MENA Minorities

New Lines Magazine just published an in-deph report from Suwaida by Madeline Edwards providing much background on the complex current situation and the relationship between Syria's Druze and the transitional government. Some brief quotes by yours truly are included as well.  “Historically, the relationship with Sweida and the central state is very rocky,” says Tobias Lang, a political scientist who has published research on the Druze of the Levant. “The Druze always claim some autonomy.”   Even after Syria gained independence from France in 1946, Sweida remained somewhat a solitary thorn in the side of the state, isolated down its long road from Damascus. That is why, says Lang, “it was with huge brutality that the Druze were integrated into the modern state.” Adib al-Shishakli, who served briefly as Syrian president in the 1950s, bombed parts of Sweida in 1954 to quash Druze dissent. (...) By 2014, when the Men of Dignity emerged, Balaous was filling a “power vacuum made ove...