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Atlantic
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The One Book Everyone Should Read
What should I read next? If only making that decision were simple: Recommendations abound online and off, but when you're casting about for a new book, especially if you're coming off the heels of something you adored, the paradox of choice can feel intense. You might turn to loved ones to ask which book would be just right for you. Avid readers frequently face a parallel dilemma; they find themselves bombarded by friends and family members who expect a perfectly tailored recommendation. Staffers at The Atlantic get these inquiries a lot—often enough to recognize that for many of us, a pattern emerges. We end up suggesting the same book, again and again, no matter who's asking. Yet each recommender cites a different set of criteria for the work that rises to the top of their list. Some of us pick a read that feels so timeless, and so widely appealing, that it truly does have something for everyone. Others among us evangelize about something so singular that it must be experienced. The 12 books below have nothing in common except for the fact that their advocates have shared them time after time, and believe in their power to delight or captivate readers who have a variety of tastes and proclivities. One of them will, we hope, be the title you pick up next. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka Some people turn to books for history, others for lessons on human nature. They might hope to better understand longing, despair, joy, or love—or simply chase the high of genre fiction (ghost stories, political thrillers, tales of redemption). To all of these readers, I invariably advocate for Karunatilaka's journey into underworlds: both a supernatural realm beyond death and the demimonde of violence and corruption that fueled the Sri Lankan civil war. Seven Moons was the dark-horse winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, beating books by Percival Everett and Elizabeth Strout and rightly claiming its place in the magical-realism canon. The title character is a gay photojournalist with a conscience—which turns out to be a very dangerous combination in 1980s Colombo. In fact, when the novel opens, he's already dead. Before moving on from Earth, he gets seven days of purgatory—during which he must try to influence his living friends to publicize a trove of damning photographs while fending off literal demons and the dark truths he'd rather avoid. My closing pitch to friends: I've rarely read a better ending. — Boris Kachka Made for Love, by Alissa Nutting I love to suggest Nutting's work to people, even though it's been called 'deviant'—if folks avoid me afterward, then I know they're not my kind of weirdo. She has a talent for developing outrageous concepts that also reveal earnest truths about what people expect from one another and why. One of the best examples is her novel Made for Love, perhaps better known as an HBO show starring the excellent Cristin Milioti. The book, too, is about a woman whose tech-magnate husband has implanted a chip in her head, but it grows far more absurd. (A subplot, for instance, features a con artist who becomes attracted to dolphins.) Nutting's scenarios sometimes remind me of the comedian Nathan Fielder's work: You will probably cringe, but you'll be laughing—and sometimes even nodding along. — Serena Dai These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett Here's how I start my recommendation: 'Did you know that Tom Hanks's assistant and Ann Patchett went from total strangers to best friends?' And then, when my target inevitably shows interest in the out-there pairing of a beloved novelist and a Hollywood insider, I put These Precious Days in their hands. The titular essay is about this friendship, but the broader subject of Patchett's book is death: She contemplates the passing of the men who served as fathers in her life; she thinks about the potential demise of her husband, a small-plane pilot; and she considers the mortality of that assistant, a woman named Sooki. After Sooki, who starts her relationship with the author as a long-distance pen pal, is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she moves into Patchett's Nashville house during the coronavirus pandemic. Much of the writing, funny and sharp, follows the two of them as they work on their art, do yoga, take psychedelics—but the sentences get their power from their awareness of the gulf between life and death that will eventually separate the two women. — Emma Sarappo Trust, by Hernan Diaz In 1955, James Baldwin famously pilloried Uncle Tom's Cabin for its 'virtuous sentimentality,' and called its author, the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, 'not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer.' For Baldwin, Stowe's well-intentioned advocacy turned her characters into caricatures who existed only in service of her ideological aims—and as a result, he believed that her novel failed as art. This trap ensnares many fiction writers, and I have spent much time thinking about how they can avoid it when tackling contemporary problems. This is one reason I constantly bring up Díaz's Trust: It navigates the line between politics and artistry with rare skill. Set in New York City's late-19th-century financial world, the book is composed of four fictional texts, each focused on the same people but written from a different vantage point. The question is: Which narrator does the reader believe? Trust 's storytelling is impeccable, full of twists and surprises. The book is also a remarkable criticism of unbridled capitalism—but the story does not exist in service of a doctrine. It remains unlike anything else I've read. — Clint Smith An American Sunrise, by Joy Harjo Harjo's poetry collection begins by recounting a horrific event: In 1830, the United States government forced some 100,000 Indigenous people to walk hundreds of miles, at gunpoint, from the southeastern U.S. to lands west of the Mississippi River. Among those on this Trail of Tears were Harjo's Muscogee ancestors, who left Georgia and Alabama for Oklahoma, and whose memory the writer resurrects through poems that collapse the distance between generations, making history feel present-tense. The book deftly expresses both grief for all of the violence perpetrated on American soil and a profound love for all of the beings that inhabit this continent. Ancestors and descendants dance at the perimeter of Harjo's poems, and her definition of relative is wide enough to hold every living thing—panthers, raccoons, tobacco plants. Anyone could spend an afternoon with this book and come away with a refreshed, more capacious view of this country. 'These lands aren't our lands,' Harjo notes. 'These lands aren't your lands. We are this land.' — Valerie Trapp An American Sunrise - Poems By Joy Harjo Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild, by Ellen Meloy When Meloy, a desert naturalist, felt estranged from nature, she sought to cure it by stalking a band of bighorn sheep for a year in Utah's Canyonlands wilderness. She begins in winter and feels cold and clumsy. She envies the bighorns' exquisite balance as she watches them spring quickly up cliff faces. She feels 'the power and purity of first wonder.' Meloy's writing is scientifically learned—beautifully so—but this book does not pretend to be a detached study. When she hikes alongside these animals at dawn, she aches to belong. She fantasizes about being a feral child they raised. At first, the band is indifferent to her project. But animal by animal, they begin to let her into their world. To follow her there is to experience one of the sublime pleasures of contemporary American nature writing. Meloy gives an account of their culture, their affections for one another, even their conflicts. All these years after my first read, I can still hear the crack of the rams' colliding horns echoing off the red rock. — Ross Andersen Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth When I picked up this novel some years ago, I'd never heard of Hjorth, and I was drawn to the book simply because of the quiet mood evoked by the cover of the English-language edition—a serene picture of a lonely cabin in the woods at twilight. What I found inside was a story that reads at once as a juicy diary and as a chillingly astute psychological portrait of a dysfunctional family. The story is narrated by Bergljot, a Norwegian theater critic who is estranged from much of her family because they refused to acknowledge the abuse that her father had inflicted on her. A dispute over inheritance brings the whole distant family back into painful contact. The novel was deeply controversial in Norway after Hjorth's family claimed that its contents were too close to reality. Later, Hjorth's sister published her own novelization of their family strife. But the scandal shouldn't detract from the novel itself, which is utterly specific yet universal: The author captures the pettiness of the family's drama and the damage they do to one another with equal fidelity. — Maya Chung Alanna: The First Adventure, by Tamora Pierce The kingdom of Tortall has many of the classic features of a fantasy world: strapping lords, tender ladies, charming rogues, mysterious magical forces that can be used for good or for evil. But what makes Pierce's Song of the Lioness series so timeless and reliable is its heroine, Alanna, who poses as a boy in order to train as a knight. The First Adventure, which introduced her to readers in 1983, serves as an excellent gateway to the fantasy genre. The book covers Alanna's years as a page in Tortall's royal palace, where, from the ages of 10 to 13, she must contend with her girlhood—which means navigating periods and growth spurts—while keeping her identity a secret. Pierce never devalues Alanna's feelings and experiences, and the author isn't didactic about the choices Alanna makes; readers will feel they're being taken seriously, no matter their age. — Elise Hannum Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Love, Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams This book's summary sounds like something out of Black Mirror: An idealist embraces a new form of technology, convinced that it has the potential to change the world, only to become trapped in a hell of her own making. Wynn-Williams, a former director of public policy at Facebook, describes her experiences working