Sudarsan Raghavan and Suha Ma’ayeh
WSJ, May 2, 2025
“The government is not welcome here.”
Deadly clashes this week in southern Syria, home to the Druze ethnic group, are putting new pressure on the nascent government as it tries to prevent the country from fragmenting along sectarian lines.
Two days of fighting were set off by an audio recording purporting to feature a member of Syria’s Druze community criticizing the Prophet Muhammad, and quickly escalated, leaving a number of dead, including civilians and 16 members of state security forces, the government said.
Fueling the tensions, however, are long-simmering concerns among the local Druze population—who practice a closely held religion that is an early offshoot of Islam—that Syria’s government of former jihadists can’t be trusted to keep them safe.
Those concerns have sparked antigovernment protests, empowered Druze militias and drawn in Israel, which sees an opening in the small community with strong family and historical links to Israeli Druze.
A 44-year-old resident of the southern Syrian town of Sahnaya, who spoke Wednesday to The Wall Street Journal, said the area had been subjected to 15 hours of fighting.
“It’s terrifying—we can hear the mortars falling right next to us,” the person said. “People are packing their belongings, but they don’t know where to go. The area is completely besieged.” …SOURCE