Southern forces loom large as Syria’s new rulers try to form a national army

Southern forces loom large as Syria’s new rulers try to form a national army
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Southern opposition forces commander Ahmad al-Awda meets with local officials, in Nawa, near Daraa, Syria, on Jan. 4, 2025. (AP)
Southern forces loom large as Syria’s new rulers try to form a national army
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A family drives past tanks that belonged to the Assad government, in Nawa, near Daraa, Syria, o. Jan. 4, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 23 January 2025
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Southern forces loom large as Syria’s new rulers try to form a national army

Southern forces loom large as Syria’s new rulers try to form a national army
  • When the HTS-led opposition groups based in the north launched their surprise offensive last year in Aleppo, factions in the southern provinces of Daraa, Sweida and Quneitra reactivated, forming a joint operations room to coordinate with northern ones

NAWA, Syria: As opposition forces raced across Syria in a surprise offensive launched in the country’s northwest late last year, officials from several countries backing either the rebels or Syria’s government met in Qatar on what to do.
According to people briefed on the Dec. 7 meeting, officials from Turkiye, Russia, Iran and a handful of Arab countries agreed that the fighters would stop their advance in Homs, the last major city north of Damascus, and that internationally mediated talks would take place with Syrian leader Bashar Assad on a political transition.
But opposition factions from Syria’s south had other plans. They pushed toward the capital, arriving in Damascus’ largest square before dawn. Those from the north, led by the Islamist group Hayyat Tahrir Al-Sham, arrived hours later. Assad, meanwhile, had fled.
HTS, the most organized of the groups, has since established itself as Syria’s de facto rulers after coordinating with the southern fighters during the lighting-fast offensive.
Wariness among the southern factions since then, however, has highlighted questions over how the interim administration can bring together a patchwork of former rebel groups, each with their own leaders and ideology.
HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa has called for a unified national army and security forces. The interim defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, has begun meeting with armed groups. But some prominent leaders like southern rebel commander Ahmad Al-Awda have refused to attend.
Officials with the interim government did not respond to questions.
 




A handout picture released by Sham News Network shows an anti-regime demonstration in the early hours of April 15, 2012 in the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. (AFP)

Cradle of the revolution
The southern province of Daraa is widely seen as the cradle of the Syrian uprising in 2011. When anti-government protests were met with repression by Assad’s security forces, “we were forced to carry weapons,” said Mahmoud Al-Bardan, a rebel leader there.
The opposition groups that formed in the south had different dynamics from those in the north, less Islamist and more localized, said Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International think tank. They also had different backers.
“In the north, Turkiye and Qatar favored Islamist factions very heavily,” he said. “In the south, Jordanian and American involvement nudged the insurgency in a different direction.”
In 2018, factions in Daraa reached a Russian-mediated “reconciliation agreement” with Assad’s government. Some former fighters left for Idlib, the destination for many from areas recaptured by government forces, while others remained.
The deal left many southern factions alive and armed, Lund said.
“We only turned over the heavy weapons … the light weapons remained with us,” Al-Bardan said.
When the HTS-led opposition groups based in the north launched their surprise offensive last year in Aleppo, those weapons were put to use again. Factions in the southern provinces of Daraa, Sweida and Quneitra reactivated, forming a joint operations room to coordinate with northern ones.
Defying international wishes
On Dec. 7, “we had heard from a number of parties that there might be an agreement that … no one would enter Damascus so there could be an agreement on the exit of Bashar Assad or a transitional phase,” said Nassim Abu Ara, an official with one of the largest rebel factions in the south, the 8th Brigade of Al-Awda.
However, “we entered Damascus and turned the tables on these agreements,” he said.




