Washington Post, November 24, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EST
Escalating violence in strategic Syrian city belies Assad’s claim that
he’s in control
By Sarah Dadouch
BEIRUT — Violence has erupted in recent weeks in a strategic Syrian city
with government forces and former rebels clashing amid a wave of
assassinations, revealing the difficulty President Bashar al-Assad faces
in maintaining control over areas he says he has pacified.
The southwestern city of Daraa is considered the cradle of the Syrian
revolution because it is where the first anti-government demonstration
broke out in 2011. Seven years later, after peaceful protests had turned
into a devastating civil war, Russian-backed Syrian forces recaptured
Daraa, raised the national flag and introduced a program of
“reconciliation” with rebel fighters.
But dissent continued to simmer in Daraa, even as government forces took
their battle to other fronts. And the turmoil of recent weeks has become
the latest challenge to Assad’s authority, which was already under
pressure from a crippling economic crisis and growing dissension within
the ranks of his traditional allies.
Tensions in Daraa spiked last month after gunmen attacked the car of a
prominent rebel leader who had continued to voice opposition to the
government even after Assad’s forces recaptured the area. The former
commander, Adham al-Karad, and four of his companions were killed,
sparking weeks of violence, according to opposition media reports
corroborated by monitoring groups, analysts and social media posts.
Under pressure, Assad agreed to release 62 people who had been arrested
for “incidents in the province,” the pro-government al-Watan newspaper
reported two weeks ago.
But days later, the army’s Fourth Division, which is headed by Assad’s
brother Maher, rolled into southern Daraa in search of wanted men,
provoking clashes with former rebel fighters who later shut down roads
leading to the city to prevent the military’s advance, local
pro-opposition media reported. Days later, an air force intelligence
checkpoint in a nearby town was attacked, prompting the Fourth Division
to try to storm Daraa and triggering a battle with former rebels.
This month, at least nine former rebels who had agreed to join the
Syrian army and seven others who had returned to civilian life were
killed, according to Mohammed al-Sharaa, a member of the Daraa Martyrs
Documentation Office. The assailants were unknown, with suspicion
falling in turn on government forces seeking to settle scores with
former adversaries; opposition loyalists who feel betrayed by former
comrades; and even Islamic State militants.
Reliable information about developments in Syria is often scarce because
of the government’s tight media controls and widespread fear of the
police state. But the documentation office, a Belgium-based monitoring
group, has sought to chronicle the rising toll, reporting that 193
former rebel fighters who had put down their weapons have been slain in
Daraa since government forces retook the city in July 2018, with the
pace of killings accelerating each year. More than 200 other civilians
have been killed, some under torture, the group reported.
These troubles in no way suggest that the civil war is turning against
Assad. His military has reclaimed much of the territory that had been
lost at the height of the insurgency, and rebel fighters are now bottled
up in one remaining enclave in northwestern Syria. Nor is there any
other obvious contender for the presidency of the country, ruled by the
Assad family for 50 years.
But the unrest in Daraa comes at a time when Assad has been confronting
the biggest challenges to his power since Syrians first rose up against
him in 2011, including strains over the past year within his family and
with his crucial Russian allies.
Syria’s Assad is confronting the toughest challenges of the 9-year war
The violence in Daraa is also eroding the image Assad has tried to
portray as he urges Syrians who fled the country to return home to
government-controlled territory. He has promised that no harm will
befall those who come back. But many Syrian refugees remain skeptical,
aware of reports that some who’ve returned have disappeared or died in
custody.
During an international conference in Damascus this month, Syrian
officials discussed steps they were taking to welcome returning refugees
and blamed the regional Arab media for painting too negative a picture.
The Syrian government’s “proclaimed military victory and the physical
return of its institutions does not mean the restoration of security and
stability,” said Abdullah al-Jabassini, a nonresident scholar at the
Middle East Institute. “The situation in Daraa contradicts the ‘return
of the state’ ideal narrative.”
Not only does Assad’s government continue to face violent opposition,
Jabassini said, but it has yet to show that it can exercise meaningful
control of the territory it has recaptured. The continuing turmoil in
Daraa is fueled by a range of factors, he said, including unresolved
grievances and score-settling, an unusually high number of former
rebels, an abundance of available weapons, and local anger over the
presence of fighters from Iranian militias and the Lebanese militant
group Hezbollah, which are aligned with Assad.
Daraa’s significance goes beyond symbolism. Daraa city is just north of
Syria’s border with Jordan, and the province of the same name hosts a
strategic border crossing. Two months after the city was recaptured by
Assad’s forces, the government reopened the crossing to both people and
commerce, seeking to swiftly restore a once highly profitable trade
route after it was blocked for several years.
The weeks-long battle over Daraa was exceptionally fierce. After the
opposition was defeated, some rebels chose to pack up and pile into the
now-infamous green buses dispatched by the government to relocate
fighters and their families to Idlib, a rebel-held enclave in the
northwest of Syria.
Other fighters chose to stay. Some accepted reconciliation deals, with
many joining the Syrian army’s Russian-sponsored Fifth Corps, created
ostensibly to fight the Islamic State. Soon after, the government
announced nearly 1,000 reconciliation deals struck in Daraa in a single day.
The pro-government media has trumpeted such reconciliation deals, saying
they “preserve blood and return those who have lost their way to the
homeland’s embrace.” But unlike in some other recaptured areas of Syria
where former insurgents have been offered these agreements, the deals in
Daraa did not put an end to resistance. Many former rebel commanders and
fighters have remained openly defiant of the government.
Karad, the rebel leader assassinated last month, was one such commander.
Even after the city fell, he continued to speak of revolution and
criticized Iran and Russia, Assad’s biggest backers.
“We are rebels from the city that is the cradle of the revolution. We
succumbed to reconciliation under international pressure, and we have
not abandoned our cause,” he said in a Facebook post after surviving an
assassination attempt last year.
In death, he leaves behind a 1-year-old son, named Saladin. On Facebook,
Karad had written that he hoped God would allow his son to emulate the
legendary Islamic commander who fought the Crusaders in the 12th century.
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