At the entrance to Suwayda, the Druze-majority provincial capital, symbols of the Syrian state have largely vanished. The multicolored Druze flag flies over government buildings that now stand empty or under the control of local armed factions, while security is enforced by Druze militants rather than forces from Damascus. Along the city’s walls and streets hang photographs of those killed in the July 2025 violence, when government forces and allied Sunni Bedouin fighters clashed with Druze factions. More than 1,700 people were killed, most of them Druze. Suwayda’s landscape now reflects the defining legacy of the violence in a community that no longer trusts Damascus.
“Suwayda will either come under the control of another state or join one. We are pursuing independence,” Hikmat al-Hijri, the Druze spiritual leader who has emerged as the province’s de facto authority, said last week. Hijri appeared to use independence broadly to mean separation from Damascus, rather than to describe a clearly defined sovereign state. Calls for separation have grown increasingly common since the July massacre. Yet independence remains more a declaration of defiance than a developed political project capable of improving the lives of Suwayda’s Druze.
At the entrance to Suwayda, the Druze-majority provincial capital, symbols of the Syrian state have largely vanished. The multicolored Druze flag flies over government buildings that now stand empty or under the control of local armed factions, while security is enforced by Druze militants rather than forces from Damascus. Along the city’s walls and streets hang photographs of those killed in the July 2025 violence, when government forces and allied Sunni Bedouin fighters clashed with Druze factions. More than 1,700 people were killed, most of them Druze. Suwayda’s landscape now reflects the defining legacy of the violence in a community that no longer trusts Damascus.
“Suwayda will either come under the control of another state or join one. We are pursuing independence,” Hikmat al-Hijri, the Druze spiritual leader who has emerged as the province’s de facto authority, said last week. Hijri appeared to use independence broadly to mean separation from Damascus, rather than to describe a clearly defined sovereign state. Calls for separation have grown increasingly common since the July massacre. Yet independence remains more a declaration of defiance than a developed political project capable of improving the lives of Suwayda’s Druze.
The province’s leaders have yet to explain how they would sustain its economy after breaking with Damascus, much less provide basic services and security. Nor is it clear which “other state” Hijri had in mind as a potential patron. Israel has demonstrated its willingness to protect the Druze, but it does not share a border with Suwayda. Jordan, which does, has rejected opening a border crossing with the province or permitting a humanitarian corridor through its territory.
Suwayda is therefore caught between two increasingly untenable models. Damascus wants to restore its authority without providing meaningful accountability for the violence committed by its forces. Hijri and his allies, meanwhile, are pursuing an autonomous order without offering a credible plan to govern or sustain it. Hijri’s rhetoric reflects the community’s desperation, but it also exposes the central weakness of Suwayda’s emerging model.
Damascus has done little to persuade the Druze that returning to state control would be either safe or just. The government promised accountability after members of the Syrian security forces were filmed carrying out extrajudicial killings during last year’s violence. Yet nearly a year later, the government’s response has extended little beyond a fact-finding process that resulted in the suspension of just 23 security personnel, all of them junior-ranking officers or enlisted men.
The limited scope of the investigation is particularly striking because much of the violence was documented in real time. Videos recorded on mobile phones showed uniformed personnel executing civilians, often with their faces visible. Despite this extensive body of evidence, many of those implicated appear to remain at liberty.
More importantly, the investigation has largely avoided the question of command responsibility. There is no public indication that authorities have examined the strategic decisions that placed government forces in a position to attack civilians and whether elements of the security forces adopted an organizational policy that facilitated violence against the Druze population. Even at the tactical level, no unit commander is known to have faced investigation or disciplinary action for failing to control forces under his authority.
The absence of accountability has reinforced Hijri’s argument that the Druze cannot entrust their security to Damascus. By failing to confront those responsible for the abuses, the government has strengthened the separatist project. Some Druze now argue that although independence may be impractical, it appears less dangerous than submitting once again to Damascus’s control.
