Despite progress in talks between Suwayda education officials and Damascus to secure recognition of upcoming baccalaureate exams, students are wary of a repeat of last year, when thousands were left with unrecognized certificates amid an ongoing rift with the government.
Under pressure and death threats, a number of journalists and activists have fled Suwayda in recent months as the space for free expression narrows in the Druze-majority southern province.
After months of deadlock, a prisoner swap between Damascus and Suwayda opened a “new” negotiating channel, but is there a way forward amid internal divisions and struggles over representation?
A year of false starts, bloodshed, shifting balances of power and foreign intervention has produced a complicated landscape in Druze-majority Suwayda, one in which the voices calling for secession and self-rule are growing louder.
Caught between the Suwayda crisis to the east and Israeli incursions to the west, Daraa grapples with new security, economic and social challenges.
Suwayda has established a temporary office to run the province independently from the central government, while activists press forward with civil initiatives they hope could ease tensions and pave a path forward.
Druze and Bedouin families are united in pain, if little else, reeling with uncertainty and loss after days of deadly violence in Suwayda.
Activists in Suwayda who were once open to the Damascus government weigh in on how their views have changed following a wave of sectarian violence—and whether any path forward remains.
While Brussels followed Washington in lifting sanctions on Syria in May, the European Union and its member states have the opportunity to chart their own course, analysts argue.
Bedouin tribal fighters clashed with Druze forces in Syria’s southern Suwayda province on Friday, one day after reported revenge attacks in the wake of a government withdrawal touched off a new wave of sectarian violence.
