In bombing the Syrian Defence Ministry building in Damascus, and also outside the presidential palace, along with killing 15 Syrian troops and several civilians, Israel was only escalating what it has been doing since December 8, the day the Syrian people overthrew Israel’s preferred leader.
Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes, possibly over 1000, since December 8. In the first few weeks, Israel destroyed some 90 percent of Syria’s strategic weaponry, in its largest air war ever, while occupying a significant part of southern Syria beyond the already-occupied Golan Heights, in “Syrian Golan” (Quneitra province). While airstrikes have returned with some intensity approximately monthly, in the meantime aggression takes place on the ground, away from headlines: taking over more land, destroying farmland, abducting “suspected terrorists,” attacks into Daraa and Damascus provinces, seizure of south Syria’s water sources and the like. It has not let up. Since February, Israel also banned the Syrian army from entering south of Damascus, ie, Quneitra, Daraa and Suweida provinces, with the threat of bombing.
So, while the latest aggression goes under the title of “protecting the Druze,” this background helps us understand that this is merely one of Israel’s excuses. Since the beginning, Israeli leaders like Netanyahu, foreign minister Gideon Saar, defence minister Israel Katz and others have called the new Syrian leadership “jihadists,” “terrorists,” “extremists,” “al-Qaeda” and so on. Both arch-fascist Ben-Gvir and Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amachai Chikli have now called for assassinating Sharaa; Chikli called the Syrian government an ‘Islamo-Nazi regime’ and ‘Hamas’. Arch-fascist Smotrich has stated that conflict with Syria will end only when Syria is “partitioned.” Israel has said it wants Syria split into “cantons,” and requests the US keep its forces in east Syria, and that Russia keep its air and naval bases in west Syria, as part of dividing up the land.
Now, all that said, there was of course a huge crisis in the southern Druze-dominated province of Suweida, and while for Israel it is an excuse, that does not alter the fact that real crises, and how a government handles them, can be critical in terms of the political facilitation of an aggressor. And while much can be said of the antics of some more extreme Druze leaders, or of Druze revenge attacks against Suweida’s Bedouins – all of which will be discussed below – the main story here is the hellish massacre of the Druze population in Suweida – even Israel’s outrages must be seen within the context of the events that politically facilitated its actions.
It did not need to be this way, especially given the goodwill shown to Damascus by the majority of the Druze leadership, who continually tried to reach agreement with the government on compromise plans to integrate the minority-dominated province, based on locally-controlled security arrangements, and who continually rejected Israeli “protection” and condemned Israeli attacks. But Sharaa’s apparent decision in the midst of the crisis to attempt to impose a military solution, and the resulting horrific crimes imposed on the Druze by government-led fighters – whether planned or not, whether due to state loss of control or state-led sectarian instrumentalisation – has almost certainly resulted in the complete alienation of the Druze minority (like the Alawite minority since March) from the post-Assad polity, from what the Syrian majority still see as their revolution. It also resulted in a total defeat for the government’s position, and an enhancement of both Israel’s position and that of the most pro-Israeli wing of the Druze, as the population is now more united than ever against the Sharaa government.
While there is a great deal of dust to settle, and the “fog of war” makes countless claims and counter-claims still unclear, this is my general understanding of what happened.
Background to the crisis in Suweida
The Druze in Suweida have their own sect-based military formations, which arose during the Syrian revolution; while for the most part they were anti-Assad, they were also strongly independent of the Syrian rebels; their focus was on defence of Suweida, and resisting being recruited by Assad to fight his war. Some parts of the Druze leadership and militia were more pro-rebel than others, some more pro-Assad, but always independent. In a sense, analogous to the Kurdish-led SDF in the northeast, with the difference though that the SDF included large numbers of Arabs and somewhat reflected the multi-ethnic nature of the region, whereas the Druze militia were explicitly Druze. This is not a criticism, but it is important going forward, because while Druze account for 90 percent of the population, their militia do not represent the non-Druze in the province.
Following the overthrow of Assad, the Druze militia have guarded their autonomy, rejected simply dissolving their militia into the new Syrian army, while agreeing in principle to eventual integration; as with the SDF, the question is on what terms. As with the SDF, the government rejects incorporating the Druze militia as ‘blocs’ within the army, but rather wants them to dissolve and for their members to join the army as individuals, which is theoretically what happened with all the mainstream rebel formations in January, including HTS. The problem for minority groups however is that the army and the government itself remains overwhelmingly dominated by the Sunni Arab majority, and, given the kinds of violations which have occurred (such as the large-scale massacre of Alawites in March following an Assadist coup and massacre), minorities need to feel the new Syrian polity is more inclusive than it currently is, and hence the terms of integration are important.
During clashes in late April and early May between Druze security forces and armed jihadi gangs in two outer suburbs of Damascus, Druze militia in Suweida clamoured to enter the fray to protect the Druze, but were attacked along the road north by armed Bedouin fighters. Following these events, the government reached an accord with the majority of the Druze religious and military leaderships, that the government’s public security and police would be activated in Suweida to look after internal security, but would consist only of local people. It was also suggested that a new brigade of the Syrian army could be formed at some stage for local Druze militia to join, but nothing happened due to the differences noted above. In the meantime, the Druze leadership remained opposed to the Syrian army or public security from outside deploying in the province, except to maintain security on the Suweida-Damascus highway.
In the background was a long-term low-level conflict between the Druze and the Sunni Bedouin people in the province, over trade routes, land-use and many similar ongoing issues. These are two very usefulbackground articles.
With the Bedouin minority socially and economically marginalised, the lack of any government security forces – banned by both the Druze leaderships and by Israel for different reasons – meant they were also unrepresented in the region’s security forces, the Druze militia being for Druze. This left their region a kind of lawless no-man’s land. Meanwhile, the government abandoned its obligation to maintain security on the highway in practice.
Onset of armed clashes
Hence the background to the current disaster began with a seemingly random crime, when a Bedouin gang seized a Druze truck on the highway. In response, Druze militia kidnapped eight Bedouins as hostages, from the in the al-Maqhous quarter of Suweida city (although ‘Bedouin’ often denotes ‘nomad,’ the majority in Syria are settled), an escalatory move given that the issue was not with city Bedouin at the time. Bedouin then responded in kind. This soon led to serious clashes and killings.
After two days of clashes, amid calls for the government to do something, it sent in General Security and army units on Monday July 14, defying the ban imposed by the Druze and by Israel. What happened next is disputed. According to Druze sources, government forces took the side of the Bedouin in the clashes. SOHR reporting supports this view. According to many Syrians, as the government security forces entered to separate the sides, they were ambushed by one of the Druze militia, the Suweida Military Council (SMC), whose forces are most associated with former Assadist elements; the SMC seems to take the political of Sheikh Hikmet al-Hijri, one of the three top Druze religious leaders, who has consistently called for Israeli intervention and opposed cooperation with the Syrian government. Some 18 government troops were killed on Monday morning. A third version has it that, yes, the Druze attacked, but it was not only Hijri’s forces; rather, all Druze militia still rejected the government security presence and tried to resist their entry. A version of this is actually cited by Laith al-Bahlous, the most pro-government Druze leader, and Hijri’s main political opponent, yet he absolves Hijri’s forces of these accusations, claiming that the Syrian government told Druze leaders of its intention to enter Suweida, but they did not convey this to the people; therefore, armed Druze fighters, coming across government troops, mistakenly assumed them to be invading so they attacked them.
I don’t have a solid opinion on this, and there may have been a mixture of all these factors. But it cannot be disputed that government security forces were ambushed as they arrived, before being involved in any violence, because Druze fighters posted images of themselves standing over the bodies of the troops, and marching others away in their underwear. These images enraged Syrians, leading to demonstrations around Syria calling for revenge, which included ugly sectarian incitement against the Druze.
The conflict spread to Suweida city, between Druze fighters and Bedouins in al-Maqhous. Again, who shot first is disputed; some report it that Hijri’s militia launched an attack on the neighbourhood to subdue it, while others simply report clashes amid the mutual hostage taking. Either way, it led to Bedouin fighters from the countryside attacking the city in support of al-Maqhous, and also attacking smaller Druze towns. At the same time, in response to what they considered the ambush of their troops by Hijri’s forces, the government massively mobilised troops and began a siege of the city, attacking with tanks, mortars and heavy weaponry. And so, if the government and Bedouin forces were not already one, as claimed by many Druze, they effectively became one in the process. This was a fateful, destructive and unnecessary decision, which I will comment on below. Israel began bombing Syrian tanks on Monday, then stepped it up on Tuesday, killing at least 15 government troops, further fueling sectarian rage around the country.
After some 24 hours of conflict, the government security forces and the main Druze religious and military leaderships, including Hijri, the other two main religious leaders, Yousef Jarbou and Hamoud al-Hanawi, along with Laith al-Balous, associated with the powerful Men of Dignity militia which fought the Assad regime, signed a peace agreement on Tuesday. Fighting would cease, “the entry of the Interior and Defence Ministries’ forces in order to impose control over the security and military centres and to secure the province” was “welcomed,” Druze militia were called upon to “organise their weapons under the supervision of state institutions,” and the state was called on to activate its institutions “in cooperation with the province’s people.”
What happened next is again disputed. Many reports claim that, 30 minutes after the meeting ended, Hijri repudiated his own signature, claiming it was made under pressure, and called on Druze to rise up and attack government forces, and for “external Druze” (ie in Israel) to come to their aid. According to one source, Hijri’s forces “launched simultaneous ambushes against government forces across a dozen locations in the city, timed perfectly with renewed Israeli airstrikes.” The obvious coincidence between Hijri’s and Israel’s actions demonstrates what gave a local Druze leader the kind of confidence to take on the government’s army and security forces. However, Druze sources on the ground, such as this harrowing account of the ensuing massacre, claim that after their militia allowed in government forces, they at first were peaceful but then launched their all-out horrific attack on Druze civilians, and this is what caused the Druze militia to renew the fight, while other Druze sources claim the government forces never stopped attacking.
It seems clear the fighting did stop for some time. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which tends to have an anti-government bias in its reporting, reported that “the clashes reached an end, after a ceasefire agreement … SOHR activists have reported seeing tanks and armoured vehicles, which have recently been deployed in Al-Suwaida city, withdrawing from the city … Meanwhile, security forces have been deployed in the city’s major streets, amid tense calm which comes after two days of fierce clashes that left tens of fatalities.”
Therefore, the question really is whether Hijri’s rejection of the ceasefire and renewal of hostilities took place before the government forces renewed their attack, or only as a result of the government re-unleashing hostilities. While it is impossible from this distance to determine who shot first next, a couple of things are clear. First, it was initially only Hijri who rapidly rejected the agreement. The other leaders, including Jarbou, Hanawi and Bahlous, and other militia groups, did not do so until fighting had clearly resumed and it became a defensive war. On the whole, there has been a clear division within the Druze leaderships all along: Hijri and the SMC reject cooperating with the government, reject integration, and call for Israeli intervention; the other main leaders prefer to try to de-escalate, to reach agreements with the government, to negotiate towards eventual integration, and reject Israeli intervention.
While it is possible that outside observers exaggerate the differences amongst the Druze leadership, it is useful to listen to Bahlous. Here he takes aim at some of the Druze “religious and political leadership” for acting “unilaterally,” supporting Israeli intervention and “attempts at division,” and even goes so far as claim they bear responsibility for the bloodshed. Likewise, Sheikh Yusuf Jarbou, claims the agreement had widespread support, but noted “Yes, there is support for al-Hijri’s position. We do not deny that, and sometimes it may have an effect on the ground. We respect their opinion, and they must respect our opinion and the opinion of he majority.” He claimed that supporters of Hijri’s position “burdened society with many losses because of their refusal to accept this agreement,” and vigorously condemned Israeli air strikes.
Massacre
But regardless of who shot first, the second undeniable fact is that once hostilities did resume, elements under the leadership of the government armed forces then carried out large-scale horrific atrocities in the city. In one massacre, 12-15 civilians in a guesthouse were murdered. People saw their neighbours killed on the road, or found them dead in their homes. Dozens, at least, are alleged to have been killed in summary executions. Whole families were murdered. A number of truly horrific crimes were reported. Others were killed by snipers or by mortars being fired in the middle of the city. Looting, home destruction, and acts of sectarian humiliation – such as filmed forced shaving of Druze beards and moustaches – also took place.
Water, electricity and fuel were cut off, and violent clashes took place at the entrance to the hospital, which filled up with corpses. A hospital massacre reportedly took place, though there are sharply different versions of who was responsible, but either way the situation there was catastrophic with complete power cut-off, leading to bodies decomposing. Tens of thousands were displaced. Druze describe a complete hell of helplessness and impunity in this period. Druze activists launched ‘Suwayda is Dying’ humanitarian appeals to the world.
Taking the ‘Men of Dignity’ (Rijal al-Karama) militia again as a kind of bellwether, despite Bahlous’ fierce criticism of Hijri’s actions, they are first of all a Druze militia tasked with defending their people, and as government-led forces went on the rampage, their forces strongly mobilised to fight them. By the end of Tuesday, the ‘Men of Dignity’ issued a statement condemning the “monstrous attack,” claiming it was one of the worst attacks on Suweida in “over a century,” by “the forces of the Syrian government, which has violated all the agreed upon pledges and guarantees made this morning.” They claimed to have lost 50 martyrs among. Other Druze militia not associated with Hijri’s group issued similar statements and likewise went to the defence of their compatriots.
According to the SOHR, by end of the fighting with final ceasefire late Wednesday, some 590 people had been killed over the four days; but given that their figure was only 116 people at the time of the first ceasefire on Tuesday, this means nearly 500 deaths occurred in those last 24 hours after the ceasefire ended. SOHR’s breakdown shows some 154 Druze civilians were killed, along with 146 Druze militia fighters, 257 members of the government’s armed forces (plus another 15 government fighters killed in Israeli airstrikes, and several more in the headquarters in Damascus), 18 Bedouin fighters, and 3 Bedouin civilians killed by Druze militia. However, the fact that SOHR’s claim of only 3 Bedouin civilians killed remained unchanged the entire week, even after large scale Druze attacks late in the week (see below), underlines SOHR’s unreliability in my view, and hence I am not using their later updates, which now report 1448 killed altogether (one third government-led forces), until confirmed by other more cautious bodies; that said, I have no doubt that the numbers now really are drastically higher. The much more cautious Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has recorded 814 deaths (and 913 injuries) as of July 24, but emphasises these figures are preliminary, and has yet to do a breakdown of the victims.
