Syria is a patchwork of identities, par for the course in a region where novel nationalities vie with tribe and religion for the citizenry’s loyalty. For most of the country’s history, the Assad family wielded dictatorial power to enforce a Syrian identity synonymous with Assadist Baathism—an identity that fractured during the Syrian Civil War. This fragmentation has continued, recently erupting into violence between Sunni Bedouins and Druze in southern Syria’s Suwayda province.
What began on July 11 as tit-for-tat attacks between the two sides metastasized into all-out fighting and mutual atrocities. Government forces intervened but either failed to quell the violence or themselves committed abuses against the Druze. By the time the fighting largely subsided, 814 people were killed and 903 were injured on all sides, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 1,386 killed on all sides, including 386 civilians.
These ongoing tensions and clashes, along with previous fighting, have raised the question of whether Syria’s new rulers are able or willing to protect minorities, including Druze and Kurds, and whether such a failure entitles those minorities to sovereignty. This proposition, however, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of self-determination—an international law principle—and its misapplication in the Syrian context.
The principle of self-determination
Self-determination gained prominence as a legal principle with US President Woodrow Wilson’s insistence that world powers must treat former imperial territories not as possessions, but as trusts on behalf of their designated peoples—resulting in the creation of the League of Nations’ Mandatory System. Self-determination would later become enshrined in international law after the adoption of the United Nations Charter in 1945, initially as an aspirational goal rather than an operative principle. The concept remains controversial and is in the process of being defined at its outer edges.
However, as self-government, the right applies exclusively to peoples, rather than to any group of individuals desiring political independence or self-governance. At the UN Charter’s adoption, “peoples” was understood narrowly, accruing to entire populations of states rather than also devolving upon minorities, ethno-cultural groups, or colonized peoples. As its application broadened to colonized peoples and those perceived to be under foreign or alien occupation, ambiguity attached to the outer limits of the term “peoples.” Nevertheless, groups entitled to self-determination can be identified with reasonable precision.
Scholarship and case law frequently reference a “shared identity” within a group that fundamentally distinguishes its members from their compatriots. Objectively, this assesses whether and to what extent a group possesses a combination of a common racial or ethnic background, language, history, and cultural heritage that is sufficiently distinct from surrounding populations, and the degree of the integrity of their claimed territory. The group’s members must also consciously perceive themselves, collectively, as a distinct people and be able to constitute a viable entity.
The Druze—Syrian or otherwise—are not a ‘people’
The right of self-determination as self-government does not accrue to purely religious groups like the Druze—collectives solely distinguished by religious beliefs, customs, and practices.
Notwithstanding internal Druze traditions regarding their sect’s primordial origins, the Druze religion originated in the 11th century as an offshoot of Ismaili Shiite Islam. The Druze relationship to Islam, as a breakaway religion or Islamic sect, has therefore always been complex. The position of Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Druze on this question is complicated and has fluctuated over time, often with political interests and currents.
Suffice it to say, however, that the unique characteristics Druze derive from their religion and their relative insularity are not so comprehensive as to render them a distinct “people.” In Arab countries, their identity is as distinct from that of Sunni Arabs as any other purely religious minority like Shiites. In fact, Druze in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan are politically classified as Muslims and are part of those countries’ Muslim social fabric.
Their ethno-cultural belonging is much clearer: Druze are ethnically, linguistically, and culturally Arab and have always been so. They originated in Arab-dominated Egypt and would, afterwards, coalesce in modern-day Lebanon’s Wadi al Taym, which became the de facto birthplace and distribution center for the Druze as a group, to areas that would centuries later become Syria, Israel, and Jordan.
As such, they lack an ethnic origin or language distinct from their Arab compatriots, or an ethnographic history predating the Arab conquest of the Levant. Like any self-contained religious group, they possess certain collective idiosyncrasies. Still, these are ultimately too minor to render them non-Arab or a people apart, resulting in Pan-Arabist movements taking the Arab identity of Druze for granted.
Admittedly, Pan-Arabism used an overly expansive definition of “Arabs” to include non-Arab groups, deliberately “flattening” and effectively erasing their particular identities and languages for political purposes. But the Druze perceive of themselves as ethnic Arabs, with a strong sense of belonging to their countries of citizenship. Arab affiliation, in fact, is central to Druze identity. The uncompromisingly endogamous and closed community prides itself on its ancient Arabian pedigree and possessing the “purest Arab blood,” unmixed through intermarriage with other ethnic groups through their prohibition on conversion. Therefore, no separate Druze ethnicity exists, and to the extent the Druze can be considered an “ethno-religious” group, their ethnicity is Arab.
