#Daraa province

[mariacallous]

Six years ago, the Syrian regime conquered the southern province of Daraa, popularly known by millions of Syrians as the “cradle of the revolution.” That military victory represented a pivotal moment for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. After all, it was the last time the regime captured a sizable swath of opposition territory, and in doing so in July 2018, its impunity was laid bare for all the world to see. On paper, Daraa had been designated a “de-escalation zone” after months of intensive international diplomacy in which the United States had played a central role.

Despite that protected status, regime forces with heavy Russian military assistance proceeded to besiege Daraa; shell it to rubble; and after weeks of brutal violence, coerce it into surrendering. Washington’s most reliable umbrella of opposition allies, the Southern Front, was abandoned—advised to surrender by U.S. officials. Since then, the regime’s status has never been in question, as international actors have methodically backed away, fatigued and disinterested. Since that decisive moment, as far as many were concerned, Assad had won and Syria’s crisis was over, its effects contained.

In truth, Assad never “won,” —he merely survived, thanks to the consistently strong support of Russia and Iran, but also to that international disengagement. In the years since, the world’s interest in working to resolve Syria’s debilitating crisis has completely evaporated. In Washington today, the mere suggestion of doing anything more on Syria in policymaking circles draws exasperated gasps and sarcastic laughs, not attention.

And yet, in many ways, the situation in Syria is worse than it’s ever been. There are clear and sustained signs of an Islamic State recovery; a multibillion-dollar regime-linked international drugs trade; and ongoing geopolitical hostilities involving Israel, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and the United States. The regime’s grip over areas under its control has never looked more frail and unconvincing.

Southern Syria offers a notable example. Six years after bombing the cradle of the revolution into submission, Assad’s rule in the south is fraying at the seams.

While Assad and his Russian sponsor intended for the south to embody a stabilized Syria that was “cleansed” of opponents, the region has been the most consistently unstable anywhere in Syria since 2018. As documented by Syria Weekly, at least 47 people have been killed in Daraa and Suwayda provinces between mid-June and mid-July alone, in a torrent of daily assassinations, ambushes, raids, and kidnappings and hostage executions. Daraa in particular is the embodiment of lawlessness and chaos.

Beyond the crippling disorder, former opposition fighters and other local armed factions in the regime-held southern provinces of Daraa and Suwayda have grown increasingly bold in challenging the regime’s abuses in recent weeks. From mid-June to mid-July, armed fighters—most of them former opposition—have kidnapped at least 25 Syrian military officers in retaliation for the regime’s arbitrary arrest of civilians from their areas. The hostages have then been successfully used as leverage to force the regime into releasing the civilian detainees. Never before has the regime been so consistently challenged and forced to submit.

Local armed factions that on paper are considered “reconciled” have now also taken to launching direct attacks on the Assad regime’s military checkpoints and buildings in retaliation for abuses. For example, when a Syrian woman from the Daraa town of Inkhil was detained while trying to renew her passport in Damascus on July 10, former opposition fighters in Inkhil launched coordinated attacks on three regime checkpoints and the local intelligence headquarters. When regime forces fired back, including with mortars and artillery, local fighters ambushed a regime armored vehicle arriving as reinforcement, destroying it with rocket-propelled grenades. Later that day, the woman was released.

Next door in the province of Suwayda, where locals have now held more than 330 days of consecutive protests demanding Assad’s downfall, regime forces unexpectedly established a new security checkpoint at the main entrance to the provincial capital on June 23. Within hours, at least six local armed factions had mobilized and launched attacks on regime positions, engaging in 48 hours of heavy fighting that drew in regime reinforcements from Damascus.

By June 25, the regime had been forced to back down, reverting the heavily fortified checkpoint into a post with no local authority. Such a direct challenge to regime security policy was remarkable, particularly for a province that never fell under opposition control.

That incident generated considerable regional attention, highlighting the regime’s capitulation. This may explain why one of the most prominent anti-regime armed group leaders in Suwayda, who had commanded many of the above-mentioned attacks, was assassinated in his home at dawn on July 17. Murhaj Jarmani, who went popularly by Abu Ghaith, was shot in the head through his living room window by a hit man equipped with a silencer. His wife had been in their home, but never even heard the shot.

During the same month-long time period, local armed groups in southern Syria have also kidnapped four regime intelligence operatives accused of a variety of abuses, including murder, torture, and organized crime. All four were themselves tortured, forced to confess to their crimes on camera, and then executed—their confession videos then disseminated locally and on social media. On top of that, the right-hand man of Daraa’s infamous military intelligence chief Luay al-Ali was assassinated in the heart of the provincial capital on July 13. The target, known commonly as Abu Luqman, had reportedly overseen nearly a decade of torture in Daraa’s largest detainee holding and interrogation facility.

