ICG (International Crisis Group) Statement / Middle East & North Africa 18 July 2025 8 minutes A Compromise is Urgently Needed in Southern Syria

 ICG (International Crisis Group) 

Statement / Middle East & North Africa 18 July 2025 8 minutes

A Compromise is Urgently Needed in Southern Syria

Fighting between government-aligned forces, including Bedouin militias, and Druze factions has been raging for six days in southern Syria, with Israel also launching airstrikes. With clashes reigniting, Damascus and Druze leaders need to find a more durable solution for maintaining security in the south.

A sudden crisis involving Israel in Syria’s south has posed one of the biggest challenges yet to the country’s fraught post-Assad transition. While the violence has created regional risks, its origins are local. On 11 July, clashes broke out between Druze and Bedouin factions in Suweida, a southern province, following an incident in the eponymous provincial capital: Bedouin gunmen reportedly beat and robbed a Druze merchant, prompting a retaliatory kidnapping by Druze elements. The Druze are a religious minority in Syria but constitute a majority in the province. The Bedouins, part of the country’s Sunni Arab majority, make up most of the inhabitants in one quarter of Suweida city and reside in larger numbers in the province’s west and east. The latter called for aid from allied armed groups from neighbouring Daraa, central Syria and Deir ez-Zor, leading to intensifying firefights and a wave of anti-Druze hate speech online. Dozens on both sides were killed. 

The interim Syrian government intervened only on 13 July, prompting suspicion that it was supportive of the Bedouin escalation. Its heavy deployment – special forces accompanied by tanks – raised concerns that Damascus was aiming to assert its writ in the area, which has enjoyed an informal semi-autonomous status since late in Syria’s civil war, which ended with the Assad regime’s ouster. The arrival of government forces also heightened fear of sectarian retribution. As they moved to quell the unrest, troops seized the Suweida city outskirts, prompting many residents to see them as siding with the Bedouin attackers. Druze spiritual leaders saw the situation spinning out of control and, on 15 July, after government troops had entered the city itself, issued a statement endorsing an agreement for Druze fighters to stand down and the state to restore calm. Just hours later, however, a prominent group of them denounced the deal as capitulation and called for returning to the fight. 

On the same day as the stand-down agreement, Israel launched airstrikes on the government’s armoured columns, saying it was making good on earlier promises to protect the Druze (an influential minority group in Israel) from the Sunni Islamists who run Syria’s interim government. Reports of summary executions of Druze civilians, including women, by government troops were also starting to accumulate. Several Druze armed groups pushed back into the city to fight, while the authorities called in major reinforcements from across Syria. On 16 July, in a marked escalation, Israeli warplanes struck the Syrian army headquarters and near the presidential palace in Damascus, deterring the Syrian leadership from ordering a full-scale assault on the Druze factions in Suweida, though civilians were increasingly caught in the crossfire as gun battles restarted on 16 July. On the morning of 17 July, Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, accused Israel of trying to destabilise Syria. Thanking Arab, Turkish and U.S. mediators, he announced that Damascus would hand local security back to Druze forces, while government troops started to withdraw. 

But later that day, fighting ignited once more. Druze factions launched attacks on Bedouins in the Suweida countryside, committing abuses including mass killings, looting and forced displacement. In response, Bedouin tribal leaders summoned more reinforcements from Daraa, prompting a wave of mobilisation from across the country, including Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor and Idlib. So far, the death toll has reached at least 600. At first, most of the casualties were combatants, but now the number of civilian victims appears to be rising, though the chaos on the ground makes obtaining exact numbers impossible.As things stand, Bedouin and Druze forces are reportedly facing off near the Suweida city centre, with Damascus preparing to dispatch its General Security force – but no military formations – to take the situation in hand if the parties agree.

Suweida’s Precarious Semi-autonomy

Until recently, Suweida has been a quiet province. It was spared much of the horror of the Syrian civil war, as the Assad regime largely refrained from applying the brutal repression it meted out in the rest of the country. In 2023, local Druze armed groups took de facto control of the area. Since the regime fell in December 2024, these groups – most prominently, Rijal al-Karama and Liwa al-Jabl – have held their positions, providing the area with a precarious semi-autonomy. Several Druze spiritual leaders, most prominently Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, have expressed strong apprehensions about the interim authorities’ jihadist past, worrying that the new political order will be inhospitable for religious minorities. 

These concerns deepened when, in early March, government and pro-government forces as well as armed civilians responded to deadly attacks by insurgents loyal to the deposed regime by killing some 1,500 Alawite civilians in central and coastal Syria. Then, in late April and early May, clashes erupted between Sunni gunmen and Druze factions in Druze-majority suburbs of Damascus. Set off by a voice note cursing the Prophet Mohammad that was attributed to a Druze leadership figure, the violence claimed over 100 lives. Afterward, government forces moved into these districts. The bloody episodes in the spring indicated grave flaws in the interim government’s security approach, with some units credibly accused of mass abuses, and many more showing contempt for the local population, thus aggravating rather than containing tensions. The violence deepened a sense of alienation and existential dread among many Syrians – especially members of minority groups who had felt vulnerable since the Assad regime’s ouster. 

