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2025-07-24 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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'Dawn of the Tribes': 50,000 Armed Men Could Reshape Syria
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Kirill Semenov
[REGNUM] The bloody events in the Syrian province of Suwayda, which began on July 13 as a conflict between Druze and Bedouin tribes, have led to the largest population displacement since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
According to the UN, 93,000 residents of the province were forced to leave their homes. However, while the Druze have already begun to return after the ceasefire was declared, the Bedouins and representatives of the Arab-Sunni clans of Suwayda have become refugees who are being placed in temporary camps in the neighboring province of Daraa, which creates the preconditions for the continuation of the conflict in the very near future.
It is clear that the Syrian tribes are extremely unhappy with this outcome, although recently it seemed that they were one step away from entering the city of As-Suwayda, the provincial capital, and dealing with the Druze leader Hikmat al-Hijri.
He is considered not only an Israeli stooge and the organizer of armed resistance to the new Syrian authorities, but also responsible for numerous acts of violence and reprisals against the Bedouins of Suwayda.
| Reprisals makes it sound like the Bedouins started it… |
But after another intervention by government troops and the Interior Ministry, which this time blocked the arrival of reinforcements from Syrian tribes in Suwayda, the Bedouins were forced to agree to the truce reached between the government and the Druze leaders and began withdrawing their forces.
However, this also led to the exodus of the Sunni Arab population of Suwayda, who feared reprisals and revenge from the Druze fighters. That is, the Bedouins may feel that not only was their victory stolen from them, but they were also forced to leave their homes, and now they are waiting for the moment for revenge.
If the situation is not resolved in the near future and an agreement is not reached between the government and the Druze that takes into account the interests of all parties, then Suwayda will likely face a new invasion of Syrian tribes. The government will not be able to stop it, and perhaps will not want to.
At the first stage of the confrontation, when battles between Arab tribes and the Druze began, the army and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were brought into the province, and instead of separating the opposing sides, they began to support the Bedouins in their attacks on the Druze.
This led to numerous casualties, including among the civilian population. Thus, according to human rights activists, the army and tribal militias participated in reprisals against the civilian population. About 200 Druze were killed then, a tenth of them were women and children.
Then the strikes of the Israeli Air Force, the patron of the Syrian Druze, were able to stop the advance of the Syrian troops and the Interior Ministry and forced them to retreat from the province. But soon Tel Aviv itself was forced to appeal through intermediaries to official Damascus so that it would again intervene in the conflict and stop the advance of the Bedouin tribes.
THE AWAKENING OF THE TRIBES STOPPED ISRAEL
After the army left, the tribal militias refused to leave Suwayda, where, according to their representatives, violence against their fellow tribesmen took place. Instead, they called for a mobilization that affected not only the clans in this province, but also throughout Syria. This demonstrated that the Syrian tribes are an important independent factor that should not be underestimated.
On July 17, the Syrian Tribal Council announced Operation Tribal Dawn, which marked a major Bedouin offensive against Suwayda. The Druze were unable to stop it without Israeli support.
The point is that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could no longer strike on behalf of the Druze. This would have provoked a more serious regional escalation and the spread of the conflict to neighboring countries, such as Jordan.
After all, the IDF would have to bomb not the “terrorists” and “jihadists,” as the Syrian army is called in Israel, but the Bedouins, with whom their fellow tribesmen from neighboring countries expressed solidarity, promising their assistance in the event of external intervention.
After all, the IDF itself is made up not only of Druze, but also of Bedouins from the Negev desert. The latter could also be displeased that, in appearing as the protector of the Druze, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored their interests.
In turn, the Jordanian Tribal Council “clearly and unequivocally” warned that “any direct military intervention by the Zionist entity in Syrian territory, especially in the south, will be met with immediate action by the Jordanian tribes in defense of the dignity of the nation, loyalty to the Arab and Islamic covenant, and rejection of any encroachment on Arab geographic sovereignty and decision-making process.”
Unlike Syria, Netanyahu would not want to destabilize friendly Jordan, whose population is made up of Palestinians and Bedouins. Jordanian Palestinians already largely support Hamas. If Bedouins joined them, it would weaken the ruling Hashemite dynasty.
Thus, the mass movement of Syrian Bedouins in support of the Arab-Sunni clans of Suwayda could get out of control and turn into a serious cross-border threat. However, the risks of such a scenario have not yet been contained, and the chances that a new wave of Bedouin rebellion will engulf not only Suwayda, but also neighboring countries, still remain.
FROM LAWRENCE OF ARABIA TO AS-SAHWA
One can recall the times of Lawrence of Arabia and the awakening of the Arab tribes, which showed that they were a formidable force when united by common interests. Without their support, the British would have found it difficult to break through the Turkish armies in Palestine in 1917-1918.
But even in the more recent past, there are examples of how the Bedouins were on the verge of changing the region.
As Grigory Lukyanov, a research fellow at the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Regnum news agency, “even before ISIS appeared, the Americans hired tribes from the Syrian-Iraqi border to fight Al-Qaeda (AQ) terrorists, and then the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI)”.
These tribes were quite successful, they managed to eradicate AK and ISI in the terrorists’ stronghold – Anbar province, and the Bedouins of Iraq gained a reputation as hunters of Al-Qaeda. They were the only ones who managed to suppress the activity of its militants and drive them deep into desert refuges.