Nassim Abu Ara, known as Abu Murshid, a rebel leader, poses for a portrait during an interview with the Associated Press, in Nawa, near Daraa, Syria, on Jan. 4, 2025. (AP)

Al-Bardan confirmed that account, asserting that the agreement “was binding on the northern factions” but not the southern ones.
“Even if they had ordered us to stop, we would not have,” he said, reflecting the eagerness among many fighters to remove Assad as soon as possible.
Ammar Kahf, executive director of the Istanbul-based Omran Center for Strategic Studies, who was in Doha on Dec. 7 and was briefed on the meetings, said there was an agreement among countries’ officials that the rebels would stop their offensive in Homs and go to Geneva for negotiations on “transitional arrangements.”
But Kahf said it was not clear that any Syrian faction, including HTS, agreed to the plan. Representatives of countries at the meeting did not respond to questions.
A statement released by the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia, Iran, Qatari, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq after the Dec. 7 meeting said they “stressed the need to stop military operations in preparation for launching a comprehensive political process” but did not give specifics.
The initial hours after armed groups’ arrival in Damascus were chaotic. Observers said the HTS-led forces tried to re-impose order when they arrived. An Associated Press journalist saw an argument break out when HTS fighters tried to stop members of another faction from taking abandoned army munitions.
Abu Ara acknowledged that “there was some chaos” but added, “we have to understand that these people were pent-up and suddenly they achieved the joy of victory in this manner.”
 




A member of the new Syrian security forces checks ammunition that belonged to the Assad government, in Nawa, near Daraa, Syria, on Jan. 4, 2025. (AP)

Waiting for a state
During a visit by AP journalists to the western countryside of Daraa province this month, there was no visible presence of HTS forces.
At one former Syrian army site, a fighter with the Free Syrian Army, the main faction in the area, stood guard in jeans and a camouflage shirt. Other local fighters showed off a site where they were storing tanks abandoned by the former army.
“Currently these are the property of the new state and army,” whenever it is formed, said one fighter, Issa Sabaq.
The process of forming those has been bumpy.
On New Year’s Eve, factions in the Druze-majority city of Sweida in southern Syria blocked the entry of a convoy of HTS security forces who had arrived without giving prior notice.
Ahmed Aba Zeid, a Syrian researcher who has studied the southern insurgent groups, said some of the factions have taken a wait-and-see approach before they agree to dissolve and hand over their weapons to the state.
Local armed factions are still the de facto security forces in many areas.




Members of the new Syrian security forces stand outside a security building, in Nawa, near Daraa, Syria, on Jan. 4, 2025. (AP)

Earlier this month, the new police chief in Daraa city appointed by the HTS-led government, Badr Abdel Hamid, joined local officials in the town of Nawa to discuss plans for a police force there.
Hamid said there had been “constructive and positive cooperation” with factions in the region, adding the process of extending the “state’s influence” takes time.
Abu Ara said factions are waiting to understand their role. “Will it be a strong army, or a border guard army, or is it for counterterrorism?” he asked.
Still, he was optimistic that an understanding will be reached.
“A lot of people are afraid that there will be a confrontation, that there won’t be integration or won’t be an agreement,” he said. “But we want to avoid this at all costs, because our country is very tired of war.”


Why is Gaza truce under threat?

Why is Gaza truce under threat?
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Why is Gaza truce under threat?

Why is Gaza truce under threat?
  • Under the truce, the warring parties have already completed five exchanges of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but have in recent days have entered into a blame game over the implementation of the deal
  • US President Donald Trump’s forceful backing of ally Israel has put the ceasefire under strain, and particularly his proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and remove its Palestinian inhabitants

