Hezbollah, Syria Army Make Gains in Qalamoun

Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Syrian army have gained ground against insurgents in the mountains north of Damascus on Wednesday, consolidating Assad’s control over the border zone, Reuters reports.

The gains in the Qalamoun region against groups including al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra follow a string of defeats for Assad in recent weeks, notably the province of Idlib in the northwest at the border with Turkey.

Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite militant group and key ally of President Assad, has sent hundreds of fighters into Syria to assist government forces in the four-year conflict and has played a key role in the battle for Qalamoun, a strategic area within Syria that straddles the Syria-Lebanon border. “Hezbollah fighters and the army seized Talat Moussa, the highest peak in the area targeted in the offensive. Sources briefed on the situation said that move had effectively secured control of the entire area some 50 km (30 miles) from Damascus,” Reuters reports.

Jihadist militants, including Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, entrenched there have continued to launch offensives inside Lebanon, including an attack in August 2014 in which fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State group briefly seized the eastern Lebanese town of Arsal and kidnapped several dozen members of the Lebanese security forces.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State seized control over a strategically located town in central Syria’s Homs, in clashes that killed dozens of militants and regime forces in and around the town of al-Sukhna, Agence France-Presse reports.

Al-Sukhna lies on the highway that leads from eastern Deir Ezzor province, an ISIS stronghold, to the ancient regime-controlled town of Palmyra. Homs, Syria’s largest province, neighbors Damascus province and is divided between regime control in the provincial capital, and opposition and ISIS hold in large parts of the surrounding countryside and desert.

“It is also home to the key Shaar gas field, which is now back in government hands after ISIS fighters overran it last year, reportedly slaughtering several hundred soldiers there,” Agence France-Presse writes.

Investigators Claim They Have War Crimes Case Against Assad

Investigators and lawyers have compiled war crimes cases against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and 24 senior regime officials with government documents smuggled out of the country in a three-year operation, the Guardian reports.

The evidence has been compiled for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), made up of investigators and legal experts who previously worked on war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

CIJA has already built three cases against the regime largely based on government documents smuggled out of Syria by a team of 50 Syrian investigators “who had risked their lives to collect the evidence that now runs to around half a million pages.”

“The regime’s mania for documenting orders as they travel down the chain of command – and after-actions reports that flow back upwards – has meant that the paper trail led unexpectedly to the very center of power in Damascus,” the Guardian reports.

“The Assad regime has committed thousands of atrocities against the Syrian people since the start of the conflict,” CIJA said in a statement. The group is also building up possible war crimes cases against rebel groups fighting Assad, including extremist militant groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS.

The U.N. has detailed a gruesome array of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes by the Syrian regime, Islamic State fighters and other armed opposition groups over the course of the Syrian conflict, however attempts to refer Syria to the ICC have been repeatedly blocked by Assad allies Russia and China.

Syrian Armed Opposition Groups Reject U.N. Invitat

Syrian Armed Opposition Groups Reject U.N. Invitation

Syrian armed opposition groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad have rejected an invitation to participate in low-level consultations with the United Nation’s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, instead sending him a letter stating their position, Reuters reports.

The U.N. launched wide-ranging consultations in Geneva last week with domestic and regional players, including Iran, in a bid to revive stalled talks to end the Syrian conflict.

The letter from 30 opposition armed groups to the U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura accused him of abandoning his neutrality and “standing on the side of one party without the other.”

“Your positions and your statements, especially your statement that Bashar al-Assad is part of the solution in Syria, have shown and given us a clear impression of your indifference toward the massacres that the regime is committing,” the letter read.

The armed opposition groups had been expected to hold talks with de Mistura – who had described the consultations as a stock-taking process, saying there would be no big roundtable discussions and that his goal was to find a way to “operationalize” the Geneva Communiqué, a document that set out a plan for a political transition in Syria but which left unresolved the future role of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

But the armed groups said the Communiqué “did not refer clearly to the departure of Assad and his regime, with all its symbols and pillars,” which it said was the crucial basis for “any supposed solution process.”

It also rejected De Mistura’s decision to invite Iran to take part in the consultations process, claiming it was occupying Syria.

De Mistura is planning to hold individual meetings with “a broad spectrum of youth, political and military actors, women, victims, civil society, diaspora, religious and community leaders and more,” as well as with representatives from 20 countries, over the next 6-8 weeks.

Recommended Reads

• Associated Press: Flag Dispute Sparks Divisions, Mistrust in Syria Opposition
• The Washington Post: A New Cooperation on Syria
• Agence France-Presse: Investigators Say Have War Crimes Case on Syria’s Assad
• Reuters: Syrian Opposition Armed Groups Reject U.N. Invitation
• Agence France-Presse: Syria Security Chief Appears with Assad After Arrest Claim