At midnight, Abu Madyan awoke to the clamor of his neighbors, roused to action by flashing lights on the horizon and the dull thud of rapidly approaching explosions. As the men of al-Thaala, in Syria’s Druze-majority region of Sweida, grabbed the weapons stashed nearby and ran to take up their positions behind recently built earthen ramparts on the outskirts of the village, Abu Madyan, peering out from his window, watched as rockets arced their way like falling stars across the night sky.
One rocket, plunging from the heavens at hundreds of yards a second, had a troubling trajectory. “I watched as it fell across the sky; my family and I were terrified, it looked as if it was coming directly toward our home,” he told New Lines. Fortunately, the rocket passed just above, slamming into the ground in his olive grove a handful of yards away. “The sound of the explosion, and the screams of my family, are like something I could never hear again, even if I were to live to a hundred years,” he explained, standing amid the blackened remains of his olive trees. “These people to the west are our neighbors, they are our kin, we have broken bread together, yet these bombs came from the west, there are people stirring unrest between us,” he said.
In Sweida, the mountainous region home to many of Syria’s Druze, tensions between Druze and Bedouin communities are reaching a boiling point. In the Druze village of al-Thaala and the Bedouin community of al-Darah to its west, people are learning to fear their neighbors. These tensions threaten to upend stability in a region still reeling from recent violence, right on the doorstep of the new government in Damascus.
The roots of these tensions can be traced to the suburbs of Damascus. At the end of April, clashes broke out in the suburb of Jaramana between Druze militias and still-unidentified armed groups, following the circulation of a fake audio recording of prominent Druze Sheikh Marwan Kiwan insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
Fighting quickly spread to another Druze neighborhood, Sahnaya, where it lasted for several days, and to the Sweida-Damascus highway, where a convoy of Druze reinforcements was ambushed, reportedly by Bedouins, resulting in the deaths of 35 fighters, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Ringed on three sides by al-Darah and the other Bedouin communities of Skaka and Umm Walad, al-Thaala has become the latest flash point in a region whose social fabric and physical landscape have rapidly fractured along communal lines.
The road between al-Thaala and al-Darah has now been cut. Fighters from the Men of Dignity, the region’s most prominent Druze militia, have set up a roadblock at the edge of the village, digging in by erecting trench lines and earthworks, from which they cautiously monitor al-Darah, just across a now-abandoned military airport, 3 miles away.
A group of armed men monitoring the checkpoint, clothed in a haphazard mix of military fatigues and soccer kit, were taking cover from the blazing sun in a roadside bunker whose walls were lined with Kalashnikovs. They emerged only to check on the occasional car traveling beyond their territory. No traffic comes from al-Darah anymore.
Hassan Hassoun squatted in the bunker, swatting flies from his face. He was stationed at this position at the time of the attack on al-Thaala on May 4. “It was a quiet night, and we were all sitting around, when suddenly bombs started falling all around us,” he recounted, pausing occasionally to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The fighters took up their defensive positions and were quickly joined by reinforcements from the village.
The first barrage, which he said came from a hill called Tal Hussein about 4 miles east of al-Darah, lasted an hour, after which the fighters responded with their own barrage of mortars and heavy machine-gun fire. “We thought we had scared them off, so a lot of people went back to their homes, but they renewed their attack savagely at around 3 a.m.,” Hassoun said. “This time they came at us with heavier weapons, and they clearly weren’t targeting us in our positions around the village, but the village directly. They were trying to destroy our homes and terrify our families. They want us to flee our land.”
In al-Darah, the story differs. With the road between the villages now closed, the only way in is a circuitous 13-mile drive through the mixed village of al-Mazraa. Here, our Druze driver stopped; he couldn’t go any further. Instead, a group of armed men from the Bedouin villages accompanied us to guarantee our safety. The Men of Dignity are the primary guarantor of security in the region, following an agreement with Damascus to keep its security forces out of Sweida, but they refuse to enter the Bedouin villages, fearing that their presence will only spark further violence.
Al-Darah was quiet, its dusty streets empty except for the occasional masked man racing through on a motorbike. Situated on a gentle crest, the village overlooks al-Thaala a few miles away. Crowned by an old church — the village is home to a small Christian community — small homes are built amid the blackened stones of an old Roman settlement.
Abu Qutaiba’s eyes twinkled beneath bushy eyebrows as he served a platter of barbecued meat. “It all began in the middle of the night, when the whole community was asleep. We heard the sounds of a rocket coming in and then the explosion, which was when the women and children started screaming,” he recalled. He said that the first rocket landed yards away from the village’s mosque, while the second hit its elementary school. Amid the chaos, terrified families filled the streets. Soon after, tracer fire from 23 mm anti-aircraft guns lit up the night sky above their heads. “I think they were trying to cut the electricity lines,” he said.
“The people of al-Thaala attacked us first. They claim they were attacked from Tal Hussein, which is 6 kilometers outside of the border of our village, so why strike us?” he said.
The episode was only the climax of a sequence of simmering hostilities between the communities. Four months prior, as the sun was lowering over the mountain, two Druze men went out to hunt birds just beyond al-Thaala’s village limits. According to members of both communities, three men on a motorbike opened fire on the hunters after a robbery gone wrong, killing one and injuring the second. Rumors quickly spread online that Abu Qutaiba’s son, Qutaiba, was responsible. Qutaiba, a smiley 16-year-old who served endless rounds of overly sweet tea throughout our conversation, quickly fled, fearing reprisals from al-Thaala. However, his father was adamant about his son’s innocence and offered himself up to the authorities in Sweida until his son’s name was cleared.
