‘We can do anything now’: how activists in this Syrian city plan to shape the country’s future

Red Flag’s Omar Hassan, a longstanding supporter of the Syrian revolution and a Palestine solidarity activist, is in Syria to report on the situation after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. This is the sixth in his series of reports, the complete list of which can be found in our Syria After Assad section.

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“We grew up with [socialist musicians] Marcel Khalifi, Julia Butros, Shaikh Imam ... many of us were communists when we were younger, back before they joined the regime”, Safaa says. We’re in an apartment in the southern city of Suwayda, where three women—Safaa, Oussayma and Omayma—explain the history of the area’s revolutionary resistance to former dictator Bashar al-Assad.

“The hirak, the movement for freedom and change, started in August of 2023. It started because prices were going up so high; inflation was just making everything unbearably expensive”, Oussayma explains. At the same time, the government decided to cut state subsidies on essential goods like petrol and bread. “These were the issues that mobilised people: we wanted to eat, have water and electricity, to live a decent life. At one point, the state-subsidised bread amounted to less than a full loaf. That’s why it was initially called the bread revolution.

“A group of youth, very small to begin with, went down to Karama Square to protest in August 2023”, she continues. “They came back every single day after that for one year and four months. Of course, not everyone could be there every day, so Fridays became the focus for large actions. Once the fear was gone, people just went for it.”

They’ve been doing it ever since—a year and four months of daily and weekly actions. The protests grew quickly, peaking at around 8,000 people. Most of the initiators were veterans of the 2011 revolution and had been active in the repeated waves of protests in Suwayda in the intervening years. To begin with, the movement focused on renewing the subsidies and lowering the cost of goods, that is, for reforms. But quickly, their ambitions grew, and they started demanding the fall of the regime.

“People endured the biting cold, the snow, the heat of summer—it didn’t matter, we were there”, Omayma says. Through their placards and chants, protesters sought to highlight grievances and issues from across Syria, but also international events such as Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Inevitably, there were debates.

“A section of people stopped coming when we raised the slogan of bringing down the regime”, Safaa explains. “They said, ‘We were here about the price of bread’. What they were really worried about was that the regime would do to Suwayda what it did to the rest of the country.”

This situation was worsened by undercover officers who were sent in to cause trouble and division wherever possible. “They used to start fights over everything, things as simple as what songs we would play during the protests. As numbers got smaller, they kept saying that we were defeated, that we should stop”, Oussayma says. “At times, when the actions were smaller, they would just try to snatch people off the street.”

“Also, you have to understand that women were the big majority of the movement here”, she continues. “The reason was that there had been a collective decision made in 2016 that no man from Suwayda would agree to serve in the Syrian army, to kill their brothers, their people, fellow Syrians. If the army was fighting Israel, we would happily have served.”

Many men left the country to avoid this fate, often by paying Hezbollah a bribe to take them over the mountains to Lebanon, from which they could go elsewhere. The women find humour in a situation where the party responsible for propping up Assad through murderous repression would simultaneously profit from his victims. Those who couldn’t afford to get out were often trapped in their local towns and villages, unable to travel for fear of being snatched at government checkpoints.

Women were therefore vital to maintaining the street mobilisations organised by the umbrella group, Movement for Freedom and Change. The regime’s supporters and security services began a terrible campaign of slander and harassment of activists online, particularly targeting women. They hoped that by posting unflattering photos and suggesting that they were behaving inappropriately, their partners or family members would discipline them into silence.

Safaa, Oussayma and Omayma are furiously speaking over one another at this stage, conveying their disgust. But they admit that it did have an impact. “Even if your family was supportive, people knew what was happening in Sednaya and other prisons, so once you became a focus for the security… well, it was seriously scary”, Omayma says.

Were there any difficulties regarding women’s involvement from within the movement itself? “No way, our community here isn’t like some other places. We’ve been involved from the start”, Safaa says. “Actually, the guys were encouraging us to come out, they were quite open-minded.”

Having said that, it was mostly a small group of men from the 2011 era calling the shots to begin with. But the movement gradually became more collective and inclusive. “We didn’t have separate women’s meetings; we were encouraged to take part as equals in decision-making, as spokespeople, in everything”, Oussayma says. “Some meetings were called off entirely if there weren’t enough women present. But of course, it wasn’t all easy—there were sometimes big debates. Democracy can be hard in this country. But I used to say that even if we didn’t overthrow the government, the movement taught us a lot about politics and how the world really is.”

How is it that they weren’t just slaughtered by the regime, like so many others around the country? The activists say that they had taken full advantage of a contradiction within the regime’s propaganda, which claimed to defend minorities against violent extremism (that is, against the Sunni majority). This made it harder for the army to drown Suwayda in blood. This constraint gave the people here precious space to organise, but it was far from easy. Activists were still being killed and kidnapped—the kaleidoscopic range of security forces in Syria continued to operate underground. But through their courageous defiance, activists in Suwayda eventually won a degree of political freedom unheard of in other regime-controlled areas.

“We have not been under the direct control of the regime for something like ten years”, Safaa confirms. “That’s why, when the movement began, [the regime] counted to one million before dealing with us militarily.” The government had made an effort to reestablish itself in 2018, after ISIS occupied some eastern villages and towns and committed massacres across the region. “Actually, the regime brought ISIS here”, Safaa says. “But the people here rose up and we crushed them, drove them out ourselves on the very first day.”

