The northern countryside of Homs in Syria is facing a similar fate as Daraa

 

 Suhail al-Ghazi:

 'The northern countryside of Homs holds great importance in the context of the Syrian civil war. The people of Homs city, known as the “capital of the Syrian revolution,” are tribally linked to its northern countryside and its strategic location connects the capital Damascus and Aleppo. Its provincial cities and towns have also participated in the demonstrations since the Syrian uprising in 2011.

 Residents and defectors from the Syrian army established armed groups to fight against the Bashar al-Assad régime in 2012 and controlled the area until 2018. The northern countryside of Homs witnessed increasing episodes of sectarian violence throughout the conflict. It was subjected to siege and bombing by the Assad régime from 2014 until its recapture and a subsequent reconciliation agreement in May 2018. But, recently, a series of attacks against régime forces and threats by régime commanders are exposing the region to a similar fate as Daraa governorate. In June 2018, locals in Daraa reached a similar reconciliation agreement with the régime, only for the Syrian army to launch a military attack against Daraa al-Balaad to fully capture it and force a new deal that allows the régime to enter all areas.



 In April 2018, after the Assad régime recaptured Eastern Ghouta, Syrian army forces headed to the northern countryside of Homs to retake control. Military operations began, accompanied by aerial bombardments that targeted civilians and civilian objects, including hospitals and schools—a common tactic used by the Assad régime against opposition-held areas, which also constitutes a war crime. After less than a month of intermittent fighting and negotiations, the Syrian army and a committee comprised of local figures, opposition commanders, and the Syrian al-Ghad Movement—an opposition political party led by former Syrian Coalition President Ahmad al-Jarba—reached a reconciliation agreement under Russian auspices in May 2018.

 The agreement displaced civilians and fighters who refused to stay and sign the reconciliation agreement; offered civilians and defectors six months before being required to join compulsory military service; banned Syrian régime forces entering the region for the first six months since recapture; and transformed the Jaish al-Tawhid faction, an armed opposition group from Talbise town, into a local police force under the command of the Russian military police. However, as with other instances, the Syrian army violated the terms of the agreement and entered the area earlier than agreed.

 Régime forces immediately started to arrest civilians following the former’s return to the northern countryside, including civil defense volunteers, defectors, and even members of the local reconciliation committee. After the reconciliation, Russia followed the same tactic in Daraa governorate by using former opposition fighters to its benefit. The Russian military police issued identification cards for the local auxiliary force after the fighters finished the settlement process. The auxiliary force was eventually dissolved and some fighters were either transferred to the Fifth Corps—a Russian-backed division of the Syrian army that consists of reconciled former opposition fighters—or went back to civilian life.

 Following the May 2018 reconciliation agreement, Iran-backed forces, such as the Fourth Division, expanded their presence in the northern countryside. The régime’s continued neglect of these areas in terms of services and reconstruction as well as continued human rights violations—such as arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances, and personal grievances cases filed by pro-régime locals, who accused opposition fighters of killing and kidnapping loved ones or destroying their properties—contributed to growing resentment against the Assad régime. Despite this so-called reconciliation agreement, several members of the reconciliation committee fled to Lebanon out of fear of being detained.



 In June 2019, a year after the Syrian army took control of the northern countryside, a channel on Telegram announced the establishment of a group calling itself “The Resistance Brigades in Homs.” The statement said that the group formed due to Russia’s failure to fulfill its obligations to the region and the régime’s use of conscripted youth in the battles in northwest Syria against opposition forces. The Resistance Brigades claimed nine attacks on régime forces between September 2019 and December 2020, targeting checkpoints and military bases.

 In October 2020, another armed group calling itself the “Brigades of 2011” announced that it would start carrying out attacks against the Syrian army, security services, and national defense militias—a local pro-régime militia affiliated with the security apparatus—in the northern countryside due to rights abuses committed by the régime in the region. In mid-November 2020, the armed group announced that they targeted a building belonging to state security in the city of Talbiseh in the northern countryside, a day before a scheduled celebration for the Baath Party. A statement published by the Brigades of 2011 said that the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases was the reason behind the attack. In May, while the country was preparing for the presidential elections, the armed group took credit for attacking an election celebration in the village of Farhaniya. Armed men on a motorcycle shot into the crowd, killing one person. Then, in July, the armed group again took credit for assassinating an army corporal at his home and assassinating another first lieutenant in mid-August.

 After these developments and, following the decision of the régime to send military reinforcements to the region, Major General Hossam Loqa, director of the General Intelligence Branch, met with local figures and the reconciliation committee in late August. Loqa threatened to launch a military operation unless the perpetrators involved in the attacks were handed over, in addition to handing over individual weapons and demanding six hundred personnel of Jaysh al-Tawhid for military service. Thus far, there has neither been a military operation nor a new settlement.



