A MART脥NEZ, HOST:
A suburb of Damascus is at the center of the new Syrian government's struggle for control. One of its security officers was killed last week during a fight at a checkpoint, and now Israel is threatening to intervene, turning this possibly into an international incident. NPR's Jane Arraf went there. She has more on what's been happening. Jane, so what's the importance of this suburb? Tell us about it.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Well, the issue here is there's an - a religious minority there. It's a suburb called Jaramana, with a population of about 2 million, so a pretty big place, but it has a significant Druze minority. The Druze faith emerged about a thousand years ago, and it's an offshoot of Shiite Islam. And like many other minorities in Syria, many Druze supported the former regime. So up until last week, security was largely controlled by a Druze militia. But on Friday, there was a clash at a checkpoint, and a security officer of the new government was killed - the new forces belonging to the new government. The government then sent fighters in to surround the suburb.
MART脥NEZ: The Israeli government described it as an attack on the Druze and said it could intervene to protect them there and in other places. Why is Israel involved?
ARRAF: Well, Israel has its own Druze minority in Israel itself and in Syrian territory it occupies, and some of the Israeli Druze actually serve in the Israeli military. But here, it's very different. We spoke with a Druze official, Rabie Munther, and here's what he said.
RABIE MUNTHER: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: He says "we reject being protected by anyone. We're protected by our people and our brothers in the homeland. That's the only protection we want."
MART脥NEZ: Now, how much control does the new government actually have in the face of militias and threats from other countries?
ARRAF: Well, in Jaramana, Druze leaders agreed to allow those government security forces in. There haven't been any official security forces since the fall of the regime in a lot of places. In Jaramana, schools and government offices were closed because of fear of violence, but they reopened this week. There's essentially a security vacuum that was there.
We did speak with the mayor and police chief - the same man - who was appointed over the weekend. He's from Idlib in northwestern Syria, and that's where opposition fighters that led this fall of the regime came from. So the mayor, Mohammad Hmoud, sat in this dusty, bare office, and he told us the city still wasn't fully under control.
MOHAMMAD HMOUD: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: He blamed weapons that the regime had left behind when they retreated - now in the hands of criminals, he said.
MART脥NEZ: So if the Druze say they don't want protection, where would that leave Israel?
ARRAF: Well, there have been Israeli airstrikes on Syrian military targets - kind of a wide array of them - so it's clearly not just about protecting the Druze. But Israel has warned Syria's new government not to deploy its own troops south of Damascus. And all of that has raised tensions with Turkey, which is the other major player in the region. It says it won't allow Israeli interference in Syria, and it's talking about building more Turkish bases in this country.
MART脥NEZ: That's NPR's Jane Arraf. Jane, thanks.
ARRAF: Thank you.
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