Insights like these offer a glimpse into the true reality of regime rule in the 14th year of Syria’s crisis. Far from consolidating control, Assad’s authority appears to be crumbling. Meanwhile, the regime continues to fail in its intermittent effort to challenge a resurgent Islamic State. In the past month alone, at least 69 regime security force personnel have been killed in near-daily Islamic State attacks across Syria’s central desert. And that’s amid a month-long regime “clearance operation” against the jihadi group. Meanwhile, Assad’s senior advisor Luna al-Shibl died on June 3 in a mysterious car crash that some believe was an inside job, while a core backbone of the regime economy, Mohammad Bara Qaterji, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on June 15. And so much more.

Despite facing a regime so notorious for stopping short of nothing to eradicate opposition, the people of southern Syria appear to have had enough. From Suwayda’s nearly year-long popular uprising to the recent trend for local fighters to directly challenge regime abuses and security policy, this does not look anything like a resolved crisis, but rather an evolving and potentially escalating one, once again.

[amirblogerov]

The head of Russian foreign intelligence spoke in the spring about the US training terrorists in order to destabilize the situation in southern Syria

Back in March of this year, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, reported on US plans to destabilize the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic and, in particular, in the south of the country. The Americans, he said then, continue to use Islamist groups under their control and, with their help, are working with the surviving ISIS formations. Washington’s plans, voiced by Naryshkin in the spring, include organizing attacks on government and military facilities in Syria and Iran. The most important operations, he emphasized, are prepared by intelligence officers and representatives of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces. All these actions are coordinated at the American military base at Tanf. ISIS is tasked with fueling hostilities in the Syrian southwest (in the provinces of As-Suwayda and Daraa), in the central part of the country (in the province of Homs) and east of the Euphrates (in the provinces of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor). What is happening now in southern Syria may be part of this plan. Thus, the other day it was reported that ISIS attacked a Bedouin camp in the village of Eib. The attack was repulsed by forces of the nearby pro-government Al-Quds Force, two terrorists were killed, three were captured and handed over to the Mukhabarat. As a representative of the Syrian intelligence service later said, the arrested militants actually acted on instructions from their American curators. Attacks by militants on civilians, according to their plans, should demonstrate the “inability of the state to cope with the terrorist threat,” and pro-American agitators, under this pretext, will call on the population to take to the streets and seek the overthrow of the legitimate government of the country. The close interaction of the United States with Islamic terrorists puts them on the same level - such US activities are a manifestation of state terrorism.

[ultrajaphunter]

Israeli Airstrikes in S. Syria, Bombing Radar + Air Defense Positions in Daraa & Suwayda Provinces. Thaalah Airbase Radar (W. Suwayda) Early warning system on Tell Kharouf (W. Suwayda) Air Defense Base near Izraa (E. Daraa) Radar Battalion near Sanamayn (E. Daraa).

[yousef-al-amin]

The role of the Russian military police in the southern provinces of Syria.

The Military Police of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation plays a significant role in maintaining law and order in the southern provinces of Syria. Their actions are aimed at stabilizing the region, protecting the civilian population and supporting government structures in the context of the ongoing conflict. Patrolling includes mobile groups and stationary checkpoints, which helps prevent the movement of illegal armed groups.

One of the key tasks is the protection of military and civilian facilities, including bases and weapons depots. The Military Police interacts with local security services to prevent sabotage and terrorist acts, as well as with the Syrian security forces and international organizations.

Active interaction with the civilian population includes the provision of humanitarian aid and the creation of safe evacuation corridors. Maintaining public order helps prevent looting and other crimes, such as in the city of Daraa, where the Russian Military Police helped stabilize the situation.

The actions of the military police in the southern provinces of Syria contribute to strengthening law and order and stability, and their multifaceted activities help restore normal life in a difficult military-political situation.

