Syria’s Crime Den: Trafficking, Extremism and Instability in Suwayda
Between July 11-18, 2025, more than 1,000 people were killed in violent clashes between members of Syria’s Druze religious minority and Sunni Bedouin tribesmen backed by the country’s interim government in the southern province of Suwayda.
The clashes were the second instance of major sectarian violence occurring in Syria since the December 8, 2024 overthrow of ex-President Bashar al-Assad, after a similar round of fighting between Alawite militiamen and security forces between March 6-10, 2025 left 1,426 dead.
However, unlike the March 2025 clashes—whose impact and fallout have largely been limited to Alawite majority areas along the Syrian coast—the fighting in Suwayda will permanently destabilize the country and provide an opening for a resurgence of both jihadist extremism and international drug trafficking.
This is in part due to local dynamics. In Suwayda, both the Druze and Bedouin militias that took part in the fighting are led by figures with extensive ties to regional drug and weapons trafficking networks which from 2021-2024 smuggled billions of dollars of contraband across the border into Jordan.
Largescale fighting between Druze and Bedouin factions in Suwayda ended on July 18, 2025. For now, the Druze appear to have achieved a tentative victory, with government forces withdrawing from Suwayda city —the largest city and capital of Suwayda province— thus creating a security vacuum that will likely remain the status quo for the foreseeable future.
Instability and Distrust
In this environment, Druze and Bedouin drug traffickers will be free to resume their activities unobstructed. Already, following a brief lull in the months following Assad’s fall from power on December 8, 2024, traffickers based in Suwayda had increased their cross-border activities starting in April 2025. In addition, ISIS cells, which controlled parts of the east Suwayda countryside from August 2014-February 2017, and re-emerged in May 2025, will likely assume a more prominent position in the region.
However, actors from outside the province, foremost among them is Syria’s interim government, have also made instability in Suwayda worse. For example, following the outbreak of clashes on July 11, 2025, Syria’s interim government deployed Syrian Arab Army (SAA) units to reinforce Suwayda Bedouin positions. These units were divided between two primary cohorts:
- Salafi-Jihadists from factions of the SAA 52nd, 60th, and 82nd Divisions and the Republican Guard (many of whom consider Druze as infidels)
- Turkish-backed fighters from the SAA 72nd Division, 52nd Division 6th Brigade, 62nd Division, Special Forces, and Military Police; all of which possess an extensive history of corruption, looting and human rights abuses committed against US-backed Kurdish groups
During the fighting, both cohorts plundered and looted Druze areas and massacred civilians, with many of the former doing so on explicit sectarian grounds. In the wake of the fighting, Salafi-Jihadists left behind graffiti and an extensive collection of videos uploaded online calling for the sectarian cleansing of Druze, and in some cases making pro-ISIS statements.
Videos circulating online show Druze fighters having captured a number of foreign fighters who when interrogated didn’t speak Arabic.
The actions of both groups have furthered hardened Druze sentiment against Syria’s new government. This government is led by Ahmed al-Shara’a, a former al-Qa’ida leader and commander of Ha’it Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which despite partnering with the US against radical groups like ISIS, remains a Salafi-Jihadist organization.
During the fighting, Druze factions also allegedly carried out several-large scale massacres of Bedouin civilians, particularly in Suwayda city’s al-Muqawas neighborhood and towns in the north Suwayda countryside.
Prior to the July 2025 clashes, many Druze were open to working with Syria’s new leadership on the condition that autonomy and a modicum of self-governance be granted to Druze areas of Suwayda. Today, they remain dead set against Syria’s interim government maintaining any military or civilian presence in the area, providing an opening for drug traffickers and jihadists to resume their activities unobstructed.
March of the Bedouin
As clashes escalated in the days after 11 July 2025, thousands of Bedouin militiamen, from distant provinces across Syria, mobilized and arrived at the frontlines in support of the Suwayda Bedouin. This country-wide mobilization was spontaneous, unorganized, ill-coordinated, and included tribes from nearly every province in Syria.
Though Syria’s government did not formally back this effort, Ahmed al-Shara’a’s government made no effort to stop it. As fighting escalated, many SAA units fought alongside Bedouin irregulars on the frontline. In so doing, Syria’s government has implicitly sanctioned and empowered dozens of non-state armed groups—many of whom are heavily involved in trafficking and possess ties to extremist organizations—at a time when it is desperate to rebuild its institutions, undermining the state’s credibility.
