DARAA, Syria (North Press) – Islamic State (ISIS) seems to be reappearing in Daraa Governorate, southern Syria, following series of murders against people accused of affiliation with the terrorist group.
A video went viral on social media showing people admitting to affiliation with ISIS before being killed.
On August 17, a local source told North Press, “Syrian government forces handed over the body of Muhammad Rabie Sayel al-Idodat, nicknamed as Hamodeh Tasil, to his family after he was tortured to death in the prison.”
Al-Idodat was arrested on August 8 at a military checkpoint of the government between the towns of Dael and Tafas in the western countryside of Daraa.
Days prior to his murder, he appeared in two videos went viral on social media in which he talked about his affiliation with ISIS, and that he assassinated former opponents and a number of members of the Central Committee of the government forces.
The Central Committee in Daraa consists of anti-government activists, lawyers, sheikhs, and former opposition leaders who engaged in Russian-brokered reconciliations with the Syrian government in 2018.
Prior to that, Muhammad Ahmad al-Hallaq, known as Abu Omar al-Jababi, was found dead close to al-Shimeri Refinery in the north of the town of Mizerib, west of Daraa.
At the time, an eyewitness told North Press that al-Hallaq, who comes from the city of Jabab in the north of Daraa, was a lieutenant before deserting the government forces and joining the opposition and then ISIS in the Yarmuk Valley in 2016.
In a video on social media, al-Hallaq showed admitting his affiliation with the group and his responsibility for the murder of Abu al-Baraa al-Jalam, member of the Central Committee in the city of Jassem in the northern countryside of Daraa.
50-60 militants
Hussam al-Berm, a journalist, affirmed that the number of ISIS militants in Daraa according to recent data do not exceed 50-56, in addition to ten leaders.
Al-Berm indicated that “The regime that gradually released ISIS’s leaders between 2018-2020, does not fight the group.”
“The regime armed and inserted them into a number of militias and groups loyal to the Military Security Branch and the Fourth Division, and it facilitated their armament by its military checkpoints”, al-Berm added.
Al-Berm pointed out that “The Syrian regime and ISIS are not different regarding radicalism as a principle.”
On August 9, local militants and soldiers of the Syrian government besieged Abu Salem al-Iraqi, one of ISIS’s leader who refused to surrender, blew himself up with an explosive belt in a house which claimed the life of the young man Yahya Muhammad al-Hamed, a former member of the Syrian opposition, according to a local source.
A member of the Central Committee, who preferred not to be named, agrees that the group did not end in southern Syria.
However, he notes that the group is “so limited” in Daraa contrary to what is claims of having militants and emirs carrying out operation adopted by the groups.
From the viewpoint of the member of the Central Committee, most militants of ISIS in Daraa are remnants of drug dealers, criminals and wanted people by the locals and some by the Syrian government.
ISIS Iranian-Syrian product
In 2018 the Syrian government transferred all ISIS militants from its last bastion in the Yarmuk Valley in the west of Daraa in buses.
However, before that, and according to member of the Central Committee “the Air Force Security and the Political Security Branches of the Syrian regime arrested 200-300 militants to be released after months and a large number are recruited in favour of these branches.”
He believes that militants and leaders of the group arrive in southern Syria “in convoys of Lebanese Hezbollah or Security Office of the Fourth Division of the government forces” in return for large amounts of money that in some cases reach $2.000.
Ali al-Hariri, 58, a pseudonym for a Daraa notable, said “ISIS is a Syrian-Iranian product that moves in due times, notably with the recession of the role of Russia in southern Syria.”
He added that “The card of ISIS and Iranian-backed militias played by Iran is to threaten the regional powers around Syria such as Israel, Jordan and the Gulf states to gain in the nuclear file.”
“The Assad regime deploys ISIS to terrify Christians, Druze and Alawites and other sects in Syria,” playing its collapse would lead to ISIS’s rule of Syria, according to the notable.