at the social-networking giant with dark humor and a sense of mounting panic. I gasped a few times as Wynn-Williams recounted being commanded to sleep in bed next to Sheryl Sandberg, and being harassed by a higher-up while she was recovering from a traumatic childbirth that nearly killed her. But the real shock comes from seeing how Facebook, a site most people associate with college friends and benign memes, helped to amplify and exacerbate hate speech. This is exactly why I keep pressing it on people. The corporation, now Meta, has described some of the book's allegations as 'false'; regardless, Careless People makes a powerful case for why no single company or boss should have this kind of reckless, untrammeled power. — Sophie Gilbert A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific, by Hua Hsu The first thing I like to tell people about Hsu's debut book is that he took its title from a novel that had been lost, or maybe never even existed. The second thing is that it is about America, not China. A Floating Chinaman 's subject, broadly, is Asian American literature between the First and Second World Wars, but its main character is the eccentric novelist and immigrant H. T. Tsiang. Tsiang wrote prolifically at the same time as Pearl S. Buck, the white writer who won a Pulitzer for The Good Earth, her novel about Chinese farmers. Tsiang had high ambitions to combat Buck's rosy portrait of his birth country, but his manuscripts were dismissed again and again, partly for their political radicalism, their criticism of the U.S. and China, and their sheer weirdness. Tsiang had sketched a novel about a Chinese laborer who travels widely—but as far as Hsu can tell, Tsiang's book never materialized. Hsu honors the writer's obsession and perseverance while asking a more pointed question: Were Americans unready to accept an immigrant writer who called out weaknesses in their own country? — Shan Wang The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, by Christopher Beha Beha's big-swing novel, set in the late 2000s, follows Sam, a young data-crunching blogger from the Midwest who gets hired to work at a legacy New York magazine. He arrives in the city certain that when one has the right information, the world is 'a knowable place'—but he is soon forced to reconsider his rational worldview. Sam encounters an apocalyptic preacher, falls for the daughter of a profile subject (though he's married), and cranks out a near-constant stream of articles while struggling with unexpected doubts. The novel takes on heady themes, but it never feels dull or brainy, and all the people I've shared it with over the years love it too. My New Yorker father told me how well it portrayed the city after the 2008 financial crisis; my friends in journalism affirm its perceptiveness about the industry's 'content farm' days; my church friends appreciate how it takes religious belief seriously. I push it upon pretty much everyone I know. — Eleanor Barkhorn Black Swans, by Eve Babitz Reading Babitz's early work is like being whisked from one glamorous party to another. A fixture of the 1970s Hollywood scene, Babitz transcribed dozens of her own libertine experiences with diaristic recall in autofictional works such as Eve's Hollywood. But by the time she released this 1993 short-story collection, the parties had fizzled out and the scene was over. Retreating from the zeitgeist didn't rob her of inspiration, though. As an older writer, Babitz possessed a new clarity about the meaning of all those youthful nights, and the stories in Black Swans —about former bohemians inching toward the staid life, and romantics bumping up against the limits of love—are told with tenderness that is unusual in her other work. Babitz is often contrasted with her frenemy Joan Didion —Babitz was cast in the popular imagination as the fun, ditzy sexpot, as opposed to Didion's cool, cold-blooded stenographer—but the maturity and thoughtfulness of these stories dispel any lazy stereotypes. Her early work is what made her reputation, but this later collection, in which she's looking back and making sense of it all, is simply better—a trajectory I wish for all writers. — Jeremy Gordon
Atlantic
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Atlantic Festival Announces New Events Across New York City
July 22, 2025—Today The Atlantic is announcing more speakers, events, and the agenda for the 17th annual Atlantic Festival, taking place September 18–20 for the first time in New York City. This year's festival will be anchored at the Perelman Performing Arts Center along with venues around the city, including the Tenement Museum, the Town Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hauser & Wirth, and McNally Jackson Seaport. Among the speakers announced today: actor Robert Downey Jr. and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, in conversation with The Atlantic 's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg; actor Tom Hanks, who voices several historical figures in the new Ken Burns documentary series The American Revolution and who will join the premiere screening of the series at the Town Hall; comedian, writer, and director Richard Ayoade in a conversation moderated by talk-show host, comedian, and producer