Allowing such groups to use the conflict with the Druze as an opportunity to form new networks also risks strengthening organized crime groups in Suwayda and enabling the spread of extremism. Clear examples have already emerged, suggesting that all these risks are already underway. One, in particular, warrants mentioning.
Among those to mobilize Bedouin irregular units is Raghib al-Sayfi al-Qara’an. From the town of al-Quria, in Deir Ezzor province, al-Qara’an is the sheikh of the Augaydat tribe’s al-Qara’an clan. After the clashes of March 6-10, on the Alawite coast, al-Qara’an as a member of the government’s Supreme Committee for the Preservation of Civil Peace. In the days after the fighting in March 2025, the committee was tasked to investigate war crimes committed by both sides, overseeing the process of reconciliation and transitional justice, and a fair trial of Assad-era officials. Its goal was to prevent vigilante acts of retribution and intra-communal tensions.
Despite this effort, during the July 2025 fighting, Raghib al-Sayfi al-Qara’an was filmed by other and uploaded numerous videos to his own social media showing himself arming and mobilizing tribesmen and encouraging others to do the same. Upon arriving in Suwayda, many of al-Qara’an’s followers and kinsmen were among the most explicit purveyors of extremist, sectarian, and at times, pro-ISIS rhetoric.
Such careless acts risk permanently eroding the trust that ethno-sectarian minorities such as Alawites, Druze, and Kurds have in the new Syrian government’s efforts to establish a fair and inclusive government. In doing so, they create gaps in governance that will be filled by armed non-state groups, including extremists and members of organized crime.
Inside Suwayda: Local Politics
From 2021-2024, while under the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, Syria became one of the world’s largest narco-states. During this period, regime-aligned actors manufactured upwards of $10 billion of cheap amphetamines annually. Captagon was most commonly produced drug, much of which was exported south via Jordan to large regional markets such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Amidst this drug-trafficking, Iranian-backed actors allied with Assad smuggled heavy weapons through Jordan to Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank. This outflow of weapons triggered a 1,000% increase in attacks on Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops in the area between 2021-2022.
Because of its location, by 2023 three-quarters of all weapons and drugs trafficked between Syria and Jordan passed through Suwayda. This illicit activity fostered the growth of Druze and Bedouin organized crime groups, which monopolized control of specific smuggling routes.
During the July 2025 fighting, both local parties to the conflict were led by leaders from each of these trafficking networks. For the Druze, this includes spiritual leader Hikmat al-Hajari. His loyalists operate smuggling routes through the town of al-Gharia and the Sheikh Mountain region in the Suwayda countryside leading into Jordan.
Today, al-Gharia is the headquarters for al-Hajari’s Suwayda Military Council (SMC). The SMC receives support from Israel and led the fighting against Bedouin forces in July 2025. The Bedouin were led by Rakan al-Khudayr and Muflih al-Sabra. Both al-Khudayr and al-Sabra are commanders of the Army of Free Tribes (AFT) faction, also known as the Southern Tribes Collective, and controlled a second route leading into Jordan via the village of al-Sha’ab in the east Suwayda countryside.
ISIS controlled al-Sha’ab, and other villages, in the eastern Suwayda countryside from August 2014 to March 2017. Under Assad, AFT coordinated closely with Jordan, the United States, and the Assad regime to combat ISIS during this period. Concurrently, commanders like al-Khudayr and al-Sabra exploited their position as international counter-terrorism partners as cover to smuggle large quantities of arms and narcotics across the region.
Today, al-Khudayr and al-Sabra’s AFT fighters dominate the ranks of the Suwayda’s General Security Service (GSS). The GSS is a militarized law-enforcement under the authority of Syria’s Ministry of Interior and has branches in each province in the country.
A US-brokered ceasefire that ended fighting on July 18, 2025 called for GSS, and other security forces to redeploy to Suwayda. The date and time of the deployment wasn’t specified but it was intended to follow the distribution of humanitarian aid. However, this remains an unlikely scenario given the hardening attitudes within the Druze community since the fighting began.
Rather than the GSS, the United States should instead advocate for the deployment of more professional, non-ideological units to the Suwayda region. Unfortunately, few such units exist, while nearly all of the government’s capable forces have taken clear sides in the conflict in support of the area’s Bedouin. In this volatile environment, drug traffickers and ISIS cells pose a significant risk of proliferating.