 The northern countryside of Homs is facing a scenario similar to Daraa, as the Assad régime has shown a lack of commitment to the settlement agreements signed by several regions across Syria, and countless human rights violations have continued. However, because the northern countryside of Homs is a tribal society and many army officers are from the area, especially Rastan—the biggest city in the northern countryside—the region may avoid a siege scenario like Daraa and a large-scale military operation if they reach an agreement with the Assad régime. This is partly because of the limited sleeper cell attacks against régime forces compared to those in Daraa governorate.

 Still, the Assad régime’s condition of six hundred young men joining conscription will be the biggest obstacle to implementing any agreement. This is yet another example of the so-called reconciliation agreement’s failure to bring stability and peace to Syria, as these agreements are built over destruction and rights abuses rather than any genuine and sustainable reconciliation. It is also another example of failed Russian promises to provide security for Syrians and how Moscow uses temporary reconciliation settlements as a step to execute its longer term, wider agenda in the country.'

Syrian exiles forced to prop up régime with fees for avoiding conscription

 

 'Early this year, Yousef, a 32-year-old Syrian living in Sweden, found himself faced with an impossible choice: either enlist in the army of the government that made him a refugee, or risk his family losing their home back in Syria.

 Military service is mandatory for Syrian men between the ages of 18 and 42, and the stakes rose significantly in February when an army official announced on Facebook that a new regulation would allow authorities to confiscate the property of “service evaders” and their families. Pressure was mounting on Yousef to decide.



 And so, in June, he made his way to the Syrian embassy in Stockholm with $8,000 (£5,876) in cash, ready to pay the fee to have his name taken off the conscription rolls. A shiver ran down his spine as he collected his receipt.

 “This money will be used by the Syrian régime to buy weapons and kill more people,” Yousef told the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), his voice trembling.

 He is far from alone. About a fifth of Syria’s population of 17 million are men of military age, according to data from the World Bank, and studies have shown that the threat of conscription is a major reason many refugees fear returning.

 The Syrian régime has been able to leverage this anxiety into revenue, harvesting foreign currency from the roughly 1 million Syrians who have settled in Europe to help prop up its ailing budget after US sanctions cut the country off from the international banking system last year.



 Syrian embassies, which used to only process paperwork for the military exemptions, have recently begun collecting cash payments. Two researchers, an airport official, and a former diplomat interviewed by OCCRP and the Syrian Investigative Reporting Unit (Siraj), said they suspected the cash made its way back to Syria via diplomatic pouch. Such a move would violate the 1961 Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, which says “packages constituting the diplomatic bag […] may contain only diplomatic documents or articles intended for official use.”

 Government documents and official statements show Bashar al-Assad’s government projected the policy would raise substantial income, revealing the lengths the Syrian government is going to in order to raise cash. Syria’s army, finance ministry, foreign ministry, central bank, and military recruitment service did not respond to requests for comment.

 The US sanctions implemented in 2020 under the Caesar Act have worsened an already difficult financial situation for Syria. Processing payments for vital imports such as wheat and oil products have become even harder as a result, and the Syrian pound, now worth barely 1% of its pre-crisis value against the dollar, has suffered further losses.

 “Shortage in foreign currency has become an acute problem, especially after the Caesar Act came into force,” said Armenak Tokmajyan, a researcher at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “The régime needs foreign currency. The more it has, the longer it will survive.”

 The government has leaned increasingly on its diaspora to fill its coffers. A Syrian passport is now one of the world’s most expensive to obtain abroad, at about £220 for a new passport, and about £600 to get it expedited.

 Syria’s 2021 budget projection predicts revenues from the military exemption fees to reach 240bn Syrian pounds (£140m), up from 70bn Syrian pounds in 2020, according to copies published in Syria’s Official Gazette.

 The estimated revenue makes up 3.2% of this year’s budget revenue, up from 1.75% in 2020, the Syrian economist Karam Shaar told OCCRP.

 Sweden illustrates how the new amendments have played out among Syria’s diaspora. The Scandinavian country hosts about 114,000 Syrian refugees and is home to tens of thousands of relatively new arrivals.

 Between June and August, OCCRP reporters made three visits to the Syrian embassy in Stockholm. They counted an average of 10 applicants a day waiting in the queue for military service exemption.

 Another hint of how many people were paying the exemption fees came a year earlier, in June 2020, when the embassy website published the names of 43 Syrians cleared to pay the fee. It is unclear exactly when those on the list applied, but for other procedures, such as passport issuance, the embassy usually issues its lists once a month. The June post was the last such public announcement.

 An embassy employee, speaking to an undercover OCCRP reporter, said he could not say exactly how many had applied for the service exemption, but that there had been a “significant increase” in the first half of 2021, which he attributed to the February announcement.

