The drive by Syria’s Sunni Islamist rulers to stamp their authority over religious and ethnic minorities has hit a stumbling block in the southern province of Suweida.

In July, the Druze of Sweida withstood a 10-day assault by Sunni Bedouin fighters backed by troops and police of Syria’s “transitional government” who summarily executed civilians, burned and looted villages and kidnapped women. I saw nauseating footage of the beheading of three men identified as Druze.

Tough resistance from Druze militia and Israeli intervention forced government forces and Bedouin fighters to withdraw from most of Suweida including the provincial capital. Thousands of civilians are dead and injured and tens of thousands are bereaved, displaced and impoverished.

Marwa*, an Australian Druze of Syrian origin with relatives in Suweida, told me her 80-year-old father escaped from his village of Hazm and hid in the mountains for three days. “He said that when he came down, Hazm looked like charcoal: they (government forces) had burned everything down. Dad has another house in Sweida city, and he said he will stay there to defend it. He’s made peace with the fact that he might die doing so. It was a heartbreaking discussion.”

Whatever the outcome of the struggle for Suweida, it signals the end of Syria as a pluralist and culturally tolerant society that once celebrated its remarkable diversity.

About 90% of Suweida’s 700,000 population follow the Druze religion, an offshoot of Shia Islam. They are reviled as apostates and idolators by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist coalition that took power in Damascus following the abrupt departure of former president Bashar al-Assad in December.

Assad was politically repressive but championed religious tolerance. His government relied on religious minorities and moderate Sunnis to resist a Western-backed regime-change war and crippling economic embargo for 14 years.

Western governments have embraced Syria’s new rulers for geostrategic reasons despite their al-Qaeda/ISIS pedigree. Their brand of Islam promotes violence against Druze and others considered to have deviated from true Islamic teachings.

Syria’s self-appointed “transitional” president now calls himself Ahmed al-Sharaa, his apparent birth name. He is better known in Syria by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

Jolani rose through the ranks of the terrorist group ISIS and founded al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2012. He supposedly broke with al-Qaeda in 2017 and renamed his organisation Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Since taking power, Jolani and his ministers have paid lip service to equal rights for minorities. Their use of buzzwords like “diversity” and “inclusion” probably reflects the coaching Jolani received from British political consultants from at least 2023. They helped him transition from the “terrorist world” to “normal politics”, said Robert Ford, a former US Ambassador to Syria who was among Jolani’s trainers.

The consultancy firm that groomed Jolani is linked to British intelligence and reportedly maintains an office in the presidential palace in Damascus. As Jake Sullivan, then a top adviser to Hillary Clinton, said in 2012, “al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria”.

Jolani’s regime displayed its sectarian and coercive character when it slaughtered thousands of Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast in March. The Alawi, a syncretic, liberal branch of Shia Islam, make up an estimated 12% of the population. Like the Druze, they are reviled by extremists among the Sunni, who comprise at least three quarters of the population.

A Reuters investigation confirmed that the massacre of the Alawi was conducted by “men who serve alongside Syria’s new leaders”. Unsurprisingly, a government-ordered inquiry absolved military leaders of any responsibility for the killing, which continues on a lesser scale. Western governments either ignored the obvious whitewash or welcomed it.

Intolerance towards the Druze surfaced in April when government-linked forces attacked Druze residents in the outer suburbs of Damascus, leaving more than 100 dead. The attackers apparently blamed Druze for an audio clip circulating on social media that supposedly insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

The assault on Suweida began on 13 July and was conducted along a wide front. The fighting started when the abduction of a Druze man by Bedouin fuelled inter-communal antagonism.

Jolani sought to exploit these local tensions to crush the Suweida Druze. Unlike the hapless Alawi, they refused to hand over weapons to the interim authorities in the absence of a constitution that guaranteed equality for all Syrians.

The Druze account for about 3% of Syria’s population and cling to the de-facto autonomy they maintained under Assad. While formally loyal to the Assad Government, Suweida Druze insisted on exemption from military conscription and formed local militia to combat Islamist incursions.

Western support, including the lifting of sanctions, may have emboldened Jolani to move against the Druze. Troops with armour from the Ministries of Defence and Interior moved into Suweida ostensibly to separate the combatants. In fact, they sided with the Bedouin, their fellow Sunnis, whose actions Jolani later praised as “heroic”.

