Since the fall of Syria’s Assad Regime in December 2024, I have been wondering what would become of the Druze people and the areas in which they are the majority population. Particularly important is the Jabal al-Druze, or “Mountain of the Druze,” which is clearly visible on satellite images of southern Syria (see the two maps posted below, with different international borders). Syria’s new president, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, now portrays himself as a moderate and has vowed to protect the Druze and other minority groups. But al-Sharaa, who recently went under the nom du guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, was once a member of al-Qaeda and was a founder of the Al-Nusra Front, another hard-core Islamist group deeply hostile to the non-Muslim Druze.
Not surprisingly, the situation in the Jabal al-Druze remains tense. On March 20, 2026, Israel bombed Syrian military sites in the vicinity, claiming that it did so to protect the Druze. Roughly 150,000 Druze live in Israel, where their men serve in the national defense forces (IDF]); according to Wikipedia, “Druze men have one of the highest enlistment rates in the country, at over 80%.” After the attack on Syrian military assets, Israel’s defense minister said that “We will not allow the Syrian regime to exploit our war against Iran and Hezbollah to harm the Druze. If necessary, we will attack with greater force.”
Shortly after these events, Mario Nawfal, an influential but controversial Lebanese-Australian entrepreneur and political commentator based in the UAE, made some strong claims on X (“Twitter”) about an emerging Druze state being “midwifed” by Israel in Syria’s Suwayda Governorate, which includes the Jabal al-Druze (see the figure posted below). I find Nawfal’s comments intriguing yet exaggerated. But I view that map that he used to illustrate his post as highly misleading.
Nawfal’s map does a decent job of showing two sizable areas with Druze majorities in southern Syria, which he depicts in green (compare his map with a map of Druze distribution posted on the blog Informed Comment, which is reproduced below). The problem lies in his depiction of the area between these two Druze-majority zones. He has colored this area brown but has given it a green outline while placing within it the label “Autonomous Druze Territory” along with a depiction of the Druze flag. Such mapping implies that any emergent Druze state or autonomous territory would include this area. This prospect is not only highly unlikely, but any attempt to create it would almost certainly result in a deadly and protracted conflict. The brown area on Nawfal’s map includes Syria’s Daraa Governorate, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim (around 97 percent by most estimates) and hostile to both Druze and Israeli geopolitical designs. It also has more than twice the population of the Druze-dominated Suwayda Governorate (over one million as opposed to fewer than 500,000 inhabitants). (Note that M. Izady’s detailed map of language and religion in the area shows a sizable Christian area in eastern Daraa. But Christian numbers here were small to begin with and have dropped significantly in recent years.)
In my opinion, the situation of the Druze in both Syria and Lebanon deserves far more attention than it has been receiving. As if often case, the more intense conflicts in the larger region tend to crowd out important but less heated geopolitical struggles.