Israel has reinforced this sense of security. Its military intervention last July showed that it was prepared to act when Druze civilians came under threat. Now, its continuing presence in southern Syria has constrained Damascus’s ability to retake Suwayda by force. Druze factions have increasingly relied on Israel for money and weapons, thus turning Israel’s support into an informal guarantee for their autonomy project.
But that guarantee has limits. While Israeli protection can deter an assault, its ability to build a functioning economy or legitimate political institutions is limited. Israel cannot provide the province with fuel and electricity, commodities that the province still relies on Damascus for.
The protection on which Druze leaders now rely could also prove temporary. U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing Israel to withdraw from the area in pursuit of a broader security agreement. Should Israel and Damascus reach an understanding over southern Syria, support for Suwayda may be expendable.
There are already signs that the relationship is less solid than it appears. Arabic-language reports have claimed that fighters affiliated with Druze factions have gone several months without receiving the $100 monthly payments reportedly provided by Israel, fueling frustration within their ranks.
Taken together, these factors have produced a grinding stalemate in Suwayda, with residents bearing the cost of the province’s growing isolation. While households elsewhere in Syria receive roughly 12 hours of electricity a day, those in Suwayda often receive only two.
The isolation, in turn, has helped consolidate a highly personalized order around Hijri. His religious authority gives him considerable political influence, but his power also rests on force. Hijri is the de facto patron of the National Guard, the province’s dominant armed faction, which has increasingly acted as a security service to undermine Hijri’s opponents.
The National Guard has targeted Druze figures who favored reconciliation with Damascus. Last November, its fighters detained two religious figures, Sheikh Raed al-Metni and Sheikh Marwan Rizk. Local reports alleged that the detainees were abused before being killed. National Guard members left Metni’s body outside Suwayda National Hospital with his mustache shaved, a particularly humiliating act in Druze society. Additionally, in March, National Guard members detained more than 20 people after a public event where they attempted to read a statement affirming Syria’s territorial unity.
The deepening internal divisions and deteriorating conditions have alarmed even Suwayda’s most influential supporter in Israel. Sheikh Muwaffaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Druze community, has voiced concern over the widening rifts and urged Hijri to de-escalate the confrontation. Hijri has also resisted a U.S.-backed framework intended to break the impasse. Last September, the United States, Jordan, and Syria announced an initiative that called for expanded humanitarian assistance, the transfer of local security responsibilities to authorities acceptable to Damascus, and accountability for crimes committed against civilians in the province.
The framework never materialized. Hijri rejected it because he increasingly regarded separation as the only viable future for Suwayda. But his rejection cannot be understood in isolation. The Syrian government’s failure to deliver meaningful accountability has reinforced Druze mistrust and deprived the proposal of credibility. But preserving the current arrangement indefinitely is no solution either. The province needs a political settlement that protects Druze security while preventing temporary autonomy from hardening into an isolated and coercive enclave.
What can both sides do to move forward?
First, Damascus should work on rebuilding trust with the Druze community in Suwayda. This requires increasing the amount of aid, including fuel, sent to the province to end its isolation. The government needs to signal to the community that it will acknowledge their local sensitivities and concerns over the security apparatus by integrating the local population into the national police force instead of relying on outsiders. More importantly, the Syrian government must conduct a comprehensive investigation into the 2025 violence and prosecute those who are accountable regardless of their military position.
Israel, for its part, has already demonstrated that it is willing to use military force to protect Syria’s Druze. But if its objective is to secure the community’s long-term safety, it should not pursue that goal by empowering independent armed factions that have increasingly monopolized political life in Suwayda. Instead, Israel should support the U.S.-backed framework proposed last year, which sought to combine locally administered security and a negotiated reintegration of the province.
Such an arrangement would offer the Druze greater protection than relying on fragmented militias. Druze security could also become the subject of coordination between Syria and Israel if negotiations between the two governments resume. Those talks have stalled, but Trump has continued to press both sides toward an agreement.
A year after the massacres, photographs of the dead lining Suwayda’s streets are reminders of why the Druze no longer trust Damascus. But that memory should not become the foundation for another unaccountable system that fails to improve their lives.