Opposition forces take Syria’s Daraa, Astana-track meeting to be held

The southern city, which President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have lost in a week, has been taken control of by opposition forces based in Damas, according to reports from the opposition.

Sources said the military has agreed to make an orderly withdrawal from Daraa under a deal giving army officials safe passage to the capital, Damascus, about 100km (60 miles) north.

After the government detained and tortured a group of boys for scribbling anti-Assad graffiti on their school walls in 2011, Daraa was nicknamed “the cradle of the revolution.” At the beginning of Syria’s war, the government repressed protests. In April of that year, regime forces besieged the city, a move seen as having militarised the revolution.

Local factions had taken control of more than 90% of Daraa province, including the eponymous city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ monitor for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Friday evening.

The governor, the police and prison chiefs, and the leader of the local Baath Party had taken control of several checkpoints in neighboring Sweida, according to the Syrian Observatory and local media.

As the cost of living rose and tens of thousands of Druze men refused to take the oath of compulsion service, Sweida, Syria’s minority’s capital, has witnessed antigovernment demonstrations for more than a year.

Losing ground

In a statement released on Saturday by state media, the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said that “our forces operating in Daraa and Sweida are redeploying, repositioning, and establishing a… security cordon in that direction.”

As Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reported from Lebanon that Syrian and Russian air strikes hit north Homs in the early hours of Saturday morning, the army added that it was “beginning toregain control in Homs and Hama provinces.”

Five days after taking Aleppo, the second-largest city, on Thursday, Hama fell to opposition fighters as they headed southward toward Homs.

“]Opposition forces] are now at the gates of Homs”, said Khodr, who is following developments from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.

“They have repeated a call to government troops to surrender and avoid battle”, she reported. This might indicate that the government intends to fight back.

It’s not clear whether or not they can stay in Homs, a strategically important city between Damascus and the coast’s heartlands.

The government has steadily lost ground since Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)’s lightning offensive on November 27 began.

Kurdish-led forces announced on Friday that they had crossed the Euphrates River and had taken control of the area that had been vacated as the army and its Iranian-backed militia allies left Deir az Zor in eastern Syria.

Never before had al-Assad’s forces been able to recapture control of such large cities in such a short amount of time.

Diplomatic push

Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister of Turkiye, will meet with his counterparts in Russia and Iran in Doha on Saturday to discuss preventing chaos in Syria and preventing it from resuming fighting.

The three nations have been partners since 2017 in the Astana process, which also includes supporting opposing forces on the battlefield.

Moscow and Tehran both supported al-Assad in thwarting the opposition, while Ankara supported various rebel movements and views recent developments favorably.

According to Berkay Mandiraci, a senior Turkiye analyst at the International Crisis Group, “diplomacy now may focus on ensuring an orderly transition and finding an exit option for the regime,” Mandiraci said.

The unexpected rebel advances came at a time when Russia’s and Iran’s proxies, the regime’s main supporters, have been hampered by other conflict zones, Mandiraci continued.

On Friday, Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh met in Baghdad with his Iraqi and Iranian counterparts, warning that the offensive threatens regional stability.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein condemned the offensive, and said Iraq” cannot be part of any war”.

Source: Aljazeera