Can Syria's tiny Druze minority survive West Asia's new storms? There's little hope

The Print

17 hours ago

Little imagination is needed to understand what's driving the violence in Syria. Following the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad's dystopic regime, more than 1,000 members of his Alevi community were slaughtered in their coastal redoubts by government forces and Islamist militia. In one case, journalist Maggie Michael reported , a young man's heart was cut out of his body. His name was listed among 60 dead that included his cousins and neighbours, and six children.
Even as Druze tribesmen poured in to reinforce their clan, in the summer of 1925, a French column led by General Roger Michaud was ambushed before the gates of Sweida and routed. A French officer committed suicide, historian Philip Khoury records .
The first shots emerged from the bowels of the great volcanic mountain of Tell Qeni. They were likely aimed with more hope than military focus at the French Nieuport-Delage NiD.29 C.1 fighter plane, which had been surveilling Druze positions on Jabal al-Druze – the great mountain redoubt of the Druze community. The great rebellion had begun, even if the pilots hadn't noticed it. Two days later, the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash occupied the region's second town, Salkhad, and slaughtered a column of 166 French colonial troops, laying siege to the capital at Sweida.
For much of their history, the Druze have fought mainly to be left alone in their mountain redoubts—allying with Israel, or Syria, or whichever power might safeguard their interests. In 2018, more than 200 Druze were killed in concentrated attacks by Islamic State suicide bombers, as retaliation for their cooperation with the regime against the jihadists.
Led by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, Druze forces have been savagely expelling Bedouin tribes from the region, following a kidnapping of a trader on the road to Damascus. There have been arguments over incendiary religious messages spread over social media. The bigger story is this, however: The collapse of the state in Syria has opened the way for genocidal ethnic-religious warfare—and the Druze want to make sure they are not on the losing end.
The fighting has been intense. Entire neighbourhoods have been gutted, journalists Santiago Montag and Hussam Hammoud have reported, while Sweida's main hospital was overrun by gunmen who slaughtered its patients. And yet, the fighting is showing no signs of ending.
There is a saying that the Druze like telling about themselves. As historian William Miles writes: 'When a fortune comes their way, a Christian would build a huge mansion, a Muslim would go to Mecca on pilgrimage, and a Druze? A Druze would simply buy more weapons.'
Lights in the landscape
Even though Indians are used to seeing West Asia as one uninterrupted wash of Islam, the reality is more complex: Like all other parts of the world, liminal communities, perched on the edge of the hegemonic faiths, light up the landscape. The Druze do not self-describe as Muslims, though their theology shares elements of Islam. The community believes in Tawhid – the unity of the divine and the human – sees time as unfolding in eternal cycles, and believes that the soul of a Druze who has died immediately reincarnates in the body of another.
Loosely linked to the Ismaili offshoot of the Shia sect, the Druze have their holy text, the Rasail al-Hikma, or Epistles of Wisdom, although the Quran is also part of their theological framework. Tight ethnic and religious bonds hold the community together.
The demographer Nissim Dana records that, even in relatively liberal Israel, there were just 145 cases of conversion recorded from 1952 to 2009, mainly to enable marriage to non-Druze spouses.
The community is reputed to number some 1 million people, overwhelmingly concentrated in Syria, but with pockets in Lebanon and Israel.
For generations, the Druze proved willing to take extraordinary risks to protect their fragile autonomy. Late in 1895, for example, Syria's Ottoman government was presented with an opportunity to punish the Druze, after quarrels broke out with their Muslim neighbours. Together with Kurds, Bedouins, and Circassians, Ottoman troops burned down the Druze village of Majdal Shams. Though the Ottoman soldiers outnumbered the Druze two-and-a-half to one, historian Shakeeb Salih writes, they were unable to subdue the uprising. An arrangement involving amnesties and cash compensation was eventually arrived at.
The inexorable forces of the market, though, brought about significant changes in the outlook of the Druze by 1925. According to Salih, the merchants and moneylenders of Damascus became frequent visitors to Jabal al-Druze and Hawran, where they financed the cultivation of crops such as gram and cereals. For their part, Druze elites began to winter in Damascus, imbibing its culture and integrating into its political milieu.
Following the 1925 revolt, Khoury writes, the Druze case became a template for other nationalist movements breaking out across the Middle East, eventually leading to the independence of Syria and Lebanon.
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The power game
Like many post-colonial states, the scholar Joshua Landis writes, independent Syria tried to stamp its authority on the Druze brutally from 1946. The four-year rule of Adib Shishakli, from December 1949 to February 1954, resulted in the crushing of Druze local leadership. 'A new form of Druze communal consciousness took root among Druze civilian politicians and, most importantly, among Druze military officers as a result,' Landis notes. Shishkali was eventually overthrown in a coup d'etat, in which Druze officers played a key role.
The Druze used their position not only to seek economic privileges from Damascus, but also to gain recognition for the wide-ranging autonomy they had enjoyed under the French. This battle was not easily won, though. The government hit back, rolling back subsidies, choking the lucrative smuggling routes into Jordan, and most importantly, destroying the profitable hashish trade. Tribal leaders such as Sultan Pasha al-Atrash found their influence diminished, just as a new, Left-leaning generation of Druze emerged.
Faced with vicious ethnopolitical propaganda and economic decline, the Druze found other means to act. In 1953, Druze officers Colonel Amin Abu Asaf and Captain Mohammed al-Atrash were plotting a coup. The army, thus, became a stage for the making and unmaking of power, with Alevi, Kurds, Christians, and Druze all competing to protect their interests against the majority.
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A grim future?
For the Druze, support from Israel—where they constitute a recognised official minority—is now critical. As historian Laila Parsons notes, early Jewish Agency officials operating in Palestine saw the benefits of developing ties to local minorities, and Itzhak Ben Tzvi—later to become Israel's second president—cultivated ties with the Druze. For the most part, the Druze stayed neutral in the Arab revolt of 1936-1939. The defeat of a small Druze detachment fighting the Israeli defence forces near the settlement of Ramat-Yohanan, wrote Parsons, stilled Druze desire to interject themselves in the conflict.
In the war of 1947-1948, the Druze emerged better off than their Palestinian Christian and Muslim neighbours. They now had the choice of living as minorities in a Jewish state or as minorities in an Arab state. For most Druze, the choice was simple.
For the Druze left in Syria and Lebanon, though, the future likely looks very different. Israeli air power was committed to protect Sweida from Bedouin tribes attacking the Druze. Still, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is an ally of the United States and is seen as key to the suppression of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Israeli support for Druze defiance cannot, therefore, be taken for granted in the future. Even more critically, the Druze have opened themselves up to a long war with the Bedouin tribes and their Islamist supporters within Syria's new regime.
Looking into the fires raging in Syria, it's hard not to see only darkness: The ethnoreligious conflicts that the Ba'ath state managed—and occasionally crushed—have returned to the centre stage of political life. The acquisition of power again involves access to guns and weapons, not political legitimacy.
The genuinely federal structures that Syria's minorities demanded during their march to independence could offer a way forward. But there's little hope that a society in which jihadists see themselves as victorious will be prepared to concede it.
The author is Contributing Editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)