University students latest pressure point in Damascus-Suwayda tensions

SUWAYDA/PARIS — On the morning of May 15, Ghiath (a pseudonym) boarded a bus in Suwayda city to head back to Latakia University, where he is a student. Then the armed men arrived. 

Members of a local armed group affiliated with the Joint Operations Room—a military body aligned with Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri—came to prevent students from returning to universities outside the Druze-majority southern province, citing “the dangerous situation and lack of security at universities,” Ghiath recalled. The men said the bus “would not move” until the students disembarked. 

As students and their families argued, the men “insulted and provoked them,” he added. This, accompanied by “veiled threats,” led most students—including Ghiath—to comply with their orders, after all “attempts by the families and transport companies to intervene” failed, he told Syria Direct. 

Ghiath was one of the university students who left universities in other parts of Syria and returned to Suwayda during sectarian tensions and attacks against students from the province on campuses in recent weeks. The incidents began at student housing at Homs University at the end of April, after a video insulting the Prophet Muhammad falsely attributed to a Druze sheikh circulated online. Outside the universities, the backlash ultimately developed into armed clashes in Druze communities outside Damascus, as well as in Suwayda. 

On May 7, as Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa visited Paris, a video spread online showing a mass evacuation of Suwayda students from universities due to sectarian violence against them, sparking an outcry on social media. 

Following the uproar, Minister of Higher Education Marwan al-Halabi issued a decision barring teachers, staff or students across public and private educational institutions from posting, circulating or promoting content inciting hatred, sectarianism or racism. Damascus’s Ministry of Higher Education and Ministry of Interior also pledged to ensure students made it back to Suwayda safely.

Last week, just before Ghiath and other students were prevented from returning to their universities, Suwayda’s Governor Mustafa Bakour said the state would “bear full responsibility for protecting students and preventing any new attacks.” He said he was 

personally prepared to accompany students returning to their universities. 

University students now find themselves at the center of the latest tug-of-war between the central government and local actors wary of it in Suwayda. Even as Damascus urges students to return and pledges to keep them safe, the armed group involved in last week’s incident insists it is stopping students from going back to school for their own protection.

Why did students leave universities? 

Many university students who returned to Suwayda were urged to do so by their families, who expressed “fear for their children because of the sectarian incitement,” Ghiath said. He returned from Latakia University after giving in to “severe” pressure from his own family, he said. 

From Aleppo University alone, some 308 students, one of whom was injured, returned in a “mass evacuation” on May 7, local media network Suwayda 24 reported at the time. Universities in Homs, Damascus, Latakia and Hama saw similar evacuations, with thousands of students returning to Suwayda “for fear they would be subjected to further reprisals.” 

While many students returned, others from Suwayda remained at universities outside the province. One of them, Laith Ghanem, a first-year informatics student at Aleppo University, says education is “proceeding normally” at his school. 

“I’m still in my dorm, I attend my lectures, and nothing has changed in my study routine,” Ghanem told Syria Direct. His classmates “supported us staying at the university and not returning to Suwayda,” he added.

Ghanem called the violence at Aleppo University “individual actions” and said he has not personally “sensed any threat or discrimination for being from Suwayda.” 

He rejected the use of “tense circumstances” as grounds to prevent Suwayda students from returning to their universities, saying this description “completely removed from reality.” At his school, “the situation is stable, and basically did not get out of control even during the period of tensions,” he added. “The university is completely committed to keeping its students safe, and protected students from Suwayda.” 

The northern bus terminal in Suwayda city, which has seen little activity recently, 19/5/2025 (Shadi al-Dbeisi/Syria Direct)

‘Escalatory and provocative’

When Ghiath, other students and their families did not initially comply with the armed group’s orders at the bus terminal last week, “the discussion took an escalatory and provocative turn,” he recalled. “They started to say insulting things, like: You aren’t afraid for your daughters? You don’t have dignity? We’re in a war situation, the government is terroristic and we don’t trust it.” 

Most students he encountered at the bus terminal “have practical exams, are in their last semester or have projects they need to turn in,” Ghiath said. “They have to go to the university so they don’t waste an academic year.” 

Commenting on that, Ashraf Jamoul, the leader of the armed group that intercepted the students, told Syria Direct “the decision to stop students from leaving was out of fear for them being attacked, as happened before by extremist factions calling themselves general security.” 

“Last time, we had difficulty bringing Suwayda students back from their universities after the attacks on them,” Jamoul said. “We paid for their return out of our own pockets, and at the expense of the military factions.” 

While students Syria Direct spoke to were angry that they were stopped from returning to school, Jamoul downplayed its significance. “Let’s consider suspending studies currently to be like what happened during COVID,” he said. “I’m not an enemy of the student, but there is no need this year.” 