Already, both groups had begun to expand their operations in the months leading to the recent clashes. In late May 2025, ISIS carried out two attacks against government forces in northeast Suwayda, prompting raids on their positions. During the July 2025 clashes, BBC Arabic correspondents encountered an ISIS cell from Hasakah—Syria’s farthest northeast province—embedded amongst Bedouin irregulars.
Smuggling Redux
Furthermore, after a four-month lull following the overthrow of Assad(from April 4- July 22, 2025) the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF) and Border Guards intercepted 39 cross-border shipments of drugs along Jordan’s border with Syria. This suggests a renewal of smuggling activities in the area.
By comparison, during the height of cross-border trafficking operations under Assad, observers recorded 108 border crossings over the period between October 2022 and March 2023. Should 2025’s current rate of drug trafficking continue, over a similar 6-month period JAF could expect to intercept 66 cross-border shipments, which is 61% of the rate witnessed under Assad.
While significant, however, these figures obscure a significant reduction in smugglers’ capacity to carry out raids. Prior to Assad’s overthrow, cross-border drug shipments were accompanied by multiple teams of dozens of heavily armed traffickers. These traffickers were supported by reconnaissance drone units who often engaged in hours long clashes with JAF and Border Guards.
However, since the overthrow of Assad, nearly half of all shipments are delivered without human escorts, with the smugglers using remotely operated drones and balloons to transport narcotics. Nevertheless, since January 2025, JAF has killed at least six Syrian traffickers who were attempting to cross the border.
Jordan’s Air Force has also twice launched airstrikes on smugglers’ headquarters in the AFT stronghold of al-Sha’ab. That said, growing distrust between Suwayda’s Druze population and Syria’s interim government that leaves this border further unguarded will create conditions that, in the medium to long term, are ideal for all forms of trafficking to increase.
Outside Suwayda: Extremist Influence
That Syria’s interim government would deploy Salafist-Jihadists to take part in a sensitive sectarian dispute so shortly after the March 2025 clashes on the Alawite coast indicates one of two things, if not both. Either the interim Syria government possesses a shocking a lack of situational awareness regarding tensions in the region or a dearth of preferable alternatives. The latter is the more likely scenario.
This is because despite the recent flurry of pledges made by foreign governments and companies to invest in, and engage with Syria, the country’s institutions remain woefully underfunded and operating below capacity.
Many have cited reports that large swaths of the SAA have not received salaries in several months as an explanation for the mass-looting that occurred in Druze areas. In such a scenario, the government’s reliance on Bedouin irregular forces and Salafi-Jihadist groups—many of which possess their own independent revenue streams—begins to make sense.
Nevertheless, the fundamentalist creed adopted by many within both cohorts has dealt irreparable damage to the country’s social cohesion, as many commanders of SAA units deployed to Suwayda include a number of Salafi-Jihadists.
This includes Haitham al-Ali aka Abu Muslim al-Shami. He commands the 52nd Division and HTS’ Liwa Ali bin Abi Talib brigades. Before Assad’s overthrow, these brigades specialized in “inghimassi” attacks, i.e., daring raids behind enemy lines that aimed to collect intelligence and assassinate prominent regime commanders. “Inghimassi” fighters were often among the most ideologically committed within HTS and included a large number of foreign fighters.
Similarly, Awwad Muhammad, or Abu Qutayba al-Shami, leads the SAA’s 60th Division, which deployed to Suwayda. He is a close confidant of Ahmed al-Shara’a, who also commanded the group’s forces in Aleppo city, prior to its capture by the Assad regime on December 22, 2016. For most of this period, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, then al-Qa’ida’s official branch in Syria.
At the time, Awwad Muhammad was one of Jabhat al-Nusra’s staunchest ideologues who helped purge moderate rebels from areas under the group’s control. In November 2016, Muhammad’s carried out a controversial assaults on rival opposition groups in Aleppo city that was later blamed for causing a collapse in the rebel defenses that enabled the Assad regime’s takeover of the city a month later.
The “Red Rands” are another radical faction that was deployed to Suwayda. The Red Bands are an elite HTS special forces unit that led assaults that caused the overthrow of President Assad in December 2024. After Assad’s overthrow, the Red Bands were repurposed as the elite SAA Republican Guards and put under the command of Abd al-Rahman al-Khatib, who is also known as Abu Hussein al-Urduni. Al-Urduni is a Jordanian citizen and long-time veteran of Jabhat al-Nusra who remains a wanted terrorist within Jordan itself.
