Bedouin residents of Sweida join an evacuation convoy organized by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, while Druze militants secure the area. (Lorenzo Tugnoli/The Washington Post)
SWEIDA, Syria - Charred bodies sat in an awful heap on a city sidewalk. Blood mixed with dirt in a traffic circle where civilians were gunned down. Grieving women clasped arms on Sweida’s stricken streets, wearing black.
This was the aftermath of the brutal violence that seized the Sweida area in mid-July, among the deadliest in Syria since rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship last year. In a fight charged by sectarian rage, more than 1,000 people were killed as gunmen battled for days, according to human rights groups.
Weeks later, the conflict still simmers, with government forces surrounding the city of Sweida in a standoff with Druze fighters within. The carnage has polarized Syria, sparking protests by members of the Druze religious minority, counter-demonstrations by government supporters, accusations of treachery and vows of revenge.
“They killed, and we killed,” said Saud al-Wadi, 58, a Bedouin who fled the violence with his family, speaking of his former Druze neighbors. “There is blood between us.”
The two sides battled again briefly Sunday, along several front lines. Inside the city, the mainly Druze residents who remain are running low on water, fuel and other essentials. Stranded in the no-man’s-land between the forces are perhaps hundreds of uncollected bodies, rescue workers say.
Nearly a week of intense fighting in the city, in southwest Syria, was set off by the kidnapping of a Druze merchant and retaliatory abductions of Sunni Muslim Bedouins, residents said. The communities have clashed in the past, including over land.
The ferocity of the dispute this time delivered a warning about the fragility of Syria’s social fabric. And the authorities’ failure to quiet the confrontation is highlighting the struggles of President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s young government in responding to tensions or outbreaks of violence - without making them worse.
Sweida’s descent was marked by atrocities and summary killings, heavy-weapons fire and airstrikes. Buildings throughout the city were looted. Villages beyond it were emptied and burned. Nearly 200,000 people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. Scores remain missing.
The majority of those killed appeared to be Druze, who are the majority in Sweida and the surrounding province of the same name, said Fadel Abdul Ghany, head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights. It was unclear how many were combatants or civilians. The dead included at least 26 children and 47 women, he said.
Survivors told Washington Post reporters who visited the city and surrounding villages in recent weeks that atrocities were committed by all the armed factions. “Everyone contributed to the blood that was shed in the province,” said Laith al-Balous, a local Druze leader seen as close to the government.
Bodies were kept for days in the courtyard and morgue of the city’s main hospital. Some were later buried in a mass grave, on a hill overlooking the city, under red-brown dirt. The dead were still being tallied, doctors at the hospital said. For days, they said, requests for coffins poured in from villages around Sweida.
A pattern of killing
The combatants on one side included local Bedouins, Sunni tribesmen from across Syria who had answered Bedouin pleas for help, and army and Interior Ministry troops. They battled Druze fighters backed by Israel, which carried out airstrikes, in Sweida and in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Mazen Aleddine, a Druze resident, said members of the state’s general security forces and allied Sunni tribesmen killed his brother, Safwan - executing him with a bullet behind the ear before dumping his body under a nearby bridge.
Safwan had stayed in the city to protect their family’s home after Mazen left for a village outside the city to care for his own family on July 15 as the violence was peaking. When Mazen returned, he said, he discovered that the building containing their home had been torched. So had their business, a car showroom on the first floor.
Around the building, someone - presumably the tribesmen - had scrawled graffiti with the names of tribes and the Syrian towns from where they came, along with taunts denigrating the Druze as disloyal. “Down with traitors,” a phrase on a blackened building column read.
Safwan’s killing fit a pattern described by residents: Sunni fighters raided Druze homes, demanding any weapons inside, and, in some cases, confronted and executed the residents.
The family of Hosam Saraya, a Syrian American who returned to Sweida last year, said he and several relatives were killed in a similar fashion. They were grabbed from their home by men the family said included government forces, marched to a square and executed while kneeling. Government forces implicated
The alleged killings by government fighters were another woeful turn for Syria, whose citizens are clamoring for order, accountability and inclusive rule. The killings added to the apprehension - or outright fear - in Syria’s minority communities over the hard-line Islamists who are fighting alongside the government, as well as to misgivings about Sharaa, a former leader of Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate.
“We will not accept al-Sharaa even if he slaughtered us all,” said Kamal Maqlad, a Druze resident whose family building was burned.
“We will not accept him as long as a single Druze man remains.”