David Letterman; Executive Producer of The Apollo Kamilah Forbes; Professor of Marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur Scott Galloway; clinical psychologist and Founder and CEO of Good Inside Becky Kennedy; and TV personality, chef, author, and activist Andrew Zimmern. Previously announced Festival speakers include Mark Cuban, Jennifer Doudna, Arvind Krishna, Monica Lewinsky, Tekedra Mawakana, H.R. McMaster, and Clara Wu Tsai. The Atlantic Festival will also host an exclusive first look for Season 3 of Netflix's The Diplomat, which debuts this fall, followed by a conversation with the show's stars Keri Russell and Allison Janney and creator and executive producer Debora Cahn; a sneak peek screening of FX's The Lowdown, along with a talk with creator, executive producer, writer, and director Sterlin Harjo and executive producer and star Ethan Hawke; and a screening of The American Revolution, followed by a discussion with directors and producers Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, along with actor Tom Hanks, who voices several historical figures, and historian Annette Gordon-Reed. New this year: The Atlantic Festival introduces Out and Abouts, intimate events around the city that are ticketed individually. Among the events announced today: Atlantic Reads book talks at McNally Jackson Seaport. Featuring Walter Mosley for his new novel Gray Dawn; Susan Orlean for her memoir Joyride; and a poetry conversation around The Singing Word: 168 Years of Atlantic Poetry, featuring the book's editor and Atlantic contributing editor Walt Hunter, with Singing Word contributor and MIT professor Joshua Bennett. Premiere of Dread Beat an' Blood at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), featuring a live performance by legendary poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. The Big Story Live events, across downtown venues: 'What Does it Mean to Be an American?,' at the Tenement Museum, featuring staff writers Xochitl Gonzalez and Clint Smith, plus more speakers to be announced. 'The Future of the Arts in a Changing World,' at Hauser & Wirth, featuring Jeffrey Goldberg, Noah Hawley, and Kamilah Forbes, with more speakers to be announced. With more to be announced, including a live taping of the Radio Atlantic podcast. The festival's Single-Day Passes and Out and About tickets will go on sale this Wednesday, July 23, at 11 a.m. ET. Atlantic subscribers receive an exclusive 30 percent discount on festival passes and select Out & About programming. Festival sessions will be led by Goldberg and many of The Atlantic 's writers and editors, including Adrienne LaFrance, Tim Alberta, Ross Andersen, Anne Applebaum, Gal Beckerman, Elizabeth Bruenig, Sophie Gilbert, Jemele Hill, Walt Hunter, Shirley Li, Ashley Parker, and Clint Smith. The 2025 Atlantic Festival is underwritten by Microsoft at the Title Level; CenterWell, Eli Lilly and Company, and Scout Motors at the Presenting Level; and Aflac, Allstate, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Destination DC, Diageo, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, Hauser & Wirth, KPMG, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation at the Supporting Level.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Conservative commentator David Frum says Donald Trump's use of the presidency for personal gain is like nothing else in American history.
President Donald Trump's shady financial dealings have turned his second term into a brazen moneymaking scheme, says The Atlantic's David Frum. On the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, the conservative writer who recently launched the podcast 'The David Frum Show' told host Joanna Coles that while it's nothing new for Trump to use his office for personal gain, his dealings since the inauguration have spiraled into unprecedented territory. 'In Trump's first term… he made improper millions of dollars,' says Frum, who left the Republican Party after Trump's 2024 reelection. 'But in the second term, he's making improper billions of dollars through his coin operations, through other forms of payment, his relatives and family.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Trump Corrupted the Presidency Into an ATM
President Donald Trump's shady financial dealings have turned his second term into a brazen moneymaking scheme, says The Atlantic's David Frum. On the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, the conservative writer who recently launched the podcast 'The David Frum Show' told host Joanna Coles that while it's nothing new for Trump to use his office for personal gain, his dealings since the inauguration have spiraled into unprecedented territory. 'In Trump's first term… he made improper millions of dollars,' says Frum, who left the Republican Party after Trump's 2024 reelection. 