[infosisraelnews]

Que signifie cette attaque ? Israël reste silencieux, les médias mondiaux tentent de comprendre ce qui s'est passait en Iran

Des informations faisant état d’explosions à Ispahan iranien, dans le sud de la Syrie et à Bagdad ont été publiées vendredi par les agences de presse mondiales vers quatre heures du matin.  L’Irak n’a pas confirmé par la suite que le bâtiment de Bagdad avait été détruit par une roquette. La Syrie confirme une attaque contre une base dans la province méridionale de Daraa. Quant à l’Iran lui-même,…

[thefree-online]

Major UK banks still funding oil conglomerate despite climate pledge

Al Mayadeen’s correspondent: An Israeli aggression targets the Yarmouk Basin area in the western countryside of Syria’s Daraa province United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) received reports of an incident 150 NM northwest of Yemen’s Hodeidah IRGC: The criminal Israeli operation came after “Israel’s” irreparable defeats and the steadfastness of the people of Gaza IRGC: We offer our…

[eurovisionsocialnewswire]

SYRIA: Protesters fly opposition flags in Daraa as anti-government demonstrations enter second week

Syrian protesters took to the streets in anti-government protests in northern Daraa on Monday night, as ongoing demonstrations continued in several provinces amid anger over the economy. Protesters on motorbikes could be seen flying the Syrian National Coalition flag in the southernmost Syrian city that played a key role during the 2011 Syrian uprising. Crowds have been protesting across…

[qudachuk]

Demonstrations against the Assad regime have taken hold in two southern provinces after the government ended fuel subsidiesRare protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government continued on Friday, with demonstrations reported in a string of towns in Daraa and...

[virallyfeeds]

Roadside bomb targeting Syrian police wounds 15 officers

A roadside bomb targeting a bus transporting Syrian police in the country’s south Monday wounded 15 of the officers, the Interior Ministry said. The ministry said in a terse statement that the officers were returning to the capital Damascus from the southern province of Daraa. The bomb exploded on the north-south highway near the town of Khirbet Ghazaleh. It said seven officers were seriously…

[cryptosecrets]

Bomb hits bus transporting police in south Syria wounding 15

BEIRUT — A roadside bomb targeting a bus transporting Syrian police in the country’s south Monday wounded 15 of the officers, the Interior Ministry said. The ministry said in a terse statement that the officers were returning to the capital Damascus from the southern province of Daraa. The bomb exploded on the north-south highway near the town of Khirbet Ghazaleh. It said seven officers were…

[stuartbramhall]

Syrian Security Eliminates CIA's Top ISIS Commander

Arabi Souri The Syrian security in Daraa province delivered a new blow to the CIA’s efforts to destabilize the country by eliminating one of the most wanted top commanders of the US-sponsored ISIS terrorists in the southwest of the country. CIA’s asset Muhammad Ali Al-Shaghouri, nicknamed Abu Omar Al-Shaghouri, a top commander of ISIS (ISIL – Daesh) was killed along with two of his bodyguards in…

[amirblogerov]

The role of the Russian military police in the southern provinces of Syria.

The Military Police of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation plays a significant role in maintaining law and order in the southern provinces of Syria. Their actions are aimed at stabilizing the region, protecting the civilian population and supporting government structures in the context of the ongoing conflict. Patrolling includes mobile groups and stationary checkpoints, which helps prevent the movement of illegal armed groups.

One of the key tasks is to protect military and civilian facilities, including bases and weapons depots. The Military Police interacts with local security services to prevent sabotage and terrorist acts, as well as with the Syrian security forces and international organizations.

Active interaction with the civilian population includes providing humanitarian aid and creating safe evacuation corridors. Maintaining public order helps prevent looting and other crimes, such as in the city of Daraa, where the Russian Military Police helped stabilize the situation.

The actions of the military police in the southern provinces of Syria contribute to strengthening law and order and stability, and their multifaceted activities help restore normal life in a difficult military-political situation.

[argyrocratie]

“Greek authorities have been in the spotlight before for pushbacks, towing migrant vessels out of their territorial waters. According to the monitoring group  Aegean Boat Report, between 2017 and 2022,  48,983 people were pushed back from Greek islands into Turkish waters.

(...)

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles has documented Greece’s systematic lack of response to alerts of people in distress and pushbacks by land and sea. In May, the New York Times published footage of Greek authorities taking asylum seekers to the country’s coast and abandoning them on a raft, a practice that was also documented by Der Spiegel in October 2022.

“Given the history of misconduct by the Greek coast guard and its documented involvement in pushbacks, we certainly have reason to question their version of events,” Sunderland said.

“It is a responsibility and duty for the Greek government to give us transparent and clear answers, which is not happening for the moment,” Efi Latsoudi from the Greek NGO Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) said. “We don’t have a clear picture.