Many Syrian government supporters are in denial about the extent of the massacre, but descriptions from inside Suweida bear out the gut-wrenching reality. This essentially renders all the discussion about the provocative actions by the more extreme wing of the Druze leadership, such as the initial ambush of government forces and unilateral rejection of the first ceasefire, purely secondary; while essential to a full analysis of the events, none of it can provide excuses for the gigantic massacre that ensued.
First ‘final’ agreement, revenge operations, and tribal offensive
A new agreement was reached late on Wednesday, and following this all government armed forces – General Security and the army – withdrew from Suweida. Once again, the agreement was signed by all major Druze leaders except Hijri, who called for ongoing resistance against “armed gangs falsely calling themselves a government,” and warned that anyone engaging with the government “will face legal and social accountability, without exception or leniency.” Sheikh al-Jarbou accused Hijri of illegitimately seeking to monopolize Druze leadership.
Following their withdrawal, Druze militia launched attacks on at least 10 Bedouin villages throughout the region. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Hijri’s militia killed dozens of Bedouin in these attacks, leading to forced displacement and widespread migration, within and outside the province, with reports of other human rights violations, massacres and hate speech (eg threats to “kill and burn all members of the Bedouin tribes in Thaala village”). On July 1, the ‘Gathering of Southern Tribes’ issued an urgent humanitarian appeal, claiming “We are being silently exterminated.” In turn, this led to thousands of ‘tribal’ fighters with links to the Suweida Bedouin in Daraa and Deir Ezzor attacking the province in support of their brethren, once again reportedly carrying out massacres, burning villages, firing mortars, looting and other violations, and again, hate speech (eg “we will burn Suweida completely”), while also escorting besieged local Bedouin across provincial borders. Israel again launched attacks against the Bedouin fighters.
This further conflict then led to further negotiations and new agreements; having just withdrawn, the government was now allowed to send its General Security – but not the military – back in for 48 hours to enforce the ceasefire. On Saturday the alliance of tribal fighters agreed to ceasefire and had withdrawn by late in the day; after ensuring their exit from the province, the security forces took up positions on the provincial border to prevent them re-entering; on Sunday the situation was reported to be “calm.” After exchange of hostages, 1500 Suweida Bedouin civilians who had been held hostage by Druze militia were expelled from the province as part of the agreement.
Analysis of final ceasefire agreement – complete rout of government operation
This second or third “final” agreement did not substantially change the terms of the first “final” agreement on Wednesday. According to this agreement which led to the withdrawal of both the army and government security, security would be kept by internal security and police “staffed by local Suweida personnel,” and “police officers and personnel from among Suwayda residents to assume leadership and executive duties in overseeing security in the province;” yet another of the terms is to “fully integrate Suweida into the Syrian state, including restoring service provision and civil state institutions.” Again, the Suweida-Damascus highway would be secured by the government. In his speech announcing the ceasefire terms, Sharaa also affirmed that “we decided to assign some local factions and Sheikhs of Reason with the responsibility of maintaining security in Suweida.”
This is curious wording, because despite talk of “fully integrating” the province, the security regime described is identical to that before the crisis, identical to the agreement reached in early May, that activated government security and police but to be staffed only locally, with the state only responsible for securing the highway, and otherwise keeping out; a huge amount of blood was spilled for no change. And in the final, final agreement, the terms are even clearer, for the complete exit of public security and the Ministry of Defense from the administrative borders of Suweida, and prevention of them re-entering the province. Essentially a complete defeat for the government.
Furthermore, even though it is consistent with the previous agreement his government made, Sharaa seems to be saying that this was only forced on Syria by Israeli bombing. He claimed the decision was made to “put the interests of Syrians above chaos and destruction” as the alternative was “open war with the Israeli entity” which aims to “drag our people into a war they want to ignite on our land, a war with no aim but to tear our country apart.”
Sharaa analyses Israel’s aims very well in this speech, noting that “the Israeli entity has always targeted our stability and sown discord among us since the fall of the former regime, is once again trying to turn our sacred land into never-ending chaos … to break our unity and weaken our ability to move forward with rebuilding and progress.”
However, the problem is not his analysis of Israel’s goals; rather it is that by blaming Israel for the failure of his goal of “integrating” Suweida,” he demonstrates his incomprehension of the fact that if he really did aim to integrate Suweida, based on real unity among Syrian people, then it is his government that totally blew it by attempting a military solution that resulted in a gruesome massacre of the Druze population. And while he targets Hijri, without naming him, for rejecting all cooperation with the government or moves towards integration, and many Syrian government supporters point to the rejection of Hijri’s extremism and pro-Israel position by other Druze leaders, the likely impact of the massacre will be to weaken the position of those like Bahlous who tried to cooperate, to strengthen Hijri’s position and unify the Druze population and leadership against the government. In fact, word has it that Bahlous has left the province and been labelled a “traitor.” Not because he was; but because all his admirable attempts to cooperate with the government were blown up by the brutal massacre.
In his speech, Sharaa stressed that “we are committed to holding accountable anyone who overstepped and wronged our Druze community” and in other speeches stated we “strongly condemn these heinous acts and affirm our full commitment to investigating all related incidents and punishing all those proven to be involved,” and so on. These are very good words. Likewise, the ceasefire terms include “the formation of a joint fact-finding committee to investigate the crimes, violations, and abuses reported during the recent violence in Suwayda while identifying the perpetrators and compensating the victims.”
However, there are some reasons why such fine words are unlikely to win back any support among Druze for current Syrian authorities for the foreseeable future, and not only because it is difficult to come back from such a terrifying massacre even in the best of circumstances.
First, all of this was promised after the massacre of Alawites on the Syrian coast in March – of course, this is not entirely fair, as the investigative commission that the government set up has only just released its report, so it is not out of the question that we will see accountability take place, perhaps that is just a matter of time. Either way, the lack of accountability so far obviously contributes to doubt that it will take place with Suweida. And a bigger problem is that neither have any of the genocidal Assadist war criminals been brought to justice, and some of the most infamous are even walking the streets under government protection, meaning that any attempt to punish killers of the Druze or Alawites may confront Sunni resistance. Moreover, even if it is necessary to wait for this process, the government could have pushed forward with other processes, including compensation, official mourning and inclusion of Alawites into the local security forces, but it has shown frankly little interest.
But more important is the fact that something like this could happen again after the experience of the coast. On the coast, local security was overwhelmed after hundreds of their members were slaughtered in the Assadist coup attempt, and undisciplined military brigades, rootless jihadi groups and armed civilians bent on vengeance went on a pogromist rampage. Arguably, government security did well to clear the region in two to three days and end the carnage. But with this experience, the government has few excuses the second time, especially since in Suweida, unlike the more chaotic descent onto the coast to confront the Assadist insurgency, the government forces clearly led the operation.
It is unclear exactly which forces carried out most of the violations in Suweida – government security forces, military brigades, Bedouin fighters, criminals exploiting the situation – and we will need to await proper investigation. SOHR obtained information from locals that cards issued by the Syrian Ministry of Defence were found in possession of several attackers; countless reports speak of attackers in government military or security uniforms, though others also speak more generally of people wearing ‘fatigues’; videos showed Bedouin fighters, already in conflict with the Druze, riding through the streets on government tanks, brandishing their weapons; videos showed fighters approaching the city expressing hate speech and threatening to kill all Druze.
Some claim that Sharaa and his government planned the massacre as a way of consolidating a sectarian Sunni base of support, but in my view this is unlikely; the massacre has resulted in a massive setback to the government’s efforts to restore some stability to the devastated country. It is more likely that it lost control and that forces under its command ran amok. But in the end it makes no difference; it is the result that counts. This once again demonstrates that the government does not have control over the collection of forces that have been patched together as the ‘Syrian army’, many made up of heavily traumatised young male victims of the Assadist genocide; that it does not have a professional, let alone inclusive, armed force at its disposal, seen as legitimate by diverse parts of Syria; the army remains a de facto Sunni Arab army. And after the coastal massacre, the government should have known this. As such, the last thing a government should do is try to impose a military solution on a minority issue.
Imposing military solutions and alienating chunks of Syria
It seems clear that at some point the government made the decision to go well beyond the initial mandate of separating the Druze and Bedouin forces and instead decided to ‘solve’ the six-month Suweida integration issue militarily. Whether it made that decision at the outset, or after the initial bloody ambush by Druze militia, is unclear. There was no way in Syria’s fragile, sectarian circumstances inherited from the Assadist slaughterhouse, the great sectarian lab par excellence, that the imposition of a military solution by an entirely Sunni military, with a huge volume of sectarian preaching and sloganeering in the background, was not going to lead to catastrophic slaughter. Reportedly, even some of the notoriously undisciplined military units which were widely reported to have carried out mass killings of Alawites in March – such as ‘Amshat’ (the Sultan Suleiman Brigade), were, inconceivably, sent to Suweida.
Such a decision to “solve” Suweida’s integration issue militarily seems the only way of explaining the decision to launch a huge siege of Suweida city itself, with tanks and artillery; attempting to take the city by military force was unnecessary if the aim remained merely separating the parties in conflict; separating the forces in rural Suweida while attempting to de-escalate the clashes in the city via negotiating the entry of public security, without the army, would have been more rational. Worse still, this meant the government forces were now besieging Suweida together with the Bedouin forces, even if that had not been the original aim; the government was now effectively on the side of one of the two forces they were supposed to separate. It also meant that the minority Bedouins, already in conflict with the Druze and with genuine grievances, were thereby given the power of impunity.
In one of Sharaa’s final speeches, at the end of the ‘second round’ when the tribal fighters from outside the province agreed to withdraw, Sharaa praised them not just for withdrawing, but for their “heroic stance”, based on their “lofty values and principles” which “motivates them to rush to the rescue of the oppressed,” meaning the local Bedouin who suffered revenge attacks after the government forces withdrew. But, he said, they “cannot replace the role of the state in handling the country’s affairs and restoring security.” While he also stated “the Druze constitute a fundamental pillar of the Syrian national fabric,” his blame for the crisis was laid entirely on “illegal armed groups,” meaning Druze militia. This double standard is not just hypocrisy, it goes to the core of the problem of the government’s project that there should be no armed bodies outside the control of the state; because the tribal brigades, which entered Suweida heavily armed, are obviously outside state control, yet were praised rather than labeled illegal armed groups; minorities are not going to give up their arms if Sunni tribal fighters, or other Sunni jihadist forces, are not also comprehensively disarmed.
Fadel Abdulghani, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said the unrest stems from Syria’s failure to embrace inclusive governance following years of conflict. “This is not just about security,” he said. “Excluding political participation fuels instability.” The fact of the matter is, neither in the political sphere nor in the military-security sphere is the current regime in any way seriously inclusive of minority groups and regions.
The only way that can be overcome is if integration – particularly of regionally-based minority communities such as the Druze in the south, the Alawites on the coast, and the Kurds in the northeast – is carried out in a way that fully democratic, inclusive and respectful of the needs of these communities, and where they are primarily responsible for their own security. While the government can be accused of doing nothing along these lines with the Alawites, there have been positive negotiation processes with both the Druze and the Kurds.
The government’s catastrophic decision to impose a military solution on the Druze issue has not only led to total defeat, with Suweida more independent than previously, but has left a new massive hole in support for the post-Assad Syrian polity, the second after the huge Alawite hole – yet until then, the Druze were largely a supportive constituency, if on their own terms. For the majority of Syrians, the revolution means freedom – the end of a tyrannical regime, the opening of Sednaya and other torture gulags, the freedom to protest and organise, to reconstruct their country bombed into a moonscape by Assad, to begin the process of return of half the population. And this post-Assad reality, the ‘revolution’ let’s say, maintains overwhelming legitimacy among the Syrian majority, as does the current government.
But for the vast majority of Alawites, and now Druze, the current reality is instead one of exclusion, alienation, insecurity and now slaughter. They would now feel much like the vast majority of Syrians felt under Assad. That is not a political statement, simply a statement of reality. It may be salvageable, but it would take a miracle for it to be salvaged in the foreseeable future, or under this government.
And if support for Israel and its actions among the Druze, and for the more pro-Israel and anti-government Hijri-led wing of the Druze, has come about as a result, the blame lies squarely on the Syrian government for this situation. It is not good, but people react to being slaughtered by accepting help from anyone who offers, regardless of their motivations. Israel’s motivations are to create a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Syria, and using the Druze card is a key part of that strategy. Israel aims to ensure that Syria cannot be re-established as any kind of stable, united state; which means that if the Syrian government acts as a sectarian agent against parts of its population, it plays directly into Israel’s hands – if the regime destroys Syria’s unity, Israel is happy to “help” from the other side.
That said, arguably Israel’s bombings did more to inflame the sectarian situation than help anyone; when looking at casualty figures, the huge numbers of Syrian government troops killed make clear that resistance by Druze militia on the ground was the more decisive factor. Much took place – outrageous Israeli bombing, intransigence and provocative acts by the Hijri wing of the Druze leadership, the violent revenge operations against the Bedouins – but the sheer enormity of the hellish massacre of the Druze is the main story here.
Damascus: like everywhere in the country, jubilant Syrians celebrated the fall of the tyrant
The fall of the Assad regime on December 8 2024 was a belated culmination of the revolution which began in 2011, an extremely broad, diverse, democratic revolution; however, long before this, by around 2016-18, this revolution had been largely crushed or confined by the Assad regime’s genocidal terror. Years of repression, stalemate, despair and exile followed.