'But in the second term, he's making improper billions of dollars through his coin operations, through other forms of payment, his relatives and family.' While presidents have traditionally followed a series of norms and laws barring them from using their office for financial gain, Frum says Trump has 'trampled' that precedent. For one, Trump has made billions of dollars on $TRUMP, a memecoin that gained ire on both sides of the congressional aisle when the president hosted a private dinner at his Virginia golf resort for the coin's top 220 investors. The top 25 investors were even offered an exclusive tour of the White House. More recently, Frum says Trump's not-yet-constructed presidential library has become an avenue to launder several million, if not several billion, dollars through so-called 'donations.' Perhaps the most glaring instance of Trump shuffling a gift through his library, argues Frum, was when he accepted a $400 million plane from the Qatari government in May. At the time, the White House said the plane would be considered a gift to the Department of Defense while Trump is in office, then will be kept at his presidential library after his term ends. 'In this case, Trump is allowing you to think that 'library' means the plane's on the ground, but there's no guarantee of that,' says Frum. 'This plane is going to be flying him around and his relatives and friends. It's a personal gift to Trump from the government of Qatar.' However, the Qatari plane is far from the only time Trump has raised suspicion while accepting a notable donation to his presidential library. As part of his settlement with Paramount, the media giant agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's library. In a July 5 essay for The Atlantic, Frum argued that settlement amounted to bribery. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren seems to agree. On July 2, Warren announced she and fellow senators Bernie Sanders and Tom Wyden would launch an investigation into whether the settlement violated anti-bribery laws. 'In the Trump case,' says Frum, '[Presidential libraries] become ways to launder money again, and not millions, not single millions of dollars, but multiple millions of dollars and even billions of dollars.' Not only do Trump's financial dealings break from presidential norms, but Frum says the lack of pushback from Republicans in Congress only exacerbates the issue. 'People who stood up to him found their political careers over,' says Frum. 'I would venture to say that probably many, certainly in the Republican Senate, disapprove of Donald Trump's financial operations. But they don't dare say so, and they certainly don't dare do anything about it. And if they tried, they fear they would fail, and they're probably right.' The result, Frum tells Coles, is that Republicans have tacitly given Trump an unprecedented level of power to abuse his position as president for financial gain. 'What is happening with Trump, the scale of it and the fact that the president himself is a personal party, not just his ne'er-do-well children, but the president himself,' says Frum. 'The scale and the location, that you've never seen anything remotely like that in American history. Never.' New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at and subscribe on YouTube to watch full episodes.
Memri
2 days ago
- Politics
- Memri
Druze Revolts, Then And Now
Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash in exile in Saudi Arabia Exactly a century ago, what began as a dispute about local power in the Druze majority region of Southern Syria erupted into a long-lasting anti-imperialist revolt, one that would have a lasting regional impact. In July 2025, a different Druze revolt threatened to change the trajectory of political change in Syria and is already havening regional implications. The Druze, a relatively small and compact ethnic and religious minority found mostly in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, are once again in the spotlight. On July 21, 1925, Druze feudal leader Sultan Al-Atrash announced a revolt against the French Mandate in the Levant. French rule in Syria, part of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 between Britain and France, had already been rocky from the start. French efforts at modernizing and controlling Syria had also been characterized by a considerable amount of meddling and heavy-handed micromanaging. The powerful Al-Atrash family (the Turshan, plural of Atrash) had sent representatives to iron out differences with the French only to have them jailed as hostages in order to secure good behavior from the Druze. The French did not quite know who they were dealing with. Sultan Al-Atrash had lost a father to the Ottomans, been drafted into the Turkish Army and later had fought the French in past battles.[1] This was a warrior chief from among a warrior people. Jealous of his personal power and feudal privileges, the Great Syrian Revolt Al-Atrash ignited was not a parochial one but framed in the potent language of Syrian Arab Nationalism, anti-imperialism and freedom. His revolutionary manifesto (drafted by Damascus intellectuals) even called for the "application of the principles of the French Revolution and the Rights of Man." The humble Arab masses, what Al-Atrash dubbed "the patchers of cloaks" were especially inspired by this cause.[2] Despite many small victories and undoubted bravery, Al-Atrash would eventually lose the war to the French but become a legendary figure, even in the West (he was portrayed heroically in the December 1925 issue of The Atlantic, in an article written by a Revisionist Zionist).