Upcoming Syria Poll Won’t Include Restive Suweida Province, Officials Say

Syria’s first parliamentary election under its new Islamist leadership, set for September, will not include the strife-torn southern province of Suweida and the northeastern Raqqa and Hasaka provinces, according to Syrian officials.

Over the weekend, Syrian media outlet Al-Ekhbariya, citing an electoral commission official, reported that voting in the three provinces would be postponed until “appropriate conditions” for conducting polls are in place.

Last month, the head of the electoral commission told state-run news agency SANA that voting for members of the 210-seat People’s Assembly would take place between Sept. 15 and Sept. 20.

In recent weeks, the southern Suweida province has been rocked by intermittent sectarian violence that has claimed hundreds of lives.

The province is home to the region’s largest concentration of Druze, a minority religious sect that adheres to an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Violence first erupted in mid-July, when Sunni tribesmen clashed with armed members of the Druze community, prompting the government to send security forces to the area with the ostensible aim of quelling the unrest.

Soon, however, clashes broke out between government forces and Druze fighters who oppose the deployment of government troops in the province.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights later put the number of people killed in the fighting at more than 1,500, including 720 locals and at least 430 government personnel.

Following three days of clashes, the Syrian Defense Ministry announced a cease-fire after holding consultations with local Druze leaders.

Simultaneously, Israel, which is also home to a Druze community, struck Syrian government positions—including Defense Ministry headquarters—with the aim of “protecting” Syria’s Druze minority.

In early August, limited clashes resumed in Suweida after Damascus accused Druze militias of attacking government positions.

Last week, Geir Pedersen, U.N. envoy for Syria, warned that violence could resume in Suweida at any moment despite the shaky cease-fire imposed by the government.

“The threat of renewed conflict is ever-present, as are the political centrifugal forces that threaten Syria’s sovereignty, unity, independence, and territorial integrity,” Pedersen told the U.N. Security Council on Aug. 21.

Vote Postponed in Hasaka, Raqqa

Syria’s northeastern Hasaka and Raqqa provinces, where the upcoming poll has also been postponed, are largely controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led fighting force backed by the United States.

The decision to postpone voting in the two provinces drew criticism from the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), which claims to function independently of the central government in Damascus.

DAANES, which functions in conjunction with the U.S.-backed SDF, said that, in any event, the scheduled elections “are not democratic and do not express the will of the Syrians in any way.”

“They represent nothing but a continuation of the approach of marginalization and exclusion,” it said in an Aug. 24 statement.

It went on to assert that Hasaka and Raqqa, contrary to the government’s claims, are relatively safe compared to other parts of the conflict-racked country.

In December 2024, the long-ruling regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power by a Turkey-backed rebel offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an armed Sunni faction with previous ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist group.

Since January, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, previously known as Mohamed al-Golani, has served as Syria’s interim leader.

In February, al-Sharaa, who has pledged to protect Syria’s disparate religious minorities, said it would likely take up to five years before the country was ready to hold its first post-Assad presidential election.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.