The dissolution of the SDF prompted claims that Damascus now governs nearly all of Syria. One southern governorate, and Israel’s stake in it, says otherwise.
Two commanders of the Druze “National Guard” were wounded by gunfire in Suwayda city on 29 August, four days after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces dissolved itself and international coverage concluded that Damascus now controls almost all of Syria. The southern governorate is the standing exception, and the fighting there is not what that conclusion assumes.
Local sources identified them as Rami Ishti and Ghaith Qantar, both from the National Guard’s security office. Reinforcements from Areeqa were trying to break a siege imposed by rival factions. This was intra-Druze fighting, not a clash with the state. So was the storming of government buildings on 26 August, which followed the killing of a young man, Mazen Ismail al-Asrawi. The province is not contested between two authorities. It is governed by neither.
What The Northeast Settled, The South Did Not
On 25 August, commander Mazloum Abdi stood at the People’s Palace in Damascus and declared the SDF’s mission over, closing a file opened by the 10 March 2025 accord. US envoy Tom Barrack described the result as one army, one government, one state.
Suwayda has been outside government control since July 2025, when sectarian violence killed more than 1,700 people, according to a United Nations inquiry, and Israeli aircraft struck Damascus. Three seats reserved for the governorate in the transitional parliament were still vacant when it convened on 12 July, because the state cannot administer the region. Deputy Special Envoy Claudio Cordone told the Security Council in June that the September 2025 roadmap had produced no progress whatsoever. In August, factions again blocked students from examination halls; Governor Mustafa al-Bakkur said roughly 150 got through, and a presidential decree created an exceptional session.
Israel’s Hand, and its Limits
Israeli pressure runs through all of it. The intervention on the Druze side halted the government’s advance in July 2025 and has not eased since. Sijil, a Syrian monitoring group, counted 65 Israeli incursions into Quneitra in July and 52 more in the first eighteen days of August. A drone wounded a man near Beit Jinn on 22 August; four days earlier, Israeli aircraft struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase over an alleged Turkish deployment, a strike Barrack called an unnecessary escalation.
Israeli policy and its Suwayda clients are not the same thing. On 24 August, one day after Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani met Mossad chief Roman Gofman in Jordan under American mediation, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri told a gathering that the Druze were an integral part of the State of Israel. No Israeli endorsement followed. Jerusalem’s demands remain a demilitarised south stretching from Damascus to the buffer zone, and a corridor Damascus rejects as a breach of sovereignty. Annexation is not among them.
His leverage is narrowing. The alliance with Kurdish forces he claimed in January dissolved with the SDF on 25 August. Al-Modon has reported quiet contacts with Damascus on an arrangement modelled on the Kurdish file, which sources close to him deny. He promised developments within days and has not produced them.
The map may soon show one Syria. Suwayda is where that is not yet true, and the reason is that the province’s patron is negotiating over something else.