Until the present confrontation, an agreement had been holding whereby the interim government formally assumed control of Druze areas through General Security. But the General Security officers deployed in Suweida were mostly Druze recruited from the area, while autonomous Druze factions remained, de facto, the force in charge.

The Israel Factor

Enter Israel. Already during April’s round of clashes, Israel had mounted aerial attacks on government forces and dropped bombs near the presidential palace, with the proclaimed intention of “protecting the Druze”. When fighting broke out anew in Suweida, it doubled down in provocative fashion, destroying part of the Syrian army headquarters and again striking close to the presidential palace. 

To some extent, Israel’s claims that it is trying to shield Syria’s Druze from harm cater to its own Druze population, some of whom play a prominent role in the Israeli military and security services. Since December 2024, Israeli Druze leaders have been reaching out to their brethren in southern Syria, and during the Suweida unrest, Druze have staged protests at the Syrian border – with some reportedly pushing across it – urging the Israeli government to step in. 

Yet Israel’s intervention is also in keeping with its overall approach to post-Assad Syria. At least part of the Israeli leadership wants to weaken the Syrian military and constrain its deployments, seeing an Islamist-led Syria as a potential threat on its north-eastern border. Since the Assad regime’s collapse, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria, obliterating most of what was left of its military assets. Israeli troops have taken over the demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights established by a 1974 Israeli-Syrian agreement (that zone lies beyond the portion of the Syrian Golan that Israel has held since 1967 and purported to annex in 1981). They also occupied additional territory in order to keep the Syrian military far away from the frontier. By positioning itself as champion of the Druze in southern Syria, Israel has created another pretext for maintaining a permanent footprint in the area and preventing Damascus from establishing garrisons there. 

Similarly, Israeli actions seem to be aimed at keeping Syria fragmented, thus hobbling the government politically and keeping it from acquiring the wherewithal to project power toward the country’s borders. Rumours have swirled for months that Israel is cultivating contacts among local leaders in Suweida, including with offers of financial support. Such talk is fuelled by the fact that prominent Druze in Suweida are at odds over whether and how to compromise with Damascus and whether to court Israeli intervention. Israel has also expressed support for the Kurdish minority in Syria’s north east. 

From Compromise to Sustainable Security

Al-Sharaa’s announcement on 17 July, following U.S., Arab and Turkish mediation, indicated that Damascus is prepared to let Suweida return to a semi-autonomous status, but it has not stopped the violence. Damascus will need to up its game: it should urgently intervene to stop convoys of armed men passing though territory it controls to enter Suweida and call upon those who have already gone there to pull back. Doing so could reduce the risk of further bloodshed and allow Damascus to demonstrate that it seeks to act as a guarantor of stability for all Syrians. In a second step, Damascus and Druze factions should initiate talks to reach an understanding that reprises the terms of the May security agreement, which is likely the best hope for returning to stability in the near term. In time, the two sides should explore a more sustainable arrangement that hands the security file entirely to General Security, with personnel recruited from within the area. The present round of violence, and particularly the clashes after the withdrawal of government forces on 17 July, shows that keeping local militias under arms is a recipe for continued bloodshed, not security. 

When the situation has settled, Damascus should also learn lessons from these dangerous events. It needs to be able to walk a line – doing enough to manage the risk of escalation but not so much that its deployments deteriorate into outright abuse and cause local security breakdowns to spiral into major crises. It failed most egregiously in this respect along the coast in March, but it is failing again in Suweida. That the government apparently overlooked signs of imminent violence, both in April and again during the early days of the current escalation, deepens fears that it will not act to safeguard all of Syria’s citizens, prompting minorities and others who are not ideologically aligned with it to keep or acquire arms for self-protection. If these patterns continue, social relations, the Syrian state’s stability and the transition to a post-Assad political order will all be in jeopardy. 

Moving forward, Damascus should stress de-escalation and civilian protection in its approach to local conflicts. Rather than relying solely on force or using security deployments as a means of asserting authority, the government needs other tools to address disputes before they spiral into wider violence. Damascus should train dedicated police forces suitable for such tasks. Overreliance on force is counterproductive, as it strengthens more belligerent elements within local communities, undermining efforts to build lasting stability. At the same time, Damascus needs to urgently bring all armed formations aligned with it under firm control, forge political agreements that cement the role of General Security as the sole internal security force on the ground, improve the conduct of General Security personnel and establish full accountability for abuses, as al-Sharaa has repeatedly promised.

External actors who have an interest in helping the new Syrian leadership succeed (and have, in many cases, assisted it substantially already) – such as Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and the U.S. – should press Damascus to take serious steps in this direction and include the above among the conditions for support. Finally, even for Israel, reaching arrangements that allow Damascus, which has repeatedly disavowed any hostility toward it, to take control of southern Syria with appropriate assurances would be more sustainable than its present approach to securing its north-eastern border. To the extent that the Israeli government’s professed concern for Syria’s Druze is sincere, letting them reconcile with Damascus, rather than trying to set them against the rest of Syrian society, is the better option.