[3] While he may have lost on the battlefield, Al-Atrash's cause won politically, giving a tremendous boost to both Syrian patriotism and Arab Nationalism, a feat that would later earn him the praise of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hafiz Al-Assad. And yet in 1946, 20 years after that nationalist revolt, the Al-Atrash clan fought fiercely against the newly independent Arab government in Damascus (under Presidents Shukri Al-Quwatli and Adib Shishakli) to maintain Druze rights and autonomy. The Druze, like the Alawites, and like the Christians of neighboring Lebanon, seemed to have had two quarreling factions within their ranks: those seeking unity with the greater whole – either with the state and/or the Arab nation – and those leaning towards greater autonomy, federalism, or separation.[4] Clipping of PLO Chief Yasser Arafat with an ailing Sultan Al-Atrash The Turshan still exist but they are not the leading political figures of the Syrian Druze today. As with other polities and individuals in Syria over the past 15 years, the Druze have had to maneuver and scheme in their relations with the state, with each other, with the Assad regime, during the brutal Syrian Civil War, and now with the new Syrian government headed by Islamist President Ahmed Al-Sharaa. There were Syrian Druze who fought against Assad and there were Syrian Druze who collaborated with and indeed held high military rank in the Assad regime army. A (pro-Al-Hijri) Druze fighter desecrating the tomb of Wahid Al-Balous (July 2025) Syria's most prominent Druze figures today represent the two sides of that historic Druze duality and ambivalence. 30-year-old Laith Al-Balous represents the more Syrian Arab nationalist Druze tendency, looking towards today's Damascus government. The Al-Balous (through Laith's father, Wahid Al-Balous, who was assassinated by the Assad regime in 2015) raised their own militia which fought against Jihadists and against aggressive Bedouin (Sunni Arab) neighbors but which also mostly leaned against the Assad regime.[5] Druze fighter posing with dead Syrian government troops (July 2025) The traditional Druze religious leadership, especially in the person of Venezuela-born 60-year-old Hikmat Al-Hijri (many Druze have ties with South America, especially Venezuela), leaned much more decisively towards the Assad regime through the years. Al-Hijri broke with the Assad regime only at the very end, and much more clearly represents the autonomy-seeking tendency among the Druze.[6] And although Al-Hijri's powerbase was initially religious, he is now very much a political player, with his own militia base and international ties (to the Israeli Druze).[7] Critics also accuse Al-Hijri of having recruited former Assad regime officers among the Syrian Druze and to be deeply involved in the Syrian drug trade across the border into Jordan. Both Al-Balous and Al-Hijri are connected, in different ways, in the recent violence in Syria's Druze majority Suwayda Governorate. One of the challenges the new government in Damascus faces is how to incorporate breakaway provinces back into a centrally-ruled Syria. This is a major problem with the Kurdish ruled Syrian Northeast and with Druze Suwayda.[8] Earlier this month, the Damascus government saw what seemed a golden opportunity to reincorporate Suwayda into Syria. The 1925 war was triggered by a dead cat belonging to a French officer. The ostensible trigger for the 2025 war was the stealing of a Druze vegetable truck at a pro-government Bedouin-run checkpoint. Both local events were, of course, intimately connected to larger questions of power and authority in Syria, a century ago under French military, today, under Syria's new Islamist rulers. Anti "Al-Hijri Gangs" propaganda on Twitter (July 2025) With the vegetable truck incident, tensions between Bedouin and Druze (which are nothing new) then exploded into outright conflict, with kidnappings and murders on both sides. Al-Hijri's men – already regarded suspiciously by Damascus because of the international ties, the Assad officer connection and the smuggling question – were prominent in fighting (and killing) their Bedouin rivals. Damascus saw the sending of troops as a way to solve several problems – restore order, extend state power, curtail (or maybe eliminate) a troublesome local potentate, perhaps also build up a more amenable local figure in Laith Al-Balous.[9] Infamous image of Druze cleric having his mustache clipped by government soldier (July 2025) But disaster struck. The Damascus units initially sent in had two major problems. They seem to have been made up of raw recruits and they were contaminated by open religious animus. Videos of government soldiers mocking the Druze including several showing government fighters forcibly shaving the mustaches of Druze elders peppered social media. Islamists called for "no Druze mustaches (shawarib) or baggy pants (the traditional Druze sherwal)." And if insults were not bad enough, government troops and the pro-government Bedouin militias committed many human rights abuses against Druze civilians (not just against Al-Hijri's fighters) while Al-Hijri's forces seem to not just ambushed government troops but also slaughtered civilian prisoners and taken hostages. All of this, the rhetoric, the videos, calls for revenge, calls to slaughter the Druze (not just "the criminal Al-Hijri") fed into larger regional and international narratives.