Deadly attacks on Syria’s small Druze community are part of a bigger fight

Deadly clashes this week in southern Syria, home to the Druze ethnic group, are putting new pressure on the nascent government as it tries to prevent the country from fragmenting along sectarian lines.

Two days of fighting were set off by an audio recording purporting to feature a member of Syria’s Druze community criticizing the Prophet Muhammad, and quickly escalated, leaving a number of dead, including civilians and 16 members of state security forces, the government said.

Fueling the tensions, however, are long-simmering concerns among the local Druze population—who practice a closely held religion that is an early offshoot of Islam—that Syria’s government of former jihadists can’t be trusted to keep them safe.

Those concerns have sparked antigovernment protests, empowered Druze militias and drawn in Israel, which sees an opening in the small community with strong family and historical links to Israeli Druze.

A 44-year-old resident of the southern Syrian town of Sahnaya, who spoke Wednesday to The Wall Street Journal, said the area had been subjected to 15 hours of fighting.

“It’s terrifying—we can hear the mortars falling right next to us,” the person said. “People are packing their belongings, but they don’t know where to go. The area is completely besieged.”

It wasn’t clear who was carrying out the attacks. The government blamed outlaws and deployed forces to the area, saying it would crack down on anyone trying to destabilize the country, Syrian state media said. The spiritual leader of Syria’s Druze, Hikmat Al-Hijri, blamed extremists aligned with the former rebels who overthrew the regime of former leader Bashar al-Assad and now govern much of Syria.

“From our position in the spiritual leadership, we stand united with our fellow Syrians in rejecting this administration,” Hijri said.

Israel added to an already complex situation by joining the fighting Wednesday. Its military said it struck operatives near Damascus who had attacked Syrian Druze, and said it was prepared to attack Syrian government targets if strikes against the Druze continued.

The violence highlights the volatile interests vying for the corner of Syria that stretches from the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Syria’s new rulers are trying to establish their authority, contending with well-armed Druze militias and Israeli troops determined to keep government forces out. The tug of war has left Druze civilians, many skeptical of all sides, stuck amid the quest for influence and security in a rapidly shifting Middle East.

The Journal saw Hijri’s supporters vent their frustrations on a visit to the southern Syrian town of Sweida in March. They converged on a central square clutching multihued Druze flags and criticized Syria’s new leaders for a lack of economic opportunity and Druze representation in senior government positions.

After the protest, armed men in the crowd moved toward the governor’s office and took it over. One climbed to the roof to hang the Druze flag above the banner of the new Syrian state. The governor, appointed by Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, was in Damascus roughly 65 miles to the north at the time and didn’t return.

“The government is not welcome here,” one militiaman said as he stood with other gunmen at the entrance to the governor’s office with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder.

Syria’s new leaders are struggling to unify the country’s myriad ethnic and sectarian militias. In March, Sharaa’s Islamist government signed a tentative deal to integrate the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia alliance in Syria’s northeast, into the government’s forces by the end of the year.

Earlier that month, hundreds of Alawites, a religious minority to which the Assads belong, were killed in what residents said were revenge attacks by hard-line Islamist foreign fighters affiliated with the government. The failure to protect them heightened concerns in the Druze community, and talks with several Druze militias to join the national army haven’t succeeded.

Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was once affiliated with Al-Qaeda and is still designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and the European Union. While the government recently announced a transitional cabinet that included one Druze and a smattering of other minorities, key posts such as the Interior Ministry remain firmly in the grips of Islamists.

No one in Sweida has forgotten how Islamic State militants killed hundreds here in 2018, largely targeting Druze.

Israel’s intervention has exacerbated the divisions. After the Assad regime fell, Israeli forces seized control of southern Syrian border areas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that southern Syria be demilitarized, and Israeli officials blasted the new rulers as extremists. Israel has offered the Druze aid, jobs in Israel and protection.

While some Druze say they want to secede from Syria and be annexed by Israel, the majority have denounced the idea. Since February, crowds of Druze lawyers, doctors, and other professionals have demonstrated in the streets, calling for unity with the country’s new leaders.

Even the militias that oppose Syria’s government say embracing Israel is a red line.

“We do not want Israel to occupy the south in the guise of protecting the Druze,” said Firoz Naeem, a militia leader and Hijri loyalist who was clad in black and wore a white skull cap. “We appreciate support from anyone, even Israel, but not as an occupation.”

Syria’s new leadership has criticized Israel’s seizure of territory as illegal, but hasn’t attacked Israeli forces or moved to reclaim territory. Nor has it flooded the south with government fighters, something Israel has warned it wouldn’t tolerate.

In that power vacuum, lawlessness has been increasing and new armed groups emerging, including some led by former loyalists of the Assad regime, community leaders and residents said.

In Sweida, the government has outsourced policing functions to the Druze Rijal Al-Karama militia. Those forces, however, stood by during the March protest when other armed Druze took over the governor’s office down the street from their headquarters.

Spokesman Basim Abu Fakhr said Rijal Al-Karama’s forces aren’t equipped to confront other militias. The Interior Ministry recently sent his group eight police vehicles, but Abu Fakhr said in March they decided not to use the vehicles after another Druze militia threatened to attack them.

“They have weapons,” Abu Fakhr said. “It’s not our responsibility to bring the Druze flag down.”

Write to Sudarsan Raghavan at sudarsan.raghavan@wsj.com