By Samah Abdul Fattah | 2023-09-26

Anti-regime protests in the southern province of Sweida have entered their second consecutive month, Syrian activists told Al-Fassel, with demonstrators also demanding an end to regime ally Hizbullah's control over the region.

The current protests are "the largest ever" in Sweida, "both in terms of the number of participants and their spread to all towns and villages of the province," Sweida city activist Nizar Abu Ali told Al-Fassel.

"In other words, it has grown into an actual national protest," he said, with participants demanding an end to Hizbullah's hegemony, its intervention in the Syrian conflict and its attempts to disseminate its ideology among the youth.

The Iran-backed party has flooded the region with drugs, which is further destabilizing the area and making it easier for the Syrian regime and Iran-aligned militias to assert their control, Abu Ali said.

These protests are the first to directly call for an end to Hizbullah's hegemony, "after the people got fed up with its attempts to recruit Sweida's youth by exploiting their dire financial and living situation," Abu Ali said.

Local residents have begun to see the neglect of the region by the Syrian regime as an attempt "to impoverish it and force it to accept being under the control of the regime and IRGC-affiliated militias," he added.

Regime spreads falsehoods

According to Sweida activist Mohannad Muqalled, the regime's media machine is trying in various ways to portray the popular protests as "a sectarian move."

Pro-regime media outlets are trying to put a stop to the protests by suggesting they are being led by Sweida's Druze population against its Sunni population and Syrians of other sects, he told Al-Fassel.

But the participation of women and Bedouin clans in the protest movement shows that it does not represent a specific sect or group, sources told Asharq Al-Awsat in late August.

Community leaders have moved quickly to clarify the true purpose and goals of the protest movement: the removal of the current regime, Muqalled said.

On the popular level, activists and protesters are communicating with police and army personnel deployed in the province to make them understand the reality of the situation, he said.

"Activists are sharing food with the [police and army] elements on a daily basis because food supplies are not arriving, or are late in arriving to the regime's centers."

But Muqalled said that the people of Sweida are fearful of a surprise military operation that the regime and Iranian militias might carry out.

Expansion of public protests

"The protests originally began in the city of Sweida and were mostly held in the city's main square, al-Karama," said local activist Wajih al-Jawhari, who works as a driver and was one of the first to participate in the protests in the city.

"From there, the protests spread outside the city to most towns and villages, which in turn began holding daily protests in public squares," he told Al-Fassel.

In a move that further shows the depth of popular grievances against the regime, protesters on September 4 took down a decades-old, huge poster of former President Hafez al-Assad from a government building in downtown Sweida.

Special protests are held each Friday, when protesters from all parts of the province join the main demonstration in central Sweida.

"Some well-off people in the region support the protests by providing basic meals and distributing them free of charge to the protesters," al-Jawhari added.