Murhij al-Jarmani assassinated: A ‘turning point’ for Suwayda’s uprising?

PARIS — The commander of Suwayda’s Liwa al-Jabal faction, Murhij al-Jarmani, was assassinated at dawn on Wednesday at his home in Syria’s southern Suwayda city. A bullet, fired at close range through the window, struck him in the head while he slept.

“The assassination was a precise security operation par excellence,” a source from Liwa al-Jabal told Syria Direct on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “It happened at 5:45 in the morning, with the use of a 7.5mm pistol equipped with a silencer while the martyr slept,” he said. 

Fingers of accusation immediately pointed at the Syrian regime and its security services. The killing took place at a time when Suwayda is witnessing a popular movement against Damascus, which has tried time and again to quell it by provoking chaos. Al-Jarmani was active within the movement, which is approaching its one-year mark. 

Who was al-Jarmani? 

Murhij Hussein al-Jarmani, also known as Abu Ghaith, was 52 years old. The faction he led, Liwa al-Jabal, was among the most prominent local factions operating in Suwayda. 

Al-Jarmani and Liwa al-Jabal participated in repelling many attacks on the Druze-majority province launched by the Islamic State (IS). It also had a role in fighting the activity of Iranian militias and Lebanese Hezbollah, including drug smuggling and trafficking. 

Liwa al-Jabal also had a hand in eliminating local armed groups with ties to Syrian military security accused of involvement in the drug trade. Notable among these was the Raji Falhout group, which was eliminated in July 2022 in a military operation carried out by several local factions, including Liwa al-Jabal. 

Al-Jarmani formed Liwa al-Jabal in 2014, leading the force made up of dozens of men from the southern province. Equipped with light and medium weapons, its goal—like other Suwayda factions—was to protect the Druze living on Jabal al-Arab. 

Samer Salloum, an activist taking part in Suwayda’s ongoing anti-regime movement, described al-Jarmani as “a supporter of the Syrian revolution” who was among the first to come out and sit in at Suwayda city’s al-Karama (Dignity) Square. Since demonstrations began in mid-August 2023, the square has become their heart. 

Al-Jarmani participated in “demonstrations and protests, and had a role in them continuing, keeping them going,” Salloum said. With his faction, he also played a role in “protecting the square and demonstrators from any possible aggression,” he told Syria Direct. 

Damascus accused

Over the past four years, “al-Jarmani received many death threats from figures affiliated with the security services, from real and fake [social media] pages,” Salloum said. 

The source from al-Jarmani’s faction agreed with the narrative accusing the regime and its security services of orchestrating the killing. “The regime’s security apparatuses are the only ones with the technology to assassinate with a silencer,” he said. 

Al-Jarmani was among the regime’s most bitter opponents in Suwayda. “The regime sought to assassinate him, an operation full of spite and treachery against the martyr of dignity, Abu Ghaith, for honorably standing for the dignity of every Syrian,” the Liwa al-Jabal source added. The commander “would not accept to be accompanied or guarded by anyone at his house or anywhere else,” despite the risks surrounding him. 

“Killing with a silencer is new, something the province has not seen before,” Abu Taymour, the spokesperson for the Men of Dignity movement, Suwayda’s most powerful faction, said. “The Syrian regime is the one party continuously carrying out assassinations. Nobody in Suwayda has the ability, technology or information to carry out such an operation—except the regime’s security branches.” 

The Men of Dignity met with other local factions after the assassination “to search for information leading us to the perpetrators,” Abu Taymour added. 

“This crime comes in the natural context of Assad’s crimes against the Syrian people in general, as well as the movement in Suwayda, as the deceased was a part of it,” writer Hafez Karkout, who is from Suwayda, said. 

Karkout recalled “assassinations inside and outside of Syria—in Lebanon, Palestine and other Arab countries” the regime is accused of committing. “These crimes began since [Bashar al-Assad] came to power, and he repeats them more after the [2011] revolution,” he said, describing the Syrian president as a “seasoned expert in assassination.” 

Al-Jarmani’s killing this week brings to mind the 2015 assassination of Sheikh Wahid al-Balous, an important Druze leader and the founder of the Men of Dignity movement. He was killed in a car bombing that the regime was accused of organizing.

For the past decade, Damascus has largely “ignored” Suwayda, refraining from using the excessive violence turned against other Syrian provinces to put down anti-regime demonstrations. Since the March 2011 revolution, Suwayda did not experience the widespread, systematic repression employed in other provinces, and had a level of limited autonomy. 

In recent months, however, that seemed to be changing, with Damascus raising the tempo of violence in its attempts to counter popular protests in Suwayda. This turn in policy was clear with the appointment of a new governor for the province who has a background in Syria’s security services, Karkout said. 

In May, Assad appointed retired Major General Akram Ali Muhammad governor of Suwayda by presidential decree. Muhammad, who had a prominent career as an officer in Syria’s General Intelligence Directorate (State Security), is accused of committing war crimes while the head of multiple security branches where detainees were tortured to death. Days before installing him, Damascus employed military reinforcements to the southern province. 

On June 7, the committee organizing demonstrations in Karama Square said two explosive devices prepared for remote detonation were found at the protest site in downtown Suwayda. Both were planted close to a platform used by photographers and members of the media. 

Just over two weeks later, hours of armed clashes broke out on June 23 between local factions—including Liwa al-Jabal—and regime forces in Suwayda city after the latter installed a military checkpoint at the provincial capital’s northern entrance. The tensions ended days later, when an agreement was reached to remove it. 

Read more: Suwayda sidesteps a ‘spiral of violence’ following clashes

“The new governor came in with a crime mentality, the crimes he was committing in places where he worked before, and with a security mentality to confront Suwayda’s uprising,” Karkout said. “There is no doubt that he has a complete security plan.” 

After Muhammad took office, “we noticed there was support for regime forces with some military equipment, the establishment of new checkpoints and the firing of bullets, terrorizing residents—all aimed at intimidating people,” Karkout said. “The new governor came with a security mission, not an administrative one aimed at taking care of people’s affairs. He only came to confront the popular protests in a security manner, through organized crimes.” 

Al-Jarmani’s assassination could be “one of his direct crimes, now,” he contended. 

A ‘turning point’

“The assassination of al-Jarmani could be a turning point in Suwayda’s movement,” activist Salloum said. “Either people will come together and stand as one, or the movement will fade away after several days.” 

Salloum fears for Suwayda’s nonviolent uprising. “Violence and militarization end peaceful movements,” he said. The regime “has started to carry out a policy of assassination in Suwayda like the one it has followed in Daraa for several years.”

Damascus, rather than taking a separate approach to different provinces, “is clearly using assassination as a strategic plan in all of southern Syria now, liquidating important figures after the collapse of its military and political forces,” Karkout said. 

Abu Taymour, of the Men of Dignity, agreed. “Murhij’s assassination aims to turn Suwayda into an arena for assassinations like Syria’s other provinces,” he said. “We are trying, in our role, to prevent it from snowballing,” he added. “We are making every effort to prevent such operations from being repeated, by escalating [against it], identifying the perpetrators and holding them accountable.” 

Despite the “danger of the message that al-Jarmani’s assassination carried,” Karkout maintains optimism. Suwayda “will become more cohesive, on a social, security and faction level,” he said. “There are efforts to unify political and security work in the province.” 

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