Protests in Syria's Southern Druze Enclave Appear To Be Gaining Momentum

A crowd of what appeared to be several hundred protesters in the southern Druze city of Suwaida, Syria, chanted slogans targeting the Syrian government Saturday on the seventh day of a growing movement calling for economic and political reform.


An economic crisis across Syria has hit the general population hard, making daily life extremely difficult and sparking protests that seemingly are causing ripples to several other parts of the country.


Activists in Suwaida said they are not trying to overthrow the government but to prompt leaders to try harder to improve the economic situation, citing the deteriorating exchange rate of the Syrian pound, the lifting of fuel subsidies, and price hikes on bread and other food.


One protest leader, Marwan Hamzeh, told Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV that the government has "not appeared to make any use of its security forces to crack down on the latest protests," adding that it's "unclear why." Some observers, however, say the government is concerned about provoking a wave of violence like that which sparked the much larger protest movements of 2011.


Although Arab media broadcast video of protesters in several parts of the country calling for the "fall of the regime," Joshua Landis, who heads the Middle East Studies department at the University of Oklahoma, told VOA that "most of the protesters are calling for more government activity in the economic life of the country, rather than a collapse of the government."


"It's an odd situation because the Syrians who are demonstrating all want more government services, not less,” Landis said. “They want more electricity, they want subsidies, they want better schooling, they want the currency to be stabilized. They are desperate. They want higher salaries."


Landis noted that Druze leaders criticized the protesters that burned down their province's town hall in a previous protest movement last December, telling them they were "destroying the infrastructure needed to run their province rather than harming the government."


Activist Hamzeh said that "90% of all government offices that collect revenue for land sales, vehicle registration and other taxes have been closed during the week of protests,” and that "most people have stopped paying their taxes to the government."


One middle-aged protester, looking tired but enthusiastic, told Druze social media it is "time for the government to clean up its act and govern fairly, rather than favoring certain sectors of the population."


He said that protesters were calling for freedom, justice, dignity and humanity, in addition to demanding the law be applied fairly to everyone.


The Saudi-owned Asharq al Awsat newspaper reported Friday that the protest movement has "spread to the Bedouin tribes in the south of Syria" from their initial communal origin among the Druze in Suwaida, "making them more of a national movement."


Several Kurdish leaders, including Ilham Ahmed, have expressed support, insisting that "peaceful protests are the correct path to achieve democratic change."


The Arab League normalized ties with the Syrian government in May, but those ties remain shaky. Investment in Syrian infrastructure has been slow to materialize, partly because of ongoing U.S. economic sanctions on the Assad government.