by News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Under terms of deal, rebels to hand over weapons, fighters opposed to living under state rule to evacuate.
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The Syrian flag
flies over Daraa, Thursday
Screenshot: Reuters
For
the first time in more than seven years, the Syrian government raised
its flag Thursday over Daraa, the first city to revolt against President
Bashar Assad in 2011 and plunge the country into a calamitous civil
war.
The display is laden with symbolism as the
government moves to stamp out the last of the uprising against the
52-year-old. His father Hafez Assad was president for three decades
before him.
Officials accompanied by state media crews
hoisted the two-star flag over the rubble of the city's main square,
allowing it to wave in sight of the shell of the Omari Mosque where
protesters first gathered in demonstrations demanding reforms then
Assad's ouster in the spring of 2011.
The mosque has since been destroyed in the
government's brutal crackdown against the city, which ranged from
alleged torturing of dissidents to shelling the city with tanks and
planes.
Government forces backed by Russian
airstrikes have recovered swathes of Deraa province in the last three
weeks, advancing unopposed by Assad's Western and regional foes into the
strategically vital southwest region near Jordan and Israel that serves
as an important corridor for trade between Syria and Jordan, and onward
to the oil-rich Persian Gulf states.
Ahmad Masalmeh, a media activist formerly
based in Daraa, said fighters in the city had accepted an offer of
amnesty from the government, and allowed back in the state institutions
and symbols of Assad's rule.
Opposition fighters refusing to accept the deal will be exiled with their families to other rebel-held parts of the country.
According to several reports, senior
Russian military delegation entered the rebel-held area of the city on
Thursday and began negotiations with Free Syrian Army commanders over
its handover to state rule, rebel officials and a witness said.
A rebel official said negotiations were
proceeding smoothly, with the Russians so far abiding by the terms of
the deal, under which rebels would hand over weapons, and fighters who
do not wish to live under state rule would be evacuated.
"Everyone is committed to the agreements,"
said rebel official Abu Jihad, adding rebels had already begun since
late Wednesday to hand over their heavy weapons.
One rebel official said fighters hoped the
Russians would keep a pledge to maintain a permanent Russian military
police presence to protect civilians and former rebels who remain.
The agreement follows a template imposed by
the government and its Russian and Iranian backers that has forced
hundreds of thousands of Syrians, including media activists, army
defectors, and draft dodgers and their family members to give up their
homes to lift the sieges against their cities.
Human rights monitors say the arrangements
amount to a program of political and demographic engineering in Syria to
secure Assad's rule.
The southern rebels were once armed as part
of an aid program run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and
backed by Assad's regional foes including Saudi Arabia. The United
States, which shut down the program last year, told the rebels not to
expect its military aid as the southern offensive began.
Government forces launched an offensive to recapture southwest Syria
and the areas neighboring Jordan and Israel on June 19. They surrounded
Daraa's rebel-held quarters on Monday. Dozens have been killed in the
campaign, including 162 civilians, according to Rami Abdurrahman,
director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — among them women
and children.
The offensive has prompted the single
biggest displacement of the war, uprooting over 300,000 people. Many are
sheltering at the frontier with the Israeli Golan Heights. Both Israel,
which is in a state of war with Syria, and Jordan have refused to let
refugees in.
Ahmad al-Hariri, one of thousands
sheltering near the Golan frontier, said he did not know where to go
after the army took his village of Hrak in Daraa.
"I'm lost. ... Even if they want to expel
or slaughter us, I don't want to hand myself over to the Syrian regime.
You can't trust it," he said. "Under the warplanes ... I carried my kids
and did not expect to arrive here."
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres
told reporters at a news conference that the world body had tried "to
prevent a bloodbath" in the region.
Late last month, Guterres had called for an
immediate end to military operations and a return to cease-fire
arrangements agreed to by Russia, the United States and Jordan.
"I think that our action was useful in that
regard," he said. "But again the objective must be and remains entirely
for us a political solution."
Russian mediators are warning fighters and
civilians against leaving Daraa for Idlib, the northwest Syrian province
where over a million displaced Syrians are living in dire conditions
and exposed to government airstrikes and the possibility of a future
offensive.
"Idlib is a crematory," the activist said Russian mediators warned him.
Anti-Assad rebels still control a chunk of
the northwest, and the northeast and a large chunk of the east are
controlled by Kurdish-led militia.
The rebel-held northwest has previously
been a refuge for rebels and civilians who fear a return of Assad's
rule. But some fear areas there could be the next target.
News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/07/13/syrian-government-raises-its-flag-over-cradle-of-2011-revolt/
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