The Protests in al-Suwayda': Interview with Faz'at Shabab al-Jabal

The protests against the Syrian government and its policies in Syria’s southern province of al-Suwayda’ have been ongoing for around two weeks, and are unprecedented in terms of the number of demonstrators, how widespread they are in the province, and the openness of the calls for political change. Yet the demonstrations still raise questions about their future direction and what they can achieve.

To talk more about the protests, I conducted an interview on 30 August 2023 with Ashraf Jamul, who is the coordinator of the local al-Suwayda’ faction Faz‘at Shabab al-Jabal (“Aid of the Youth of the Mountain”), which coordinates with the Faz‘at Fakhr faction and has come out in support of the demands of the protests in a broad sense. This interview is slightly edited for clarity and any parenthetical insertions in square brackets are my own.

Q: Could you tell us in summary about Faz‘at Shabab al-Jabal?

A: We are the formation of Faz‘at Shabab al-Jabal, though we did not call ourselves as such, it is our relatives who called us as such. We are a group of friends, childhood friends, schoolfriends, study friends. We meet daily, you know just like any youth meet and stay up late with each other. In this time happened the crisis, the incidents and events and the country was drawn into war and drawn into many crises, and within this war there have occurred a great abyss of woes: thefts, deception, fraud, wars waged on the Jabal [Jabal al-Druze/Jabal al-Arab: i.e. al-Suwayda’] from the outside as well. We began to help the people, as they say. We were not affiliated with any faction, or we were offered affiliation, but we did not want to belong to any faction, because most of the factions here have become divided. Frivolous hands have got involved and divided them, and those that were not divided by corrupt individuals in the security branches have been divided by money or wealth coming from the outside.

Thus we were united with each other and as we gave help to people, people began calling us Faz‘at al-Shabab. Later on they called us Faz‘at Shabab al-Jabal because we helped everyone. We don’t have this mindset of: so-and-so is affiliated with so-and-so, so we cannot help him. What we are proceeding on is that of our people and ancestors from a long time ago. We are one hand, we die alongside and are born among other, we raise each other as the Banu Ma‘ruf or the Monotheist Druze. Therefore we don’t have this mindset of so-and-so is affiliated with so-and-so. The oppressed person or one who suffers wrong-doing, we stand alongside that person, and even if one of our friends commits wrong against someone in the Jabal, we oppose such action and stand against that person.