WASHINGTON/DAMASCUS: The US has warned Damascus it will take “firm” action if the government of Bashar al Assad violates a ceasefire deal, after Syrian aircraft dropped leaflets on a southern province ahead of an expected offensive. Residents of Daraa said on Friday that several different leaflets were scattered across the province, which has borders with Israel and Jordan and is expected to be among the next targets in the resurgent regime’s reconquest. One of them, seen by a journalist contributing to AFP in the city of Daraa, includes a picture showing lined up bodies, presumably of anti-government fighters.
“This is the inevitable fate of anyone who insists on carrying arms,” reads the leaflet. The US State Department issued a statement late on Friday saying it was “concerned” by the reports and that the area in question was within the boundaries of a de-escalation zone it had negotiated with Russia and Jordan last year. “We also caution the Syrian regime against any actions that risk broadening the conflict or jeopardise the ceasefire,” said spokeswoman Heather Nauert, adding that the ceasefire had been re-affirmed by President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Vietnam in November.
“As a guarantor of this de-escalation area with Russia and Jordan, the United States will take firm and appropriate measures in response to Assad regime violations,” she added.
Syrian regime and allied forces on Monday retook the Yarmuk area in southern Damascus, giving President Bashar al Assad full control of the capital and its surroundings for the first time since 2012.
Meanwhile, Syria’s army issued orders to return home for men conscripted for compulsory service in 2010, the year before war broke out, fighters and local media said on Saturday.
The decision ends the drawn-out deployment of thousands of Syrians who enlisted for the mandatory 18 months of military service in 2010, but who ended up serving for eight years because of the war.
Al Watan, a Syrian daily close to the government, reported that the army had “issued a decision to demobilise the officers and reservists of Recruitment Class 102 as of June 1, 2018”.
The decision comes in the wake of a string of military gains around the capital Damascus and in the central province of Homs.
Mohammad, 27, has been serving for eight consecutive years after enlisting in 2010, but will finally go home next month.
“I feel like I just won a huge battle,” said Mohammad, who hails from Syria’s second city Aleppo.
“I called my family this morning and told my mom to congratulate me as I’d been discharged. She was surprised and didn’t know what to say,” he told this agency from Damascus, where he is now deployed.
Before Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011, men 18 and older had to serve between 18 months and two years in the armed forces, after which they remained part of the reserves.
But when war broke out, anyone enlisted remained deployed on active duty. The regime initially lost swathes of territory and its 300,000-strong army was nearly halved by deaths, injuries and defections. — AFP
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