Rebels surrender weapons in ceasefire as Syrian regime reclaims southern city
▶ The obligation to aid the victims of terrorism and war should not await a resolution in Syria
Syrian rebels in the southern city of Deraa were surrendering heavy weapons to government forces yesterday under a deal brokered by regime ally Russia.
Opposition fighters in the neighbourhood of Deraa Al Balad in the city’s rebel-held southern half handed over ammunition and other equipment, state news agency Sana said.
It came a day after the regime and rebels began to dismantle the dirt barriers that had divided the city for years.
The agreement reached on Wednesday will return Deraa city, the cradle of Syria’s seven-year uprising, back to government control.
Under it, rebels will hand over their heavy and medium weapons and will be able to reconcile legally with the government, state media reported.
Meanwhile, a war monitor said on Friday that an air strike on one of the last holdouts of ISIS in Syria killed 54 people, more than half of them civilians.
The United States-led coalition said it or its allies might have carried out air raids in the area on Thursday and it was investigating any civilian deaths.
The raid on an ice factory near the village of Al Soussa, close to the Iraqi border, killed 28 civilians and 26 ISIS members, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, from Britain.
It was not immediately clear if the raid on the eastern Deir Ezzor province was carried out by an Iraqi plane or the coalition, the monitor said.
“The coalition or our partner forces may have conduct-
ed strikes in the vicinity of Al Soussa and Baghour Fukhani,” the coalition said. “We are forwarding the report to our civilian casualty cell for further assessment on this allegation.”
Iraqi warplanes have recently carried out strikes against ISIS in eastern Syria, while coalition aircraft have been supporting Kurdish-led fighters battling the extremists. The ISIS fighters were Syrians and Iraqis, the Observatory said.
Sana reported the strike late on Thursday, saying more than 30 civilians were killed and saying the coalition was responsible.
The Foreign Ministry in Damascus criticised the coalition for “only succeeding in killing innocent Syrians and destroying Syrian infrastructure”.
ISIS still holds pockets of land in Syria, including in the vast Badiya desert and Deir Ezzor. While the group has been expelled from most urban centres in Syria, analysts say they still have the ability to attack from the desert.
To help stabilise towns and cities previously under ISIS control, the UAE last week pledged US$50 million (Dh183m) to Raqqa and other areas.
The contribution was announced by Mohammed Al Bowardi, Minister of State for Defence, at a meeting of the global coalition to defeat ISIS at Nato’s new US$1.45 billion headquarters in Brussels.
“We are closely co-ordinating with the alliance to improve living conditions in affected areas,” Mr Al Bowardi said.
The UAE is also funding the rebuilding of the Al Nuri Mosque in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, which was an ISIS stronghold for three years. Abu Dhabi contributed US$50.4m to the five-year project.
Plans to rebuild the mosque and its famous “hunchback” Al Hadba minaret are already under way.
Foreign observers touring Raqqa after it was liberated from ISIS last year found their powers of description challenged by what was on display. Almost the entire city – home to nearly a quarter of a million people before the war – had been reduced to rubble. In a place that once hummed with life, the main landmark was the midtown traffic junction where ISIS staged its sadistic public executions. And mass graves and landmines were all that ISIS left behind when its fighters fled the capital of its so-called “Caliphate”. The civilians who have since trickled back into the city are still haunted by the reign of terror they endured. The destruction all around them doesn’t merely remind them of the recent past; it makes them physically captive to that past.
It is daunting even to contemplate reconstruction under existing circumstances. And yet rebuilding Raqqa is the only way to liberate it, psychologically, from ISIS. This is why the UAE’s pledge of $50 million on Thursday to help revive Raqqa – and other areas once under ISIS rule – is so crucial. Other potential donors have been deterred from acting by the ongoing conflict in Syria. But the UAE’s donation reminds them that there is an urgent need for intervention – that the obligation to aid the people of Raqqa cannot wait for the arrival of perfect circumstances. Announcing the pledge at Nato last week, Mohammed Al Bowardi, the UAE’s Minister of State for Defence, indicated that improving the living conditions in Raqqa will only enhance security.
Eradicating terrorism is rightly a top priority for the international community, but the focus should also extend to preventing its rise in the first place. Desperate conditions, after all, are ideal breeding grounds for militancy. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS found plenty of recruits among young men who had been abandoned by their governments. Walking away from a new generation, now that ISIS has militarily been vanquished as an organised force, would be a profound mistake – and could lead us to yet more nightmares. It is therefore important to learn from the past and invest generously in places ravaged by terrorism.
The historic monuments vandalised by ISIS were architectural expressions of our civilisation’s finest instincts and cultural sophistication. Re-erecting them, brick by brick, affirms our steely determination to preserve our heritage. The UAE’s grant of $50 million to rebuild Mosul’s Al Nuri Mosque, razed by ISIS as Iraqi forces advanced to liberate the city, is a case in point. As Noura Al Kaabi, the UAE’s Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development, has said, this is “an initiative that defeats extremism in all its facets. We don’t want to allow the destruction of the past and the present”. The two are inextricably connected.