As Syrian writer Robin Yassin-Kassab described it just before the December 8 victory:
“The civil revolution that began in 2011 was largely crushed, its experiments in democracy eliminated, its most grassroots military forces co-opted or gobbled up by more powerful and authoritarian actors. There are no longer hundreds of independent, quasi-democratic local councils to organise civil life. The country is divided, traumatised, cursed by warlords and foreign occupiers. But suddenly it looks as if it may be possible not only to challenge but to end the rule of the monster …”
Hence as the regime, with the decisive aid of Russia’s air war and Iranian-backed Shiite sectarian militia, drove back the revolutionary forces, the only remaining areas free of Assad in the northwest came under the hegemonic control of either the Turkish regime, or of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the hardline Islamist militia then led by today’s president Ahmed al-Sharaa. While there were sharp differences and armed conflicts between the Turkish-backed groups and HTS, both Turkish and HTS hegemony in their own ways were negative influences from the perspective of the democratic revolution that they were coopting.
This is the background to HTS emerging as the leading force in November and December 2024 – the opposite of the situation 2011-2017, when HTS’s predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra, was only one of countless rebel forces; and the opposite of the expectations of the vast majority of Syrian revolutionary forces since 2011.
Background to HTS
Here it seems a little background on HTS would be useful. Jabhat al-Nusra arose in 2012 as a Sunni sectarian militia which affiliated to al-Qaeda (its leaders like al-Sharaa had been veterans of al-Qaeda in Iraq who took part in the Iraqi resistance against US occupation), and its reactionary and repressive politics were anathema to the goals of the revolution. However, following its rejection, in 2013, of the attempt of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) – which had quit al-Qaeda – to impose itself on Nusra in the form of ISIS, an important distinction arose: the more Syria-based Nusra, which focused on fighting the regime, often bent to the pressure of the people and other rebel factions, while ISIS from the outset was an outright enemy of the revolution, much more so than it was ever an enemy of the regime (indeed, both the regime and ISIS always focused more on fighting the rebels than each other, often enough at the same time).
Therefore, from a purely military standpoint, the vast array of Syrian rebel groups, representing a wide variety of ideological perspectives, were usually in some kind of united front situation with Nusra against the far more powerful genocidal regime and genocidal ISIS. In 2016, the Nusra leadership split from al-Qaeda as well, and in early 2017 formed HTS with a number of smaller Islamist factions to focus on Syria rather than connections to ‘global jihad’.
Despite this convergence of interests, Nusra, and later HTS, also worked to monopolise the situation where it was strong, and would sometimes destroy other rebel formations which threatened its power. This was not always successful though, and vast rebel-controlled coalitions and regions resisted Nusra or HTS encroachment and at times imposed important defeats on them.
However, the regime’s victories aided the process of HTS hegemonisation. The crushing of free Aleppo in late 2016 – where Nusra had been only one of 40 odd rebel groups – and of a number of famous revolutionary towns such as Daraya and Moademiyah around Damascus in 2015-17, and then the reconquest of the south from some 50 democratic rebel groups (the FSA Southern Front) in 2018, left only the northwest under rebel control. But in the huge regime and Russian offensives between 2018-2020 in the northwest, all the famous revolutionary towns with a strong revolutionary-democratic tradition, and a hsitory of resistance to Nusra/HTS encroachment – Saraqeb, Kafranbel, Maraat al-Numan, Atareb and so on – were conquered by the regime, hugely weakening the more independent, non-HTS sectors, and driving everyone into a corner near the Turkish border – either Idlib under HTS control, or the northern border regions under Turkish control.
So, while in the 2012-17 period, Nusra’s 10,000 fighters never formed more than about 10 percent of the rebel fighting force, HTS was estimated to have some 35,000 fighters when it launched its late November offensive last year. When these revolutionary towns in the northwest were conquered in 2018-20, their populations fled to remaining free territory, controlled by HTS, and many people not previously associated with it joined its fighting ranks. According to Ayham al-Sati of Baynana, a Spanish-language media outlet founded by Syrian journalists, “Many of the people who are now fighting … are children of areas like Saraqeb or Kafranbel. We are seeing figures we recognise from 2011, who then fought a regime that was bombing its population, and now they are doing it again.” Even troops from FSA brigades earlier destroyed by Nusra later joined HTS ranks, as their main aim remained the fall of the regime and this had become the last effective fighting force.
It should also be noted that the HTS-led ‘Deterrence of Aggression’ offensive in November 2024 also included a number of Free Syrian Army formations, most notably Jaysh al-Izza and the National Front for Liberation, which had managed to maintain a degree of independence from both HTS and the Turkish-controlled Syrian National Army (SNA). While having ideologically little in common with HTS, in practice they became closer to HTS simply because it continued to fight the regime, whereas the SNA was largely used by Turkey as an anti-Kurdish proxy while the Erdogan regime appealed to Assad for joint action against the Kurdish-led SDF, and as such aimed to keep the peace in the northwest.
But this meant that, while on one hand, HTS monopolised the fighting forces, the impact also went the other way, because the huge growth of HTS meant the vast majority of its cadres were never in Nusra, and therefore never connected to al-Qaeda. And these influences by non-Nusra elements, as well as the simple needs of technocratic governance in Idlib for 8 years, had a serious moderating impact on HTS, which was vital to its ability to lead the revolution in December.
This underlines the fact that HTS was essentially a coalition, and cannot be easily defined by the original Nusra core group. It includes pragmatic elements, hard jihadist elements, elements closer to the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the revolution and so on. Discussion on whether HTS’s transformation is real or superficial often takes on essentialist forms (absurd statements like “al-Qaeda can never change”), yet there have been marked changes over last few years in Idlib itself, including outreach to Christian and Druze communities which Nusra had severely oppressed, as well as to Kurds and to the SDF.
However, these genuine changes in HTS do not mean that it ceased being an authoritarian Sunni Islamist group, and in any case a significant part of its base still consisted of ideological jihadists. Reports by human rights organisations consistently reported on repression and torture used in prisons (although by then the majority of prisoners were unreconstructed al-Qaeda or other hard-jihadist militants rejecting HTS’s pragmatic course); and Syrian revolutionary activists remember that some of their outstanding cadres, such as Raed Fares and Hamoud Juneid, are widely believed to have been murdered by HTS cadre.
Nusra/HTS, in other words, was long a known quantity, and was previously the very last choice of Syrian revolutionaries to be the leadership, but hard reality changed things.
‘Deformed revolution’ or mere ‘popular coup’?
What accounts for such a rapid collapse of the regime? The main cause was that it was hollow; its troops refused to fight; no soldier in Syria thought they should put their life on the line for the rotten, uber-corrupt, thieving, tyrannical regime. But there was a second factor, and this was the ability of this more pragmatic HTS to realise that, to carry through this revolution, it was required to do and say things which stood in stark contrast to its background, ideology and practice in Idlib, for example outreach to all religious and ethnic minorities, promises to women of no compulsory veiling and so on. The revolution would not have been possible without this – even people who hated the regime may still have resisted if they believed HTS was still what Nusra had been a decade earlier.
The regime’s previous crushing of the revolution and all its popular organisations, combined with its utter hollowness, meant that it simply collapsed once the HTS-led “Deterrence of Aggression” offensive took off, so the rebel army simply took power, but without a mobilised and organised revolutionary population taking part. While some observers, such as Gilbert Achcar, have claimed that this was therefore not a revolution (indeed he warns against characterising it “as the resumption of the Syrian revolution”), in my view this lacks a huge amount of nuance; millions of Syrian people did come out and welcome the rebels everywhere, and countless popular initiatives began to take shape, and in their consciousness the masses feel it as the culmination of what they began. Nevertheless, it means that the new government, while based on popular support, is under less restraint from the revolution’s base than it would have been otherwise, and the new state’s armed forces were de facto almost entirely Sunni Muslim in composition.
Rather than a mere ‘popular coup’, what occurred is better analysed as a ‘deformed revolution’.
A capitalist regime, a democratic opening and a devastated country
To state the obvious, the Islamist-influenced government led by al-Sharaa is a capitalist one; no-one had ever imagined anything different. And the cadres around the former HTS seek to consolidate their own power as the leading political force in this government. A capitalist government, whatever its political colouring, will aim to stabilise the situation for local and foreign capital, and to sideline any radical, working class or socialist challenge to its rule.
At the same time, December 8 created a semi-revolutionary situation: the Syrian masses who entered the streets in December have expectations, they are pressing their demands. Above all, democratic space now exists that did not exist before December; the masses are able to speak, to organise, to hold rallies and meetings around the country without being repressed. This is a vastly different situation for organising – and only now is there some possibility of attempting to establish a workers’ movement. Previously you would have ended up in the Sednaya concentration camp or in a mass grave.
Some of the apocalyptic destruction the Assad regime imposed on Syria; when a regime destroys its country, it becomes the job of whoever overthrows it to reconstruct it.
Currently there is electricity for a few hours a day, if lucky, food and fuel are absurdly expensive due to being in very short supply, and wages abysmal, the state bankrupt – so bankrupt that Qatar and Saudi Arabia paid off a mere $15 million in debt to the IMF and World Bank that the government could not afford. With the central bank sanctioned, virtually no banks around the world have been able to make financial transactions with Syria; not even remittances could get through much of the time. Even a Qatari attempt from January to pay public sector salaries for a few months was held up by US sanctions until May, when special permission was finally given by the US (except for military and security salaries).
Clearly, no reconstruction can occur without the lifting of sanctions. And there can be no illusions about a working-class or socialist movement in the short-term without some level of recovery of industry, infrastructure and of the population.
And in the real world, getting the economy going again, bringing about reconstruction, will require massive injections of local and foreign capital, loans and aid. While “stability for investment” may be goal of a capitalist government, at this moment it also equates with the popular mood and with the needs of the country and its population. The sanctions not only devastated the population, they also further demobilised them, both under late Assad and post-Assad, given their everyday struggle for survival.
Of course, capitalist investment and economic activity are no panacea, but currently it would be a luxury to worry too much about this in the context of the absence of any money for investment and development; Assad’s kleptocratic crony capitalism was little more than a regime of plunder, and its collapse has left nothingness in place of it. Capitalist investment and an onset of economic recovery would create conditions for class struggle to revive, to confront the evils that capitalist investment will re-introduce in a new form.
A capitalist government with an unclear direction
Which direction does its need to establish a stable capitalist regime lead the ex-HTS core group now in effective control in Syria?
Towards continuing with its pragmatic liberal-capitalist transformation, and opening further in a non-sectarian direction towards the countries’ minorities?
Or to reasserting its more ‘Islamist’ character, imposing a hard Sunni Islamist regime, as a means of repression, and asserting Sunni sectarianism as a means to suppress minorities? The Sunni version of what happened in Iran.
The jury is still out on this; both pressures and tendencies exist. To date, while the government has mostly gone in the first direction, there have also been signs of the second. Either way, it has tended to appoint many people from former HTS or closely allied groups to key political and military-security roles in the caretaker government – critics call this ‘one colour’ appointments – and has somewhat limited the move towards democracy at an institutional level, while maintaining a generally pragmatic course and environment of free expression. These are some of the major changes:
At a conference of armed factions in January, the rebel militia were told to dissolve – including HTS itself – and form a new Syrian army. However, there has been little real progress in fully integrating the factions, especially some of the SNA factions who carried out terrible crimes in March on the coast (see below). Moreover, this underlines a fundamental problem/weakness with the new regime: given that the overwhelming majority of rebel cadres, especially by late in the conflict, were Sunni Arabs, this means the the regime’s main armed forces are essentially from this one dominant part of the population. While this is an inheritance rather than a deliberate policy, there has been very little movement to expand the military to incorporate minorities, a fundamental issue when the army is used in non-Sunni areas, given the deep divisions inherited from the Assad regime.
This conference also declared al-Sharaa interim president. While this was arguably formalising a reality, he was thereby declared president by a purely military gathering representing only one section of Syrian society.
The long promised National Dialogue Conference in March did not live up to its promise – the committee appointed to organise it was small and dominated by supporters of the ruling group; the basis upon which delegates were selected at local gatherings was opaque; invites to the conference were sent out only two days beforehand, preventing many long-time Syrian revolutionaries abroad from reaching it; the conference lasted only a day; and its decisions carry little weight.
The government declared it would take four years to write a new constitution and five years to hold elections. Some period of time for recovery is understandable, and millions of Syrians abroad or internally displaced should also be able to take part in decision-making; and in any case, holding elections now would most likely simply lead to al-Sharaa being elected and strengthened. However, these periods of time are widely considered rather long.
The interim constitution declared in March, to be in effect until a new constitution is written, declares ‘Sharia’ to be the major influence on Syrian law, and that the president must be a Muslim. While these aspects represent formal continuity with the Assad regime constitution, people expect the new Syria to go beyond the old regime; moreover, some fear that these clauses may be used undemocratically by an Islamist-influenced government where they were not by the secular-fascist Assad regime, which justified totalitarian rule using different ideological constructs. The interim constitution also gives sweeping powers to the president, allowing him to appoint one third of the national assembly. However, many aspects were better, including clauses guaranteeing “the social, economic and political rights of women,” protecting “freedom of belief and the status of religious sects” and guaranteeing ”the cultural diversity of Syrian society, including the cultural and linguistic rights of all Syrians.”
The new transitional government appointed in April emphasised technical expertise, and of 23 members, only four had been members of HTS and another five associated with it at some level; this was thus an improvement on the one-colour interim cabinet. Respected civil activists such as Hind Kabawat, who has a background in Syria’s civil opposition movement, and Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets disaster relief and rescue service, were included. However, there is only one woman, one Alawite, one Druze, one Kurd and one Christian (Kabawat, who is also the woman!), as opposed to 19 Sunni Arab men, so this attempt at diverse representation smacks of tokenism. Five ministers previously served in senior positions in the Assad regime, including the two main economic-related ministers, who not surprisingly are advocates of neoliberal policies.
When government ministers have made unacceptable statements or decisions, there has been pushback, often leading to retreat. For example, when announced school curriculum changes (including scrapping evolution) were widely protested, the government said they were only suggestions, and that the only actionable change was the removal of Assad worship; Syria’s caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, appeared in front of a flag that displayed the shahada (Islamic profession of faith) as well as the Free Syrian flag, but following a storm of criticism, at his next public appearance only the revolution flag was present.