Case Study: 82nd Division
However, the SAA’s 82nd Division, composed entirely of fighters from the former Ansar al-Tawhid faction, are by far the most extreme unit to deploy to Suwayda. Created in March 2018, Ansar al-Tawhid was formed by several hundred defectors from an ISIS linked faction in rebel-held Idlib province who renounced their allegiance to the group in February 2017.
Nevertheless, despite reconstituting under a new name, these fighters maintained their fundamentalist creed and strongly opposed the presence of Turkish soldiers that deployed to Idlib starting in October 2017. This stance brought Ansar al-Tawhid into an alliance with Huras al-Din, a newly-formed al-Qa’ida affiliate in Idlib which over the next two years fought regular battles against HTS.
By May 2020, tensions between HTS and Huras al-Din reached their peak, pushing Ansar al-Tawhid to break with the latter and formally reconcile with the former. Shortly after, in late June 2020, HTS dealt a final blow to Huras al-Din in a series of battles that left several dozen dead and many more arrested. In the succeeding years, HTS offered many detained Huras al-Din fighters the option to defect from the group and instead join Ansar al-Tawhid or other groups in exchange for early release from prison.
Over the next four years, HTS made the same offer to many ex-al-Qa’ida members and ISIS fighters who were either defeated in battle or defected from either group. This included a large number of Chechen and Azeri foreign fighters who rebelled against HTS in October-November 2021, along with numerous Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians, Uzbeks and other foreigners.
Following the overthrow of Assad, Ansar al-Tawhid remained one of HTS’ closest allies and was repurposed as the SAA 82nd Division. However, as Syria’s rebel movement became the country’s governing authority, Ansar al-Tawhid fighters took the opportunity to more openly provoke sectarian tensions, marching through Shi’a, Christian and Alawite towns flying the black “seal of the prophet” banner—ISIS’ official flag post-2013—burning down Christmas trees, and carrying out other acts of provocation.
During the March 2025 fighting on the Alawite coast, the 82nd Division and Ansar al-Tawhid fighters could often be distinguished by “seal of the prophet” patches seen on their uniforms. These markers that also appeared in many videos taken from Suwayda.
Irreconcilable Differences
The current Syrian government’s reliance on such groups and the impunity this affords them under the current regime does not bode well for the future of Syria or the government’s ability to stabilize minority areas like Suwayda. Though Bedouin irregular and government forces have withdrawn from Suwayda city, they remain deployed in towns along its outskirts and on stretches of the Damascus-Suwayda highway.
Furthermore, despite having withdrawn, the memory of Salafi-Jihadists penetrating Suwayda remains emblazoned on the walls of the city in the form of threatening graffiti. One such message captured by activists and left by followers of al-Qara’an sheikh Raghib al-Sayfi al-Qara’an, reads, “al-Qara’an Ikhwat al-Hadba Abu Saddam…Dawlat al-Jolani Baqia”, i.e., “the al-Qara’an [Clan] are the Brothers of the Hadba and Abu Saddam… the State of Jolani Endures”.
To those with local knowledge, the sentence is loaded with references to ISIS’ former Caliphate. The first of these is the “Hadba”, a colloquial name for the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, from which ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the official formation of the ISIS Caliphate on July, 4 2014. “Abu Saddam” is a reference to Ali Mattar, also known as Abu Saddam, the most prominent Syrian rebel commander from the town of al-Quria, where Sheikh Raghib and his clan hail.
Though Ali Matar was killed on April 10, 2013, his uncle Saddam al-Jaml soon became one of ISIS’ top leaders in Deir Ezzor province. Al-Jaml regularly took refuge in al-Quria during clashes with moderate rebel factions. During ISIS’ takeover of Deir Ezzor province in July 2014, al-Quria became a major bastion of support for the group which it used as a base to expand its remit of control.
Lastly, “the State of Jolani Endures” is an alternative version of the popular ISIS slogan, “the State of Islam [ISIS] Endures”. This is a chant often used by ISIS supporters to reinforce the belief that the group’s Caliphate will one day reconstitute, even during periods of relative weakness. In this case, “Islam” has been substituted for “Jolani”. Jolani is the nom de guerre of Syrian President, and HTS commander, Ahmed al-Shara’a, who prior to Assad’s overthrow went by the moniker Abu Muhammad al-Jolani.
Such messages constitute explicit threats that Druze and other religious minorities including Alawites, Christians, Shi’a and moderate Sunnis will find hard to ignore. In the long-term, they will undermine any potential for peace and social cohesion within Suwayda and across the country.
