The Druze-Bedouin clashes in Syria were not a sectarian conflict

The flare-up of unit successful Syria’s confederate state of Suwayda successful July has erstwhile again raised fears that the state whitethorn gaffe backmost into conflict. Media headlines were speedy to overgarment this arsenic different occurrence successful the region’s longstanding “sectarian strife” betwixt Druze and Sunni Bedouin communities. But specified framing obscures much than it reveals.

The world is much complex. While sectarian identities person been invoked during periods of tension, the basal causes of this struggle prevarication elsewhere: successful humanities disputes implicit onshore and pastures, successful contention implicit smuggling routes and authorities patronage, and successful economical illness exacerbated by prolonged drought and clime change. To trim this flare-up to a substance of spiritual hatred is to erase the deeper governmental ecology and societal past of the portion and obfuscate ways to resoluteness tensions.

Druze migration

In the 18th century, the Druze began migrating to Jabal al-Arab, a mountainous portion successful what was past the Hauran Sanjak of the Ottoman Empire, arsenic a effect of contestations among the assorted Druze tribes successful Mount Lebanon. They established villages, cultivated land, and yet asserted governmental and subject dominance successful the region.

The Druze saw their colony of the country arsenic reclaiming barren terrain — a onshore they described successful their oral contented arsenic “empty”. But this communicative has been profoundly contested by the Bedouin herding communities, who had a beingness successful the portion centuries earlier.

The Bedouin were a mobile nine and did not found imperishable settlements; they utilized the onshore seasonally to graze their herds, navigating past migration routes and relying connected h2o sources that could not beryllium owned privately. To them, these were not vacant spaces but ancestral landscapes, and the Druze tribes were the newcomers.

This inevitably led to conflict. Skirmishes implicit pasture rights, entree to wells, and power of borderlands were a recurring diagnostic of the region’s societal fabric. Historical accounts notation to these confrontations arsenic ghazawat — tribal raids and counterraids that were arsenic overmuch astir assets contention arsenic they were astir honour and survival. Druze oral past tended to picture Bedouins arsenic marauders, prone to betrayal. Bedouin narratives portrayed Druze enlargement arsenic a signifier of territorial encroachment.

And yet, the narration was ne'er exclusively hostile. There were periods of coexistence and cooperation: Druze farmers hired Bedouin herders, and Bedouin communities relied connected Druze markets and atom supplies. But this fragile equilibrium often collapsed during times of stress, peculiarly during drought, authorities collapse, oregon governmental interference.

A past of governmental manipulation

Over the people of the past 2 centuries, successive regimes — from the Ottomans to the French Mandate and past the regularisation of the Assad household — exploited and entrenched section tensions to service broader strategies of control.

To reassert its authorization implicit the progressively autonomous Druze of Jabal al-Arab, the Ottoman Empire turned to the Bedouin tribes and encouraged their raids connected rebellious Druze villages. The purpose was not lone to punish dissent among the Druze but besides to counterbalance their increasing power without committing ample imperial forces. The effect was a deliberate deepening of intercommunal hostilities betwixt the Druze and the Bedouin astatine the crook of the 20th century.

France, which took power of Syria aft World War I, besides sought to power the portion by exploiting existing responsibility lines. It gave peculiar privileges to the Druze by establishing the Jabal Druze State, but that did not placate the community.

In 1925, a revolt broke retired successful Jabal al-Arab led by Druze commandant Sultan al-Atrash. Bedouin groups joined forces with the Druze, warring unneurotic successful large engagements specified arsenic the battles of al-Kafr and al-Mazraa. This infinitesimal of practice betwixt Druze and Bedouin communities was calved retired of shared grievances and a corporate absorption to assemblage rule. It demonstrated the imaginable for intercommunal unity successful resistance.

After independency successful 1946, this fragile narration deteriorated erstwhile much erstwhile President Adib Shishakli launched a convulsive run against the Druze, portraying them arsenic a menace to nationalist unity. His forces occupied the Jabal and reportedly encouraged Bedouin tribes to raid Druze villages, rekindling fears of collusion and solidifying a communicative of betrayal.