 “On some days, 10 come to us and on other days the figure can go up to 50,” the employee said. If accurate, this would mean the embassy could be taking in as much as $400,000 in cash on some days.

 OCCRP spoke with 10 Syrians, eight in Sweden, one in Germany, and one in Lebanon, who decided to pay the conscription fee. Some, like Yousef, were frightened by the prospect of asset seizures in Syria. But others had more practical reasons.

 One 29-year-old named Ali said he paid the fee at the encouragement of his family, who considered the payment to be “a form of direct participation in the Syrian war effort”.

 Gian, a Syrian who works at a home for elderly people in Frankfurt, Germany, said he had no issue in paying the money. “I am getting a monthly salary, the exemption process is easy, and I want to safeguard my family’s property in Syria from being seized,” Gian said. He said three relatives with asylum status in Germany also paid the fee.

 But many Syrians are still leery of funding the government they feel was responsible for sending them into exile.

 Abdullah Jaafar, a 35-year-old who has been living in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city, for eight years, said he saw the exemption payments as a kind of extortion.

 “I have the full amount, and I can pay it, but I will not do it,” Jaafar said. “This government is illegal.” '

Afrin attacks prove political solution with Assad régime impossible

 

 'The latest attacks by the Bashar Assad régime and its backer Russia on Syria’s northern Afrin prove that reaching a political solution with the régime is impossible, Abdurrahman Mustafa, head of the Syrian Interim Government said on Sunday.

 In a written statement, Mustafa said that in a dangerous escalation “confirming the continuity of the criminal approach of the régime and its allies against the Syrian people” warplanes targeted a school in the village of Barad, in the south of Afrin province, which lead to deaths as well as injuries.

 The attack also caused material damage to surrounding buildings, he added.

 “The crime adds to the criminal record of the murderous régime and its allies, and confirms the impossibility of reaching with them any political solution on the future of Syria,” Mustafa said.

 He also accused the international community of not being able to deter the regime from carrying out such attacks.



 Mustafa underlined that “the régime must be held accountable for all war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Syrian people.”

 Condemning the attack, Mustafa said that these acts will not undermine the determination of the Syrian people to achieve victory.

 The increasing attacks on Afrin and Idlib come ahead of a meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to take place in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

 Russia is the main ally of the Syrian régime, while Turkey supports groups that have fought to unseat Bashar Assad.'

The Assad Régime’s Business Model for Supporting the Islamic State

'The régime of Bashar al-Assad consistently supported the Islamic State (ISIS) when the group controlled significant amounts of territory, even as the régime struggled to retake control of Syrian territory from the various rebel groups engaged in the Syrian civil war, including ISIS. One key tactic of the régime’s strategy was to focus its military efforts against the moderate Syrian rebel groups opposing the Assad dictatorship, in particular the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and not the Islamic State group. Assad typically would be involved in any major decisions, and government officials would be wary of the consequences of making sensitive decisions or taking sensitive actions without Assad’s prior approval. It is therefore inconceivable that Syrian intelligence could have assisted, facilitated or tolerated ISIS operatives without prior decision-making at the highest levels of the Syrian government. The Syrian régime made this strategic decision to enable and facilitate the continued survival of the Islamic State in Syria in an effort to paint all of the Syrian opposition as “terrorists.”

 In May 2011, in the wake of some of the early Arab Spring protests in Syria, the Syrian government began to release hardline Islamist terrorists in the first of a series of official government amnesties. Decree No. 61, for example, issued in May 2011 covered “all members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other detainees belonging to political movements.” Several of the terrorists released in these first amnesties went on to head Islamist extremist groups in Syria, including Hassan Abboud, a founder of Ahrar al-Sham; Zahran Alloush, the commander of Jaysh al-Islam; and Ahmad `Aisa al-Shaykh, the commander of Suqour al-Sham, as well as senior figures in ISIS such as Ali Musa al-Hawikh (aka Abu Luqman). Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat with Syria’s foreign ministry who later defected to the opposition, told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 that “the fear of a continued, peaceful revolution is why these Islamists were released. The reasoning behind the jihadists, for Assad and the régime, is that they are the alternative to the peaceful revolution. They are organized with the doctrine of jihad and the West is afraid of them.”

 By housing the jihadists together in the notorious Sednaya prison before the rebellion, the régime effectively networked together formerly disparate and unconnected jihadists, who came to refer to themselves as Sednaya graduates. According to one released Sednaya jihadist, “when I was detained, I knew four or five or six, but when I was released I knew a hundred, or two or three hundred. I now had brothers in Hama and Homs and Daraa and many other places, and they knew me. It took only a few short weeks—weeks, not a month—for us, in groups of two or three, in complete secrecy, to start.”

