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When the Virtual World Rings the Bells of War
When the drums of war sounded in Sweida Province, media campaigns began as alert sirens, spreading misinformation, and fabricating videos by electronic armies affiliated with local authorities, Turkey, Qatar, and others. These create events portraying the oppressor as a victim and vice versa, and the killer as a peace messenger.
The Badu attack was triggered after the Syrian government’s security forces withdrew and failed to enter the villages of Sweida, resisting factions from the area. They committed heinous crimes against civilians in the village of Al-Durat, spreading sectarian provocative videos on social media, claiming, for example, that a Badu young man’s chest was torn open and his entrails extracted by Sweida factions—an old video from 2020 posted on a Mexican blog. Other videos showed children thrown from rooftops, alongside misleading images and videos fueling the exchange of fire between Druze and Badu, with large tribal militias from other provinces, such as Dera and Damascus, involved by passing through government checkpoints. Security forces disguised in tribal costumes carried out field executions in Al-Durat, mutilated bodies, and burned houses.
Citizen Mazen Ahmed recounts the pain of recovering the bodies of over fifty civilians from the streets of his village, Al-Durat, on July 14, 2025. He speaks of his 85-year-old aunt who was executed inside her home, along with his uncle and two of his children. He never imagined that one day he would carry the bodies of his relatives or that the neighbors and friends he knew would be indistinguishable among the victims—yet, the perpetrators ongoingly release inflammatory videos claiming they are killing them.
Widespread videos claim that Badu tribesmen defeated Druze forces, stormed Sweida city, and its villages like Smeih, Dur, Dweiri, Mazra’a, Tiry, and others. In reality, villagers fled from heavy shelling by security forces. These videos falsely claim they liberated the villages from lawless groups, while in truth, civilians who remained in their homes were killed, while abandoned houses were looted, burned, and others shot dead. Mazen laments: “The truth hidden from social media and state-controlled outlets is the scenario in reality: they rarely show the corpses strewn in streets or brutal executions; they scarcely depict the looting of our homes, especially our phones with private photos, or scorched homes and memories—memories… memories.”
Meanwhile, smoke rises as images and videos spread to distort reality and promote falsehoods, such as inciting support for Badu tribesmen. Influential social media figures appear, like TikToker أبو طلق, with millions of followers, brandishing weapons amid armed men, inciting attacks on Druze. Also, a member of the National Reconciliation, راغب الصيفي, is seen mobilizing fighters heading to Sweida, holding weapons. Many figures who worked for years to promote social cohesion and condemn sectarianism have used sectarian language, calling for excluding those not from the Sunni sect, despite Syria’s rich religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity, and its history of peaceful coexistence.
A misleading clip shows a Badu clansman threatening Druze with a knife, but the real origin of the video is a 2015 clip of a Libyan fighter in Syria called , confirmed by the platform , specialized in exposing false news and manipulated footage. The forces involved have not been clarified by any media outlet or explained how the Druze-Badu relationship has existed for hundreds of years, especially in agriculture and trade.
Mazen tears up as he talks about the destruction that struck them overnight and his frustration with the crimes committed by Badu tribesmen and security forces. He says, “I remember an agreement with my childhood friend Hazem in elementary school. I would write his assignments, and in exchange, he would gift me some vegetables from his land because he worked with his father in farming. Every day, I would go home with a watermelon or something. Now I open Facebook and see incitement against us, but I am just remembering my childhood with Hazem.”
Writer: Shero Mohammed
