Sweida's roads lead to three wars
Published 10 October 2026
Sweida, also rendered Suwayda, entered July with a relationship to Damascus different from that of the coast. Under Assad, many local men had avoided national conscription or served locally, while armed factions developed for community protection. The old government still maintained a repressive apparatus, but its limited presence allowed substantial local autonomy. A devastating Islamic State attack in 2018 reinforced the demand for self-defence. Protests against economic hardship and for political reform intensified before Assad fell. The new government's demand for one army therefore reached a region whose residents had reasons to distrust central security under both the old administration and the coalition replacing it. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Druze leadership was not uniform. Religious figures and armed groups differed over engagement with Damascus, disarmament and decentralization. Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri criticized aspects of the transition and the constitutional declaration while also engaging officials. Other influential leaders sought agreements with the government. The commission recorded creation of a local police force with Druze officers and attempts to reactivate state institutions. Mustafa al-Bakkour was appointed governor and undertook outreach amid damaged infrastructure and mistrust. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Bedouin residents had their own history of exclusion. The commission described inadequate political representation, discrimination and poor access to services, alongside earlier displacement and destruction of villages. Some hoped Assad's fall would end that marginalization. Their expectations could clash with local Druze efforts to preserve autonomy. These were not communities neatly represented by whichever armed group claimed to defend them. A civilian Bedouin household's demand for education and representation differed from a tribal fighter's objective, just as a Druze family's wish for safety differed from every position taken by local factions. Treating the population as two armed camps erased the people most exposed to their contest. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Disputes over pasture, water, mobility and illicit trade added pressures to political mistrust. Drought made some resources more difficult to share. Weapons were widely available. Local mediation had often resolved incidents quickly, according to interlocutors from different communities interviewed by the commission. That history matters because July was not an inevitable expression of ancient hostility. There were mechanisms for de-escalation, and people tried to use them. The collapse of those efforts occurred within specific decisions, mobilizations and failures of protection. Explaining violence through timeless communal antagonism would obscure the acts and omissions making this particular escalation possible. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
The commission received credible accounts involving checkpoints staffed by Bedouin or tribal personnel, and said appeals to replace staff went unanswered. The road's importance went beyond military access. It connected residents to trade, travel and the capital. If government-controlled checkpoints themselves became places of predation, a promise to restore security could appear to demand submission to the source of insecurity. By early July, kidnappings and assaults had intensified. Some Druze residents suspected official delay was intended to demonstrate the need for government intervention, a perception the report distinguished from established proof of intention. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
The immediate trigger was the abduction of a Druze merchant near the Khirbat al-Shayab checkpoint on July 11. Druze fighters abducted Bedouin men the next day. Mediation failed, gunfire spread, and on July 13 Bedouin fighters detained Druze men at temporary checkpoints in Maqwas, a mixed neighbourhood in Sweida city. Druze armed groups surrounded the area. Heavy weapons were used in residential streets. Tribal fighters attacked villages outside the city too, burning homes and displacing residents. During the night of July 13 and 14, an exchange of detainees temporarily stopped fighting in Maqwas and western villages. That interval showed de-escalation was still possible immediately before the government began its formal operation. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
On July 14, the Defence and Interior ministries announced intervention to restore order. They established a joint operations room and eventually deployed roughly four thousand personnel. A meeting intended to prepare government entry with Druze leaders in Mazraa drew none of the invited leaders except the host. Telephone contacts continued. Convoys advanced alongside tribal fighters and met resistance from local armed formations. Government personnel were killed and captured; videos showed some captives beaten and humiliated. Israeli strikes hit convoys and military positions. These were overlapping conflicts: an official security operation, resistance to central entry, intercommunal mobilization and external military intervention all occupied the same roads. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Government forces reached Sweida city on July 15. Hijri initially called on local factions not to resist, and the defence minister announced a ceasefire following agreement with notables. Reports of massacres changed Hijri's position; he urged resistance and requested international protection. The commission documented the sequence rather than treating his public stance as unchanged throughout the operation. Fighting resumed, Israeli strikes continued and communications failed. By night, government forces controlled western and central districts amid fires and looting. Local groups regained some neighbourhoods overnight, but government and accompanying tribal forces reasserted control on July 16. Civilian safety fluctuated with front lines that changed faster than residents could obtain reliable information. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Internet measurements incorporated into the commission's report showed disruption beginning on July 15 and broader outages from July 16, including days with no connectivity in monitored locations. This evidence did not establish who caused every interruption. It corroborated residents' accounts of being unable to communicate during the crisis. A person seeking medical help, warning relatives or checking a route could lose the information needed to act safely. The blackout also affected later reconstruction of events: families could know the last call from a relative without knowing what happened during the silence following it. Disrupted communication intensified exposure while allowing rumour to travel through whatever channels remained available. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