Government forces went door to door interrogating residents about their religious affiliation and slaughtered Druze families in their homes and cars. E yewitnesses reported bodies piled up at doorsteps, random executions of civilians, wounded residents left bleeding in the streets, and entire villages looted and burned.

The Syria Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that security forces carried out summary executions. In one particularly shocking incident, Jolani’s forces used gunfire to force three young Druze to leap to their deaths from a high balcony.

In Suweida’s main hospital , government fighters appear to have murdered scores of patients in their beds. “Everyone here says the Syrian Government forces did this and they were targeting the Druze,” said a BBC reporter at the scene.

Despite being urged not to film, government forces uploaded evidence of their atrocities. They forced victims to howl like dogs before being shot and led an old man around like an animal. The UN human rights office documented the public humiliation of Druze men including the forcible shaving of their moustaches, an important Druze cultural symbol.

At least 79 Druze women and girls were reported to have been abducted during the assault. Syrian Government TV broadcast a friendly interview with a kidnapper with the reporter questioning female captives as they sat helpless in the kidnapper’s car. The abduction of women and girls as sabaya, or sex slaves, was a feature of the anti-Alawi pogrom.

Marwa described the humanitarian situation in Suweida as catastrophic. “Suweida is under siege with electricity and water supply deliberately cut off,” she said. “There’s a dire shortage of medical supplies and food and the community is asking for a humanitarian corridor to be opened through the Jordanian border.

“The Syrian Government produces propaganda videos of trucks it says are aid convoys supposedly heading to Sweida but none of the trucks have entered Suweida.

“Today Dad moved around the city looking for petrol. The roads are lined with dead bodies and people are burying them on the side of the road, because they are decomposing in the heat.”

Marwa said female relatives told her many Druze women were raped during the attack on Suweida. “The Druze won’t talk publicly about this because it’s a violation of their honour. But the women are talking about it among themselves.”

Marwa, who spent 10 years working in Damascus, was shocked by the degree of popular support in the capital for the attack on Suweida.

“Bedouin fighters from the north drove down to Suweida in convoys and on the way, they stopped in Damascus, where people from rural Damascus clapped them and danced for them. They were celebrating the fact that the tribes were going down to slaughter the Druze.

“I’ve seen footage of people in Idlib and Aleppo offering free rides to the so-called mujahadeen to go and fight Suweida. Every Syrian governorate except the coast sent fighters. People in Suweida were overwhelmed by how many of these ISIS monsters were coming to attack them.”

Marwa said the sectarianism of Syrian and Arab media towards the Druze was “way worse than during the war”. “Al Jazeera Arabic (owned by the government of Qatar, which funds Jolani’s administration) and the Saudi channel Al Arabiya have broadcast a lot of hate and false claims about the events in Suweida.”

Israel has taken advantage of Syria’s post-Assad weakness to destroy military infrastructure and occupy territory between the Golan Heights and Suweida. It warned Jolani not to deploy his troops south of Damascus.

When he ignored the warning and moved against Suweida, Israel seized the opportunity to legitimise its incursions and pose as the humanitarian protector of an oppressed minority. Israeli drones and fighter planes bombed Jolani’s troop convoys and Syrian Defence Ministry headquarters “in defence of the Druze”.

This saved the Druze from an even worse massacre but allowed government supporters to paint them as traitors. It also fuelled sectarian attacks on Druze outside Suweida.

Islamist outrage at perceived links between Israel and Suweida’s Druze is ironic given that Israel backed Jolani and other anti-Assad forces for many years with thousands of air strikes, arms transfers, funding and medical aid. Moreover, Suweida Druze have historically opposed Israeli ambitions.

Jolani has made no secret of his desire for friendship with Israel. He publicly advocated co-operation with Israel against “ common enemies” (presumably Shia Hezbollah and Iran) and senior Syrian and Israeli ministers met to discuss “ de-escalation of tensions” on 24 July – the highest-level meeting between the two countries in a quarter of a century.

Meanwhile, Syria’s recently adopted “transitional constitution” gives no comfort to minorities and supporters of democracy. It concentrates power in Jolani’s hands, enshrines Islamic jurisprudence as the major source of legislation and recognises only three “heavenly religions” – Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. This implies “heretics” such as the Druze, Alawi, Shia and Ishmailis will be treated as second-class citizens at best.

The Islamist power monopoly and Druze resistance to central authority has major implications for relations with the Kurds. They control a quarter of Syrian territory, are better armed than the Druze and also seek a degree of self-rule.

*Not her real name.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.