At dawn, as the sky blushes above the black basalt of Jabal al-Druze, an old shepherd kneels beside a spring near Salkhad, whispering verses his grandfather once sang during the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925. The water flows as it did then. The land remembers. And now, so does the world.
For the first time in over two decades, Syria awakens to a reality it had only whispered of in underground cafés and rebel trenches: Bashar al-Assad is gone.
His fall, like the regimes of Saddam and Gaddafi before him, came not with a trumpet but with a slow, staggering implosion. His once-formidable grip unraveled under the weight of war fatigue, economic collapse, and a public whose patience had frayed to threadbare. But in the ruins he leaves behind, a new question emerges: What becomes of Syria’s soul?
And high in the mountains of Suwayda, one community rises not to seize power, but to protect a way of life rooted in resilience, memory, and silence deeper than speech.
The Druze, or al-Muwahhidun, are a paradox in flesh: a people of secrecy who embody clarity of purpose; warriors who rarely initiate war; spiritualists who hold no mosque or minaret sacred, yet regard wisdom as divine.
Emerging from the schisms of Ismaili Shi’ism in the 11th century, their doctrine has borrowed from Islamic mysticism, Neoplatonism, and Gnostic thought. Their scriptures, the Rasa’il al-Hikmah, are hidden, and only the initiated ʿuqqāl may understand them. They neither convert nor recruit. Their boundaries are drawn not by maps, but by memory and honour.
Their homes dot Lebanon’s Chouf, Israel’s Galilee, Jordan’s Ajloun, and Syria’s Suwayda. But it is in Suwayda—the land of Sultan al-Atrash—that the Druze soul roars loudest.
While Aleppo and Homs turned to ash, and Damascus descended into paranoia, Suwayda became the quiet epicentre of non-violent defiance. The Druze did not revolt like Daraa, nor radicalise like Idlib. They chose instead to defend their soil, uphold local order, and reject both Assad’s oppression and jihadist seduction.
But neutrality has its cost. Fuel lines were cut. Salaries withheld. Roads neglected. Suwayda became a backwater in Assad’s Syria, useful for optics, dispensable for policy.
By 2023, the pot boiled over. Mass protests erupted, peaceful, poetic, powerful. In Suwayda’s main square, farmers stood with loaves of bread and placards that read: “We are not your enemies. But we will not be your beggars.”
As other provinces trembled in chaos, Suwayda stood with dignity. Even then, Assad’s forces hesitated to crack down. They feared not bullets, but the moral thunder of the Druze mountain. And now, with Assad gone, that mountain speaks anew.
The fall of Assad has shattered the illusion of a unified Syria. In his absence, Syria is not free, it is fractured.
Damascus is under the shaky stewardship of a transitional technocratic council, backed loosely by Russian security elements and Iranian “advisers.” Aleppo is divided between Turkish-backed militias and local warlords. Daraa teeters between tribal councils and narcotics mafias. And in Idlib, one man smiles behind a beard once feared across the globe: Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
Julani, the once-anonymous face of Al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm, has spent the last few years rebranding himself from jihadist emir to nationalist statesman. Dressed now in suits instead of fatigues, he conducts interviews in Arabic so refined it sounds rehearsed. In Idlib, he’s courted foreign journalists, restructured local governance, and positioned himself as a “bulwark against extremism”, a bitter irony, given his own past.
But he watches Suwayda with envy and unease. Julani knows that Suwayda holds what he cannot buy or bomb, legitimacy rooted in history, philosophy, and civic honour. And he fears its example might inspire other Syrian communities to follow a path of peaceful resistance instead of violent Islamism.
His fighters have probed Suwayda’s peripheries before, masked as tribal factions or local gangs. But they were driven back, not by tanks, but by local militias commanded by farmers, teachers, and elders. These were not soldiers. These were sons defending their grandmothers’ orchards.
And now, with Assad gone, Julani eyes the south, hoping chaos might open a corridor. The Druze, in response, have reopened their old war rooms, not to conquer, but to prevent conquest.
In the centre of this unfolding drama stands Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, the spiritual custodian of the Syrian Druze. Soft-spoken but firm, the Sheikh has rejected calls for secession or militarisation.
Instead, he speaks of local governance, mutual respect, and a new social contract, not just for Druze, but for all Syrians.
His address on the day of Assad’s confirmed departure echoed across every village square in Suwayda: “We are not rising to rule others. We rise to govern ourselves. If Syria must be reborn, let it begin with dignity, not domination.”
In those words lies a doctrine deeper than politics, the Druze belief in order without tyranny, faith without fanaticism, and resilience without revenge.
In the village of al-Kafr, where the memory of Ottoman hangings still lingers in stone archways, teenagers now volunteer to teach displaced children from Daraa and Homs. The local council has reopened clinics, repaired roads, and even restored a historic library. Flags of Syria still fly, but beside them are flags of Suwayda’s civic dignity movement.
Here, we see what post-Assad Syria could become, not a fragmented warlord state, but a mosaic of self-governed communities linked by mutual respect and shared suffering.
But for this vision to survive, the mountain must once again hold its ground.
The world watches Syria with familiar fatigue. Analysts debate whether Iran or Turkey will gain the upper hand. Great powers dust off old maps. But amid the din of geopolitics, the Druze of Suwayda offer a quieter message: We will not fight for thrones. We will not kneel for bread. We do not want to rule. But we will not be ruled.
They are neither rebels nor rulers. They are the memory of a different Syria, one built not on fear, but on honour.
And as Julani plots and others posture, the mountain whispers once more: “We do not move with the storm. We survive it.”
