Suwayda between self-administration and division: Are civil initiatives too late?

PARIS — On August 6, the newly formed Supreme Legal Committee in Suwayda announced a set of measures to organize administration of the Druze-majority southern province, forming a temporary executive office and appointing figures to run local security, administration and services. 

The legal committee, made up of a group of judges and lawyers, was formed last month under a decision by the Druze spiritual presidency, led by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, after clashes and sectarian killings in the province killed at least 1,013 people.

The new measures to locally manage Suwayda hint at efforts to move towards establishing an autonomous administration in the province, or even separation from the Syrian state. 

Days earlier, a group of notables and activists from neighboring Daraa province launched a civil initiative aimed at resolving the Suwayda crisis and returning the province to the Syrian fold.

The campaign, launched on August 5 under the slogans “Suwayda in the Heart of Syria” and “Suwayda is Syrian,” aims at countering escalating hate speech and sectarian incitement while warning of the dangers of partition and demographic change, Basel Mansour, one of the effort’s coordinators, told Syria Direct. 

On July 31, social figures from various Syrian ethnic and religious groups launched what they called the Syrian Civil Initiative, also aimed at resolving the Suwayda crisis in preparation for an internal national dialogue. 

Major violence broke out in Suwayda in mid-July, when armed clashes between Druze and Bedouin groups in Suwayda spiralled into large-scale operations involving local tribes. In response, the interim government in Damascus deployed its forces to the province in what it described as an effort to resolve the dispute and stop the fighting. 

Suwayda residents viewed Damascus’s intervention as an effort to take control of the province by force, leading to a new round of fighting between Druze groups on one side and government forces and groups loyal to it on the other. 

Up until a fragile ceasefire took hold on July 19, fighting was marked by extrajudicial killings by multiple parties to the fighting, which involved local Druze and Bedouin groups, government forces and tribal fighters from other parts of Syria. Tens of thousands of Suwayda residents were displaced inside the province or to neighboring Daraa. 

Self-administration, or a temporary move?

In its August 6 statement, the Supreme Legal Committee said it was tasked with managing all administrative, security and service sectors in Suwayda, alongside preserving public and private institutions, “lifting injustice and harm from the shoulders of all citizens” and “fighting corruption.” 

The committee has not commented on the nature of the form of governance in Suwayda, or whether its work would be temporary or pave the way towards autonomy or partition. 

In its own comments on the statement, the Suwayda Alternative Media and Advocacy Unit—a local media and advocacy group—said “Suwayda today faces an exceptional experience, which could be a model for decentralization and self-administration, at a time when the central authority in Damascus still categorically rejects any form of decentralization or participatory [governance] and tries by all means to obstruct and demonize any calls for decentralization.” 

Tareq Suleiman (a pseudonym), an activist from Suwayda’s civilian protest movement, locally known as the hirak, told Syria Direct “the committees’ work will be temporary, only for the sake of organization.”

“It is natural, in the absence of a genuine state-building project under the de facto authority—which is not absent because of al-Hijri, but rather because [Damascus] is an authority that neither negotiates nor involves the people—that every community would organize its own affairs and address major needs,” Refaat Amer, a Syrian academic based in Sweden, said. 

“The goal of these committees is to organize the province’s affairs. They are not related to a single decision by Sheikh al-Hijri, nor to the idea of seeking partition or federalism,” Amer added. “It is a decision that rejects this authority, does not trust it and does not expect it to resolve the crisis.” 

He stressed that the role of the Supreme Legal Committee is to “manage daily life following the humanitarian, health, social and service catastrophe that befell Suwayda after the barbaric attack carried out by the Ministries of Defense and Interior, as well as jihadist factions,” as he put it. 

The committee’s appointment of Brigadier General Shakib Nasr as head of Internal Security in Suwayda, and Brigadier General Anwar Radwan as his deputy, has sparked widespread controversy among Syrians elsewhere in the country, as both officers held security positions in the former Assad regime. 

The Syrian Ministry of Justice has taken action against judges involved in the Supreme Legal Committee, one ministry official told the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on August 7. The judges “engaged in acts that violate their mandated duties under the Judicial Authority Law, particularly Articles 78 and subsequent provisions,” the unnamed official said. 

The legal articles in question “do not permit a judge to combine judicial functions with another profession or other secondary work, and prohibit judges from expressing political opinions or leanings, or engaging in politics,” the ministry source said.

“Since the work commenced by these judges is purely political, conflicting with national interests and inciting calls for division and disunity, they have been referred to the Inspection Department to investigate and take the appropriate measures,” he added. 

Civil efforts ‘too late’

There has been no direct official response from Suwayda towards civil initiatives for a solution, but the timing of the decisions by the Supreme Legal Committee in the province appear to be “an attempt to block the way, and a response to messages calling for coexistence and a united homeland,” organizer Mansour said. “The campaign will continue until a solution is reached in Suwayda.” 

