In late October, the Syrian government decided to disband the General Authority for National Reconciliation, which was established in 2018 with the supposed aim of resolving the country’s multi-year conflict through settlements and reconciliation with opposition figures. Through reconciliation, the Syrian government has gone from controlling less than a third of Syria to over 63%.
What exactly does the end of reconciliation mean for Syria and the opposition, and what are the long-term effects of reconciliation? Will it lead to long-term peace? Why are so many of those who made settlements being arrested and killed? North Press spoke to two experts from Syria’s south on the reconciliation system and its ramifications for the Syrian conflict.
Peace was never an option
Outwardly, the reconciliation system seemed to have been a way to cease conflict and pave the way for peaceful negotiations. Indeed, the system enabled the regime to neutralize many armed factions that could have toppled the government altogether. However, many observers see its sinister nature.
“We cannot believe that Bashar Assad, when he went through the system of reconciliations and settlements, hoped to achieve societal peace,” Daraa-based political affairs expert and human rights activist Walid al-Bedran told North Press. Al-Bedran firmly believes that the entire reconciliation process was simply a way for Assad and his allies to brag about facilitating peace.
“The aim of the reconciliations is to avoid Syrians’ rightful demands for justice and equality,” Syrian Democratic Coordinator Samir Azzam told North Press. Azzam goes on to explain that the entire system of settlements and reconciliations is a Russian tactical plan agreed to by Turkey and Iran and the Syrian regime in order avoid finding a real political solution to the Syrian crisis in accordance with UN Resolution 2254, which calls for a peaceful political solution to the conflict.
Further exposing the regime’s lack of desire for a peaceful solution is the fact that “reconciliations were taking place in Daraa under the constant bombardment of the Russian air force,” which tilted the negotiations in the favor of the regime from the start, according to al-Bedran.
“Kill the creditor and get rid of the debt”
It is obvious that almost immediately after reconciliations began, the Syrian regime began turning on those who had made settlements with the government.
Al-Bedran stated that since the settlement agreement in 2018, nearly 1,172 civil and military activists and dissidents have been arrested, and 54 detainees have been tortured to death in regime prisons in Daraa governorate. He explains that the number of missing and murdered individuals is likely much higher, as many families are afraid to report their loved ones missing for fear of reprisals from the government.
Azzam adds that the arrests and murders of these individuals should come as no surprise, as the reconciliation was always a short-term tactical plan never intending to solve the conflict in a peaceful manner. “The only way for Russia and the regime to evade its responsibilities is by killing the signatories to [the reconciliations], in the manner of ‘kill the creditor and get rid of the debt’,” he said.
“The Syrian government, in the next stage, does not wish to keep alive those who rose up against it,” al-Bedran explains, as those who made settlements with the government “constitute an intellectual burden and an existential danger” because they could potentially reorganize, leading to more uprisings in the future.
Suwayda and Daraa: Neighbors pitted against one another
Suwayda and Daraa, two of Syria’s southern-most provinces, were neighboring regions that enjoyed a mostly friendly and harmonious relationship before intervention by Russia and the Syrian regime soured ties between the two, according to both Azzam and al-Bedran.
Azzam, who is himself from Suwayda, says that “Suwayda has received hundreds of thousands of displaced people of Daraa…and they have lived among us as brothers and sisters for years.”
So why are there now clashes between groups from Daraa and Suwayda? The analysts explain that the answer lies in Russia’s “divide-and-conquer” strategy. According to al-Bedran, Suwayda largely refused to participate on either side of the Syrian civil war, and Daraa actively rose up against the regime. “Therefore, fueling the fighting between them relieves the Syrian government of confronting them and the losses it suffers,” he explains.
Azzam adds that opposition militants from Daraa who reconciled with the government joined the Russian-backed Fifth Corps, who have recently been involved in fierce clashes with independent militias in Suwayda. Russia is currently using the Fifth Corps “to subjugate [Suwayda] to the regime’s authority, so that Russia could explore for oil in the province’s lands,” according to Azzam, who clarifies that Suwayda is rich in both oil and high-purity silicon.
To further complicate matters, the regime seems to only care about Damascus and Aleppo, and has “transformed the rest of Syria into a market for raw materials at low prices, a source of manpower at low wages, and a market for selling the products of the two centers,” according to Azzam, meaning that the regime has little motivation to care about solving crises in the southern governorates.
Looking towards the future
“The immediate and long-term effects of the reconciliations will not affect the interests of Russia, Turkey, and, to a lesser degree, Iran’s interests,” Azzam says. “The reconciliations have stopped the war in the regions that reconciled, but did not resolve the crisis.”
“A deep crisis of this size and complexity, which led to the deaths and injury of millions of Syrians…is not a quarrel between two tribes to be solved by reconciliation,” Azzam elaborates, adding that the conflict requires a political solution which leads to social, economic, and political equality between all Syrian communities.
“The reconciliation and settlement committees that achieved the instructions assigned to them have become a scorched and useless paper for the current situation of Syria,” says al-Bedran. As for the possibility of a future Syria formed on coexistence and dialogue between different communities, al-Bedran says: “Assad and his family have no place in it.”