[10] Enemies of the Ahmed Al-Sharaa government in Damascus, including Iran and its allies, Assad regime types, and the Syrian Kurds, wasted no time in highlighting the abuses, and there was plenty of real material to work with. Pro-Syrian government forces stand on image of Druze flag and Sultan Al-Atrash With its own Druze population, a valued part of the state of Israel's history and armed forces, rhetoric (and real violence) against the Syrian Druze and deeply ambivalent about Islamist rule in Damascus, the IDF intervened directly on the side of the Druze (meaning on the side of Al-Hijri).[11] Israel has long considered Southern Syria an area of deep strategic concern. Israel not only hit local government units and militias confronting Druze forces but spectacularly bombing the Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus on live television. With the help of American mediation, Damascus tried to forge a de-escalation agreement with the Druze which may or may not last. Government troops pulled back which led to even worse violence which then seems to be leading to government forces returning to the region.[12] There are simultaneously community-generated efforts at vendetta and at peacebuilding happening between Druze and non-Druze. Anti-Druze, pro-government propaganda on Twitter (July 2025) Much blood has been spilt and hearts hardened, especially among the Syrian Sunni majority against the Druze. There is deep rage and fury on both sides. While pro-government voices seek to place all the blame on the mercurial Druze warlord Al-Hijri, the fact remains that many Druze (and some Christians) were slaughtered, raped or kidnapped by pro-government forces (whether Bedouin or uniformed government units) with no regard to political affiliation.[13] Syrian Bedouin Tribes Meet to Demand Disarming of Al-Hijri's militia (January 2025) Both sides are being portrayed as either victims or villains and both are portrayed too often, falsely, as uniform fronts.[14] There has been so much rhetoric and so much twisting, for political or ideological reasons, of the facts or exaggeration that it is important to make some general statements about the situation: 1) Tension and violence between Syrian Bedouin and Druze are not new. In addition, elements of both groups have connections with and are competitors in the lucrative smuggling (drugs and guns) business. They are not just in conflict because of religion or ethnicity. 2) There has been heightened anti-Druze tension for months in Syria.[15] In April 2025, there were bloodcurdling threats against Druze as a result of a suspicious video of a Druze man insulting the Prophet Muhammad which led to Syrian Sunni Muslim calls for violence against the Druze community as a whole.[16] 3) The March 2025 slaughter of Alawites by government forces on the Syrian Coast and the seeming subsequent impunity of those forces has heightened tensions with all ethnic and religious communities in the country across the board. The Druze, like the Kurds, and unlike the Christians, are armed and everyone is more leery of domination by Damascus after the March events. 4) Hikmat Al-Hijri is indeed a scheming, volatile figure who seeks to gain ultimate power within his community and is involved in all sorts of suspicious enterprises. But the indiscriminate slaughter of Druze by Bedouin/government forces seems to have boosted his popularity among Druze while Al-Balous's influence is greatly diminished in comparison. 5) The Syrian government has real ties with Syrian Bedouin which it has used and is using as a tool to project power. In this conflict, the Bedouin are not completely free actors but rather enthusiastic sub-contractors, pursuing their own vendettas and crimes (such as rape and looting) while broadly serving the political interests of the Damascus government, in a sense serving as the "bad cop" to the Syrian government's relative "good cop."[17] 6) The Damascus government – whatever President Al-Sharaa's real feelings on the matter – is itself not a free actor in this conflict either. Al-Sharaa is exquisitely aware of Qatari, and especially Turkish interests, in everything involving Syria, including the South. In a way, what happened with the Druze can be seen as a dry-run for a similar campaign to be directed against the Kurdish-led SDF in the country's Northeast, an issue of tremendous interest to the Erdogan regime. But Al-Sharaa seems to also be hampered by his own cadres, blunt and chaotic instruments who seem to be cruder and less disciplined than he would prefer.[18] Pro-Al-Hijri Propaganda on social media comparing him to Sultan Al-Atrash (July 2025) A century after Sultan Al-Atrash's heroism, the situation in Syria seems dire indeed, balancing on the edge of a knife. Any celebration marking the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925 and the great Druze warrior would ring extremely hollow today. A shaky ceasefire seems to be holding in Suwayda but what comes next?[19] The war-wrecked country's already frayed social fabric is again, deeply and severely wounded. *Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.