The “Suwayda is Syrian” campaign emerged with the aim of “confronting the polarization on social media, the entrenchment of Syrians and their refusal to accept the other side, which has caused a major state of division,” Mansour explained. The effort is “trying to break the isolation of Suwayda, and combat the rhetoric of excommunication [takfir], incitement, separatism and forced displacement.” 

Recent events in Suwayda have created a state of “entrenchment and isolation, and have driven national voices into silence or entrenchment within the sect,” Mansour said. 

The campaign “started by presenting its ideas through the media, and will review the results to start the second phase of opening communication channels between patriotic voices inside and outside Suwayda in order to pave the way for a solution.” 

While a number of activists from Suwayda are involved in the campaign, they “are being pursued by the Suwayda Military Council, and two of those we coordinate with have been threatened and put in danger,” Mansour said. 

Amer said the initiative “is far from being effective or influential,” consisting of “general talk about civil peace and stopping sectarian incitement—which is good, but general.” The initiative has not clarified what mechanisms it would adopt to solve the problem, nor does it “accurately describe the problem or propose solutions,” he said. 

“The ‘Suwayda is Syrian’ campaign also had general slogans. We all support a safe and stable Syria, stopping incitement and calling for joint action. But it did not point to the cause of the problem, and without identifying the problem we cannot identify solutions,” Amer added. “The problem is not with the Syrian people, but with the current administration, which is tearing Syrians apart and presenting them with challenges that did not exist before.” 

“The initiatives came very late,” Suleiman, who is from Suwayda, echoed. “The siege imposed on Suwayda must be lifted before any civil initiative,” as the “first step to a solution.”

Civil activist Salim Omran (a pseudonym), for his part, said “the initiatives would be good if they came before the blood, burning and theft, but they were late.” Like Suleiman, he said “what works today is sending food and medicine, breaking the siege on us.” 

The Syrian government and activists outside Suwayda deny that the province is besieged, saying the province is isolating itself. Aid convoys have entered the province, including on August 6, while food and service shortages persist. 

“The voice of reason was not heard amid the sound of the bullets,” Mansour, acknowledging the civil campaign came late. “No sooner had they fallen silent but we came out and said: no to sectarian incitement, no to hate speech, no to demographic change and no to division.” 

What is the solution? 

Any solution in Suwayda requires “fighting sectarian and ideological militarization, stopping the incitement, killing and destruction and uprooting these causes,” Syrian academic Yahya al-Aridi told Syria Direct. 

He called for a “reconciliation and resolution committee that addresses the authority in Damascus before Suwayda, so it issues strict instructions to stop sectarian militarization against Suwayda, the Druze and al-Hijri, lifts the siege, exchanges detainees and withdraws forces from the villages it controls north and west of Suwayda.” 

Damascus “must be convinced that it cannot triumph over its people. When Bashar al-Assad tried that, he fell and was defeated,” al-Aridi added. 

“Lifting the siege, forming an international committee to investigate violations in Suwayda and then prosecuting all those who committed them” would go far towards solving the crisis, Suleiman said. Without that, “the general mood in Suwayda will not return to what it was.” 

People in Suwayda “feel betrayed, that nobody stood with them except the blue [Israel], unfortunately. The government and [other] Syrians must take serious steps towards civilians in Suwayda,” Suleiman said.

“Syrians must first take real steps to solve the problem in Suwayda so that we, as activists inside, can move and speak,” he added. He called for “all Syrian provinces to genuinely stand with the squares in Suwayda, not just as an online campaign. We must see Syrians in other provinces breaking the siege.” 

In Omran’s perspective, “we have reached the point of no return, after this amount of incitement, killing and tension. In the near future, there is no inclusive Syrian solution for Suwayda or the rest of Syrians. Solutions will be imposed on us from outside,” he said. 

At a tripartite meeting between Jordan, Syria and the United States in Amman on Tuesday, the three countries agreed to form “a Syrian-Jordanian-American working group to support the Syrian government’s efforts in strengthening the ceasefire in Suwayda province, and to work on finding a comprehensive solution to the crisis,” SANA reported. 

If there is a true path forward, it is through “forming a national participatory government, a national army of defectors from the Assad regime and a social contract following a Syrian national dialogue that oversees the restructuring of state institutions,” Omran said. 

Amer, in turn, ruled out the possibility of Suwaydans cooperating even regarding a fact-finding committee. “The committee must be international, and if the state is innocent, it should support this approach,” he said. This would “support Suwayda’s return to the Syrian fold.”

Ultimately, the blame for “calls for division and separation in Suwayda” lies with Damascus, he added. 

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