Damascus managed to eliminate stronghold of illegal armed formations through negotiation

The UN Secretary General's special envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has promised to take a political initiative that concerns the Syrian settlement. He made it clear that further steps in the Syrian settlement will depend on the outcome of consultations between Russia and the United States in Geneva, which were renewed on Wednesday. De Mistura also noted that humanitarian convoys can be sent to Aleppo as soon as a 48-hour-long pause in the hostilities is agreed on.

The central development is the reinstatement of the Syrian government’s control over a suburb of the capital, Daraya. The area has been freed from militants, who had controlled it since 2012, through dialogue and negotiations. Civilians, as well as former members of illegal armed formations who stated their desire to lay down arms and take advantage of the declared amnesty, were relocated from the war-ravaged town to temporary accommodation centres in the Damascus region. To save civilians, the Syrian authorities granted intransigent jihadists safe passage to the Idlib province after they laid down their arms. 

"The importance of this event is that through negotiations, the Syrian military has eliminated a key base of illegal armed groups in southwestern Damascus. It is essential to note that this course of events has infuriated certain Syrian oppositionists, in particular the Istanbul-based National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces. They expressed outrage over the course of events, and in this context, even came up with the term “forced displacement of people.” Interestingly, this term occurred to them at a time when the situation that had been unfolding in Syria for many years has forced hundreds of thousands of people both in and outside the country to leave their homes, not so much in search of a better life as to save their lives. But no one in the opposition was concerned about displacement then. Let this remain on their conscience," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

"Russia hopes that the Daraya experience will be used in the future so that violence and fierce fighting will come to an end on Syria’s entire territory. There are already indications of this. The Syrian authorities have reached an agreement on the restoration of control over the town of al-Maadamiya in line with a procedure similar to the one used in Daraya. Illegal armed groups of Jaish al-Tahrir, Liwa Suqour al-Jaba and Falak Al-Sham, affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, which got a second wind due to external financial and logistical assistance, mainly from Turkey, are advancing to the south and west of Jarabulus, engaging defensive Kurdish paramilitary detachments. Under these circumstances, the command of the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance, the core of which is constituted by Kurds, has decided to postpone preparations for an operation against Daesh to free Raqqa in order to focus on the fight against 'Turkish aggression'," she stressed. She also noted that ethnic and religious cleansing conducted by terrorists, as well as persecution on religious grounds, is a brutal manifestation of the Syria conflict.