The government said it sent troops to Sweida to tamp down the conflict between the Bedouin and the Druze. Quickly though, the troops suffered setbacks, including an ambush by Druze fighters that killed at least a dozen people, and the Israeli airstrikes, which killed hundreds of soldiers, a government spokesman said.
Soon, the government troops were seen as a faction in the fighting, rather than a mediating force.
Videos were circulated showing men in uniforms, including military police, forcibly shaving off the mustaches of Druze men, in acts of forced humiliation. Other videos showed Druze men being executed, prompting the Interior Ministry to release a statement that condemned the killings and said an “urgent” investigation had been launched.
Late last month, the Justice Ministry said a committee, composed of judges and others, would investigate violations in Sweida and refer perpetrators to court.
Starting the fire
Bedouin quarters of Sweida also were viciously attacked, including the neighborhood of al-Maqwas in the east of the city.
Residents from there said the attacking Druze fighters were loyal to Hikmat al-Hijri, the Druze spiritual leader in Syria.
Government supporters have singled out Hijri as an instigator of the chaos in Sweida, faulting him for opposing the government’s presence and for calling on Israel for support. Israel, which has demanded that Syria keep its south demilitarized - and has frequently bombed military and other installations to enforce the edict - said it intervened last month to protect the Druze.
A representative for Hijri, responding to a request for an interview, said he was unavailable.
Balous, the Druze leader, blamed Hijri’s “stubbornness” for the violence in Sweida. “They only wanted to start the fire,” he said.
In the past, incidents like the kidnappings that set off the conflagration were resolved in a few days by tribal figures, said Emad Salama, 40, a Bedouin resident from al-Maqwas. “This time, no one wanted to initiate the peacemaking,” he said. “Both sides were stubborn.”
The government’s allies have charged that Israel’s support emboldened Druze factions in the city seeking autonomy from the government. Druze residents have alleged that the state was looking for any excuse to bring a restive Sweida to heel. Whatever the reasons, Salama’s Druze friends called him to warn him about the dangers coming.
“This time is bigger than the others,” he quoted them as saying.
Neighbors betrayed
As the fighting intensified, Salama’s relatives - his brother Wael, a brother-in-law, a nephew and a cousin - were stuck outside Sweida. “We told them not to come. They worried about their families,” he said. They were killed as they attempted to return, he said.
At least 26 people were killed by Druze fighters in al-Maqwas, he said.
Some Bedouin residents said they were shocked at how quickly Druze neighbors turned on them. Mohammed al-Wadi, 22, said he sheltered Druze residents from his neighborhood as the fighting started. When government forces withdrew, “it was those people we hosted who turned against us,” looting his house, he said.
He and his family spoke to reporters in a village west of Sweida called al-Darah where they were sheltering. Elsewhere in the village, Druze families were being protected, too, after fleeing al-Thaala, a Druze village a few miles away, said Khalid Ahmed, 42.
The two villages had long been intertwined, and as the violence started in Sweida, they agreed to a truce, brokered by local leaders, Ahmed said.
“The Druze are peaceful, honestly. They would not be involved in all this,” he said. “The problem is the Hijri gangs.”
Peril at a checkpoint
When Post reporters visited a few days after a ceasefire was announced July 19, government fighters had established a checkpoint in Walgha, west of the city, where they drank tea and warned of snipers just down the road.
As they spoke, a white Toyota pickup truck drove toward the checkpoint, sparking panic. Fighters rushed to the car, dragging the driver out - a Druze man carrying a rifle mounted with a sniper scope. It was not clear whether he had driven to the checkpoint by mistake or gotten lost.
At first, the man was desperate. “Please, I have a son,” he pleaded to fighters who quickly surrounded him, binding his hands with zip ties. Then he sounded resigned. “If you want to kill me, just kill me.” An officer told the man he would be taken for “investigation.”
By the hour, the city’s complexion was being altered. Every night, convoys arranged by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were shuttling mostly Bedouin families out of Sweida: some on buses, some sharing the back of flatbed trucks with furniture and sheep. Some said they are unlikely to ever return.
A few miles from Walgha, Druze fighters watched a convoy preparing to set out one evening from the city’s Omran Square. A few seethed that the Bedouin were being allowed to safely depart. “Sixteen people were killed, women and children,” one fighter growled, referring to a massacre that he said occurred in one of the villages.
Another Druze fighter, with a machine gun slung on his shoulder, had to be restrained by his comrades. “They killed my brother,” he shouted, a few feet away from passengers in the idling convoy waiting nervously for it to move.
