The Syrian army began to withdraw from Suwayda city on Wednesday night local time, following two days of clashes with local Druze forces that killed and injured hundreds and provided an opening for expanded Israeli intervention.
Hundreds of former public sector employees in Idlib, arbitrarily dismissed from their positions by the Assad regime, are still waiting for progress towards reinstatement.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order lifting most US sanctions on Syria this week, cementing a sea change in his country’s approach to Damascus. What explains the shift, and what could future relations look like?
Syria’s southern Daraa province has seen serious violations and abuses by new general security personnel—including killings, the abuse of corpses and personal revenge operations by “controversial” personnel.
As Turkish-linked commanders with dubious human rights records are commissioned as officers and appointed to top military positions in Syria, questions arise over the future of Ankara’s influence in the state and its armed forces.
Planned talks between the AANES and Damascus were postponed this week, while efforts to implement the March 10 agreement remain slow and complex. Two separate delegations from the northeast aim to negotiate, while Damascus still rejects decentralization.
University students who returned to Druze-majority Suwayda during recent sectarian tensions on their campuses were stopped by a local armed group as they tried to go back to school last week. Some fear education is being politicized amid tensions with Damascus.
As transitional justice remains out of reach, hundreds of extrajudicial killings—predominantly of Alawites—have taken place in central Syria since the start of the year, with state security forces accused of involvement in some cases.
After a short-lived period of calm, clashes returned to Suwayda province on Tuesday, raising questions about the durability of a recent security agreement and the risk of a new wave of violence in southern Syria.
This week’s violence in Druze-majority Jaramana and Sahnaya reignited longstanding questions surrounding civil peace and the impact of sectarian violence on social cohesion in Syria.