Significant demonstrations and public meetings were held by women to protest the anti-woman agenda put forth by two HTS appointees. Thus far, there is little evidence of this agenda being implemented, despite worrying signs. The governor initially appointed for Suweida province was the first woman in Syria’s history in that position. When asked about women’s rights to study and work, al-Sharaa pointed out that in Idlib under his government, women are 60 percent of university graduates. Given what happened to women’s rights under an Islamist regime following a popular revolution in Iran, women’s movements will need to stay alert.
There have been plenty of declarations by small groups of leftists, workers organisations, other progressive groups and the like around various issues, but it is hard to gauge how significant they are. There is no room for exaggeration on this – after 54 years of monstrously repressive rule, it is going to take some time for workers and leftist movements to emerge in a country destroyed. There have also been many local grassroots initiatives, eg local people began organising their own people’s security forces in Aleppo; a popular initiative there quite early put the demand on HTS and the other militia to leave the cities to local councils, and they agreed; non-governmental civic councils in parts of Daraa and Damascus monitoring local government and services; grassroots local councils in the Qalamoun region supporting education and aid initiatives for displaced people; grassroots re-greening initiatives in Daraa; inter-communal dialogue initiatives between Sunni and Alawite communities taking place on the coast; and much more. Again, however, this is mostly small-scale.
Neoliberal orientation – and Assadist connections?
In January, the government announced an economic policy based on free markets and privatisation of ‘loss-making’ state enterprises, while maintaining critical infrastructure in state hands. An article in the Financial Times was headlined ‘Syria to dismantle Assad-era socialism, says foreign minister’, referring to Shaibani’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, demonstrating the way the new government aimed to get needed foreign investment by propagandistically playing up its rejection of the so-called ‘socialism’ of the Assad regime.
However, while the new government certainly is neoliberal, there should be no illusions about the role of large-scale private capitalist ownership under the Assad regime, largely owned by Assad family and regime-connected cronies. For example, again from the Financial Times, Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, controlled “as much as 60 per cent of the country’s economy through a complex web of holding companies. His business empire spans industries ranging from telecommunications, oil, gas and construction, to banking, airlines and retail. He even owns the country’s only duty free business as well as several private schools. This concentration of power, say bankers and economists, has made it almost impossible for outsiders to conduct business in Syria without his consent” (ironically given the ‘socialism’ title in the article above, the Financial Times here cites another of the same paper’s articles entitled ‘Syria sees benefits of liberalisation’, referring to the Assad regime!). Moreover, much of this “complex web” extended into what is euphemistically called the ‘state-owned economy’ via massive corruption and nepotism.
On top of this, foreign investment is hardly new; after all, Russia and Iran owned large chunks of the Syrian economy, and even became rivals for control of the Syrian corpse. Russia owned phosphate mines, ports, gas fields and so on; Iran amongst other things owned much of the telecommunications network. These deals were often not on terms beneficial to Syria. Whatever the case, this collapsed with the regime.
As such, Syria’s new quest to mobilise local and especially foreign capital is not so much a change as a step to the side; Shaibani’s talk of Assad’s ‘socialism’ pure opportunism to encourage western investment. Ironically, the government actually cancelled a 49-year contract over a Tartous port held by the Russian navy in the same week as Shaibani’s speech in Davos; Syrian authorities said that revenue from the port would “now benefit the Syrian state,” whereas Russia had received 65 percent of the port’s profits in the old agreement, meaning Syria basically carried out an act of nationalisation, of ‘socialism’, just as Shaibani was talking up rejecting ‘socialism’!
All that said, the continuity of neoliberalism means anti-worker policy. The government has called for the retrenchment of some 400,000 of the 1.3 million-strong public sector workforce; some of this has either already been implemented, or workers were placed on three months of compulsory leave (whether paid or unpaid remains unclear) while authorities assess whether these jobs are needed. The excuse given is that these are just paper jobs created by the previous regime to pay its cronies and supporters for doing nothing; while this claim should not be dismissed out of hand, rather than trusting capitalist governments to deal with such issues, they should be investigated by unions or workers’ committees. Of course retrenchments are hardly surprising in a bankrupt economy, after losing the lifelines provided by Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies, which until May were not replicated even by Syria’s new friends due to US secondary sanctions. There have been strikes in health and education and other sectors against lay-offs. On the other side, in late June, Sharaa issued a decree raising all public sector salaries (as well as those of employees in joint-ventures), and pensions, by 200 percent, thus raising the average wage from $40 to $120 a month; this is the first step in a promised 400 percent increase.
The beginnings of sanctions removal following Trump’s mid-May about-turn is of course a hugely welcome change, but at the same time there can be no illusions about what a massive influx of local and foreign capital will do politically. On the one hand, it is important to re-emphasise how essential this is. Already, major French, Chinese, Turkish, Qatari, Saudi and Emirati projects have been launched, focused on restoration of Syria’s crucial infrastructure and energy sectors.
However, as Syrian writer Joseph Daher stresses, an economic free for all without clear targets will not lift the country out of its misery, especially given the government’s neo-liberal orientation; he also stresses the necessary political dimension of democratic inclusion and revival of civil activism to assuring the gains are not all made by big capital, otherwise the government’s already centralising tendencies could drift towards what he calls “authoritarian neoliberalism,” which is essentially what the Assad regime, like the other regional regimes, had become and was precisely what led to the revolution – with the proviso that “authoritarian” is a rather euphemistic term to use for a regime as totalitarian and genocidal as that of Assad and it would take massive anti-democratic setbacks for this new order to even begin approaching that scenario.
One thing the Assad regime did leave was some fabulously wealthy individuals, and these Assad-connected capitalists may be grabbing some of the new investment opportunities. As Syrian writer Mahmoud Bitar notes, “Russia and Iran are not standing aside. Their economic arms, state-linked contractors, businessmen, and cronies are still embedded in Syria’s reconstruction, energy, and infrastructure sectors. … The likes of Mohamad Hamsho, who controls hard currency flows, and Fuad al-Assi, who runs the country’s largest money transfer network, remain central players … Lifting sanctions could make them stronger tomorrow.” As a party calling itself the Syrian Democratic Left Party notes, new investments will only contribute meaningfully to recovery if protected from entrenched corruption inherited from the former regime, requiring a new regulatory framework.
Shortly, after writing these lines, Bitar returned to the largest and most important showpiece of the post-sanctions climate: the $7 billion investment in power infrastructure by the Qatari-led UCC-Holding and Power International consortium, expected to provide some 50 percent of Syria’s power needs and to create 50,000 direct and 250,000 indirect jobs. While the importance of this for Syria can hardly be doubted, Bitar notes that these two linked companies are owned by Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who were also behind a 2005 “disastrous Ummayad Tunnel project in Damascus” which was carried out “in partnership with the Military Housing Establishment, one of Assad’s most notoriously corrupt state fronts.” Moreover, he notes that the Al-Khayyat brothers are nephews of the very Mohammad Hamsho he had just mentioned, who was “the Assad regime’s top economic operator, still active and protected in Damascus despite international sanctions.” Bitar also questions why the consortium is not investing in the 14 existing power plants, rather than “building 4 new ones from scratch.”
Bitar also revealed that Farhan al-Marsoumi, “a key figure in Assad’s Captagon production and smuggling networks, has received a license from the new Syrian government to open a tobacco company.” Aside from his Captagon trade, he was also a key Iranian-connected figure in Deir Ezzor , who led recruitment efforts for Iran’s 47th Regiment, and was even connected to Maher al-Assad’s notorious 4th Brigade.
Capitalism is clearly a key point of connection between the previous and current regimes, and if these examples become the norm, we may be seeing the resurrection of elements of the old regime by stealth.
Interestingly, al-Sharaa’s economist father, Hussein, strongly criticised the privatisation push, declaring the state sector a “national asset built over decades,” and claiming that “the issue is not with the public sector itself, but with the mismanagement that has plagued it.” He warned that privatisation posed both ‘sovereignty’ and economic issues.
Transitional justice or lack of it
Al-Sharaa issued a decree on May 17 for the establishment of a Transitional Justice Commission, tasked with “uncovering the facts regarding the violations of the former regime” and to “hold accountable those responsible for the violations … and redress the harm caused to victims and consolidate the principles of national reconciliation.” On the same day, a National Authority for Missing Persons, to be responsible for “investigating and uncovering the fate of the missing and forcibly disappeared and documenting their cases,” was also established.
However, to date the Syrian people have seen virtually no evidence of this justice in action, and even the formal establishment of this commission was considered months late by the public. On April 25, Syrian activists had called ‘Friday of Rage’ demonstrations around the country under the slogan ‘Transitional Justice and the Beginning of Trials.’ This demonstrated the depth of anger at the lack of accountability of the Assad-era criminals responsible for hundreds of thousands of killings and untold destruction. Interior Ministry spokesman Nouruddin al-Baba confirmed that 123,000 former regime personnel were implicated in crimes against Syrians.
The lack of a ‘transitional justice’ process in the months since December is widely cited as a factor driving on-the-ground retribution against perpetrators, assumed perpetrators, or in the worst cases, collective ‘retribution’ against Alawites. Thus while the security forces can in some cases be blamed for being too harsh on the Alawite communities when searching for Assadist criminals, this goes hand in hand with the government being too soft on these criminals in the bigger picture. So, on the one hand, there was a sweeping amnesty of ordinary Assadist troops and security forces; tens of thousands of troops passed through government “resettlement” processes to demonstrate their innocence. This is of course a very good measure of the new government. However, while a very significant number of Assadist war criminals have been arrested, none have faced the judiciary yet, which casts the actual positive measure in a negative light to many victims. The amnesty is aimed at engendering social peace, but the lack of accountability for actual criminals engenders the exact opposite.
What has made it much worse is that in some cases even worse Assadist criminals, unaccountably, now walk the streets. For example, Fadi Saqr, former National Defence Forces (NDF) leader who shares responsibility for the horrific Tadamoun massacre, was inconceivably amnestied, leading to protests; war criminal Ziad Masouh, responsible for massacres in western Homs region, was released from prison; Khaled al-Qassoum, head of the Shabiha ‘Popular Resistance’ militia and close associate of the ‘Butcher of Baniyas’ Ali Kayali, returned to live in Hama city with security guarantees! In some cases the explanation is that is that these Assadist generals made last-minute deals and stood aside in December, ensuring the surrender of entire territories without causing unnecessary bloodshed. This has created huge resentment among Syrians whose families were slaughtered and homes and cities destroyed.
However, Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa claims the releases are provisional, prioritizing short-term stability while pledging long-term justice. Thus civil peace efforts, including community reconciliation, are precursors to formal justice, as “a turbulent atmosphere guarantees neither fair trials nor reparations.” He referenced post-apartheid South Africa’s model, where truth-telling preceded prosecutions. At a June 10 press conference, Hassan Soufan of the Civil Peace Committee claimed the government’s “amnesty-centered approach” had helped sharply reduce [Assadist] insurgent attacks since March.
Whether this works or not is unclear. In Homs, a former Assadist commander was killed on April 20, and the assassin appeared on video complaining he had raised charges against him related to crimes against civilians, to no avail, so he acted himself; and in Aleppo, a militia calling itself the Special Accountability Task Force was launched on the same day, by former rebels take the law into their own hands and assassinate former Assad regime criminals. Such initiatives are inevitable in the circumstances; but though they appear directed at actual criminals (Alawite and Sunni alike) rather than Alawite civilians, there is huge potential for this to go wrong. According to Gregory Waters, such vigilante executions “surged” following Soufan’s June 10 acknowledgement that Fadi Saqr had been given a role in the committee as a key intermediary with ex-regime insurgents and loyalists, a kind of “peace-builder” whose safety is “guaranteed” by the Committee!
Much worse is the appearance of a new Sunni sectarian militia, Saraya Ansar al-Sunna, which has essentially declared war on the country’s minorities, which made its appearance by killing 15 Alawites in Hama in February. Unlike ISIS it has not yet militarily confronted the government, but it has issued fatwas against al-Sharaa’s “tyrannical” government, declaring them infidels. While such an ideologically reactionary militia cannot be blamed on lack of transitional justice, it may well be able to recruit from some disaffected by it.
More generally, the lack of transitional justice (and perceived betrayals of it), combined with the lack of jobs in sanctioned post-Assad Syria has also been a factor in the prominence of jihadi-inspired armed civilian groups which played an important role in both the slaughter of Alawites in March, and the attacks on Druze in late April-early May, to be discussed below.
How much does the government control?
A few tens of thousands of troops that HTS and its allies had may have been adequate as a security force for the northwest corner of Syria, but once in control of a country of 23 million people, it is in a weak position. The government currently only controls part of Syria, most of the Sunni Arab heartland running down the west of the country from Idlib and Aleppo in the north, through Hama and Homs, down to Damascus. Regarding the rest of the country:
South of Damascus, the also Sunni Daraa and Quneitra provinces came under the control of old Free Syrian Army (FSA) Southern Front brigades, some of which joined the new army while some resisted; however, the main militia resisting integration, the formerly Russian and UAE-backed 8th Brigade, finally dissolved in April, an important victory for the government, so formal government authority now extends to these provinces.
The neighbouring Druze-majority Suweida province is somewhat autonomous, controlled by Druze militias which arose during the revolution against the Assad regime, which had also maintained independence from the main rebel formations. More on this below.
Israeli occupation forces control the Golan Heights (occupied since 1967) and also an expanded region in Quneitra and Daraa provinces which they have seized since December, while also making incursions into Damascus province; Israel bars the government from moving its control south of Damascus under the threat of bombing, meaning government authority in Quneitra, Daraa and Suweida is incomplete at best.
The heavily Alawite coastal provinces of Tartous and Latakia, as well as Alawite sections of Homs and Hama, are theoretically under government control, but there remain Assadist remnants in various parts engaged in a low-lying insurgency; meanwhile the Russian military still controls its major air and naval bases here.
