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Syria opposition groups hold talks with Russia outside Ghouta

January 10, 2018 at 2:18 pm

A member of opposition forces fires from a building during a clash after Assad Regime hit a de-conflict zone in the Eastern Ghouta region of Damascus, Syria on 24 July, 2017 [Ammar El Bushy/Anadolu Agency]

Syrian opposition groups under siege in the Damascus neighbourhood of Eastern Ghouta have resorted to talks with government ally Russia, according to Reuters.

Whilst the meetings with Russian officials in the no man’s land between Syrian regime forces and opposition groups have not been beneficial to the besieged fighters so far, they say they have little choice.

“It’s better to negotiate with the one calling the shots, which is Russia, than with the regime,” said Wael Olwan, spokesman for the Failaq Al-Rahman group. “So the factions are forced to sit down with them. This is the reality.”

Russia says that it routinely holds peace talks with armed factions across the country, but all of the operating factions in Ghouta have accused Moscow of not honouring ceasefire agreements and ignoring the ongoing bombing being carried out by the Syrian regime and its allied forces.

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“We send them [Russia] documentation of how the aircraft drops missiles on residential areas. Either there is silence … or baseless excuses,” Hamza Birqdar, a military spokesman for the Jaish Al-Islam fighters, told reporters.

“They say government authorities denied bombing. Then these planes flying over the Ghouta, who do they belong to?” he asked.

The suspicion of Russian involvement is echoed by Olwan, but he says Syrian groups have no alternative due to the severity of the situation of civilians in Ghouta.

“In reality, Russia has never been honest in its support of the political track. But with the failure of the international community … the factions were forced to negotiate with the enemy,” he said. “We don’t see them as mediators. We see them as the final commander in the regime’s ranks.”

Eastern Ghouta is one of four de-escalation zones established in May by Russia, Iran and Turkey in order to stem the bloodshed of Syria’s six-year civil war. However, the region has been subjected to intensified air strikes from the Syrian regime in recent months, despite such attacks being expressly forbidden by the terms of the agreement.

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Ten children were among 24 people killed in strikes on the neighbourhood yesterday, amid an official visit from the UN’s humanitarian chief to Damascus to assess the situation. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has estimated that some 132 people have been killed as a result of ten days of consecutive bombardment since 29 December 2017.

The province is also suffering from a tightening of the blockade imposed since 2013, after an offensive by the Syrian regime earlier this year cut underground smuggling routes that formerly allowed civilians access to food, fuel and medicine. Some 400,000 civilians have been left struggling to survive.

Following a plea from the UN for the Syrian regime to allow the 500 most severe medical casualties to evacuate Ghouta, President Bashar Al-Assad allowed aid agencies to transport patients to Damascus at the end of last month. However, the evacuations were deemed complete less than a week later after only 29 patients had been moved.

In November an aid convoy from the UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent arrived in Eastern Ghouta, bringing aid for 40,000 people for the first time since June 2016. A week later, Amnesty International released a report on the Syrian government’s strategy of “surrender or starve” towards civilian populations in opposition controlled areas, concluding that the Ghouta siege amounts to crimes against humanity.

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