A year has passed since the Sweida massacre. We have not measured this year in days, but in revisiting faces and in trying to make sense of cruelty and violence.
The passing of a year is more than an occasion to repeat that time heals all wounds. It is a moment to admit that we have moved past nothing. We remain trapped in that instant, trying for the thousandth time to believe that what happened truly happened.
Every man, woman, and child in Sweida is, in all likelihood, still trapped in a single moment in time, even those of us who were physically far from the killing.
I remain frozen at the moment I had to tell my mother that her brother, my uncle, had been killed. My mother is still standing at that early hour, reliving the moment she received the news. My nephew is still haunted by the sound of gunfire and the assault.
The violence began with clashes between Bedouin and Druze communities in Sweida before rapidly escalating into a large-scale assault involving forces aligned with the new authorities and tribal fighters. It ended in massacres, mass displacement, and forced displacement.
If trauma has layers, the first was the massacre itself. The second was collecting the bodies. The third was waiting for another massacre. But the deepest layer was the impossibility of believing that all of this had happened in Sweida, that fellow Syrians, people who had once walked the same path, had become “enemies.” It was the moment trust was broken beyond repair.
Healing is not determined by the number of victims or the brutality of the killer. It depends on who the killer is. That is where the deepest wound lies. Had the Assad regime committed this massacre, it might have been easier to process psychologically, because a clearly defined enemy offers the comfort of comprehension. Not because such a crime would have been any less devastating, but because an identifiable enemy does not shatter your understanding of the world. When the killing comes from those you believed shared your fate, you lose not only your loved ones, but also your ability to make sense of humanity.
To remain trapped is to find it impossible to believe that Syrians who endured the brutality of the Assad regime, who knew suffering firsthand, chose to recreate it. They chose, fully aware of what they were doing, to kill. They decided that another community was unworthy of life.
For the past year, we have confronted extremism dressed in military uniform. However hard we try to look away from that reality, we fail. The massacre confronts us with the same question: “What does it mean to be Syrian?” It was the question a member of the new authorities asked Munir Al Rajma before killing him, after he answered that he was Druze. It was not enough for him to say, “I am Syrian, brother.”
Looking back on that moment, you realize the question was never meant to be answered. It was, in itself, an act of negation, a rejection of the humanity of being Syrian. In the end, being Syrian meant nothing at all.
The massacre ended as an event, but it continued in other forms. It lives on in the constant fear at Sweida’s entrances and exits, in the thousands of students who were denied the chance to sit their exams, in the siege imposed on the city and its people, and in the authorities’ violation of the ceasefire and shelling of the city. It continues, in that more than 100,000 people remain unable to return to their homes. Most painfully, it continues in the denial of the massacre by fellow Syrians.
A month ago, I met with Syrians from different backgrounds. I saw their disbelief and their inability to accept what had happened. I still do not know what I felt in that moment. Was it a long-overdue sense of safety, or bitterness? Yet something resembling relief found its way into my heart. I needed to hear a Syrian from another community say that the people of Sweida did not deserve what happened to them. That unambiguous solidarity is the only possible balm for a wounded identity.
The massacre is ongoing. For it to end, it must begin with acknowledging the truth and then acknowledging our pain. Today, more than ever, I understand that one of the most fundamental human needs of a victim is for others to recognize their suffering. That has not happened in Sweida, just as it has not happened for so many Syrian victims. Meanwhile, transitional justice remains at a standstill.
On this anniversary, I happen to be reading From North to South by the Syrian novelist Mamdouh Azzam, who is from Sweida. In the book, he recounts the burning of his library in Sweida while tracing the story of the place, its people, and its dreams. He imagines his own death had he been home on the day of the attack. Fortunately, he and his wife were abroad.
Luck alone spared Mamdouh from living through that ordeal.
As for me, there is one thing I have thought about constantly over the past year. When it was announced that the army was entering Sweida, I told my family, friends, and relatives not to be afraid. I advised them to stay in their homes during the searches, assuring them that the General Security forces would not harm them. I now deeply regret that advice. By sheer luck, the perpetrators never reached their village.
And I keep asking myself: what kind of blind trust did I have in Syrians I believed were like us when I reassured my family and told them to stay home? How did I ever imagine that I could entrust my family to their conscience?
That, then, was the first lesson I learned, and I learned it in the cruelest possible way: never advise in the middle of a massacre. Let people act on instinct.
I also came to a bitter realization. Had I been at the heart of that massacre, I would likely have been among its first victims, not only because of the extremists’ bullets, but because of my own naivety and my long-held belief in the humanity of those who stormed our city. I had believed there was something about the Syrian experience, about the suffering we had all endured, that made such a massacre impossible.
What happened left me with more than anger. It forced me to reconsider my most fundamental assumptions about human beings, about trust, and about what prevents people from killing one another. Most importantly, I learned that suffering does not necessarily make people better or more reluctant to inflict suffering on others, even on communities that once stood by them. Simply put, suffering grants its victims no moral immunity.
A year later, I realize that our cries, mine and those of the few who rejected the massacre, were little more than silent screams drowned out by international alliances, extremism, and the authority of religion. Humanity today feels fragile and diminished, perhaps more than it ever has. Yet acknowledging that fragility may, at the very least, be the beginning of thinking differently, of starting again from the very place where we failed the first time.
