MENA Minorities

The news are allover: The Druze in Syria are said to face an existential crisis. This is of course not fully true but it is undeniable that during the last weeks some extremely worrying developments have occurred: 1. ISIS has increased its activity in the East of Suwaida’. They attacked the village of Huquf on May 15, killing six inhabitants including 18 years old Mariana as-Sman. True or not, on Druze social media massive allegations circulated blaming the regime for allowing ISIS into the province. Later ISIS entered the Lajah area between Suwaida’ and Dar‘a and started to fight against rebel forces. 2. This brings us to the next hot spot, the West of Suwaida’ which is currently penetrated by different rebel groups including Jabhat an-Nusra. Especially around the Thula-airbase a fierce battle is fought. Here Druze militiamen are also involved, who had refused to fight in Dar‘a during rebel-offensive earlier this year. 3. The massacre of 23 Druze villagers by Jabhat an-Nusra...

Former Druze rebel dies in car accident   The Daily Star A former Druze rebel commander in the suburbs of Damascus was killed in a car accident this weekend in Austria, his friends said. They said Hussam Dib was en route to Germany when the accident occurred. Supporters of the uprising against the Syrian regime praised Dib as the founder of the Bani Maarouf Commandos militia, which attracted rebel fighters from the Druze community as well as other sectarian affiliations in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital. However, Dib’s group, which later changed its name to the Youssef al-Azmeh Brigade, was unable to continue fighting due to funding problems and pressure from Islamist militias. (...) Hussam Dib announcing the establishmen of the Bani Ma'ruf Commando in late 2012

Swedish Journalist Carl Drott provides a fascinating account of the Dawronoye , a Christian guerrilla force, operating in Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Read all about its roots in the Turkish far left of the 1980s, its relationship with the Kurdish PKK and how its caders helped to set up the Syriac Military Council. Noteworthy is how the fighters interviewed were annoyed by the ongoing argument in the diaspora, whether they should call themselves Syriacs, Assyrian or Aramean. The Revolutionaries of Bethnahrin  by Carl Drott, War Scapes