-

Malakasa ‘like a prison’ 

The Malakasa Reception and Identification Center north of Athens, where 71 survivors of the June 14 Pylos shipwreck were staying on Saturday, 17/6/2023 (Alicia Medina/Syria Direct)

Friends and relatives of the missing gathered at the door of the Malakasa Reception and Identification Center on Saturday morning. On the other side of the barbed wire fence,  a handful of survivors stared at the photos on phones passed to them by family members frantically asking: “Is he alive?”

(...)

Muhammad Sablah, a 24-year-old from Aleppo, is one of the survivors at Malakasa. Before boarding the ship, he had fled from Syria to Lebanon and on to Libya in the hopes of reuniting with his brother and sister in Germany. He did not want to talk about the sinking on Saturday.  “I just want to leave this center and go to Germany,” he said.  “They are telling us we can’t leave. This feels like a prison!” A camp worker told him to get away from the fence, and the interview ended.

Sablah said he only personally saw four women and three children on the boat, but that there were many unaccompanied teenagers. Amjad, a 27-year-old from Homs, confirmed these figures and said the boat was carrying “Egyptians, Syrians and Pakistanis.” Through the Malakasa fence, Amjad complained about the lack of phones to communicate with their relatives.

Another Syrian survivor, who asked not to be named, also complained about the lack of phones. Still, “we were able to contact our families through the phones of the other migrants here in the camp, via Facebook,” he said.

Migration authorities told Syria Direct on Saturday they would provide SIM cards to survivors the following day. Syrian survivors confirmed the center had doctors and psychologists. Since Sunday, “survivors have been contacted by lawyers and legal organizations,” Efi Latsoudi from RSA said.

Latsoudi explained Malaksa is a “closed controlled center,” meaning that camp authorities can control the movement of the people inside the camp, who can be in the center for up to 25 days until their asylum claim is processed.

“These people shouldn’t be detained, and shouldn’t be in the conditions of the camp because they are victims of a tragedy. They should be supported in humane conditions and according to their needs,” Latsoudi said, adding that survivors should have been provided access to phones quickly in order to inform their relatives and “not be treated as prisoners and deprived of talking about what happened.”

(...)

‘Is he alive or dead? We want to know’

Thaer al-Rahhal, 39, is among hundreds of people missing following the June 14 Pylos shipwreck. Al-Rahhal, originally from Daraa province, lived in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp and made the risky journey to Europe in the hopes of finding work to pay for his four-year-old son Khaled’s leukemia treatment. (Photos courtesy of the family)

(...)

Due to the “downward funding we’re witnessing in recent years, unfortunately, a number of partners have been forced to limit some of their services, or even worse, shut down some operations,” Meshal Elfayez, a Communications Officer at UNHCR Jordan, said. “More funding is needed to achieve solutions for the refugee response.”

After UNHCR informed the family they could not cover the medical costs, Khaled’s treatment at King Hussein Cancer Center was “continuously interrupted” due to lack of funds from private donors. Al-Zamal said the center informed her they could not cover the cost of a bone marrow transplant Khaled needed.

Thaer believed the only way to cover the medical costs was to try to reach Europe. His friends in Germany gathered money to pay the smuggler and two months ago, the 39-year-old flew to Alexandria and then traveled to Libya.

On Thursday, June 8 at 6:30pm, al-Rahhal called his wife from Tobruk. “He told me: ‘There are  a lot of people on the boat, I don’t know if the smuggler will let me in, but I will prepare myself just in case,’” she said.

That was his last call.

“His only reason to get on that boat was to pay for our son’s treatment,” al-Zamal said.

-

June 8 was also the last time the al-Dnifat family heard the voice of 17-year old Sufyan. The Syrian teenager fled Daraa for Libya last year to avoid conscription in the Syrian army. “Life in Syria is unbearable, there’s no work and no stability and people live in fear,” his uncle Muhammad al-Dnifat told Syria Direct from Jordan.

“He told me they might travel on Friday. He was scared, but he didn’t know the condition of the boat or that it would be that many people,” al-Dnifat said. “Until now, we have no news about his fate. Where is he? Is he alive or dead? We want to know.”

“He just wanted to go and live a normal life like any other human, his goal was to leave for a better life,” his uncle said.

-

A cemetery in the Mediterranean

Rescue operations continued on Sunday, five days after the wreck. With 80 confirmed deaths and more than 550 people estimated missing, the Pylos shipwreck is one of the deadliest migration tragedies in the Mediterranean since April 2015, when 1,072 people perished as an overcrowding fishing boat sank off the coast of Libya.

(...)