The commission identified July 14 to 16 as the first major wave of violence against civilians. It documented government personnel and accompanying tribal fighters committing abuses or failing to intervene while present. Some security members tried to stop harm or provide numbers residents could call, but those measures did not prevent subsequent attacks. The report described killings, arbitrary detention, torture, theft, sexual violence and attacks on religious buildings. Cutting the moustaches of elderly Druze men was recorded as deliberate humiliation carrying particular cultural significance. Some perpetrators filmed the acts. The recording was part of the abuse's public performance, and later part of the evidence available to establish what they had done. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Western villages experienced government advance before the city. Some residents fled, while elderly, ill or disabled people stayed, as did others believing state forces would not harm them. The report described government formations followed by armed men engaging in theft, burning and killings. Treatment varied. Some personnel helped injured people leave or urged residents to flee because safety could not be guaranteed; other groups attacked them. The differences did not make the operation safe. They meant the promise of official protection could not reliably guide a family's decision about staying. Vulnerability arose both from inability to escape and from a reasonable expectation that remaining unarmed at home should not invite violence. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
At Omran roundabout on July 15, security and army personnel stopped a minivan carrying three Druze men. An elderly passenger was killed after valuables and documents were taken. The younger men were forced to the ground and later released. They witnessed another civilian being humiliated nearby. A relative calling the dead man's phone subsequently received an answer from an unknown person saying he had been killed. The checkpoint turned ordinary travel into exposure, while the stolen telephone became the means through which a family learned the outcome. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Another family tried to flee in two cars that afternoon. Parents travelled with five young men and a sixteen-year-old boy. Near a hospital, an Internal Security member approached the second car and opened fire, killing the six younger male passengers. Personnel then searched the bodies and took possessions. The parents fled after witnessing the shooting. The report did not describe the passengers as participating in hostilities. Their attempt to leave was not protection against being selected as targets. This case differed from a house raid but reproduced the same vulnerability: men and boys could be separated from the apparent safety of family travel and killed without a process establishing any individual offence. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
A home in central Sweida held about twenty-three people when a mixed group arrived on July 15. The attackers initially reassured the family, then forced men outside, beat them, stole valuables and opened fire. Two severely wounded men died before the group left. Their bodies stayed inside for more than a day before burial beneath the family home. Other groups raided afterward without further physical injury. A few hundred metres away, a different household sheltering displaced people offered entering fighters coffee. Questions about Druze identity were followed by insults and gunfire. The commission recorded twelve killed and at least ten injured there. The contrast between a civil welcome and lethal response underlined how little peaceful conduct could protect the occupants. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Successive groups entered other buildings too. In one, security personnel searched for weapons and left without incident. A second group arrived shortly afterward and shot a civilian who went outside, followed by relatives trying to see what happened. Elsewhere, occupants already robbed were threatened again when later attackers found no valuables left. A boy was threatened until residents produced more jewellery. These sequences explain why an initial peaceful search did not establish lasting safety. No effective system marked a protected household as beyond further predation. Residents could satisfy one group's demand and discover that compliance merely left them with fewer resources when the next group arrived. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
The report's account of Sweida National Hospital joined medical disruption to direct violence. On July 15, army and security personnel assembled medical and administrative workers and forced them to kneel. A volunteer accused of denying care to a wounded government member was shot; CCTV captured the event. An information-technology worker was reportedly killed after refusing passwords to the archive. Phones and valuables were taken and recording systems damaged. These details were particularly important for accountability: the hospital held both victims and records, and violence against staff could be accompanied by attempts to control the evidence. A facility needed for treatment became a place where personnel themselves required protection from the force claiming to restore order. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
On July 16, fighters forced three displaced young men onto a third-floor balcony and ordered them over the railing while shooting. An older relative was killed inside. The perpetrators filmed the act. The commission said the person appearing to direct the others had been identified and was reportedly an Internal Security member; the government later said at least one perpetrator was arrested, a claim for which the commission sought clarification. The record therefore supplied evidence about the killing and a reported response without claiming that the full chain of responsibility had been established. Arrest of one participant could not automatically answer who organized, permitted or failed to prevent the incident. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Near Tishreen roundabout that morning, armed men entered a family villa, gathered women separately and took eight civilian men down the street. They were lined up and executed. The perpetrators filmed the movement and killing. Other personnel returned to loot the villa. The women learned what happened after the withdrawal when bodies were recovered. In another guesthouse, roughly sixty people had sought shelter. Fighters searched, forced men outside, beat and humiliated them and killed sixteen, drawn from several families. A fourteen-year-old was abducted, beaten and later escaped. Places chosen for refuge became concentrated sites of vulnerability because several households had gathered under one roof. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Aid worker Hamza al-Amareen disappeared while undertaking an evacuation on July 16 near Omran roundabout. The Syrian Civil Defence said his vehicle bore its emblem. A colleague's later call was reportedly answered by someone saying he was well. The commission could not independently establish his fate or location, despite unconfirmed claims about detention by local armed groups. It can identify the last known activity, the attributed reports and the unanswered question. The gap is itself part of the transition's record, not a blank to be filled with a confident explanation. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Israel's intervention altered the operation without protecting everyone from what followed. On July 16, strikes hit command facilities in Damascus, including the General Staff complex near Umayyad Square. The commission recorded at least one civilian killed and thirty-four injured in that strike. The attack disrupted command and contributed to a halt in operations. A ceasefire was announced later, with uneven acceptance among local factions. Israel framed intervention as protection of Druze, while Syrian officials condemned its destabilizing role. Other Druze leaders rejected Israel's claimed protective position. The community did not have one agreed external patron, and association with Israeli support could itself fuel accusations and hostility against civilians who had made no such alliance. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Government forces and accompanying tribal fighters withdrew that evening. The second major wave began as Druze armed groups attacked Bedouin communities on July 17. The commission recorded killings, torture, detention, theft and forced displacement, particularly around Shahba and southern villages. The victims of the preceding wave did not become the only population needing protection. A withdrawal could end one force's access to civilians while exposing another population to the armed groups remaining. Responsibility followed the perpetrators of each act. Recognizing crimes against Bedouins did not lessen the crimes against Druze; it described the next stage through which the escalation spread across communities. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
By then the hospital had lost water and electricity, endured shelling and had armed men positioned on its roof. Civilians and medical professionals were reportedly killed while seeking or providing care. Workers told the commission that 368 bodies reached the hospital between July 15 and 17. The report warned that images of accumulated bodies circulated with false claims that all had been executed inside the facility. The bodies evidenced a grave toll without proving that particular assertion. A false caption could convert a genuine image into a misleading account of where and how every person died. The commission preserved the difference between direct killings documented at the hospital and deaths from elsewhere brought there afterward. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
In Shahba, armed groups deployed around Bedouin residential areas on July 17. Some initially said they had come to protect residents before shelling and shooting began. Families fled. The commission recorded children and elderly civilians killed in attacks during escape. A badly injured teenage survivor described relatives shot at close range while fleeing on foot; Druze neighbours later took her to hospital. Another family's injured girl received assistance through a local Druze acquaintance before being reunited with her father in detention. Those acts of help matter alongside the attacks. Communal identity did not dictate every civilian's conduct, even as armed actors tried to make identity the organizing rule of survival. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Reports of violence against Bedouins spread online alongside misinformation and hate speech. Thousands of tribal fighters mobilized from outside Sweida on July 17 and 18, producing the third major wave. The commission stressed that many had no substantive relationship to the local Bedouin population they claimed to aid. One official estimated as many as eighty thousand mobilized, but the report could not independently verify that figure. It should not become a settled troop count. Government forces on main roads failed to stop the entrants. The commission also received accounts of soldiers and security members removing uniforms and joining the mobilization. Official withdrawal had not neatly separated the state's personnel from the next attacking force. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
The tribal advance brought looting and systematic burning across mixed and predominantly Druze villages. The main report referred to thirty-five villages; a detailed annex described nearly every previously unburned structure in thirty-three western and northern villages being deliberately set alight. Those are differently framed summaries, not figures to combine. The report used visits, imagery and fire data to corroborate timing and destruction. Civilians who had remained or returned after government withdrawal were exposed again. Some victims were elderly or disabled people found later in houses and fields. The third wave attacked the possibility of return itself by destroying dwellings and infrastructure, extending harm beyond the people killed during the advance. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
Around twelve hundred Bedouin civilians were held in Shahba's mosque from July 17 to 20, including children, older people and people with disabilities. Phones were confiscated, food and water were limited, and threats accompanied detention. Local Druze leaders reportedly prevented further harm inside, but armed groups later expelled the families and moved them to a school lacking adequate sanitation and drinking water. Children fell ill. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
In Um al-Zaytun, approximately a hundred Bedouin civilians were detained in a kindergarten. Guards threatened execution. When fighters left during renewed hostilities on July 19, families escaped on foot. Some fleeing civilians were killed or wounded; a man with intellectual disabilities remained missing in the account examined by the commission. Other detainees were transferred between hospitals and security facilities, where torture was reported. The institutions used for confinement differed from the original battlefield: a mosque, school, kindergarten and former security branch could all become parts of an improvised detention network. The capacity to deprive people of liberty did not depend on possessing a formally designated prison. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
A ceasefire on July 19 did not stop every attack immediately. Tribal fighters largely withdrew by July 20, while official forces redeployed to separate actors and reopen limited humanitarian routes. On July 20, a government convoy including ministers was denied entry when local authorities insisted on Red Crescent or international delivery, and Red Crescent convoys followed. On July 21, roughly fifteen hundred Bedouin civilians trapped in Sweida city were evacuated under Red Crescent supervision. Additional movements followed. Sharaa condemned abuses and stressed that Druze were part of the national fabric, while also praising the tribes and saying their role did not replace the state. The speech contained reassurance and politically significant distinctions. The surviving question was whether the government could enforce protection impartially where some of those it praised were associated with the violence it promised to examine. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026
The commission later assembled credible reports of at least 1,707 deaths and nearly two hundred thousand displaced. Most reported deaths affected the local Druze population; Bedouin civilians and government personnel were killed too. The report included an estimated component concerning tribal fighters, making its methodology and qualifiers essential to interpreting the total. It did not present every category as equally verified through the same process. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/61/CRP.7, 2026