“I stayed in prison for 47 days because I was certain my son was innocent and wanted to pressure them to find the real killer,” he declared. During this time, though, Druze fighters cut the electricity and water to al-Darah in reprisal. They built earthwork defenses and banned the residents of al-Darah from passing through to access supplies or schooling in the city of Sweida, on the other side of their village.
“This is when the rift between us really began. Strange things began to happen at night. They began to fly drones over our community in order to monitor us. A border has sprung up between us — it is as if we live in a different state.”
Officers from the Syrian central government’s General Security service, tracking the stolen motorcycle and weapons used in the murder, were eventually able to identify the real killer. He was a resident of Hasaka, an outsider from a city in the far northeast of Syria. Qutaiba was exonerated and his father was quickly released. Yet demands for an apology from the residents of al-Darah were met with reciprocal demands to pay respects at the grave of the murdered man. Neither side was willing to back down.
It is clear that actors from outside Sweida have had a hand in stirring tensions in the province, and the security services are struggling to adequately secure the region’s borders. Sheikh Bassem Mazlouma, divisional commander of the Men of Dignity in al-Thaala, was provided information by security officials in the neighboring Daraa province that the culprits behind the rocket attack on al-Thaala came from villages in that region.
Yet he was dismissive of the government’s claim that the region’s hilly terrain renders the security services incapable of stopping external actors from penetrating the porous border. “I don’t believe them, because as a military commander I know how to control terrain, position people on the border and check for weapons.”
Mazlouma points to the fact that the attack was perpetrated with heavy weapons, difficult to smuggle through a checkpoint. “General Security is trying to handle the issue, but I believe sections within it are demonstrating divisive tendencies and are not following the orders presented to them at a higher level.”
For those in al-Darah, officials from the new government have played an important role in trying to keep the peace. Abu Qutaiba spoke to officials in General Security during the attack on al-Darah, warning them not to retaliate or risk plunging the region into complete chaos. “We don’t want sectarianism, we don’t want our communities to become a river of blood,” Abu Qutaiba said. “So we never fired a shot back and, not long after their attack, we met with them and agreed a truce.”
Yet the current security settlement in Sweida remains tenuous. Distrust is building, partly due to the lack of a unified, noncommunal security provider. Druze militias like the Men of Dignity protect their own communities while refusing to enter Bedouin villages. Meanwhile, the Syrian security services, who are prohibited from deploying within the region, have essentially left the Bedouin to provide their own security, while failing to properly secure the border from outside instigators.
This issue is now inflaming latent communal tensions, which have historical roots, according to Haian Dukhan, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Teesside University. Conflict often emerged in the past due to competition between the land use patterns of Bedouin pastoralism and Druze agriculturalism. In 2000, the region erupted into communal violence following the killing of a Druze farmer by members of a Bedouin tribe.
In July 2018, a string of devastating Islamic State group attacks killed 258 people in Sweida. Some within the Druze community harbored suspicions that members of the Bedouin tribes had helped facilitate these attacks. Many Bedouin now feel as if they are being held responsible for the actions of outsiders once again.
Fortunately, while anxiety permeates the villages of al-Thaala and al-Darah, their uneasy truce is mostly holding. Just days ago, however, that peace was threatened once again.
On several occasions, Ali Said had snuck into the military airport that sits between the villages of al-Thaala and al-Darah, abandoned since the overthrow of former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. He came to rip up and sell for scrap the network of old water pipes that lay under the airfield. But this most recent excursion ended in disaster.
Said, along with seven other men, had made it only 20 yards from their parked cars before an explosion ripped through the group, instantly killing three, including Said’s younger brother. Four others, including Said, were injured. The Druze militia members claim that they were killed by an Assad-era landmine, part of a network that rings the perimeter of the airbase. The Bedouin are not so convinced.
In the village of Skaka, just over a mile from al-Darah, Said sat wrapped in bandages, his face bruised and bloody, his voice weak and hoarse. “I don’t know what happened; it all happened so quickly,” he said.
“I am convinced that it wasn’t a landmine. I wasn’t that injured below my waist,” he rasped while wiping pus off a seemingly infected, fly-covered wound on his calf. “I think it was a homemade explosive — someone had put it there with the intention of hurting us.”
He was vague as to the culprit’s identity, but from his words, his suspicion was clear. “I can’t even go to Sweida for medical treatment. That place is forbidden to us now. If we tried to go, they would surely just kill us.”
“Look what they have done to my son,” his mother, Umm Ali, interjected. “They took my youngest as well — he had four children. We aren’t trying to hurt anyone, we live in poverty,” she lamented. “We do this work just to survive, we have no other choice.”
In a sense, it is not so important whose account is correct. Rather, what is key is that neither side trusts the account of the other. Amid a security vacuum, these neighbors have come to fear each other.
As Abu Qutaiba recounted the accusations against his son, his wife entered the room, panicked. Abu Qutaiba’s sister was stuck in al-Maqwas, a neighborhood of Sweida city that was rapidly being engulfed in a conflict between two Bedouin families. The night before, two men had been killed in a shoot-out and, by the next day, it had spiraled into an all-out gun battle in the streets. A heated discussion quickly erupted between members of the family over how to respond. Someone suggested coordinating with the Druze militias to try and keep the peace. “This is a dangerous plan,” said Abu Islam, a former fighter in the Free Syrian Army, clothed in camo with a pistol hanging from his belt. “All it would take is for one Druze to get killed in such an intervention for the whole region to erupt into civil war.”
This interaction is a testament to the fragility of peace in Sweida. No one there wants a conflict; in fact, everyone asserts the necessity of cool heads prevailing. Yet the region, it seems, is stuck in a cycle of responses. Fear has begotten fear, and now vendettas are growing out of vendettas. No one knows who started it, and no one seems to know how it will end.
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