Crowds of men and women belonging to Syria’s Druze minority continue to descend on the main square of the city of Suweida, unrelenting after a year of action, chanting slogans and raising placards demanding the removal of President Bashar Al Assad.
Suweida remains under the control of central authorities, unlike rebel-held areas where people have broken the grip of Mr Assad’s iron rule and are now part of fragmented zones largely free of regular security forces.
Security compounds, one of them overlooking the square, have not been overrun by rebels. Military bases still dot the province, which borders Damascus, unlike fringe areas in the north-east and north-west that are now run by separatists or extremists.
In nearby Damascus and other provinces fully recaptured after the 2015 Russian intervention in support of Mr Al Assad, even a critical comment on a Facebook page can result in arrest for an indefinite period. But Suweida's Druze population are bucking the trend, thanks to outside pressure.
For the last five decades, Syria's ruling elite, drawn mainly from the Alawite sect, have portrayed themselves as the protectors of minorities, a claim that became central to their strategy in the civil war, which has raged since 2011.
The authorities have implied that without the Alawites in power, a political ascendancy of majority Sunnis would result in religious extremists taking power and the annihilation of non-Muslims, similar to how ISIS behaved towards some non-Muslim groups in Iraq.
But as the Syrian authorities hope to benefit from normalisation between Damascus and Arab countries, and amid growing calls in Europe to reach accommodation with Mr Al Assad that could involve financial flows to Suweida, the Druze protest continues unabated.
The Druze sect is an offshoot of Islam, and Suweida is a strategic province between Damascus and the Jordanian border, encompassing a fertile plateau.
The Druze are a transnational minority, also present in Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. In Syria in 2010, the last year before the civil war broke out, there were about 700,000 Druze among the country's 22 million population.
With Syria's economy deteriorating since 2011, many of Suweida's Druze population have grown increasingly resentful of the state's corruption and mismanagement. Calls have also grown among young people to introduce democratic rule as a way to settle the civil war.
Several pro-democracy marches have taken place in Suweida over the past several years, but they lacked critical mass and were crushed by the authorities.
In August last year, however, the demonstrations became sustained, protected by Druze militia and endorsed by prominent religious leaders in the community.
On Friday, thousands of people celebrated the first anniversary of the Hirak, as the protest movement is known, on Suweida city's Dignity Square. The protesters have renamed it from Procession Square, its official name.
Women raised posters of showing female fist. One placard read: “It has been a real year.”
People also waved the tricolour Druze flag, along with the old Syrian flag from before Mr Assad's Baath party came to power in a 1963 coup, ushered in one-party rule and banned all opposition.
The mostly secular protesters were joined on the square by Druze clerics. Sheikh Hikmat Al Hijri, the sect's most senior cleric, has been vocal in his support for the uprising and the need to keep it peaceful, while maintaining a deterrent force.
Some clerics have remained on the side of the regime, but they are seen as lacking Sheikh Hijri's stature.
Suhail Theiban, one of the Hirak leaders, said the protests represent “a revolt against Assadism”, the system of rule dominated by Mr Assad and his close relatives.
“The regime has been trying to turn it into civil war,” Mr Theiban said, referring to attempts to saw division among the Druze, and calls to counter sporadic killings of protesters with violence.
Suweida's population is well armed. Many militias in the area are opposed to Mr Al Assad, but have held their fire. Other groups are linked to the Syrian security forces, or to Iran-backed militias such as Hezbollah.
Russian protection
Mr Theiban, a left-wing sculptor who was tortured during his years as a political prisoner during the rule of Hafez Al Assad – Bashar's father – was on Dignity Square on Sunday. The revolution, he said, “is continuing”.
He is among many who say that outside factors have been crucial in protecting the Hirak, particularly old ties that the Druze had managed to forge with Moscow, independently of their state rulers.
Syrian political commentator Ayman Abdel Nour told The National that Russian protection makes it unlikely that Suweida “would be overrun by Syrian army tanks”, as was the fate of opposition-held areas at the start of the 2011 protest movement.
Moscow, Mr Abdel Nour said, is “only allowing the regime to try to weaken the Suweida movement from within” because it does not want it to “lose the minority protection card”.
“Suweida is a real peaceful popular movement,” he added, and Mr Al Hijri and other Druze leaders have managed the Suweida uprising “smartly, in political terms and also security-wise”.