Parts of the northern border strip are still controlled by Turkish troops supporting their proxy Syrian National Army (SNA) militias; although theoretically dissolved into the new army, by all accounts they maintain significant independence.
One third of Syria in the northeast is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by 2000 US troops.
US troops also control part of the Jordanian border region in the southeast in collaboration with the Syrian Free Army (SFA, not Free Syrian Army-FSA), an ex-rebel brigade which fought only ISIS but not the regime, with US backing.
In parts of the central desert region ISIS remains active. In mid-May, ISIS called on foreign fighters in Syria to defect to its ranks to join its fight against Syria’s government (accused of “idolatory” and “apostasy”), showing images of al-Sharaa shaking hands with Trump, followed by a May 18 attack on government forces in Deir Ezzor (previously most attacks were on the SDF).
This map somewhat underestimates the degree of government control, but is not that incorrect as a general guide.
The question of minority regions
Due to the way the government came to power, the new security forces which emerged are by default overwhelmingly Sunni in composition. The new General Security forces (GSS) and the new army consist almost entirely of cadre from former rebel groups. The GSS itself is virtually a proxy for former HTS cadre, and from the previous HTS-led Syrian Salvation Government of Idlib, and as such the government has been able to assert reasonable control over it. The new army, however, is simply a patching together of dozens of rebel groups who formally agreed to dissolve into it at the January conference, but many are not fully integrated, and there is limited command and control. There is no formal block on non-Sunni joining these forces, and this process has begun but is still in its infancy.
Clearly, unifying Syria is a crucial task for the new government, but the question is how this can be achieved, especially given this reality. This is connected to Syria’s religious and ethnic diversity. On the one hand, most of Syria’s Christians, Ismaelis and even Shia have maintained good relations with the new authorities, despite its Sunni-centric tendencies. It is where minority populations coincide with geographic regions that major issues exist: the Alawites on the coast, the Druze in Suweida in the south, and the Kurds in the northwest.
But there is a very important difference between these three groups: the Druze and the Kurds have been able to maintain security in their own regions, and pose a strong bargaining position with the government as they negotiate integrating into the national security architecture (despite agreeing in principle), because they developed their own armed forces during their autonomous struggles during the revolutionary period. By contrast, the only de facto Alawite armed forces had been those of the Assad regime; when it disappeared, they had nothing else, as Assad had repressed any sign of Alawite opposition.
The Alawite coast
This left a security vacuum in the Alawite-dominant provinces of Tartous and Latakia on the coast, and where they are a minority in western Homs and Hama. HTS attempted to fill this vacuum with the GSS, but the situation deteriorated. While both the GSS and local Alawite leaderships attempted to work together, on one side large numbers of armed Assadist remnants have hidden out in the region, with the support of a section of the population, while on the other, a section of the Sunni population – especially among those who lost everything, whose homes and entire cities have been destroyed – is bent on revenge for the genocide which Assad carried out against the Sunni population using Alawite fascist death squads (Shabiha) and armed forces overwhelmingly dominated by Alawite officers. Some killings targeted Assadist criminals, but this was combined with sectarian ‘revenge’ killings of Alawite civilians, as well as ordinary criminality in the security vacuum. This also coincided with a GSS push to arrest war criminals, which at times was carried out in a heavy-handed way with serious violations, and a growing Assadist insurgency beginning with the massacre of 14 GSS personnel on December 25 – quite a tragic cocktail of different elements.
The government passed thousands of former regime troops (mostly Alawites) through a process to ‘settle’ their status; once shown they had committed no crimes, they were free. However, the collapse of the Assadist repressive forces left these former troops without income, and no process began to recruit them to the new security forces, increasingly alienating them from the new authorities. While there was no formal block on recruitment of non-Sunnis, a certain reluctance with Alawites due to past Assadist affiliations combined with the government’s lack of money to pay new recruits due to the sanctions and catastrophic economic situation. This exacerbated the security vacuum, because, whatever the intentions even of the better GSS personnel, they were stretched thin, and without roots in the region and the Alawite community, they were in a weak position to confront the criminality.
On March 6, the Assadist insurgency broke out in full force in Tartous and Latakia, initially slaughtering over 120 of the new, young GSS members and 25 civilians. As the government scrambled to confront it, thousands of people poured in from around the country, including GSS forces, military factions from the new army, jihadi gangs, and armed civilian groups, enraged by the slaughter of the security forces and the audacity of remnants of the hated regime to attempt to return to power. Among these thousands were perhaps hundreds who, rather than help confront the Assadists, instead engaged in a horrific sectarian pogrom of the Alawite citizenry over the next two days, driven by a combination of sectarian hate (fomented by some hate-filled preaching), lust for revenge or simple criminality.
While some GSS units were reportedly involved in atrocities, overwhelmingly reports suggest this central arm of government, made up mostly of former HTS cadre, acted professionally, focused on fighting the insurgents, and took a heavy toll. Long time Syrian writer, activist and former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh claims, regarding the GSS, “in some cases, [they] exercised excessive repressive violence and captured Alawite civilians. … However, it was also the most disciplined, limiting further casualties in some instances, and it suffered significant losses in confrontations with armed Assad loyalists.” Even this report by an anti-Assad Alawite coastal resident, which is uncompromisingly gut-wrenching in its description of the mass murder and the terror of the Alawite citizens, nevertheless also speaks of the security forces “trained in Idlib” who were “known for their professionalism and respectful conduct toward the people of the Syrian coast,” and claims “the best of them” were massacred by the Assadist insurgents on the first day. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) report does include violations by “General Security personnel” along with “military factions [and] armed local residents, both Syrian and foreign,” but assesses that the “vast majority” were carried out by certain of these “military factions” that only recently joined the new Syrian army. In Homs, the GSS formed cordons around areas to protect the Alawite citizens from armed gangs, while an Alawite woman interviewed on Gregory Alexander’s excellent Syria Revisited blog claimed “the General Security forces played a huge role in protecting the Alawite neighborhoods. This interviewee from the town of Qadmus – an Ismaili town surrounded by Alawite villages – reports no problems with the police or security forces (GSS), but with some of the “factions” (ie military factions), as well as the Assadists. Similarly, Latakia resident Alaa Awda recalled that “when general security entered for the first time, they were professional,” but when factions affiliated with the Ministry of Defense entered, “they were harsher, with executions, assaults and robberies.”
Saleh, like the SNHR and others, claims most atrocities were carried out by undisciplined military factions of the semi-integrated new army, above all two notorious SNA brigades “Amshat [the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade] and Hamzat” (both were widely named by other sources too) and by “jihadist groups, including foreign fighters,” and these forces “engaged in genocidal violence,” driven either by “malevolent ideological conviction” or “a mix of revenge, warlordism, and looting.” Notably, the Amshat and Hamzat brigades have long been under US sanctions for their extensive violations in Afrin when they took part in Turkey’s conquest of the Kurdish town, and they have now been placed under EU sanctions for their role in the coastal violence. These two brigades, plus another three notorious SNA brigades – Sultan Murad, Ahrar al-Sharqiya and Jaysh al-Islam – were also mentioned as violators in the report by the well-respected Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), as was a military brigade (Division 100) which was not SNA, but previously belonging to the now dissolved HTS. Irregular armed civilian groups, including from the region itself, bent on revenge, also played an important role in the atrocities.
On March 7, al-Sharaa demanded that “all forces that have joined the clash sites” immediately evacuate the region. The GSS managed to clear the region of the undisciplined forces, make a number of arrests and put an end to the slaughter by March 9-10, but according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the toll included some 889 civilians or disarmed fighters killed by the forces nominally on the pro-government side, and 445 killed by the insurgent Assadist forces, including 214 members of security forces and 231 civilians.
During the crisis, al-Sharaa claimed that “many parties entered the Syrian coast and many violations occurred, it became an opportunity for revenge.” He continued that “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability. Even among those closest to us, or the most distant from us, there is no difference in this matter. Violating people’s sanctity, violating their religion, violating their money, this is a red line in Syria.” These are strong words. And the evidence from a range of sources above that that the state’s GSS was least involved in killing and was largely ‘professional’ and acted to quell the violence, likewise means that claims by enemies of the new Syria, as well as some sloppy journalism, that “the Syrian government carried out a massacre of Alawites,” are extremely irresponsible.
However, my aim here is not to make the case for government or GSS innocence, but simply that their roles need to be distinguished from that of the actual pogromists. It would be pure apologism to deny some level of overall responsibility: the military factions involved were undisciplined, yes, yet in theory they belong to the new army whose chain of command leads back to Damascus; while Sharaa’s own words were strong, some other government leaders tended to blame the Assadists for most crimes, or to downplay the massacres as “individual” violations; and as Syrian activist Rami Jarrah points out, while the Syrian government immediately declared condolences and mourning for the Christians killed in the late June ISIS church bombing in Damascus, there was no such mourning or even official condolences for the slaughtered Alawites.
Whatever the case, the future of the revolution – meaning beyond the mere ‘democratic space’ now open in Syria, the revolution’s promise of a Syria for all its communities, that rejects the methods of the past regime – now depends on how real, how effective, how transparent, how just this process of identifying, trying and punishing the perpetrators is, as well as working hard with Alawite community leaders for policies of compensation, reconciliation and inclusion in the institutions of the new Syria. Much depends not only on the report, but on the government’s response to it.
While some Alawites have declared their support for the government’s investigative commission, tens of thousands have fled Syria and countless more, likely the majority, will be too traumatised by these events to ever feel the new Syria is their home again. In the case of Hanadi Zahlout, a long-time Alawite supporter of the revolution since 2011, whose brothers were murdered, on the one hand she also gave her support to investigative commission, after Sharaa rung her and gave condolences, yet three months later, on the eve of the release of the commission’s report, she describes the situation grimly: “my home area is still surrounded by checkpoints. The killings continue and people live in constant fear, unable to resume their lives or even perform basic daily tasks like farming or moving along the roads. Families of the victims are still denied the dignity of burying their loved ones. Survivors continue to search in vain for healing. Homes lie in ruins, and children live in perpetual terror.”
Notably, leaders of ‘Amshat’ and ‘Hamzat’ still occupy important positions in the new army; if only street criminals but not ‘big fish’ are netted this will be farcical. Unfortunately, the injustice of seeing large-scale Assadist war criminals like Fadi Saqr walking the streets as reported above is not a good sign for justice for the Alawites – if leading Sunni criminals were to be brought to justice while leading Assadist criminals are not, it would lead to popular rejection and likely more sectarian ‘revenge’ violence. The worst outcome would be the government’s obsession with ‘social peace’ meaning neither set of criminals facing justice.
(The investigative report is due for release on July 10. This short section cannot do justice to the enormity of this issue; I will be releasing a big report on this to coincide with the release of that report).
Top: Photos of the first 100 security personnel massacred by the Assadists spread outrage around Syria; Bottom: Cover of the Syrian Network for Human Rights’ preliminary report into the massacres of Alawites.
The Druze south
While the Alawite issue was always going to be a minefield, the situation of the Druze is quite different; overwhelmingly the Druze opposed Assad, and the new stage of the revolution arguably opened with mass Druze demonstrations in September 2023. The various Druze militia – always independent of the rebel formations but also of Assad’s regime – played a direct role in the overthrow of Assad in December. However, they have resisted integration into the new army without certain guarantees.
In late April, a fake video purporting to show a Druze leader insulting the Prophet led to attacks on the Druze-majority town of Jaramana in Damascus by gangs of Sunni jihadists from the neighbouring area Mleha (“and other neighborhoods of Damascus heavily destroyed by the regime and Druze NDF members from Jaramana”). The defenders were government-aligned Druze security forces, who were reinforced by GSS forces sent in by the government to fight off the attackers. As these Druze civilians who were hiding out from the April 28 attack by armed jihadists reported, “Syrian security forces … had intervened to quell the fighting at the expense of suffering fatalities themselves” from the jihadi gangs. However, then four members of the government’s security forces were killed, and their bodies mistreated, by an anti-government Druze militia (including former pro-Assad Druze militiamen); in late February there had already been a clash in the same town between government forces and a Druze militia derived from the Assadist National Defence Forces (NDF).
There were important divisions among the Druze leadership. “Top Druze clerics were split between calls for calm and escalation in response to this week’s violence. Two of the three Sheikhs of Reason, Yousef Jerboa and Hamoud al-Hanawi, issued a statement calling for calm and restraint on April 29. The third, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, took an escalatory stance towards Damascus.” The Men of Dignity movement noted above, led by Layth al-Balous, is strongly identified with the first position. By contrast, the SMC identifies with Hijri’s anti-government stance.
These clashes left 48 Druze militia cadre, 28 government security forces and 14 civilians dead. Not good, but this outcome was vastly different from the disaster on the coast, partly because the attacking forces were much smaller, the GSS was more ready, it had not been preceded by a murderous Assadist coup, and above all because the Druze had their own armed forces. The government and most of the main Druze leaders – including Jerboa, al-Hanawi and al-Bahlous – reached an agreement that the GSS and police would be activated in Suweida, but they would be composed of local Druze; separatism was explicitly rejected, and Israel’s interference was rejected. Only Hijri, who had also expressed support for Israel, did not sign this agreement. The next day the government announced that over 1500 local faction fighters had applied to join the GSS; while the Druze militia themselves would remain the main military force for now, expectations were “underway to form a special military brigade for Sweida, affiliated with the Ministry of Defense.”
Israel launched a series of attacks on the region supposedly to “protect the Druze,” including an attack on Damascus close to the presidential palace, which Israeli leaders said was an warning to al-Sharaa. Netanyahu warned Israel would not allow the “extremist terrorist regime in Damascus” to harm the Druze. Some wounded Druze did flee to Israeli occupied parts of southern Syria to get hospital treatment for injuries. The Israeli Druze leadership, which supports the Israeli government and does not identify with the Palestinians, pressed for more Israeli intervention. The great majority of Druze reject Israel’s intervention and its pretence of “protecting” them, as well as any Israel-driven fantasies of a ‘Druze state’. As Syria watcher Charles Lister sums it up, “when Israel has militarily intervened, or threatened to do so, it’s only ever been to specifically protect Druze militias known for hostility to Syria’s new government and for having previously been part of, or loyal to Assad’s regime.”
