„Unser 7. Oktober“: Golan Druze trauert syrisches Massaker und loben Sie Israels Intervention

When Syria says it sends ‚the army‘ or security forces we know its not a regular army. The army today consists for a large part out of the different groups fighting the previous regime. Many of them are jihadi or at least very radical. Even a lot of foreigners among them. Only a small part was recruited from the regular army under Assad.

The Syrian government says its trying to quickly profesionalize and reform its security forces but with these groups being so dominant that might be difficult if not impossible. At least if you expect a modern secular army. Most likely they want to see a Sunni version of the IRGC supported by a relative weak standing army.

But they do govern Syria now. On the one hand you could say in case of unrest, as was the case in Southern Syria, Damascus has to do something. But Damascus knows very well who it sends. The tragedy in Sweida shows not much has change since the massacres around Latakia against the Alewites.

Furthermore Damascus had previously promised to not intervene in this area. It made use of the opportunity to try to expand its control and subdue the Druzes while not caring at all about the risk many of its Jihadi troops were posing by most likely planning awful things as revenge or otherwise.