 Beyond strategically and intentionally releasing jihadists from Syrian prisons, the Assad régime also frequently refrained from attacking ISIS positions. At times, the Assad régime and ISIS agreed to several evacuation deals, and sometimes the régime appeared to collude with ISIS in an effort to encourage the group to attack moderate rebels rather than the régime. In other cases, ISIS appeared to take actions favorable to Syrian government interests. For example, in July 2014, ISIS forces withdrew from the northern suburbs of Aleppo just as the Syrian régime was trying to outflank FSA forces in the city. The ISIS withdrawal enabled régime forces to take the city’s northern suburbs without firing a shot and then outflank FSA forces in the city from three sides.

 One reason the Assad régime may have elected not to target ISIS positions in Eastern Syria was the régime’s business dealings with the organization. The U.S. State Department has stated unequivocally that “the Syrian régime has purchased oil from ISIS through various intermediaries, adding to the terrorist group’s revenue.” This started around 2014, when ISIS seized control of the Deir al-Zour region of Eastern Syria, and gained control of more than 60 percent of the country’s oil fields, including Syria’s largest, the al-Omar oil field. By September 2014, ISIS’s daily income from oil from Iraqi and Syrian oil fields was estimated to total some $3 million a day, with sales of around 50,000 barrels a day in Syria alone.

 Reports emerged in 2015 that the Islamic State was selling at least some of its oil to the Syrian government. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, in 2014 “ISIL may have earned as much as several million dollars per week, or $100 million in total, from the sale of oil and oil products to local smugglers who, in turn, sell them to regional actors, notably the Asad régime.” In March 2015, the European Union blacklisted prominent Syrian businessperson George Haswani, explaining that “Haswani provides support and benefits from the régime through his role as a middleman in deals for the purchase of oil from ISIL by the Syrian régime.” Meanwhile, according to a Financial Times investigation, there were reports that Haswani’s company, HESCO, “sends ISIS 15m Syrian lira (about $50,000) every month to protect its equipment, which is worth several million dollars.” Haswani’s son denied this but confirmed that ISIS did, in fact, “partly” run the company’s Tuweinan gas plant.

 The Assad régime’s business dealings with ISIS did not end with oil and gas, however. The régime also purchased and sold grain from areas under ISIS control. Samer Foz, a Syrian businessman blacklisted by the European Union in 2019 for providing financing and other support to the Assad régime, reportedly transported grain from Syrian government-controlled areas to territory controlled by ISIS. According to other reports, he also moved wheat from ISIS-controlled areas through Turkey into Syrian régime-controlled territory.

 The Syrian régime also supported the financing of ISIS by allowing Syrian banks to continue to function and provide financial services within ISIS-held territory. In a report on ISIS financing issued in February 2015, the Financial Action Task Force—the multinational body that develops and promotes policies to counter illicit financial activities—found that “more than 20 Syrian financial institutions with operations in ISIS-held territory” continued to do business there. Moreover, these bank branches remained “connected to their headquarters in Damascus; and some of them may maintain links to the international financial system.”

 The Assad régime also looked the other way and allowed ISIS to conduct financial transactions through informal financial networks, even once these illicit terror-financing channels were publicly exposed. For example, in April, September and November 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department designated a series of ISIS financial facilitators and money service businesses that had been enabling ISIS activities in Syria and beyond. But the Syrian government took no action against these publicly outed ISIS financial intermediaries, which continued to function unmolested.

 The ISIS financial networks in question were not insignificant, making the Syrian government’s decision not to act against them, even once their activities became public, all the more galling. They included, for example, the ISIS “general financial manager” Abd-al-Rahman Ali Husayn al-Ahmad al-Rawi, who according to information released in the Treasury Department press release announcing his designation in April 2019, “was one of a few individuals who provided ISIS significant financial facilitation into and out of Syria.” Moreover, “Abd-al-Rahman had a hard-currency liquidity of several million dollars in Syria. He served as ISIS’s general financial manager, and prior to his relocation to Turkey, he traveled around Syria on behalf of the group.”

 The territorial defeat of ISIS, coupled with the relative increase of the Syrian régime’s strength, means the group’s utility to Damascus has largely run its course. ISIS cells primarily attacked régime-aligned forces in the Badia (the Syrian desert) in 2020, régime forces have carried out operations targeting ISIS forces rather than letting them relocate as before, and the group has become even more reliant on illicit money service businesses in the region to transfer funds internationally.

 While ISIS remains an insurgent threat in Iraq and Syria and a global threat as a terrorist network, it no longer controls significant territory and the risk it poses is a fraction of what it once was. But there is no clear global coalition—political or military—to address the threat posed by the Assad régime, which has killed exponentially more people than ISIS, facilitated the group’s terrorist activities, and caused population displacement, migration flows, and tremendous regional instability. The international community stepped up to the challenge of ISIS, but it has failed miserably to address the multifaceted challenges presented by the Assad régime, let alone address the calamity that is the Assad régime itself.'