JERUSALEM: A little over three weeks since it came into effect, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that halted the Gaza war has become increasingly fragile.
Under the truce, the warring parties have already completed five exchanges of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but have in recent days have entered into a blame game over the implementation of the deal.
US President Donald Trump’s forceful backing of ally Israel has put the ceasefire under strain, and particularly his proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and remove its Palestinian inhabitants.
The truce is currently in its first phase. The next ones have not yet been finalized.
Here are the positions of the key actors who could decide the future of the truce:
For days now, Hamas has accused Israel of not respecting the agreement, saying that the amount and type of aid entering Gaza was insufficent.
Israeli authorities have denied the claims.
In several statements, the Palestinian militants have said they had not received machinery requested to clear the rubble in Gaza, and complained about obstacles to evacuating wounded people to Egypt under the terms of the agreement.
On Wednesday, Hamas said that as a result of the Israeli violations it would postpone indefinitely the next hostage release, which was due to take place on February 15.
Hugh Lovatt, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP that the announcement from Hamas may be an attempt to force a decision on the next phases of the truce.
“Hamas’s aim is to break the deadlock in the negotiations on the second phase of the agreement,” he said, adding that the Palestinian movement has been trying to obtain guarantees that the ceasefire will hold and the war will come of a permanent end.
It’s a “Hail Mary pass,” said Lovatt, “because they fear that Israel will take advantage of Trump’s support to impose new conditions and delay the implementation of the agreement.”
The ongoing first phase of the ceasefire is for 42 days. During this period, negotiations for the second phase were meant to start but that has not happened yet.
On Wednesday, a Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo to discuss the disputes over the agreement with Egyptian negotiators.
But a Hamas spokesman warned that the group would not bow down to the “language of threats” from the United States and Israel.
Trump on Monday said “all hell” would break out in Gaza if Hamas did not free all Israeli hostages held in the territory by Saturday noon.
Under the terms of the truce, not all hostages were meant to be freed during the first phase.
The president’s threat came soon after he announced a plan for the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip and move its almost 2.4 million residents to Jordan or Egypt.
The proposal has provoked widespread international condemnation, and experts have said it would violate international law.
Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that Trump’s statements had “underscored the US backing of Israel.”
“Trump and Netanyahu have both emphasized the importance of releasing hostages,” Freeman said.
He said that despite making threats, he did not believe that either Trump of Israel’s leaders wanted the war to resume.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Hamas cannot be allowed to use the ceasefire to “rebuild itself and recover strength.”
Echoing statements from the US president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would resume “intense fighting” in Gaza if Hamas did not return hostages by Saturday.
Netanyahu did not specify whether he expected all the hostages to be freed, or a smaller batch due for release under the terms of the deal.
“It’s in his best interest to do it gradually,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
According to her, Netanyahu was deliberately being ambiguous and was “buying time” to extend the first stage of the truce and delay talks about the post-war future of the Gaza Strip.
But Netanyahu also faces domestic “public pressure” to secure the release of the remaining hostages, including through indirect negotiations with Hamas, said Zonszein.
“It could be a determining factor that when the three hostages came out last Saturday, they looked really, really bad,” she said of the three Israelis freed on Saturday.
They appeared emaciated, spurring concern among Israelis for the fate of those still in captivity.
Despite their disputes, Zonszein said that the sides have not “given up on anything yet.”
“They’re just playing power games.”


Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life

Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life
Updated 14 min 45 sec ago
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Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life

Wife of Colombian-Israeli hostage receives proof of life

BOGOTA: The wife of Elkana Bohbot, a Colombian-Israeli man being held hostage by Hamas, said Wednesday she had received proof he was alive and denounced the “terrible” conditions in which he was being held.
In an interview with Colombia’s Blu Radio, Rebecca Gonzalez said that she received news of her husband from Ohad Ben Ami, one of the three hostages released by Hamas last weekend.
The three, whose emaciated appearance caused widespread shock, were released under the fifth exchange of prisoners since Israel and Hamas agreed a truce in their 15-month war on January 19.
“He (Ben Ami) brought me proof of life from my husband. I received a message, I even received a song in which he asks me to be strong,” Gonzalez, who is Colombian, said.
“He is alive, and we need to get him out of there immediately,” she pleaded.
Relating Ben Ami’s account of his captivity, which left him in a “severe nutritional state” according to doctors, Gonzalez said: “They are in tunnels, they are not allowed to see the light, they are not allowed to go out for air.”
She said her husband was living on a piece of bread a day, “very little water” and was “mistreated physically and psychologically.”
Bohbot, who hails from the town of Mevasseret Tzion near Jerusalem and has a young son, was one of the producers of the Supernova music festival, which Hamas gunmen stormed during their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
His childhood friends and fellow rave organizers Michael and Osher Vaknin were killed in the attack.
A Hamas video from October 7 posted online showed Bohbot, now aged 36, bound and injured in the face, being held by the Palestinian armed group.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro gave him Colombian nationality a month after the attacks.
The Hamas attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The group also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has reduced most of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 48,222 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The United Nations considers the ministry’s figures reliable.


UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank

UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank
Updated 13 February 2025
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UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank

UNICEF decries soaring violence against children in West Bank
  • UNICEF condemns all acts of violence against children and calls for the immediate cessation of armed activity across the occupied West Bank

UNITED NATIONS, United States: Violence against children has surged in recent months in the occupied West Bank, where Israel is conducting a sweeping military operation, UNICEF warned Wednesday as it called for an end to hostilities.
UNICEF’s regional director Edouard Beigbeder said 13 Palestinian children were killed in the West bank since the start of the year alone, including seven killed following the launch of a large-scale operation by Israel in the north of the territory on January 19.
The casualties include a two-and-a-half-year-old child, whose pregnant mother was also injured in the shooting, according to the United Nations children’s agency.
“UNICEF condemns all acts of violence against children and calls for the immediate cessation of armed activity across the occupied West Bank,” Beigbeder said in a statement.
“All civilians, including every child without exception, must be protected.”
He added that the rising use “of explosive weapons, airstrikes and demolitions in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas Governorates — including in refugee camps and other densely populated areas — has left essential infrastructure severely damaged, disrupting water and electricity supplies.”
In total, 195 Palestinian children and three Israeli children have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza.
That constitutes a 200 percent increase in the number of Palestinian children killed in the territory over the past 16 months, compared to the same period prior.
According to UN humanitarian agency OCHA, 224 children (218 boys and six girls) were killed between January 2023 and January 2025 in the West Bank by Israeli forces or Israeli settlers, which represents nearly half of the 468 children killed in total in the territory since 2005, when OCHA began documenting these victims.
More than 2,500 Palestinian children were also injured in the West Bank between January 2023 and December 2024, according to the agency.


Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says

Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says
Updated 13 February 2025
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Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says

Russian Red Sea base deal still on the table, Sudanese FM says
  • The war in Sudan has drawn in multiple competing regional and global influences, in part due to its ample Red Sea coastline, as well as gold resources

CAIRO: An agreement signed years ago for the creation of a Russian naval base in Sudan remains on the table following talks in Moscow, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Yusef Sharif said in an interview with Russia Today on Wednesday.
Such a deal has been discussed for years since an agreement was signed under former President Omar Al-Bashir. The army generals who overthrew him in 2019 said later the plan was under review, and a base has never materialized.
“In our meeting we did not negotiate the deal ... there was a deal signed and there is no disagreement,” he said, saying that as before all that remains is the issue of ratification.
“There are no obstacles, we are in complete agreement,” Sharif had said earlier when asked about the deal, following talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
He did not provide any additional details on the plan.
Russia has cultivated ties with both sides in Sudan’s almost two-year-long civil war, and Russian officials have visited the army’s wartime capital of Port Sudan in recent months.
Last year, a top Sudanese general said Russia had asked for a fueling station on the Red Sea in exchange for weapons and ammunition.
Sharif said such a station presented no threat to any other country or to Sudan’s sovereignty, drawing on the example of nearby Djibouti, which hosts several foreign bases.
Such a station would be beneficial to Russia, particularly after the fall of Syria’s Assad regime put in question key bases there.
The war in Sudan has drawn in multiple competing regional and global influences, in part due to its ample Red Sea coastline, as well as gold resources.


