ABUTAA, Syria (AP) – Classrooms in ABUTAA’s school buildings in Dara province, southern Syria, have been transformed into residential districts that house three or four families, respectively. With a lack of quarter close to privacy, women and children sleep inside, while men put their bedding in the courtyard.
Bedouin families evacuated the village Denominational battle More than a month ago in nearby Sweida. Since then, the central government in Damascus has been in conflict with local Druze authorities in Sweida, but the displaced people have been left in Limbo’s state.
Munira al Hamad, 56, from the village of Alkahul in the countryside of Sweida, is staying with his family at a school that is scheduled to reopen this month. If that happens, she doesn’t know where the family will go.
“We don’t want to live in tents. We want the government to find a home in the US and a suitable place to live,” she said. “It’s impossible for anyone to go home. Just because you’re a Muslim, they’ll consider you an enemy of Sweida.”
Disputes replace tens of thousands
What began last month with a small clash between local Sunni Muslim Bedouin clans and members of the Druze (a Syrian minority but a majority of Sweeda) escalated into a fierce battle between one Bedouin and government fighters on one side and the other. Israel intervened It fires an airstrike on the Druze flank.
Mostly druze, hundreds of civilians have been killed, and Sweida has since remained under what he describes as a siege and siege, with limited aid and supplies. Amnesty International reported this week that “government and government were “intentionally and illegally killed” by “government and government violations” of abolished military and security submission.
It’s a fight It’s calmed downUN figures show that over 164,000 people remained displaced due to the conflict.
They include Sweida, who fled or evacuated from the state, and druzes internally discharged within Bedouins, and now raises the prospect of permanent population change and believes there is little chance of returning.
Al Hamad said her family “before Syrian Arab red crescents evacuated them, “we remained siege for 15 days with nothing bread or anything else in them.” Her cousin and neighbor were attacked by armed men when they fled and forced them to steal the car with all the possessions they carried, she said.
Jarrah Al-Mohammad, 24, said dozens of residents fled on foot when the battle arrived at the village of Sahwat Balata. Nine people in the area were shot by Druze militants, including three children under the age of 15, but they were all unarmed, he said. The Associated Press was unable to independently verify the account.
“No one has returned. There’s a house where they burned and destroyed and stole furniture,” he said. “We cannot return to Sweida. There is no longer a security between us and Druze… and we are a minority of Sweida.”
He laments his 21- and 23-year-old sons in a hotel outside of Damascus in Saiida Zainab, which has been converted into a shelter for the refuge and his wife, Munira al-Seiyadh.
They say that the two were shot and killed by extremists along with Hamoud’s Nie and their cousin, but were armed and tried to escape from their homes in Shahba town.
Al-Sayyad is unhappy in his hotel room and does not have a kitchen to cook for his young children. The family said food aid was sporadic.
“I need help, I need money. I don’t have a home,” Almukmas said. “I don’t think we’ll go back. We went back and found a Druze who lives in our house.”
There are very few answers from the government
Officials argued that the displacement is temporary, but “does not provide clarity as to how long people will evacuate or what mechanisms or plans or strategies they have to get them back.”
Given that the government in Damascus and the de facto authorities in Sweida have not even met in person, he said that returning the sheltered in their homes would require a political solution that appears to be far away.
Shake Hikmat al-hijriSweida’s prominent Druze leaders are seeking independence in South Syria, a demand rejected by Damascus, and recently announced the formation of a “National Guard” formed from several armed factions of Druze.
Officials declined to comment on plans to deal with the move.
For some, the situation recalls the unpleasant memories of Syria’s nearly 14 years of civil war, when fighters and civilians who opposed former President Bashar Assad evacuated from areas recaptured from rebels by government forces. Green bus The transport of them became a symbol of many exiles and defeat.
The mutual tension has become difficult to resolve
The Bedouin of the flower swida, who historically works as livestock herders, considers it to be the original inhabitants of the land before the arrival of the Druze in the 18th century, fleeing violence in Lebanon today. The two communities coexist mostly, but there was regular tension and violence.
In 2000, Bedouins killed a Druze man in a land conflict, and government forces intervened and shot and killed a Druze protester. After the 2018 attack on Sweida’s Druze, which killed more than 200 people, Druze accused the Bedouins of helping extremists.
The latest escalation began with the Bedouins of Sweida setting a checkpoint and attacking and robbing the drunk man. But before that, tensions were rising.
A Bedouin man who evacuated from Alkahul, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears of security, said his brother was lured in 2018 by an armed group belonging to Alhijiri and was detained for ransom. On July 12, the day before the conflict began, he said, he forced a group of armed men to come to the family home and threaten their father and sign a paper that would give up on the property of the house.
Druze “not all bad people,” he said. “Some of them have kindly supported us, but there are also bad extremists.”
He threatened, “If the state cannot find a solution after our house is occupied, we will put our rights into our own hands.”
Al-Saiyad, the mother of two young men who were killed, also achieved a tone of vengeance.
“I want the government to do these people what they did to my son,” she said.
Haid said tensions in the Communitinent region could be resolved over time, but now they have become secondary to the larger political issues between Damascus and Sweida.
“Unless there is some kind of dialogue to overcome these differences, it is difficult to imagine how local conflicts will be resolved,” he said.
