Syrian Druze facing uncertain future

Since January, the non-ISIS rebels, under pressure from their regional patrons Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf States – and with more and better military equipment such as U.S.-made anti-tank TOW missiles — have inflicted a series of heavy defeats on Assad forces and Hezbollah militia fighters in Idlib province in Syria’s north-west and in areas south of Damascus. At the same time, ISIS forces have been advancing in east Syria, and are now in control of about 50 percent of the country.

The accelerating pace of retreats by forces loyal to Assad forces — and the fact that the Syrian army “in practice, has ceased to exist,” in the words of General Yair Golan, Israel’s deputy chief of staff — have forced minority groups such as the Druze to rethink their position in a rapidly changing situation and their affiliation with the main actors.

The New York Times reports that Walid Jumblatt, a member of the Lebanese Parliament and the region’s pre-eminent Druse leader, on Thursday (11 June) declared on his Twitter account that Druze should give up on the government of President Assad and reconcile with the restive Sunni community that surrounds them in southern Syria.

“The regime is finished,” Jumblatt declared in an interview in his house in Beirut on Thursday, as anti-regime rebels captured the most important military base in the southern province of Sweida for the first time in four years of war, two days after seizing a major base in neighboring Dara’a (the town where, in February 2011, the rebellion against Assad was launched).

Syrian Druze, “before being Druze, are part of Syria, and they are Arabs,” Jumblatt said. “Their natural environment is Sunni. Their only way is to reconcile with that environment, with the people of Dara’a, the first people who revolted against Assad.”

Jumblatt stressed that his position – calling for Druze reconciliation with the Sunni rebels — was unchanged despite an episode Wednesday night in Idlib Province in the north, where at least twenty Druze residents were killed after a dispute with Nusra Front militants. He condemned the killings, but said that they should be viewed in the context of a war that has killed more than 200,000 Syrians.

In the mostly Druze Sweida Province in the south, a growing number of Druze families were fleeing to Damascus. Observers note that Druze in Sweida Province have mostly remained neutral or were supportive of the Assad government, but that they have stopped sending young Druze men to fight in the Syrian army – figuring that in the face of the regime’s likely collapse, there was no point in angering the Sunni rebels by fighting alongside the regime. Some Druse leaders also wanted to keep young Druze men at home so they could be mobilized, if a decision is made, into a self-defense Druze militia.

The rebel offensive in the south has been led by the Southern Front, a coalition of non-ISIS rebel forces which includes elements that the United States has determined to be sufficiently moderate to receive American aid through a covert CIA program, and training in neighboring Jordan. At the same time, though, some of these elements have often cooperating with the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.

Whether as a public relations ploy or out of a genuine desire to send a calming message to Syria’s minorities, leaders of the Southern Front had issued statements strongly condemning the killing of Druze in Idlib as “a crime against Syrian coexistence and the future.”

“We affirm that the people of Sweida are our brothers and our people,” the Southern Front’s statement said. “We have not and will not fight them, and we will be with them hand in hand to confront all threats to the province if they ask us to do so.”

Jumblatt’s Friday’s press conference
On Friday morning (12 June), the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the preeminent Druze leader in the Middle East, held a press conference in Beirut in which he said the Druze of Syria had no plan to ask for asylum in Israel. “We don’t need Assad and we don’t need Israel,” he said. “Both sides [in Syria’s civil war] are using ethnic terminology, the goal of which is to entrench ethnic thinking and divide the country.”

Jumblatt, who has historically been a fierce opponent of the Assad family, added that the future of the Druze community in Syria depends on an internal political settlement in the country which will strengthen state institutions and allow for a transitional government to prepare the ground for a post-Assad Syria. He insisted that the Syrian Druze are part and parcel of the Syrian people, and that their issues cannot be treated or resolved separately from the Syrian people.

Jumblatt was part of the leadership of the 14 March Movement in Lebanon, a pro-democracy, pro-pluralism movement created after Syrian and Hezbollah operatives assassinated Lebanon’s reformist president, Rafic Hariri, on 14 February 2005.

As was the case with other leaders of the 14 March Movement, he publicly supported the anti-regime rebellion since its 2011 beginning. The strengthening of the jihadist elements in the anti-Assad insurgency has led Jumblatt and others to call for a political agreement which will ease Assad out of power, rather than for an outright military defeat of the regime.