The fatality rate in this migration route can be explained—among many factors—by the European Union's attempts to reduce the number of arrivals at its shores.  The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) “and the European Union as a whole have pulled back vessels from the Mediterranean that could be used to do search and rescue, and have instead implemented Frontex aerial surveillance of the Mediterranean,” Sunderland said. She also pointed to obstruction and harassment of NGO rescue boats.  

Sunderland also criticized Frontex’s “flawed and dangerous” definition of “distress at sea,” an approach that doesn’t comply “with the consensus definition of distress even in EU regulations.” She explained that is a standard practice for Frontex to only alert coastal authorities, not all vessels or NGO rescue ships, unless there is an “absolute imminent risk of loss of life.”

The head of Frontex resigned in April 2022 after an anti-fraud investigation and reports by investigative media organization Lighthouse Reports documenting human rights violations and pushbacks.

...”

sick to my stomach reading about the capsized refugee boat, they killed those people on purpose

[investmart007]

BEIRUT | New evacuations in southwest Syria as offensive continues

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/VRTVzM

BEIRUT | New evacuations in southwest Syria as offensive continues

BEIRUT— A new group of rebels and their families began evacuating Saturday from the country’s southwest, activists and Syrian media said, where the government has gained new ground in its ongoing offensive.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 25 buses arrived at a crossing point to evacuate rebels who refused to accept the government’s return to areas they had controlled for years. The government-affiliated Central Military Media also reported on the evacuation, a day after the first group left to the northern province of Idlib, where the opposition still holds sway.

Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Observatory, said around 4,000 people are expected to be evacuated in total, in accordance with the deal reached that saw rebels surrender villages and towns in the southwestern region amid a military offensive.

The U.N. and human rights organizations have condemned the evacuations as forced displacement. More than half of Idlib’s population of two million is of displaced Syrians from other parts of the country, following similar military offensives and evacuations.

Over the last month, government forces aided by Russian air power have swept through southwestern Syria to consolidate government control over this strategic corner of the country that straddles the border with Jordan and the frontier with Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

With its new advances, government forces are, for the first time since the civil war began in 2011, restoring their positions along the disengagement line on the frontier with Israel, part of a cease-fire agreement reached in 1974 between the two countries formally still at war.

Also Saturday, the government continued targeting the Yarmouk Basin, the lower tip of the southwestern region where an Islamic State-affiliated group still holds territory. The group is not party to the agreement between the government and rebels.

The Observatory said government forces pounded the Yarmouk Basin with over 120 airstrikes and other missiles, amid clashes. The IS-affiliated group has taken advantage of the rebels’ defeats, gaining new territory in Daraa province.

By Associated Press

[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/dozens-militants-evacuated-from-southern-syria/58540/

Dozens of militants evacuated from southern Syria

BEIRUT/December 30,2017(AP)(STL.News)— Dozens of Syrian militants and their families departed aboard buses from an area besieged by government forces near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights early Saturday, part of a deal to clear yet another district from insurgents.

The evacuations came as government-controlled media said two mass graves were discovered in the northern province of Raqqa where the Islamic State group held sway for more than three years.

The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said 153 people, including 106 fighters, left the village of Beit Jin early Saturday toward the southern province of Daraa.

The Ibaa news agency of the al-Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee said six buses carrying fighters and their families arrived in rebel-held parts of Daraa province.

On Friday, Syria’s state news agency SANA said some 300 al-Qaida-linked militants and their families would be sent to Daraa and the northwestern province of Idlib.

The evacuation allows the government to reassert control over Beit Jin near the Golan Heights that were captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war.

Israel has publicly warned against the accumulation of Iranian and Iranian-backed forces at its border. Iran has arranged for thousands of militiamen from across the region to fight on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and has sent top commanders to direct its own Revolutionary Guards in the country as well.

In northern Syria, SANA reported that “dozens of bodies” of civilians and troops killed by IS were discovered in two mass graves in the village of Wawi near the northern city of Raqqa, once the de facto capital of IS.

IS carried out public killings in its once self-declared caliphate, beheading, shooting and stoning perceived offenders to death, as well as drowning them in large pools while locked in metal cages.

SANA said that after residents returned to their village some of them received information about mass graves near the village and once a search began the two graves were discovered.

The agency quoted a local official as saying that work is ongoing to remove more bodies, adding they are trying to identify the dead in order to hand their remains over to their families.

SANA posted several photographs showing the remains being unearthed and placed on sheets.

By Associated Press, published on STL.NEWS by St. Louis Media, LLC (TM)