The Druze, then, are and perceive themselves as a distinct religion, not a people. Lacking any of the objective indicia of peoplehood save for their unique religion, they are not entitled to sovereignty or self-government separate from Syrian Arabs, and certainly not secession. In Syria, as Syrian Arabs, Druze self-determination has been secured through Syrian independence. In fact, their renowned fierce patriotism led the Druze in Syria to play an instrumental role in pursuing and securing Syrian independence from the French, rather than seeking a state of their own. Today, as a purely religious minority, they are entitled to fair and equal treatment from their government and to control their religious affairs without outside interference.
Syrian Kurds have no right to pursue independence
The right of Syrian Kurds to self-determination is at once more straightforward and more complex. Kurds, after all, possess all indicia of peoplehood: a unique shared history, culture, language, and ethnic origins that are sufficiently distinct from those of Syrian Arabs. However, the status of being a people alone does not entitle a group to independence. Self-determination is a spectrum rather than a binary that grants or denies peoples the right to establish particularistic sovereign entities. Secession is only one manifestation—the most extreme and legally dubious—of self-determination.
That is because international law, a Western-created legal system, favors order and predictability. Therefore, even as the scope of “peoples” entitled to self-determination progressively broadened, exercising the right to self-determination nevertheless remained subordinate to preserving the territorial integrity of states, the main units of the international order.
Former International Court of Justice (ICJ) President Rosalyn Higgins writes that in the interest of preventing “the international order [from] be[ing] reduced to fragmented chaos,” self-determination must, as a default, be reserved as “the right of the majority within a generally acceptable political unit to exercise power.” In Syria, this right would then accrue to Arabs, who constitute 80–85 percent of the population and most provinces, except for Hasakah—where Kurds may form a majority, though this is disputed. Arabs also almost certainly form a majority in the Kurdish-controlled Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which expanded into Arab-majority regions such as Manbij, Deir Ezzor, and Raqqa.
Self-determination accrues to Arabs over the established boundaries of Syria. Admittedly, the country’s borders—like almost all borders—are messy, drawn up by France to delineate a mandatory holding granted them by the League of Nations. However, upon its independence, Syria succeeded the French mandatory entity and, by law, inherited those boundaries under the principle of uti possidetis juris—which provides for the maintenance of pre-existing internal and international boundaries when a new state emerges.
The principle seeks to maintain the predictability of frontiers and, according to the ICJ, “prevent the independence and stability of new States being endangered by fratricidal struggles provoked by the challenging of frontiers following the withdrawal of the administering powers.” In other words, it seeks to prevent forceful struggles over seemingly unclaimed territories emerging with the extinction of colonial or mandatory entities.
This does not mean Kurds do not have a right to self-determination, including within Syria. The issue, as addressed by the 1998 Supreme Court of Canada in the Reference re Secession of Quebeccase, is its form. In the Quebec case, the court concluded that generally, “peoples are expected to achieve self-determination within the framework of their existing state” if it “represents the whole of the people or peoples resident within its territory on the basis of equality and without discrimination, and respects the principles of self-determination in its internal arrangements,” by granting minorities that qualify as peoples “meaningful access to government to pursue their political, economic, cultural and social development.”
The Canadian Supreme Court, in this case, was describing internal self-determination, which can be satisfied by granting legal equality to the individual members of the people in question to pursue their aforementioned rights, or autonomy if necessary. Only “as a last resort” is a people denied self-determination internally entitled “to exercise it by secession.” However, the court conceded that “it remains unclear whether this […] actually reflects an established international law standard.”
Nevertheless, a Syrian Kurdish right to territorial autonomy is legally dubious because the areas these groups control lack territorial integrity. As noted, these regions are far from ethnically homogenous and are non-contiguous. Nor would a Syrian Kurdish entity be viable, economically or otherwise: most of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters are Arabs, weakening the ability of Syrian Kurds to hold a territory intended for Kurdish self-determination. The territory is landlocked, beset to the north by Turkey, which would view an autonomous Syrian Kurdistan as a direct threat because of its historical links to the terrorist Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). To the east, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) would also oppose an autonomous Syrian Kurdistan due to the groups’ competing ideologies, which may lead to clashes.
Therefore, as a matter of law, Syrian Kurds would be required to pursue their self-determination as equal members of the Syrian state, in its current internal and external boundaries.