Despite the sharp differences between the Alawite and Druze situations, one factor in common was the intervention of outlaw sectarian forces theoretically allied with the government, but with their own agendas. These rootless Sunni jihadi forces are causing mayhem, and the government needs to seriously rein them in, rather than only doing so when they begin killing. Some accuse the government itself of being behind them – they cause chaos, then the government sends in the GSS to restore order and thereby gain control of minority regions. Joseph Daher, a long-time anti-Assad Syrian analyst, believes sectarianism is promoted by the government as an ideology of state to cement its Sunni base; suppress class struggle, by diverting “the attention of the popular classes from social, economic and political issues by making a particular category (caste or ethnicity) a scapegoat as a cause for the country’s problems;” and to be used as a tool of repression when necessary, for example, he claims that strikes against anti-worker policies have declined since March due to fear the sectarian gangs may be used against them – while there has been no evidence of any such use, it is a legitimate concern.
The former HTS base is a spectrum and therefore linkages no doubt exist at some level between sections of the state machine and such jihadist gangs; it is not unusual for bourgeois governments to use sectarian, nationalist or similar prejudices to homogenise and mobilise their base in a way that heads of united working class struggle, so Daher’s analysis may partially explain these phenomena. However, this seems too conspiratorial a reading to fully explain either the far more complex events, or the actions of a government under pressure from a variety of directions, many of which are in contradiction to the priorities of its former jihadist base. For example, on the coast, the government obviously did not organise an Assadist insurgency and slaughter of their own forces in order to then have to fight to regain control; in Suweida, the GSS lost lives to the jihadis from the first day, and the outcome in the final agreement would appear positive for the Druze. Arguably the actions of sectarian jihadists are deeply destabilising for a government attempting to hold the country together and help it recover. Not having the resources to properly control the base (whether in uniform or not) is just as plausible an explanation than a deliberate strategy in my view, but many aspects probably combine to make the big picture.
[The big clashes between local Druze and Bedouin fighters which erupted in mid-July, bringing the government security forces in to quell the fighting and sign a new agreement with the Druze leaderships, which then collapsed, leading to far greater violations than in this episode, indeed, a horrific massacre, and involving large-scale Israeli airstrikes on government forces and on Damascus, occurred too late for this piece, and would require substantial new analysis].
The localised security outcome for the Druze [which was confirmed following the rivers of blood shed in July] needs to be repeated with the much more difficult Alawite situation: it is an urgent task for the new Syrian police, security forces and army to recruit former Alawite equivalents whose status has been settled, not simply to provide them with income but to end the security vacuum in their regions and as a step to fuller inclusion of the now effectively excluded Alawite part of the population.
The Kurdish northeast
The Kurdish situation is extremely complex. Turkey immediately took advantage of the overthrow of Assad to push an attack on some regions held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which included bloody attacks on Kurdish civilians; indeed, the SNA was not really involved in the HTS-led offensive which toppled Assad, but rather in this side venture. However, the situation is far from straightforward and not everything can be reduced to a simplistic “Turkey and/or Syrian government versus the Kurds” narrative.
The shape and size of the region controlled by the SDF, called ‘Rojava’ or the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), covering 30 percent of Syria (Hasakah, Deir Ezzor and Raqqa provinces), has little correspondence to the regions with majority ethnic Kurdish composition. The three Kurdish ‘cantons’ controlled by the Peoples Defence Units (YPG) from 2012 onwards corresponded quite closely to Kurdish populations; like the Druze militia, they tended to be independent of both the regime and the rebels, though at times they cooperated with one or the other. The great expansion of SDF control began after 2014 when the US airforce intervened to save Kurdish Kobani from the genocidal ISIS assault, and from then fought alongside the SDF to liberate the rest of the territory controlled by ISIS over the next 4-5 years – most of which however was Arabic in composition. Of course, given the options in east Syria being SDF, ISIS or the Assad regime, these Arab populations preferred SDF hands-down, but it is not clear that remains the case now that regime has fallen.
Map on top of original ‘Rojava’ cantons shows their close correspondence to main concentrations of Kurdish population (second from top, olive green along northern border). Map on bottom of current AANES/Rojava statelet shows its almost complete lack of correspondence to Kurdish population centres. Notably, the map in middle also shows that even the largest area of Kurdish population, the northeast ‘nose’ of Syria, is very ethnically mixed
Therefore there are two related but distinct questions: the future of AANES as a separate statelet with its own armed forces, and its own political system, from the rest of Syria; and that of the national rights and autonomy of the actual Kurdish regions.
In December, several days after the revolution, a popular uprising of the Arab population took place in Deir Ezzor city against SDF rule; they wanted to join the new main Syrian polity, and the SDF wisely let go. However, nearby in also Arab-majority Raqqa city, the SDF is alleged to have used violence against a similar movement.
The initial Turkish-SNA offensive against the AANES in December only reconquered the Arab-majority regions of Tel Rifaat north of Aleppo, and Manbij on the northern border. The SDF had taken Manbij from ISIS in 2016, aided by the US airforce; Tel Tifaat, however is a different story – the SDF conquered that Arab-majority region from the democratic Syrian rebels in January 2016 with the aid of the Russian airforce intervening to back the regime. Arguably, therefore, regardless of Turkish means and motivations, in neither case was it necessarily ‘wrong’ or anti-Kurdish that the SDF lost them. However, two caveats. Two years after the SDF conquest of Tel Rifaat, Turkey and the SNA conquered Kurdish Afrin, also in the northwest, and much of the Kurdish population fled to the Tel Rifaat region, from where a similar number of Arabs had earlier been expelled; as such, it was these uprooted Kurds again on the move. Secondly, while Manbij itself is majority Arab, it is dangerously close to Kurdish Kobani. From that point conflict stalemated around the Tishreen dam on the Euphrates river which separates their forces.
From the start, the new HTS-led government stressed a negotiated settlement with AANES, implicitly rejecting the Turkish approach. Syrian defence minister Abu Qasra called for the formation of a united military via negotiations with the SDF that would serve “as a symbol of the nation rather than a tool of repression.” Foreign minister Shaibani issued a Kurdish-language statement on January 21 declaring “The Kurds in Syria add beauty and brilliance to the diversity of the Syrian people. The Kurdish community in Syria has suffered injustice at the hands of the Assad regime. We will work together to build a country where everyone feels equality and justice.” Senior SDF official Ilham Ahmed responded that Shaibani’s remarks were a “place of honour for the Kurds. The Kurds will bring their own colour to Syrian society when their rights are guaranteed in the constitution. We will build together a new Syria that is diverse, inclusive, and decentralized.”
The January back and forth between Shaibani and Ilham Ahmed presents a positive picture of what the new Syria could be; the March 10 agreement between the Syrian government and the SDF to integrate their administrative and military institutions was the first time the leader of a major national Kurdish organisation was ever in Damascus
This was a tremendous step forward, the polar opposite of the catastrophe on the coast just winding down at the time; how it develops is crucial for the future of a democratic Syria. A few days later, the SDF rejected the interim constitution because it did not reflect the spirit of the agreement days earlier; and in particular, Arabic remains the sole official language. There are important differences to be ironed out; the SDF wants to integrate into the Syrian army as a bloc, while the Syrian government wants a unified structure with no blocs. This is related to the SDF’s preference for a federal system, with wide-ranging powers for regions with ethnic, religious and cultural minorities, which is rejected by the government.
Arguably, ‘federalism’ (depending on the definition) does not work in Syria’s reality, where most ‘minorities’ are religious rather than ethnic, and would thus entrench sectarian identities as in Lebanon; and even with the ethnic Kurdish minority, there are few regions that are not to some extent ethnically mixed. While some non-Kurdish (Arab, Syriac) peoples in parts of AANES (especially in Hassakeh province) appear to be supportive of the Rojava arrangement – which is officially multi-ethnic rather than Kurdish – others appear not to be (especially in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa); according to one source, “the overwhelming majority of Arabs living in the autonomous region express support for immediate integration into the new Syrian state. But this only underlines how difficult it is to find a clear solution, and the problem of what criteria would define ‘federal’ units, if not based on clear ethno-national criteria.
However, some degree of decentralisation where the administrative and security apparatuses are strongly representative of the diverse populations of regions such as the northeast, the coast and the south seems essential to forging a new Syrian unity given Syria’s reality. In practice the first major step taken under the government-SDF accord process was very promising: an April agreement for the SDF to move its military forces out of two Kurdish districts of Aleppo city, while leaving their internal security forces there, which will be supplemented by the government’s General Security working in collaboration, and the Kurds running their own administration, schools and the like. Such processes, along with the outcome for the Druze outlined above, offer hope, and with some will, could be extended to other Kurdish regions; the critical leg of this process will be how this works for the Alawites.
Unfortunately, the latest meeting between Sharaa and Abdi in July was inconclusive, with the government apparently unresponsive on decentralising initiatives, and the SDF insisting on a federal arrangement whereby the whole SDF enters the Syrian army as a bloc, even insisting on keeping Deir Ezzor and Raqqa within such a federal unit. According to one report, Shaibani asked the SDF to withdraw from Arab-majority Deir ez-Zor, but the SDF responded that was a matter for joint committees to discuss. While arguably the SDF position is maximalist, the government’s own insistence on a centralised state is arguably likewise; and seems to contradict its own agreements with the Kurds in Aleppo and the Druze in the south. Especially after the Alawite massacres, no minority will give up some kind of security control and simply trust a ‘centralised’, Sunni-dominated arrangement.
While the SDF joining the Syrian army as a ‘bloc’ may seem unreasonable, it may also be a bargaining chip. For instance, does the government’s position mean that MOD decides where any troops are stationed? Does it mean a central decision could be made, for example, to send former SNA troops into Kurdish regions while sending Kurdish troops to, say, Daraa, a decision that could have disastrous consequences? Or does it simply mean that some new divisions of the Syrian army could be established in the northeast, to mostly incorporate former SDF troops? One article suggested the government would accept the Kurds running their own councils and internal security, just not a separate army. But it remains unclear exactly what was proposed by each side. Clearly, some kind of middle ground needs to be found.
It is also not straightforward for AANES to simply dissolve the entirety of its political-administrative structure into the transition Syrian polity; whatever one views as the positives and negatives of each, both have arisen via a degree of popular negotiation in revolutionary conditions, and only a sustained negotiation process involving the people on both sides, and not only the leaderships, can bring about a real unity which has popular legitimacy. Any attempt to force the situation will only result in bloodshed and the return of massive instability.
This necessity to forge a real Syrian unity should not be viewed as a ‘compromise’ with ‘separatism’, but rather is essential to standing against not only internal sectarian or separatist threats, but also external (especially Israeli or Iranian, but potentially Russian, Turkish, UAE or US) exploitation of these divides; it is a life and death question of the revolution’s security, given the number of real and potential foreign enemies it has. This will be discussed in Part II of this series, New Syria’s Foreign Policy.
Where to from here?
Given the current stage of post-revolution Syria – a democratic revolution with a bourgeois-Islamist leadership with mildly authoritarian tendencies in a catastrophic socio-economic situation – what should those advocating a more radical-democratic or socialist orientation advocate at this time? Here are a number of important issues, by no means intended as exhaustive.
First, demanding the complete, comprehensive end of sanctions on Syria. Fortunately, this step is now in progress (which it wasn’t when this piece was started), but the process is not complete, and various US leaders continue to imply that it may be conditioned on certain geopolitical moves by the government (see Part II of this series). Indeed Trump recently threatened that “The Secretary of State will reimpose sanctions on Syria if it’s determined that the conditions for lifting them are no longer met.” All unacceptable conditions must be rejected and sanctions lifted unconditionally. The economic strangulation of the Syrian people must end, so that the government has the money to pay proper wages for public services (including security), industry begins to move and creates jobs, and housing, energy and infrastructure can be repaired.
However, this renewal of local and foreign capitalist investment needs to take place under the supervision of workers’ committees and the broader community to limit corruption, protect workers’ rights, and attempt to ensure the benefits accrue to society rather than just the capitalists. And while this capitalist investment is essential, sweeping privatisation should be rejected as far as possible. An economic orientation towards restoring the health of state coffers so that it can expand its own investment in key sectors should be supported. Mass retrenchments should be rejected, and if there are legitimate issues of fake jobs created by the old regime, this should be dealt with under workers’ supervision. The proposed 400 percent wage increases should be available to all public sector workers to set a standard for workers throughout Syria.
Reactivation of civil society and push for more democratisation against centralising tendencies – the great range of local coordinating committees and people’s councils that arose during the revolution, and were crushed by the regime, provide a terrific blueprint for what is possible, once sanctions relief hopefully leads to people being able to look beyond the everyday struggle for survival. Support all popular initiatives to protect the current democratic space and utilise it to push people’s demands. This in particular applies to women’s organisations mobilising to obstruct any attempts to impose “Islamist” restrictions on their democratic rights. In various places, new councils have begun to be formed after free elections, for example the Al-Ahli Musyaf Council following elections in May. At a higher level a genuine national dialogue conference might be pushed for, and discussion of the new constitution needs to be an open, democratic process.
A transparent process of transitional justice needs to get underway. If ‘truth-telling’ needs to come first then it also needs to get underway. If no-one is held accountable for years and decades of Assadist crimes against humanity, and major Assadist criminals walk free while others grab sections of the economy, the result will not be social peace but quite the opposite. Transitional justice also includes crimes carried out by non-Assadist forces, including in the past by HTS and its predecessor Nusra, relatively minor as they may be by comparison. But only if Assadist crimes are appropriately punished will many among the Sunni majority accept the necessary punishment which must be given to Sunni sectarians who engaged in the Alawite massacre in March. Meanwhile, on June 6, the Supreme Fatwa Council issued a fatwa declaring that those who have been wronged are “obligated to obtain their rights through the judiciary and competent authorities, and not through individual action,” declaring acts of “revenge or retaliation” to be forbidden – a healthy step.
