Syria’s Druze reject Assad’s call to serve
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Nearly eight years into the Syrian war, Selim still refuses to perform his military service, just like many fellow Druze from Sweida province rejecting the regime’s conscription call.
“I don’t want to get involved in the Syrian bloodbath,” said the 27-year-old, who gave a pseudonym for fear of reprisals.
The Sweida region south of Damascus is the Syrian heartland of the country’s Druze minority which follows a secretive offshoot of Islam.
After the anti-government protests that sparked Syria’s war in 2011, the Druze obtained a de facto exemption from military service in exchange for their tacit support of the regime.
Last week however, President Bashar al-Assad urged the minority, which accounted for around three percent of Syria’s pre-war population, to send its young men to the army.
