US envoy Tom Barrack’s claims that the area between Sweida and Daraa was “the captagon manufacturing operation of the world” and that a Druze sheik was using perceived American and Israeli backing to “persecute other Druze” have sparked outrage in the Druze community, with some Israeli experts telling The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that the remarks had led them to question his suitability for the role.
Speaking in an interview with Lebanese-Australian podcaster Mario Nawfal on Friday, Barrack alleged that Druze in the area were living off the manufacture and sale of illicit drugs.
“It's not Israel that worries me. It's a particular Druze sheik who utilizes the perception of Israeli backing of some alignment with America to persecute other Druze,” Barrack said.
Although Barrack did not name the sheik, his comments have been widely interpreted in Arab media as referring to Sheik Hikmat al-Hijri, a spiritual leader of the Druze community who has called for Israeli support and independence from Syria. Calls for independence and Israeli support among Syria’s Druze community have grown more frequent since Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power in late 2024.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the formerly designated terrorist organization led by Sharaa, has a documented history of persecuting Druze, while the sectarian massacres in July 2025 and sporadic violence since have further fueled fears of Damascus’s Islamist government.
Against this backdrop, Israeli Druze diplomat and historian Dr. Reda Mansour criticized Barrack’s remarks in a post on X, describing his attribution of the global Captagon trade to the Druze region and his criticism of its local leadership as “highly irresponsible” and untruthful.
“By baselessly criminalizing an entire ethnic minority, these statements put the vulnerable Druze community in southern Syria at direct risk of sectarian violence and targeted jihadi attacks. Painting a minority enclave as an illicit hub paints a dangerous target on their back for extremist networks,” Mansour wrote. “Diplomacy demands accuracy, not reckless generalizations that compromise human lives. We stand in solidarity with the Druze community in Syria.”
Mansour’s concerns come amid continued violence against the community. More than 1,300 Druze were killed in the July 2025 massacres in Sweida and surrounding villages, according to UN figures, while subsequent outbreaks of sectarian violence have continued to see civilians abducted and killed.
Civilians have also been killed in Jordanian military strikes on facilities Amman alleges are used for weapons storage and drug manufacturing. In a strike on January 18, 2024, for example, Jordan killed sisters Farah and Dima, aged three and five, along with their parents and other members of their extended family.
Lebanese academic Dr. Zena Mansour also condemned Barrack’s remarks in a post on X, accusing him of targeting the Druze minority because of its “defiance.”
Referring to the territory by its biblical name, Bashan, Mansour argued that the community faced a stark choice between self-determination and rule by Islamist extremists. “When you present them with a choice between self-determination and a jihadist, Takfiri, terrorist alternative, you are forcing them to choose between life and death, and the outcome is predetermined,” she wrote.
Mansour also accused Barrack of failing in his “mission” to “undermine” confidence in the Druze community’s aspirations for self-determination and of “covering up the jihadist” landscape in Syria.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told The Post that Barrack’s comments and “lack of understanding” of the region have “brought a lot of damage to the whole Middle East.”
Doubting Barrack’s knowledge of the issue of Sweida or the sectarian violence, Kedar said that he thought Barrack was relying on information provided to him and not on information on the ground or from the people affected by the violence.