One year into Suwayda’s uprising: Challenges and unfulfilled demands

SUWAYDA — Two months into Suwayda’s nonviolent protest movement, Aref Ahmad (a pseudonym) stopped taking to the streets of the Druze-majority southern province. Despite his early enthusiasm, he began to feel “the protests wouldn’t achieve our demands of toppling the head of the Syrian regime, so long as there is an international consensus that he remains,” he said. “There is no point in continuing the same discourse.”

Protests broke out in Suwayda on August 20, 2023 in response to a number of decisions by the central government—most notably the lifting of fuel subsidies. A general strike swept the private sector and state departments in the southern province, before economic demands turned political. Demonstrators demanded the implementation of Security Council Resolution 2254—a roadmap for a political settlement—and the release of political detainees. Ultimately, they demanded that President Bashar al-Assad be removed from power. 

Over the year since, regular protests have continued in downtown Suwayda city’s al-Karama (Dignity) Square. Despite repeated provocations by the Syrian regime and its security services, those taking part in the movement remain committed to nonviolence and their political demands, none of which have been met. But as time goes by, with the estimated number of protesters in the square on Fridays falling from more than 6,000 in the early weeks to no more than 800 recently, questions arise about where the movement is headed. 

Numbers “began to fall at the start of the year,” activist Ali al-Aridi said, with “the cold winter weather and preoccupations of daily life.” The movement’s participants “thought it would achieve direct results, but it turned out that the matter is not so easy, and needs time,” he added. 

In addition to difficult living conditions in the regime-controlled province “and the risk of killing or arrest facing the demonstrators,” Suwayda’s movement declined once participants felt “disappointment,” civil activist Khaled Salloum told Syria Direct. Early optimism gave way to a belief that “political change requires an international decision.” 

“Internal disputes and attempts by political, civilian and factional forces” have also impacted the strength of the movement, human rights lawyer Ayman Shaibeddin added. 

Countering Suwayda’s uprising

Compared to other Syrian provinces, where Damascus sought to quell demonstrations with excessive violence at the start of the revolution in the spring of 2011, the regime has taken a different approach in Suwayda. 

Turning its back to the uprising with an “ignore and contain” policy, Damascus bet that demonstrations would dwindle as time passed, internal divisions emerged and protesters grappled with the poor services and deteriorating living conditions common across regime-controlled parts of the country. 

In the movement’s early days, the regime tried appeasement. Delegations sent to the southern province offered to improve services such as electricity and water, in promises made to former Suwayda governor Bassam Barsik and conveyed to the spiritual leader of Syria’s Druze, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri. The offer was rejected, as by then the ceiling of demands in the province had risen. 

In response, Damascus tried intimidation, using regime-affiliated media personalities to spread rumors that terrorists and suicide bombers had entered Suwayda through Syria’s eastern desert. 

Meanwhile, the regime portrayed Suwayda’s uprising as a “Druze revolution run from abroad,” political activist Marwan Hamza said. “Our demands are purely national, they are the demands of the Syrian people as a whole,” he added. The activist noted that Damascus previously “spread discord among the people of Suwayda and [neighboring] Daraa to divide and control the area by broadcasting sectarian discourse in Suwayda, which for years it tried to exclude from the political scene.”

One month into the protests, regime forces used violence against demonstrators in Suwayda for the first time. Security personnel at the Baath Party headquarters in Suwayda city fired on demonstrators attempting to storm the building, injuring three. 

In February 2024, Damascus announced it would settle the status of Suwayda demonstrators sought by the security services. In response, protesters gathered in front of the settlement center in Suwayda city to reject the settlement, chanting for the fall of the regime and holding signs with slogans emphasizing nonviolence.

Security forces at the center responded by shooting at the demonstrators, killing one of them, Jawad al-Barouki. Al-Barouki became the first protester killed since Suwayda’s movement broke out in August 2023. 

University students from Suwayda have also been arrested while outside the southern province, as in the case of Danny Obaid. Security services took Obaid from student housing in Latakia in February 2024 after he wrote a post on Facebook expressing support for the protests. 

Obaid was detained for 75 days, and all attempts by his family to secure his release failed. Ultimately, local factions in Suwayda took a number of regime officers hostage to force his release, which occurred two days later. In response, Damascus deployed military reinforcements to Suwayda, which activists read as a signal of violence and an attempt to turn the province into a battleground. 

Shortly after deploying reinforcements to Suwayda, Assad replaced its governor with retired Major General Akram Muhammad by presidential decree in May 2024. 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. 