Jumblatt’s calls for a political arrangement which will resolve the Druze plight as part of a broader political arrangement to facilitate the emergence of post-Assad Syria should be understood in this context.

Jumblatt’s rejection of the “Israeli option” is not in line with the preferences of the leaders of the Druze community in Israel. Israeli Druze want the Israeli government to open the border to allow Druze families fleeing from the insurgents to enter Israel, and they want the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to help arm a Druze militia so the Druze can defend themselves.

Israel and the Druze plight
The Druze in Israel are among the non-Jewish groups most-integrated into Israeli life. They serve in the Israeli military, and Druze have been promoted to senior command positions. Leaders of the Israeli Druze community have been exerting pressure on the Israeli government to support the Syrian Druze, especially now, as the retreat of the Assad forces has left the Druze exposed to Sunni anti-regime rebels – both moderate rebels and Islamists.

The Israeli government and military, however, have this week quietly decided not to use, or threaten to use, military force to defend the hundreds of thousands of Druze who may be facing a fate similar to the Yezidis in Iraq if ISIS forces reach them.

Israel has concluded that any effort to use military force to help the Druze, especially in the Jabl Druze area near the border with Jordan, would get Israel directly involved in the Syrian civil war, something Israel has studiously avoided for four years now.

The disintegration of the Syria military, and the series of heavy defeats the Assad regime has suffered in the country’s north-west, east, and south, have forced the regime to abandon areas it regards as less essential to the future of the Alawite community, to which the Assad family belongs.

The retreat of Syrian forces from areas populated by Druze is especially worrisome: Fundamentalist Sunnis regard the Druze as religious heretics, and even if religion is not involved, most Sunnis resent the Druze for the Druzes’ close ties with the Assad regime over the last four decades.

Calls by the elders of the Druze community to Assad to send Syrian military units to defend them have been ignored, and the regime says that in recent months Druze leaders have told 27,000 young Druze men not to report to Syrian military recruitment centers. The Druze leaders worry that if their young men were to be taken into the army, Assad would move them north the defend Damascus and the Alawite enclave in the country’s north-west. Druze leaders prefer to keep these young men at home to serve as a Druze militia to defend the community.

In any event, Druze leaders increasingly see no point in trying to help a regime which appears to be nearing its end, especially as the Druze community has already been accused by Sunnis as being too chummy with the Assad regime.

The leaders of the Druze community in Israel, which includes senior current and former Druze officer in the IDF, have recently met with Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin and with the chief of staff, Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, to urge Israeli action to help the Druze in Syria.

Earlier this week, the same leaders, in an unusual move, also met with Muhammed Abbas, the Palestinian leader, asking him to plead with the leaders of major Sunni states in the region to do something to prevent the slaughter of the Druze in Syria.

These please notwithstanding, Israeli political and military leaders have concluded that Israel should not intervene militarily in Syria, even if such intervention is presented as a humanitarian gesture. Israel has indicated to the Druze leaders, though, that it would not object to the Druze forming a self-defense militia, and would encourage Jordan to help arm such a militia. Since the beginning of the civil war, Israel has objected to the arming of the Druze because of the proximity of the Druze to the Israeli border, and the fact that the closeness of the Druze to the Assad regime has allowed Hezbollah and Iran to establish terror cells in Druze villages along the border.

To disrupt the creation of this terror network, Israeli drone strikes, in January this year, killed an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general and Hezbollah’s young commander Jihad Mughniyeh — the son of Hezbollah’s former chief of operations, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed by Israeli Mosad agents in Damascus in February 2008 — and four other Hezbollah fighters, as they were traveling in Druze areas east of the Israeli border on an inspection tour of Hezbollah terror infrastructure there.

The Israeli government has not made any public statement about its hands-off decision in order not to strain relations with the Druze in Israel.

If ISIS fighters take the lead in pushing into areas heavily populated by Druze, and if the militants exhibit the same murderous tendencies toward the Druze that they showed in Iraq toward the Yezidis and other minorities, then a humanitarian catastrophe will be unfolding on Israel’s doorstep, forcing Israel to make decisions it has so far resisted.