Israel threatens displacement from Gaza if hostages not released Saturday

Families and supporters attend a demonstration calling for the immediate return of hostages held in Gaza.
Families and supporters attend a demonstration calling for the immediate return of hostages held in Gaza.
Updated 12 February 2025
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Israel threatens displacement from Gaza if hostages not released Saturday

Families and supporters attend a demonstration calling for the immediate return of hostages held in Gaza.
  • If fighting resumes, Katz said, “new Gaza war will be different in intensity from the one before” ceasefire, and will not end without defeat of Hamas, hostage release

GAZA CITY: Israel on Wednesday threatened to launch a new war on Hamas that would lead to the implementation of US President Donald Trump’s plan to displace all Palestinians from the territory if the militants do not release hostages this weekend.
The remarks by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz came shortly after Palestinian group Hamas said it would not bow down to US and Israeli “threats” over the release of hostages under a fragile truce deal.
Mediators Qatar and Egypt were pushing to salvage the ceasefire agreement that came into effect last month, a Palestinian source and a diplomat familiar with the talks told AFP, while Hamas said its top negotiator was in Cairo.
The truce has largely halted more than 15 months of fighting and seen Israeli captives released in small groups in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli custody.
But the deal, currently in its 42-day first phase, has come under increasing strain.
The warring sides, which have yet to agree on the next phases of the truce, have traded accusations of violations, spurring concern that the violence could resume.
Katz said Israel would resume its war if Hamas fails to free captives on Saturday, when a sixth hostage-prisoner exchange was scheduled under the terms of the agreement.
Hamas has said it would postpone the release citing Israeli violations, and hours later, Trump warned that “hell” would break loose if the Palestinian militant failed to release “all” hostages by then.
If fighting resumes, Katz said, “the new Gaza war will be different in intensity from the one before the ceasefire, and it will not end without the defeat of Hamas and the release of all the hostages.”
“It will also allow the realization of US President Trump’s vision for Gaza,” he added.
Katz on Thursday ordered the army to prepare for “voluntary” departures from Gaza.
The Israeli military said it has already begun reinforcing its troops around Gaza.
Trump had proposed taking over the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and moving its more than two million residents to Jordan or Egypt — a plan experts say would violate international law but which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “revolutionary.”
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said on Wednesday that Israel was “evading the implementation of several provisions of the ceasefire agreement,” warning that hostages would not be released without Israeli compliance with the deal.
“Our position is clear, and we will not accept the language of American and Israeli threats,” said Qassem, after Netanyahu threatened to “resume intense fighting” if hostages were not released by Saturday.
Last week’s hostage release sparked anger in Israel and beyond after Hamas paraded three emaciated hostages before a crowd and forced them to speak.
On the Palestinian side, Hamas accused Israel of failing to meet its commitments under the agreement, including on aid, and cited the deaths of three Gazans over the weekend.
Hamas has insisted it remained “committed to the ceasefire,” and said that a delegation headed by chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya was in Cairo for meetings and to monitor “the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.”
A diplomat and a Palestinian source familiar with the talks both told AFP on condition of anonymity that mediators were engaged with the parties to resolve the dispute.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has urged Hamas to proceed with the planned release and “avoid at all costs resumption of hostilities in Gaza.”
In Tel Aviv, Israeli student Mali Abramovitch, 28, said that it was “terrible to think” that the next group of hostages would not be released “because Israel allegedly violated the conditions, which is nonsense.”
“We can’t let them (Hamas) play with us like this... It’s simply not acceptable.”
In southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis, 48-year-old Saleh Awad told AFP he felt “anxiety and fear,” saying that “Israel is seeking any pretext to reignite the war... and displace” the territory’s inhabitants.
Trump reaffirmed his Saturday deadline for the hostage release when hosting Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Tuesday.
In a phone call Wednesday, Abdullah and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said they were united in supporting the “full implementation” of the ceasefire, “the continued release of hostages and prisoners, and facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid,” according to a statement from the Egyptian presidency.
The two leaders called for Gaza’s “immediate” reconstruction “without displacing the Palestinian people from their land.”
Egypt, a US ally which borders Gaza, earlier said it planned to “present a comprehensive vision” for the reconstruction of the Palestinian territory.
A UN report has said that more than $53 billion will be required to rebuild Gaza and end the “humanitarian catastrophe” there.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,222 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures which the UN considers reliable from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.