Pressure tactic

“All sides are attempting to politicize the issue of Suwayda students” as a “bargaining chip for whoever holds it—all the students and their families are aware of that today,” Ghiath said. 

“Keeping students in Suwayda and out of school is a pressure tactic local parties in Suwayda are using against the government, portraying it as a terrorist government that cannot be trusted,” he added. Meanwhile, Damascus is trying to remove this leverage by “using the return of students to confirm that it can protect them from any danger.”

While the move to stop students from returning to their universities was not formally signed off on by Druze religious leaders or the Joint Operations Room, in Ghiath’s view what happened indicates that “everything is organized.” 

Nidal Abu Sobh, a member of the Suwayda Civil Gathering, said preventing students from returning to their universities “is an infringement on the citizen’s right to learn.” At the same time, this does not negate the violence that took place at universities, “illegal acts that require accountability,” he told Syria Direct. 

“Those who incited and intimidated students with sectarianism in university housing are no different from those who today prevent them from leaving in pursuit of education. Both actions warrant legal accountability,” Abu Sobh said. He described those responsible as “unlawful remnants, unaccountable groups attempting to politicize the student issue for political gains.” 

Abu Sobh called for “the student issue to be separated from politics and politicization, because students are the driving force of the country’s early recovery.” 

In response, Jamoul said it is Damascus that is using students “to put pressure on us— they want students to leave Suwayda to use them as leverage.” He asserted that “attacks at universities are ongoing.” 

Beyond his group alone, Jamoul said stopping students from leaving “is the general course” in Suwayda. “We, as a military operations room, as well as the religious authorities, are authorized to do what we deem fit in the interest of the sect,” he said. “Sheikh Hikmat neither rejected nor approved stopping the students, but he authorized us to do what is appropriate for the sect.” 

Jamoul defended his group’s actions, saying “the battle has not ended, and could erupt at any moment, so we don’t want our children to be outside the province at that time.” 

While Jamoul insists that university students remain, Damascus is urging them to return. On May 14, Suwayda’s governor Bakour said he was “prepared to go with Suwayda students to any university, and to meet with students to bridge the gap and remove fear.” 

On Saturday, Bakour accompanied a number of professors from Suayda to their universities, stressing “a proper educational environment is the state’s responsibility.” 

“There is communication with Bakour, but we see no real guarantees,” Jamoul responded. The governor’s offer to accompany returning students “is no real guarantee,” he added, as “who ensures their safety after arrival?” 

Beyond that, students are “part of a larger matter,” he said. “What we want is a humane, democratic state that guarantees human rights, with a parliament and elected president. When that happens, we can say students are safe and send them to the universities.”

Has calm returned to universities? 

Before deciding to return to Latakia University last week, Ghiath reached out to classmates from Suwayda who remained. They told him “the situation is safe, that they’re studying and going about their lives,” he said, though “there is a state of constant caution.”

Neither Ghiath nor any of the students he knows faced “personal threats at the university or in the dorms,” he added. “University housing is mixed, from all places and sects and ethnicities. There is coexistence, as if it were a miniature Syria.”

Despite efforts to prevent students from leaving Suwayda, Samer Yahya (a pseudonym) was able to return to Damascus University, where he is a medical student. When he arrived, “the atmosphere was normal,” he said. “My classmates from other provinces welcomed me and thanked God for my safety, and the first day was normal at my college, which did not see any sectarian agitation.” 

Still, Yahya is taking necessary precautions, “not going far from the dorms, and staying aware because caution is necessary,” he told Syria Direct. 

Four other students from Suwayda, who are currently at universities in Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia, also told Syria Direct the situation at their schools was stable. 

Abeer, who also studies at Damascus University, said “the atmosphere is very normal, and there has been no incitement or discrimination.” Forcibly preventing students from returning “is not a solution,” she added. Many students “borrow money to pay the costs of their studies, and don’t have the luxury of having them obstructed.” 

While “fear is justified, and what happened is terrifying, we must respond with awareness,” Abeer said. The solution “is not for each sect to retreat into itself.” 

Abu Sobh called for universities to be kept out of politics, stressing the need to “prevent sectarian and political incitement and issue binding laws for universities and students, with penalties including expulsion, imprisonment and prosecution, especially now, to move beyond this sensitive transitional phase.” 

“Students are the foundation for success, for achieving early recovery for Syria and lifting it from a pre-state to a state,” Abu Sobh added. He called on Damascus to “restore safety for students” and issue necessary directives. 

“The slackness of the security agencies in dealing with cases of [sectarian] mobilization inside the universities allowed unruly parties to run rampant in university housing,” he added, risking “the fragmentation and sectarianization of society.” 

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