The government needs to crack down on uncontrolled armed jihadi groups, of the type that took part in the Alawite massacre and led the attack on the Druze in southern Damascus. This will be no easy task – their existence is related to a number of factors: first, the lack of transitional justice; second, the lack of jobs in Syria’s current catastrophe (in this sense they have something in common with their Alawite enemies who took part in the Assadist insurgency in March), and so economic improvement is just as important as transitional justice; finally, the fact that many of them belong to the traditional jihadi base of HTS from which the current leadership arose, so despite the instability they cause being damaging to the government, there may be elements within the ruling state apparatus that still have connections to these groups, especially at base level, and there may be times the government surreptitiously uses their sectarian antics to its benefit. It is essential that the government acts to prevent their deeply destabilising impact.
But as members of the new army also committed massive violations in March, the government also needs to establish control over wayward military factions; an important step took place on May 30 when the Ministry of Defense issued a code of conduct and discipline for the army, which demands troops “treat[ing] citizens with dignity and respect, without discrimination based on religion, race, colour or affiliation,” observe human rights standards, protect civilians and so on, and prohibits any assaults on civilians or property, “engaging in any form of discrimination,” “proclaiming slogans or positions that undermine national unity or disturb civil peace” and so on. A great start, but making this reality remains a challenge [update: a challenge which completely failed in Suweida in July].
Related to this is the necessity of a political struggle against sectarianism. It is one thing when ‘street justice’ in the absence of court justice targets actual criminals; it is an entirely different thing when the entire Alawite population is associated with the crimes of the Assad regime and targeted collectively (and even more when this is extended to other non-Sunni minorities that had no connection to the Assad regime, such as the Druze). While obviously the Assad regime’s criminal weaponisation of sectarianism to carry out its counterrevolutionary war is responsible for this mutual hate, liberation means not simply reversing the victim but fighting the ideology.
The investigation into the massacre of Alawites in March – as well the Assadists who sparked it by slaughtering hundreds of security personnel – as must be genuine, fair and transparent, and perpetrators on both sides must be held accountable. While a number of arrests have been made, the danger would be just a number of lower-level perpetrators being convicted, and those responsible at a higher level, especially with regime connections, are not held accountable. In particular, the widespread evidence of the involvement of the ‘Amshat’ and ‘Hamza’ SNA brigades in the crimes against Alawite civilians raises important issues. While HTS has clashed with these forces in the past, in order to coopt them their leaders have now been given important positions in the new Syrian army [and related to this: can the government prosecute these Sunni ‘big fish’ if Alawite Assadist ‘big fish’ like Fadi Saqr and others referred to above are free from prosecution? The worst possible outcome is that criminals on both sides walk free]. In addition, the issues of compensation, reconstruction and inclusion of Alawites in governing and security bodies are just as crucial.
As noted above, a new unity needs to be forged based on some degree of decentralisation where the administrative and security apparatuses are strongly representative of their diverse populations, and this is particularly the case regarding the Druze in the south, the Kurds in the northeast and the Alawites on the coast. While important processes are underway with the Druze and the Kurds which must be followed through, the Alawite issue remains crucial: there is an urgent to fully include the Alawite population in the new governing structures, including security forces. Alawites need to be appointed to higher level governing positions, they need to be recruited to the general security forces to serve in their regions, and “resettled” former troops need to be enlisted into the new army; to date, these remain de-facto largely Sunni institutions, except for southern Syria, where the government has begun recruiting Druze in Suwayda for the army, based on a memorandum of understanding with Druze leaders agreed to in March.
Concluding comments – ‘Is the new Syrian state revolutionary’ – and forward to Part II:
In an important theoretical article entitled ‘Is the new Syrian state revolutionary’, Riad Alarian and Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra argue that it cannot be, regardless of intention or ideology, or whether or not current leaders believe they are just concealing their true ‘Islamist’ intentions to get back on their feet first or they really are pragmatists or whatever the case. Rather, it is a simple matter that the Syrian state collapsed, and with it its global support network (principally Russia and Iran), and so the new leadership inherited a “proto-state with minimal military resources, no clear international partnerships, and a heavily sanctioned economy, all while facing various domestic and foreign threats”; and as such, there is simply no alternative to integration into global capitalism. They are correct: no country – capitalist or otherwise – can survive isolated in today’s world, let alone a devastated Syria, and the world is capitalist (including the former regime and its Russian and Iranian backers, which are/were capitalist with gusto).
They write: “In theory, post-Assad Syria was a blank canvas upon which the revolutionary movement could realize its vision for a new kind of state. In reality, the political and economic conditions in which Syria’s emergent leaders found themselves sharply delimited the horizon of revolutionary possibility. As many continue to hail the success of the Syrian revolution, it is increasingly clear that what is materializing is not a revolutionary state, but a political order shaped by the same structural pressures and conditions that have historically defined state formation in the post-colonial Middle East” and further “What we are witnessing transpire in Syria is a predictable consequence of the material conditions under which modern proto-states are compelled to develop and operate.”
These are fundamentally crucial points to understand; in essence, this accords closely with what is written here. However, a number questions arise in relation to their framing of the issue.
First, it is not entirely clear what the authors mean by a “revolutionary” state, which would be counterposed to the neoliberal capitalist reality. The Syrian revolution was always fundamentally a democratic revolution against tyranny; much as many of us would like such revolutions to go beyond capitalism, there is no-one I am aware of who ever thought that any of the leaderships of the Syrian struggle were anti-capitalist, or that socialism was on the immediate horizon. The persistence of mass revolutionary struggle can indeed lead the working masses to push beyond capitalism in specific circumstances, but that was even less likely once Assad had crushed the early grassroots democratic phase of the revolution.
Secondly, this leads to what the authors seem to imply was the potential “revolutionary” state they are counterposing to the neoliberal capitalist reality: some kind of ‘revolutionary Islamist’ society envisaged by various radical Islamist currents, including that which gave rise to the current crop of Syria’s post-Assad leaders. But apart from the fact that, as explained above, Nusra/HTS was the very last rebel formation any of the revolutionary vanguard every wanted or expected to assume power post-Assad because its vision was furthest from the revolutionary democracy they envisaged, the implication that political ‘Islamist’ movements are somehow anti-capitalist seems wide of the mark. Certainly, there can be rhetoric about “the dispossessed” and there can be a “social” component to their capitalist rule in some cases, but basically everywhere that either Sunni or Shiite Islamist movements have come to power – the Iranian revolution, the AKP in Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and so on – they have pushed an ‘Islamic’ form of neoliberal capitalism. So it is unclear that there is any contradiction here. On the other hand, if they mean the more regressive aspects of “revolutionary” Islamism such as imposing harsh versions of “sharia law,” reactionary laws oppressing women or more generally theocratic rule, then it is indeed a good thing that such a “revolutionary” vision has been largely abandoned by the new rulers, despite some regressive moves; but this is actually a reflection of the pressure of the actual revolutionary spirit, which was always liberatory and sharply opposed to Nusra’s reactionary program.
Finally, they note rightly that the pressure to conform to global capitalism would be the same whether the post-revolutionary regime contains a greater or lesser amount of bourgeois democracy. Addressing Yasin al-Haj Saleh’s concerns about the limitations on real democracy in post-Assad Syria, they question his implication that success or otherwise of the revolution can be measured by the degree of democracy, asking “what would that success amount to if the new government still had to submit to the imperatives of international capital and the interests of the dominant powers to which Syria is presently beholden?” However, this seems to miss the point: while there would certainly still be capitalism, the amount of democracy is precisely central to the ability of the workers, peasants, urban poor, women, minorities and others to organise for their interests within this capitalist reality. In this sense, the continuing relative political openness in Syria, despite its challenges, is crucial to understanding what the revolution is; at this stage, this is the revolution; the revolution does not mean the particular regime in power following the overthrow. And this must be zealously defended against attacks on it either by the current authorities, Assadist counterrevolution or external enemies; indeed must be expanded as much as possible.
Nevertheless, despite these issues, an understanding of their general argument is very important for grasping both the internal situation, as discussed here, but also the foreign policy of the new government. And once again, my overall agreement on this is coupled with some quibbles regarding what they claim to be inevitable foreign policy choices of the new government, above all their tendency to take at face value some of the deliberately vague statements the new leaders have made about Israel and the media-driven discourse that claims they are even open to the Abraham Accords – something I argue is neither true, nor an inevitable outcome of alliance with global or regional capital, especially since there is no consensus at all on the Israel/Palestine question, especially regionally; in particular, the states closest to the new Syria are precisely those which have not ‘normalised’ or have relatively hostile relations with Israel. I have already taken up the issue of US and Israeli pressure on Syria regarding ‘normalisation’ and the sheer volume of nonsense in reports by various anonymous “sources” in my last article. But more generally regarding the new government’s foreign policy, be on the lookout for Part II of this series.
In this extraordinary declaration reproduced below, the ‘Civil Assembly of the People of the Golan’ has released a document entitled ‘The National Pact,’ not only condemning ongoing Israeli aggression into the (until recently) unoccupied part of Golan (ie Quneitra province), but also stressing the right of return of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians expelled from the Golan Heights following Israeli conquest in 1967, stressing that Golan is not some regional issue (ie that can be bargained away) but rather is “a purely Syrian national affair,” and calling for enshrining the rights of Golanis in the constitution and for genuine parliamentary representation in the People’s Assembly “proportional to their numbers exceeding one million,” pointing to the “catastrophes and denial of rights” they have been subjected to for 57 years.
Where did this declaration suddenly come from now? It seems unlikely to be coincidence that this comes just a week after Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa held a meeting with dignitaries from Quneitra and the Golan, where among other things Sharaa stressed that “we reject the past where the president’s region ruled everything,” which seems directly connected to the demand for parliamentary representation and inclusion in the constitution, while condemning Israeli attacks and affirming efforts to halt them through indirect talks with international mediators. So while there is no direct evidence that Sharaa’s meeting with the Golanis prompted them to make this declaration, it at least appears they are connected.
And then why did Sharaa make this trip to Quneitra to attend this special meeting? Many would have noticed much media speculation about “Syria-Israel discussions,” either “indirect” or “direct”, supposedly discussing, depending the imagination of the author, everything from “security matters” to “normalisation.”
According to some anonymous “sources,” the Syrian government is “open to normalising with Israel” or even “open” to ceding to occupied Golan Heights to Israel as a price for “normalising,” so desperate they must be normalise, or that “Syrian sources” say a “peace agreement is possible with Israel by the end of 2025.” But then we get to “Israeli sources” claiming that “Syrian sources” told a “Hezbollah-affiliated outlet” that president Sharaa is open to “diplomatic relations” with Israel but “his supporters” are not, “such a step does not enjoy genuine consensus, even within the team loyal to Sharaa,” so Israel “doubts” it will happen.
Whether there really are any such “Syrian sources” saying anything like any of this is anyone’s guess; all of these endless statements which somehow never seem to come from any public statement by any Syrian leader but are always second hand allegations, hearsay and anonymous “sources”, are likely embellishments of Syrian government messages being used as a form of pressure aimed at destabilising the Syrian government and/or pressuring it into something it does not want to do. If the public statements of Syrian leaders matter in any of this, then there has been zero correspondence between these and the hearsay. But even if we are just relying of second-hand “sources,” they are also far from uniform.
For example, according to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, “According to sources close to the current Syrian leadership, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa is not prepared to sign up to any broader peace agreement with Israel for now.” Or, according to “anti-Zionist Arab Jew” Alon Mizrahi, based on a “report coming out of Israel,” “Syria is not ready for a permanent agreement with Israel or for joining the Abraham Accords at the moment; it is interested instead in going back to the 1974 ceasefire agreement (signed after the 1973 war), which will force an IDF withdrawal from all the territories captured during the last two years, plus a cessation of hostilities against Syria.” Or then there’s US Syria Envoy Tom Barrack, who while asserting that “both sides” were “open to normalization,” claimed that “Syrian officials hint peace may come by 2028.” 2028? I was pleasantly surprised to read that, and also surprised by Barrack’s gullibility; “2028” is another way of saying “sometime in the undefined future” (perhaps after Israel collapses under the weight of its genocide). Barrack added that “Damascus seeks to halt Israeli attacks in Quneitra.”
As we see from these statements, every single time we hear what the Syrian government says, it comes back to the same thing: the demand that Israel return to the 1974 disengagement line that Assad and Israel respected for 51 years, and Israel end its attacks that it began the morning the revolution overthrew Israel’s man Assad. That’s it. Whether secret “direct negotiations” are going on nobody knows; the Syrian government denies it. When in Paris in May, al-Sharaa admitted to the indirect, mediated discussions; he said they were aimed at deescalating the situation in southern Syria, where Israel has been continually attacking, bombing and occupying; he told Macron that “Israel has bombed Syria more than 20 times in the past week alone.” Once again he demanded Israel return to the 1974 disengagement line and that the UN Observer Force return (they were expelled by Israel after December 8).
A May 27 Reuters report about alleged “direct negotiations” over “security” issues in southern Syria named Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Dalati as heading these discussions, to which he responded “I categorically deny my participation in any direct negotiating sessions with the Israeli side and confirm that these allegations are unfounded and lack accuracy and credibility.” On July 2, the Syrian government officially denied that there were any “peace negotiations” taking place with Israel. Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV asserted “There can be no negotiations on new agreements with Israel until it fully respects the 1974 disengagement accord.” Al-Sharaa and the Syrian government have been making the same demand since December. It comes back to that every time. When he met Trump in May, Trump “advised” him to join the Abraham Accords with Israel in return for lifting sanctions, while claiming it was not a condition and Syria needs to “straighten itself out first;” Sharaa’s response was that “we have shown our willingness to implement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel.” On July 8, “sources” claimed that Sharaa had met Israeli National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi during his then visit to the UAE, to which the Syrian Information Ministry responded “there is no truth to the reports about any sessions or meetings being held between President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and Israeli officials,” and then Israel denied it too – especially given that Hanegbi was at the time in the US with Netanyahu!
