When touring the Druze city of Suwaida, south of Syria, the visitor feels that he is in a “rebel” city, as he observes that there are no slogans of glorification for the Syrian regime and its symbols across the streets and at the entrance of the province.
Streets and walls are free of any banners with slogans praising the regime and its symbols and army, in addition to the absence of military manifestations in its neighborhoods, except for some few army checkpoints.
In an indication of the refusal of the neutral citizen of Suwaida to engage in the war, the streets of the city and the surrounding villages have lost the pictures of citizens who fell in the ongoing battles in the country.
In fact, the province of Suwaida did not witness any fighting during the long years of war. The area remained peaceful and tens of thousands of people resorted to the city, fleeing areas of conflict, such as Daraa and the suburbs of Damascus. Thus, the scene here differs from that in cities that remained under the control of the regime and which are relatively calm, such as Tartus and Latakia, where billboards carrying slogans and announcements praising the regime can be seen everywhere.
According to a 2010 census, around 700,000 Druze Muslims lived in Syria, equivalent to 3 percent of the total population of about 22.5 million people. The majority lived in the governorate of Suwaida, which had a population of 375,000 people, 90 percent of whom were Druze, 7 percent Christian and 3 percent Sunni.
A journalist from Suweida said on Wednesday: “When the peaceful uprising began in the spring of 2011, the situation in Suweida - also called Druze Mountain - was agitated. Residents drew their inspiration from the memory of the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash, who revolted against the French occupation in 1925, and protests broke out in the city and its countryside.
However, the different political agenda of the opposition issued by the Syrian National Council and then the Syrian National Coalition did not live up to the expectations of the Druze, because no one mentioned secularism, which is the only guarantee for their security.”
In the midst of this situation, the people of Suwaida chose “neutrality” by avoiding alignment with either the revolution or the regime and abstaining from joining the compulsory service in the army, while not fighting against it, in accordance with the decisions of the leaders of the province.
The streets of the city and the surrounding villages are free of any images of those who were killed in the ongoing battles in the country, and which are widely seen in the cities that are under the Syrian regime control.
