns

Former commander Abu Abdulrahman believes “most people want to turn in their weapons and return to their normal lives,” while “those who cling to them are the ones with records—thugs, thieves and criminals who fear being held accountable.”

“In the Tafas area, there are many small armed groups of between six and ten people who hold on to their weapons to extort farmers,” he added. These groups “demand money in exchange for protecting orchards and farms from theft, and if the farmers refuse to comply, they steal the crops.” 

Others, however, cling to their guns out of caution, a form of security against “clan conflicts, blood feuds, robbers and thugs,” he added. 

The chaos that southern Syria has experienced for years “pushes people to hold on to weapons and refuse to hand them over at the moment,” the journalist in eastern Daraa echoed.

Unlike some other parts of the country, Daraa cities and towns have not seen major security campaigns or house-to-house searches for weapons since the regime fell, three local sources told Syria Direct.

“The Ministry of Interior has not conducted any large-scale security campaigns to collect weapons in Daraa,” the eastern Daraa journalist said. “What is happening is only limited, selective actions through which weapons are collected.” 

In his town, like in Inkhil, how and when authorities respond to weapons violations is “selective,” varying depending on the identity of those responsible, he added. 

“A few days ago, there was a wedding party here, and the shooting went on for hours. The police didn’t respond,” the journalist said. “If the shooting were at the wedding of another family, one without connections to officials in the new administration, we would have seen a huge security mobilization.” 

Security forces “should stand at the same distance from everyone, and apply the law equally,” he added, stressing the need to “hold security personnel accountable and prevent excesses and corruption in their ranks.” One solution, in his view, could be to “assign them outside their own cities and towns” to avoid “conflicts of interest, abuses of power and personal bias.” 

Internal security needs “a large central security force and branches throughout Daraa, which is not available due to the lack of personnel and capacity,” he added, not to mention that “some officers are not qualified.” 

“However, we have noticed that offending personnel are being followed up on and detained. It appears that, due to staff shortages, some random recruitment was done that allowed unfit individuals to enter the force,” he added. 

Read more: Daraa security forces plagued by vendettas, abuse and controversial recruits

“The internal security forces are still being built, and lack qualified police personnel,” one member of the force in northern Daraa told Syria Direct. “This is why we are holding continuous training and qualification courses.” 

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, he said work was being done to pursue abusive officers and hold them accountable, such as “reviewing the security background checks of recruits and following up on complaints filed against them.” 

Consequences of chaos

Persistent insecurity affects daily life and work in Daraa, where many struggle to get by. “When there is a shooting in Tafas, the wholesale market shuts down; movement is paralyzed at the first small problem,” Abu Abdulrahman said. He called on the government to “find swift solutions to restore security, even if the solution is the use of force.” 

Complicating matters is the involvement of local security forces in some of the violence. In June, three men were killed in Tafas during clashes between gunmen from the same extended family stemming from a blood feud. Notably, both sides of the clashes included members of internal security, and the Tafas detachment was directly involved, sources told Syria Direct at the time. 

Abu Abdulrahman called the Tafas security detachment a “hotbed of corruption and bad actors,” accusing figures within it of involvement in the June killings. As a result, “many residents, myself included, go to the al-Muzayrib detachment or Daraa city to avoid dealing with it,” he said. 

Chaos in Tafas means it has “not seen a noticeable economic improvement like [more stable] Daraa cities and towns,” Abu Muhammad said. “Capital is still afraid.” 

Stability in Inkhil, meanwhile, has ushered in “a tangible economic improvement, with many large commercial enterprises opening” after the regime fell. Wealthy residents “hid their money in the days of the regime, fearing theft, extortion or drawing the attention of kidnapping gangs,” he added. 

In the face of Daraa’s patchwork security woes, notables and clan elders—who in past years played a key role in resolving local disputes through clan reconciliation processes—are trying to “contain conflicts, prevent the spread of vendettas and killings from expanding and keep weapons in the hands of the state,” al-Fahid said. 

Traditional leaders are also attempting to “raise public awareness about seeking justice through law and the courts, to keep the country from turning into a jungle,” he added.

Jassim Khalaf al-Madalja, a clan elder in eastern Daraa, said figures like him can “play a role in calming tensions among residents, urging them to abide by the law and the directives of the new government” while “working to assess and resolve blood feuds and killings.” 

“There is coordination and cooperation between us and the government in everything we do to resolve disputes and seek calm,” he said. 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.