The sectarian violence in Sweida, Southern Syria has genuinely been keeping me up at night. The images, stories, and potentials for further violence is just really hard to process. There's also a lot of confusion as to what exactly is happening, how did this start, and how does it end.
In this episode I try to provide some overview of the situation, but mostly talk about my thoughts and feelings watching this unfold and seeing all the discourse online, and denounce in as strong of terms as possible the violent sectarianism of it all. Syrian Druze communities are under great threat at the moment, and its really scary. As I say in the episode, there have been attacks as Bedouin community and security forces at the hands of Druze militias, but that does not, in anyway justify massacres of Druze civilians and of the sectarian hate being spewed at them online.
For a decent chronological breakdown of how this started I recommend this short video by Charles Lister:
https://x.com/Charles_Lister/status/1945976275606089749
There's also this very informative episode of a podcast recorded in March with two activists from Sweida (very helpful for background info for whats happening now):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/stir-2-unrest-in-128972762
For the full list of social media pages and accounts to follow please check the description in my youtube video (all the links look super clunky here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K2nnauhj9M&ab_channel=PoliticallyDepressed
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