Anarchy reigns in Sweida, Syria’s main Druze city

Stalls of smuggled gasoline lined the streets of central Sweida. Yellow for Syrian fuel, blue for Lebanese. The very public display of this black market has become a hallmark of the Druze city in southern Syria, as have the weekly demonstrations against the central government. They are symptoms of the economic crisis and abandonment that has gripped this region bordering Jordan, which has become a land of all kinds of commerce and the kingdom of mafia and criminal gangs.

“Syria is in a bad way, but here, far from everything, we are even worse off,” one resident summed up. Here, more than 100 kilometers south of Damascus, amid hills of black volcanic rock and vineyards that produce the arak that is served on every table in the capital, “it’s the Wild West. You can say anything, do anything, it’s a mess. There is no government in Sweida,” added Walid (like the other witnesses quoted, he declined to give his last name and his first name has been changed). The 33-year-old Druze started selling smuggled gasoline two years ago.

Like many young graduates, Walid, after completing his studies as an electrician and giving six years of his life to the army, which was tasked with retaking areas that had fallen into the hands of the Syrian opposition, has not found a job in the field in which he was trained. After 13 years of civil war (since 2011), under boycotts and sanctions by the major powers, Syria is sinking into an economic crisis. The province of Sweida, with its 770,000 inhabitants, has not escaped unemployment, which affects 75% of the youth.

The gasoline trade is an easy stopgap. Walid buys subsidized gasoline quotas from people who receive them from the state, at a rate of 23,000 Syrian pounds (nearly €40) per liter, and sells them at 25,000 Syrian pounds per liter to those for whom the 50 liters of gasoline allotted each month are not enough. Through this trade, he pockets between one and 1.5 million Syrian pounds per month, enough to pay for his rent, bills, food and cigarettes. “I don’t put anything aside. Everything has become very expensive in the past four years,” Walid said.

Clashes and feuds

The business is not without risk. It is run by the mafia that thrives in the city, which has been given over to anarchy, organized crime and violence. “There are basically no security forces in Sweida anymore. Everyone makes their own laws. Everyone has a gun. As soon as a fight breaks out, it doesn’t take long for the guns to come out. You are afraid of getting hit by a stray bullet. You feel unsafe all the time. It is 10% of the residents who cause all this crime, the others are afraid and call for order to be restored,” said one resident.

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