May. 05, 2025 |
Syria’s new power struggle. More than 100 people have died in sectarian clashes between Druze and Sunni fighters south of Damascus this week. It all started with a fake audio clip of a local Druze cleric insulting the Prophet Muhammad. It’s not clear who made the recording, and it’s not clear who the pro-government gunmen battling the Druze militias were.
Last month, around 1,600 people were killed in sectarian violence along northwestern Syria’s Mediterranean coast. It looked like armed Sunnis were picking out members of the country’s Alawite minority for retribution. Alawites make up only about 10 percent of the Syrian population, but they also made up a lot of the country’s military and political elites under the country’s former dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and his father, Hafez, who, between them, ruled Syria for almost 50 years before their regime was overthrown in December by Sunni Islamist rebels.
These rebels, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took control of Damascus, formed a government, and tried to reunify the country after 13 years of civil war. But now these two episodes—the deadliest violence since HTS came to power.
What’s driving the new violence in Syria?
—Michael Bluhm