This significance of the city’s independent military capacity is emphasised more by others in Suwayda, especially Alaa, a leading figure in one of the town’s largest militias, Liwaa al Jabal, or the Mountain Brigades. Joining us in the flat, he explains Suwayda’s relative autonomy as being a product of their fighting strength.

“My militia alone had 4-5,000 people under arms, and there were many others”, he says. “Most of the time, we didn’t directly clash with the regime. But if they tried anything, for instance, if they snatched one of our people in Damascus or from a protest, we fought back. We would kidnap their soldiers and exchange them or threaten their commanding officer in the region. Things were mostly resolved that way.”

Walking and driving around Suwayda, it is obvious that the city and surrounding districts have not suffered the same devastating destruction seen in other parts of Syria. There are no buildings destroyed by missiles or bombs, no bullet-ridden homes. There are also fancier buildings and shops, more large construction projects underway, and fewer visible signs of poverty.

“Almost every family in Suwayda has some people outside the country, sending money back”, Ra’fat, my driver, later explains. “As well, there’s a higher proportion of people who’ve studied at university, in higher paying jobs.” Alaa makes a similar point, saying that most of the militia was made up of educated people. It’s impossible to confirm many details as there is little data on Syria’s population (though the transitional authorities are planning a census soon). But this relatively clean and functioning city of 500,000 is a taste of what Syria could have been had the Assad family not clung to power with such maniacal tenacity.

Alaa is quietly confident about the future. This week, his militia announced their intent to merge with the other main local militia, the Men of Dignity (Dignity Square being the location of the many protests held in Suwayda’s capital city). In a joint press conference, both declared their willingness to join a future Syrian army. “We will negotiate with [Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)] as equals”, Alaa insists. Their unified command now controls 10-12,000 fighters.

Their statement was endorsed by the most prominent sheikh in the area, who has long positioned himself as an advocate of the movement. (“Though he has always had his own ambitions that don’t exactly match ours”, warns one of the women). Importantly, he emphasised that Suwayda must have a role in the shaping of the new Syria, not simply be told of the outcome.

People here remain fiercely committed to their independence, which they see as the only guarantee of their freedom and rights under the new regime. Alaa explains that HTS sent 35 cars filled with soldiers on New Year’s Eve, hoping to occupy the area by catching the local fighters by surprise. “We turned them around on the highway and told them that if they entered, they would be slaughtered. And that was that.” As a result, along with Kurdish-controlled areas in the north-east, Suwayda is the only governorate in Syria without an armed HTS presence. There is, however, an HTS envoy, Mustafa al-Bakkour, who is in practice functioning as the area’s governor, which nobody seems to mind.

There is a trend, represented in the Liwaa Party (unaffiliated with the militia), that advocate the secession of Suwayda from Syria. They have an informal alliance with the right wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish forces controlling north-eastern Syria, and are similarly open to collaboration with the West and Israel to achieve this goal. But I’m told that most people in Suwayda reject this approach, and that the movement voted not to allow their slogans in the square. “We are Syrians; we do not want to be separate”, Safaa says. The others agree.

There is some disagreement about how to proceed with the transition. Alaa expresses some lingering bitterness about those who served in the old regime: “Honestly, I feel we can’t just move on—we need them to know that we know who they are, to feel the shame”. Safaa disagrees: “We need justice, but it needs to be restorative justice. We need to rebuild a sense of community, to forgive each other for the crimes of the past”. Ra’fat concurs: “We should hold senior figures accountable, but most of them have left the country. The average soldier had no choice: they were conscripted, there was a gun to their head. We need to start with a blank page”.

The women speak about HTS with a familiar mix of hope and trepidation. “Things have been pretty reasonable so far—Jolani is acting carefully. His ministers have said and done wrong things, but when there’s been a popular uproar then Jolani walks it back”, Oussayma says. (Abu Mohammad al-Jolani is the nom de guerre of HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has become the country’s de facto leader.)

Safaa offers a slightly different perspective. “We lived many years under this terrible regime, with so much fear and anxiety. It hasn’t just all gone away overnight”, she says. “We don’t even really know what freedom will look like. Also, in this area, most of us are Druze ... We are very worried that the new government will adopt a strict interpretation of Islam; their ideas are very conservative.”

Alaa is even more sceptical: “The man was al-Qaeda, and politically, he’s still al-Qaeda. His ideas don’t fit with the people here; we want a progressive, secular state”. These fears are far from baseless. Where HTS and its predecessors governed the northern city of Idlib, Christian and Druze villagers were subjected to serious sectarian violence and had their lands and homes stolen. Women were forced to wear the hijab, and conservative social norms were policed strictly. While Jolani has recently made an effort to undo some of the worst excesses, if only to soothe domestic and international opinion, issues remain, and these crimes have not been forgotten.

Yet, once again, all insist on differentiating between HTS, with its strict interpretation of Sharia law, and the Muslim community as a whole. “Suwayda has received so many refugees from parts of the country that the regime was attacking. We were happy to welcome them; we don’t have any problems with anyone living here”, Safaa says. “But [HTS] have been trapped in Idlib for so long, they don’t know what Syria is like, what Damascus, Suwayda, Tartous are like.”

Oussayma cuts in: “There’s no way that [HTS] is going to be able to run the whole of Syria like Idlib. If they try, we’ll rise up again. We defeated the old regime, we have our own militias, we can do anything now”.