In April, two US Congressmen visited Syria and advocated for the end of sanctions. They reported that Sharaa would be willing to sign the Abraham Accords if “the right conditions were met.” Notwithstanding what the vague “right conditions” could mean – return of Golan, Arab Peace Initiative for a Palestinian state, who knows? – there was no such statement from the Syrian government, though of course Sharaa no doubt would have fudged some response to encourage them encourage Trump to lift sanctions. When asked about this in an April 30 interview, Shaibani responded “In fact, the word normalisation was not mentioned, and I was present during this meeting. What was discussed was that we want Syria to live in security and stability. The Israeli incidents that they talk about are a matter of Israeli threats and doubts about this matter … The Abraham Accords and normalisation were not mentioned.” When pressed about an Israeli newspaper claim that Damascus is considering joining the Abraham Accords, Shaibani insisted “This matter was not discussed at all, and Washington has not asked us about this issue.”
In recent reportage of US discussions with Israel towards a new Gaza truce, it was said that as a prize for Israel to end or pause the war, there would be a “regional” package which would include “bringing Syria and Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.” Trump apparently thinks he can just deliver whole countries to the Accords without their perrmission. Every Saudi statement for years has emphasised that there will be no normalisation with Israel until it withdraws from all territories occupied in 1967 and allows the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Earlier this the Saudi regime released a 3am statement to once again deliver this message – in as strong a way as possible, declaring its “unwavering position” is “non-negotiable” – as an immediate response to Trump claiming the Saudis no longer made that a condition. But Trump would deliver Saudi Arabia, and also Syria?
Yet by the next day, we read, no, it won’t be the Abraham Accords yet, just a “security agreement.” The next day it becomes “Syria will make a statement that the state of war which has existed with Israel since 1948 no longer exists” – a tall order when Israel has been actively making war on Syria for 6 months straight. Next it was going to be a “non-aggression pact,” an odd idea given that only one side has been engaged in aggression. Next the Golan would be turned into a “peace park.” Next we hear that Israel’s alleged “security” concerns in southern Syria will be taken care of by allowing US troops to patrol the “buffer zone,” the euphemism for the part of southern Syria Israel has annexed since December as a “buffer” to its already illegally occupied “buffer” the Golan itself. Then “sources,” citing “Israeli media,” informed us that the deal was that Israel will give back one third of the Golan, or two-thirds but lease back one third, and Syria will be compensated with northern Lebanon, including the city of Tripoli! Apparently the Lebanese government is supposed to simply agree! When it got to actual Syrian government statements, however, that article could only, yet again, cite Syrian foreign minister Shaibani demanding Israel return to the 1974 lines.
Clearly, if we are to take too much notice of all this media manipulation, our heads would spin. As the Syrian government says, there can be no talks on anything before Israel returns to the 1974 disengagement lines. But that’s all it says – that “talks” would thereby be possible. There is no suggestion from Syria that “talks” would lead to the Abraham Accords. People are entitled to think that’s what it means; and given Syria’s precarious situation crushed between the desperate need for reconstruction of its destroyed country, the need to put an end to non-stop Israeli aggression, and the need for investment and above all the full release of US sanctions, the Syrian government is entitled to allow its deliberately vague language to be interpreted by the US government in a way to try to achieve those goals, while in reality not promising anything.
Of course, returning to the 1974 lines does not solve the bigger problem of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. Obviously Syria, a victim of a decade of genocidal mass murder and apocalyptic destruction by the Assad regime, Russia and Iran, is in no position to open a military front on the Golan at this point. As Sharaa put it in December, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts,” the country must instead focus on reconstruction of half the country Assad destroyed, including housing for the half the country uprooted from their homes either internally or in exile; and indeed, as a transitional leader who simply filled the vacuum opened by the collapse of the Assad regime, before any elections have been held, he has no mandate to open a military front against a crazed nuclear armed genocidal entity and force the Syrian people to commit suicide. His mandate is reconstruction, recovery, and return of refugees. However, for exactly the same reason, he also has no mandate to cede any chunk of Syrian sovereign territory, such as the Golan, for “peace.”
Despite much nonsense from “sources,” every statement made by Syrian leaders on the Golan declares it to be Syrian territory that must be returned. On January 17, Syria’s UN ambassador Koussay Aldahhak, in a UN session condemning Israel’s aggression into the ‘buffer zone’, also “reaffirm[ed] Syria’s inalienable right to recover the occupied Syrian Golan in full.” When asked during a February interview with The Economist whether he would be ready to normalise with Israel, president Sharaa replied “actually we want peace with all parties,” but as long as Israel occupied the Golan, any agreement would be premature. At another UN session on April 10, Aldahhak demanded implementation of UN resolutions 242, 338 and 497 and “the end of the Israeli occupation of the occupied Syrian Golan.” When Shaibani attended the Munich Security Conference with European and Middle Eastern leaders in February, he stated that the “Golan Heights are Syrian land and no one has the right to give it to anyone.” In April, while condemning ongoing Israeli aggression, he again stressed that “the Golan Heights continue to be considered occupied territory, in clear violation of the UN Charter.” In late April, the Syrian foreign ministry, in rejecting speculation about the Abraham Accords, noted that “such agreements do not apply to a country whose land remains under occupation.” The same article above reporting the July 2 statement that no talks are possible without Israeli withdrawal to the 1974 lines, also cited a source within Syria’s foreign ministry adding that Syria’s foremost condition for any “peace process” is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights;” another source claims “Damascus will not consider any diplomatic initiative that falls short of restoring Syrian sovereignty over all occupied territory, including the entirety of the Golan Heights.”
It is also worth noting, given some discourse claiming “the Gulf” is adding to “western” pressure to normalise with Israel (as if “the Gulf” were not divided into different countries with often very different regional politics, especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), that the Gulf Cooperation Council also issued a July 2 statement not only “condemn(ing) Israeli violations and repeated attacks on Syria,” but also “confirm(ing) that the Golan Plateau is a Syrian Arab land.” Given that Israel’s key condition for a “peace” agreement with Syria is that Israel keep the illegally annexed Golan, as Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar has just reaffirmed, this makes it very clear that there is no basis for any “normalisation” discussions.
To reaffirm: Syria has made no statement to the effect that it would sign a peace agreement with Israel without the return of the Golan; however, again note the language – return of the Golan is the precondition for any “peace process” to (possibly) begin, not for a peace agreement to be made or for “normal relations” to be established. To clarify: Syria has also made no statement that it would sign a peace agreement with Israel even if it did return the Golan – though of course since we know Israel will never return it, it is OK for Syria to hide behind this for now. Incidentally, Assad, by contrast, did explicitly state that he was ready to join his best friends in the Arab world (Egypt, UAE, Bahrain etc) in normalising with Israel if it returned the Golan Heights: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land.” Sharaa has NOT said that. Assad mentioned nothing about Palestine or “resistance” in this interview; and in any case, we are well aware that both in 1999-2000 and in 2009-2011, Assad father and son were engaged in precisely such ‘land for peace’ negotiations with Israel (blocked only by Israeli intransigence on returning the Golan). Notably, this statement by Assad puts him to the right of Saudi Arabia on the Israel question.
The problem is, however, not what “sources” imagine Sharaa wants or doesn’t want; nor even necessarily what Sharaa wants or doesn’t want; nor the opinions of leftist keyboard warriors wet dreaming that already massively traumatised Syrians should be engaged in suicidal “resistance” for their benefit (they mostly didn’t care that Assad never engaged in such “resistance” and never opened any front on the Golan for 51 years and was widely praised by Zionist leaders, including Netanyahu, for this). No, the problem is that Syria is not like any other Arab country except Palestine itself (and to some extent Lebanon): Syria is a devastated country under aggressive Israeli attack and occupation, daily attacks, bombings, killings, arrests, destruction of farmland, of water sources, ever since the morning of December 8. And of course, Israel also immediately destroyed 90 percent of all Syria’s strategic weaponry immediately after December 8, weaponry it had no problem with as long as it was in Assad’s hands, because they knew Assad only ever used it against the Syrian people. And in their occupation of extra Syrian lands since December, they are now in control of the al-Mantara dam, the major water source for all of southern Syria: think about that for a moment.
Every day, Netanyahu, foreign minister Saar and defence minister Katz call Syrian leaders jihadists, extremists, terrorists and al-Qaeda (just like western tankies do). Now they say we want to sign the Abraham Accords with them. Really? They want to make a peace accord with jihadi terrorists? No. The demand itself is an act of aggression. The demand says: we will continue to bomb your country, occupy the south, seize farmers land, destabilise the country, and have a stranglehold over your water, unless you both sign away the Golan Heights and sign a “peace” treaty with Israel on that basis. Syria needs our solidarity, not our ignorance or our keyboard heroism.
I read ignorant statements from critics that “the new Syrian government is “rushing” to make peace with Israel, apparently unaware of Israel’s war on Syria. News reports of the indirect or alleged “direct” talks between Syrian and Israeli officials suggest this may indicate “warming” of relations. Strange discourses assert that Syria is engaged in indirect or “direct” talks with Israel “despite” Israel’s ongoing attacks on Syria; the “despite” indicates just how much these writers don’t get it. Israel – a massively armed genocidal entity – is in occupation of Syrian territory and has been constantly attacking Syria – a devastated, disarmed, exhausted country – since December 8. Of course Syria engages in mediated “negotiations” with the aggressor, the occupier, to try to get it to end its aggression and occupation. It is normal that countries negotiate with their enemies, their aggressors. To depict “negotiations” between the powerful occupier and the powerless occupied country as some kind of equal negotiation about to “normalise” is to miss the point fantastically.
I repeat there has been zero suggestion from the actual mouths of Syrian leaders about either ceding the Golan or normalising with Israel. But that does not make it out of the question at some point; this is not a confident prediction of what will or won’t happen in the future, given the situation which Syria is in. On one hand, Israel continues its daily aggression and occupation in the south; at the same time, despite Trump’s lifting of sanctions, the US is capable of slowing down or reversing that process – several days ago Trump stated that “the Secretary of State will reimpose sanctions on Syria if it’s determined that the conditions for lifting them are no longer met.” That’s what all this aggression since December 8 is about. If devastated, destroyed, disarmed Syria were to capitulate at some point (more likely some “security arrangement” than full normalisation), it is important to recognise that it would be something forced on Syria by overwhelming pressure and endless aggression; that must be the greater context through which any “condemnations” of any such capitulation are made.
Now here’s where we return to where we began – up till this point, all this has been on the level of states and geopolitics. By going to the grassroots – by going to the people of Quneitra and the refugees from occupied Golan, and getting this statement from them, Sharaa made a deft move: he helped make it much harder for himself, or any Syrian government, now or future, to sign away the Golan for “peace” with Israel.
Below is the declaration and introduction by the Zaman Al Wasl news agency.
The people of the Golan declare the National Pact: No concession on identity… and no alternative to return
⛔️ أبناء الجولان يعلنون ميثاق العهد الوطني: لا تنازل عن الهوية.. ولا بديل عن العودة#زمان_الوصل في خطوة لافتة، أعلن "التجمع المدني لأبناء الجولان" وثيقة بعنوان "العهد الوطني"، حددوا فيها جملة مطالب اعتبروها "مشروعة وعادلة"، مؤكدين التزامهم بالدفاع عنها في كافة المحافل السورية،… pic.twitter.com/y9HX3qgHxM
— ZAMANALWSL – زمان الوصل (@zamanalwsl) July 1, 2025
In a remarkable step, the ‘Civil Assembly of the People of the Golan’ has released a document entitled ‘The National Pact,’ in which they outlined a series of demands they considered “legitimate and just,” affirming their commitment to defending them in all Syrian forums, considering the Golan issue “not a local matter, but a purely Syrian national affair.”
The statement, a copy of which was received by Zaman AlWasl, stated that Quneitra Governorate, the heart of the Golan, continues to suffer from Israeli occupation attacks, land confiscation, and home demolitions, while hundreds of thousands of Golanis displaced since the June 1967 setback live dispersed across five Syrian governorates.
The document emphasized the need to unify the voice of the Golanis inside Syria and in displacement camps, in order to crystallize their political, service, and constitutional rights. The signatories emphasized that what they put forward “is not merely sectarian demands, but rather national and moral obligations.”
Key points of the document:
1- Support for the legitimate Syrian leadership:
The people of the Golan declared their support for President Ahmad al-Sharaa, colnsidering that his leadership “represented the will of the people and led the country toward liberation.”
2- Rejection of Israeli attacks:
The statement condemned what it described as “repeated Israeli aggression against Quneitra lands,” warning against “attempts to complete the occupation of the remaining Golan.”
3- Adherence to the right of return:
The people of the Golan affirmed their full commitment to the right of return to their occupied land, based on United Nations resolutions, rejecting any understandings or agreements that would infringe upon or undermine this right.
4- Rejection of the “administrative integration” project:
The statement warned against the project to integrate displaced communities into other governorates, considering it “an attempt to obliterate the Golan identity and a pretext for closing the Golan file internationally.” It also paves the way for the abolition of the Quneitra governorate.
5- Demand for Full Parliamentary Representation:
The signatories demanded that the Golanis be granted genuine representation in the People’s Assembly, commensurate with their population of over one million, pointing to the “catastrophes and denial of rights” they have been subjected to for 57 years.
6- Legal Recognition of the Rights of Displaced Persons:
The demands included the right to adequate housing, employment opportunities, and a decent standard of living, similar to what is stipulated in the United Nations conventions for displaced persons around the world.
7- Enshrining Rights in the Constitution:
The statement called for the inclusion of the rights of the Golanis in the constitution or in a permanent law, “so that the demands do not turn into a seasonal debate that is repeated with each new government.”
8- Moral and National Obligation:
The statement concluded with a recommendation that this document be considered “a moral and national charter for all Syrians,” particularly those who will hold representative positions in legislative bodies.
According to the Golan Heights Civil Gathering, this document emerged after months of consultations between representatives from Quneitra and the displacement camps. It will serve as a reference for any national dialogue on the Golan Heights issue.
Their Anti-imperialism and Ours 