During this aforesaid epoch of aboriginal independence, the Syrian constitution acceptable retired to settee each Bedouin communities and region galore privileges they had been granted during the French Mandate. In 1958, during Syria’s national with Egypt, the Law of the Tribes was repealed, and Bedouin tribes ceased to person immoderate abstracted ineligible identity. They were besides seen arsenic a menace to nationalist unity alongside the Druze.

In the decades that followed, particularly nether the regularisation of the Assad family, the authorities maintained stableness by suppressing unfastened struggle without addressing underlying grievances. In the 1980s and 90s, Druze and Bedouin communities coexisted uneasily, having minimal enactment and occasional onshore oregon grazing disputes.

This uneasy calm collapsed successful 2000, erstwhile a localised altercation escalated into deadly clashes successful Suwayda. The unit reignited humanities tensions, hardened communal boundaries, and exposed the limits of authoritarian stability.

The outbreak of civilian warfare successful 2011 further destabilised Druze-Bedouin relations arsenic Islamist factions, peculiarly ISIL (ISIS) and al-Nusra Front, exploited Bedouin marginalisation to enlistee fighters and found footholds successful the Syrian desert. While not each Bedouin communities aligned with these groups, the relation betwixt immoderate Bedouin tribes and Islamist equipped groups deepened Druze suspicions and intensified the cognition of the Bedouin arsenic a information threat.

The massacre successful Suwayda successful 2018, which was carried retired by ISIL and reportedly facilitated by “sleeper cells” successful adjacent Bedouin communities, reinforced this communicative of betrayal. Islamist manipulation of Bedouin discontent frankincense served to fracture already fragile intercommunal relations, undoing years of fragile coexistence betwixt 2 historically entangled groups.

Economic illness and clime stress

While humanities grievances and authorities manipulation acceptable the stage, it is the present-day economical illness and biology accent that person exacerbated Druze-Bedouin tensions successful Suwayda. The civilian warfare brought the Syrian system to the brink, which severely affected the south, agelong neglected by the cardinal government. For some communities, endurance has travel to beryllium not connected ceremonial employment oregon agriculture alone, but connected informal economies that intersect and vie successful unsafe ways.

In the lack of authorities services, galore parts of confederate Syria person go reliant connected smuggling routes, particularly crossed the porous Jordanian border. Fuel, narcotics, and basal goods each determination done these corridors.

Controlling a checkpoint oregon a smuggling way contiguous tin mean the quality betwixt subsistence and destitution. For Druze factions successful Suwayda and Bedouin groups operating connected the godforsaken fringes, this has translated into struggle implicit territory, disguised arsenic information enforcement oregon tribal honour.

These are strategical contests implicit mobility and access. A Bedouin radical accused of cooperating with traffickers whitethorn clash with a Druze militia that seeks to constabulary the area, oregon vice versa. Accusations of betrayal, retaliatory killings, and roadworthy closures follow. What mightiness look externally arsenic communal unit is, successful practice, a conflict implicit the spoils of an informal system successful a lawless zone.

Compounding this is the region’s expanding vulnerability to clime change. Recurrent droughts person devastated accepted forms of livelihood. Druze farmers person seen harvest yields collapse; Bedouin pastoralists tin nary longer prolong herds connected shrinking grasslands. What was erstwhile a seasonal bushed of co-dependence — grazing connected unfastened onshore successful winter, planting and harvest successful summertime — has breached down. Both communities present vie implicit progressively scarce and degraded land.

In this context, to framework the unit purely arsenic a sectarian feud is not lone inaccurate; it is politically dangerous. Such a communicative serves those who payment from fragmentation. Portraying section conflicts arsenic past hatreds justifies repression and delays immoderate superior efforts to instrumentality decentralisation oregon prosecute reconciliation. It erases the agelong past of cooperation, trade, and adjacent shared conflict betwixt Druze and Bedouin tribal communities. And it silences the real, worldly demands astatine stake: unafraid onshore rights, sustainable economical opportunities, and an extremity to imposed governmental marginality.

Understanding this struggle arsenic economical and political, alternatively than a spiritual oregon tribal one, is the archetypal measurement towards ending it.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the authors’ ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.