According to Lukyanov, this led to an increase in power and financial demands from tribal groups, who hoped to consolidate their role and place in governing Iraq and gain access to its resources.
But the American exodus in 2011 and the end of funding for the tribal militias transformed them from a leading counterterrorism force into a base for the same jihadist groups they had so successfully fought so recently.
Of course, the sectarian anti-Sunni policy of the radical Shiite party "Dawa" headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which came to power in Iraq, also played a role here. He saw "As-Sahwa" as a threat to his power and rejected previous agreements on turning the tribal militia into a national guard, trying to disarm them.
As Grigory Lukyanov noted, this led to the fact that the authorities of the Sunni tribes of Iraq and their sheikhs were unable to do anything to stop the mass exodus of ordinary members to radical anti-government groups.
Thus, at first, the Sunni tribes of Iraq played a decisive role in the defeat of terrorist groups and allowed the Americans to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq under the pretext of completing their mission to suppress terrorist activity, which was carried out at the hands of the tribes.
But then those same tribes, or rather the youth that emerged from them, turned their weapons against the government and supported the terrorists they had only recently fought, becoming the social base of the ISIS, and then of ISIS.
This allowed the terrorist organization to restore its strength and, two years later, to attack government troops with renewed vigor, who, now deprived of the support of the tribes, could not withstand the onslaught and began to surrender city after city.
AMERICAN "INVESTMENTS"
As for Syria, according to Lukyanov, similar phenomena are currently being observed there: tribes are looking for their new place and new role.
As the expert notes, the absence of a fully functional state, parties, trade unions, and the loss of horizontal connections that existed in the Baath Party led to the launch of processes of forming new forms of socialization, activity, and consolidation that tribal structures can offer.
However, as Lukyanov notes, the consolidation of the Syrian tribes is currently based on a response to threats from their opponents, the Druze. Therefore, it is too early to talk about the long-term nature of such tribal associations. Consequently, according to the orientalist, the potential of the tribes is "situational and limited."
Indeed, despite having a very significant number of “bayonets and sabres,” the Syrian tribes were never able to come up with a common position during the civil war. They created various alliances with the opposition, the Assad regime, and the Kurds, and, depending on the situation, switched from an alliance with one to an alliance with their opponents.
At the same time, the clans often changed places: one supported Assad today, and the opposition tomorrow, and another supported the opposition today, and the government tomorrow.
For example, some clans of the Shaitat tribe, which initially supported the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army, later switched to the government's side, creating the "Lions of the Eastern Province" group led by Abdul Basset Alkhalaf.
Others chose the “third way” and ended up in the ranks of the pro-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), where, for example, two tribal armies operated: Jaysh al-Sanadid from the largest tribe, Shhammar, and Quwat al-Nuqba.
At the same time, the Assad regime tried to use the tribes to undermine the unity of the Syrian Democratic Forces and turned the tribes against the Kurds, in which Iran helped it.
They partially succeeded in this in the fall of 2023.
Then a tribal uprising broke out, which was able to expel the Kurdish SDF formations from many areas of the Euphrates region after the Kurds arrested one of the tribal leaders who headed the SDF-affiliated military council of Deir ez-Zor.
And only American “investments” were able to stop the spread of the conflict, which threatened the very existence of Kurdish autonomy in the Syrian northeast, and force the tribes to return to the ranks of the SDF.
Therefore, despite the situational and temporary nature of alliances, the ability of the Syrian tribes to create a militia of 50 thousand armed men could threaten the existence of not only the Druze formation in Suwayda, but also the Syrian Democratic Forces, with which Damascus has been unsuccessfully trying to negotiate.
In fact, the SDF alliance, consisting of Kurds and Arab tribes, between whom there has long been undisguised hostility, is held together only by American infusions. But Washington has recently been reconsidering its attitude to maintaining the SDF's autonomy, which its Kurdish leadership continues to insist on, and is pushing it toward integration into the Syrian army.
And the tribal instrument remains a factor of influence in the hands of Washington, among others, as could be seen during the period of the activity of the As-Sahwa movement in Iraq.
If the Druze and Kurds continue to be intractable, it is precisely the money from the Americans, who have suddenly shown interest in Syrian unity, that could become the trigger that will force the tribes to turn their weapons against the Kurds and Druze and “drive” them under the aegis of official Damascus.
CROSS-BORDER THREAT
Even temporary outbreaks of tribal activity in Syria pose a serious threat to neighboring countries.
For example, in Iraq there are still quite a lot of contradictions between Sunnis and Shiites, and, having realized the ability to solve problems on a regional scale, Syrian tribes can come to the aid of their Iraqi brothers.
And brothers in the most literal sense, since many families and clans are divided by the Syrian-Iraqi border and live on both sides of it. The same applies to Jordan.
Therefore, the Syrian tribes are a "samurai sword" that, on the one hand, can be used against enemies, but on the other hand, there is always a risk of inflicting mortal wounds on oneself.
And the flirtation of the weak Damascus regime, which is incapable of establishing order in its own army, with tribal militias in the more distant future may turn against it, just as the Iraqi Sahwa once turned against the Iraqi government.
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