In June 2023, major clashes broke out between security services and local factions supporting Suwayda’s movement after the regime began to construct a military checkpoint near the al-Anqoud roundabout at the northern entrance of Suwayda city. 

Tensions were already high in the city, as two days earlier the commander of the Suwayda Local Forces Faction, Raed al-Matni, was abducted by a group affiliated with state security. In response, his faction took four regime officers hostage to force his release. 

After days of tensions, Suwayda sidestepped a further descent into violence when an agreement was reached to move the checkpoint away from the public street and turn it into a military barracks. 

One of the most dangerous turning points for Suwayda’s uprising, however, came in late July with the assassination of Murhij al-Jarmani, the commander of the Liwa al-Jabal faction and a staunch supporter of the protests. The regime is accused of orchestrating the killing.

On August 18, around the one-year mark of the protests, Damascus reestablished the checkpoint at the al-Anqoud roundabout and brought in major reinforcements of personnel, equipment and weapons. Local factions, headed by the Men of Dignity movement, raised “the alert status and gave the checkpoint an ultimatum not to target the people of Suwayda,” a source in the faction told Syria Direct. 

A general assembly for the movement

On July 9, local actors declared the formation of a “general assembly” to represent Suwayda’s anti-regime movement in an announcement made at Druze spiritual leader al-Hijri’s residence in the town of Qanawat. 

The assembly includes representatives of the movement, in a consensus-based step aimed at driving “the momentum of the popular protests until they realize their demands,” one member told local network Suwayda 24. Its goals include “organizing the steps of the peaceful movement, moving away from political parties and currents to achieve the street’s aspirations and demands for freedom and peace.”

Days later, the body announced it would form a political committee aimed at “commiting to national principles and the unity of Syria’s people and territory, preserving the popular movement as a peaceful civil movement and adhering to relevant international resolutions,” one of its members told Suwayda 24. It aims to work “in line with the just demands of Syrians to build a state of justice and equality, based on the Syrian people’s right to self-determination by building their own state,” he added. 

In late July, the assembly held elections in Qanawat to select the political committee’s members, with dozens of activists attending. Eleven committee members emerged after receiving the highest number of votes out of 50 candidates. 

Lawyer Shaibeddin believes the body’s formation is an important step. “It is natural for the movement, its future and organization, for it to have an assembly representing it politically, as an organization and in the media, because organization is the antithesis of chaos, improvisation and purposelessness,” he said. 

Participants in Suwayda’s movement generally view the assembly and its committee “positively,” Shaibeddin added. It is “under close scrutiny to represent them in form, rhetoric and democratic national practice” to “achieve a comprehensive political solution for Syrians and begin building a new system and state.”

The assembly’s formation was preceded by several earlier attempts to form a political body to represent Suwayda, Jamal al-Shoufi, a member of the political committee and an activist in the movement, said. The body’s task is to “coordinate with all parties—whether civil, political or religious—at the level of the province or Syria,” he told Syria Direct. 

However, this “does not negate the role of individuals in other political currents or parties,” he added. “The political committee can act as a cooperative link with all parties, which is needed.”

Human rights activist Raya Subaie is not entirely convinced. “I have no idea why” the committee was formed, she said, as “usually there would be a specific goal for which we would form a committee, current or team. But the political body was formed first and then set its goals, so the vision was not entirely clear to us.” 

Salam al-Nabwani, a member of the al-Karama Square organizing committee, believes the political committee’s formation is “necessary, but its exterior does not reflect its interior.” She is concerned about the future of the movement, as the recently formed body “includes people who are not politicians,” and therefore “we have fear and doubts about the upcoming plan and its current heading.” Not to mention that “I do not know the extent of its capacity for political dialogue,” she added. 

Baath Party expulsions

On August 13, news circulated that the Central Command of Syria’s ruling Arab Socialist Baath Party expelled 100 active members in Suwayda province, according to a document dated May 28 obtained by Suwayda 24, a local network covering the province. The network attributed the dismissal of most to their participation in Suwayda’s movement. 

Lawyer Riham Abu Yahya, whose name appeared on the list of expelled members, said she was dismissed after participating in the protests, adding the move “aims to pressure demonstrators to stop coming out to the square.” 

The Baath Party no longer has real power in Suwayda, particularly after protesters shut down its headquarters and branches in the provincial capital, villages and countryside, Abu Yahya said. She remains committed to participating in demonstrations, despite all the challenges the movement faces. 

This report was produced in collaboration with Suwayda 24 as part of Syria Direct’s Sawtna Training Program for women journalists across areas of control in Syria. It was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.