Many were killed, some were imprisoned, still others returned their jackets or fled. Of all the rebel leaders who had made southern Syria one of the main strongholds of the anti-Assad uprising, Ahmed Al-Awda is one of the last still active. Although pro-government forces redeployed in this region two years ago, after a lightning offensive carried out with a lot of Russian bombing, this portly forty-something, entrenched in Bosra Al-Cham, an agricultural village close to the border Jordanian, continues to stand up to Damascus. And this, despite its paradoxical allegiance to the Russian allies of the regime.
At the end of June, during the funeral of nine of his men, killed in the explosion of the bus in which they were traveling, Al-Awda announced the imminent creation of an army in Hauran, the volcanic plateau which makes up the southern tip of the Syria and whose capital is Daraa, the cradle of the 2011 revolution. “This training will not only protect the Hauran, but will also be the most powerful tool to protect Syria,” he then declared, in implicit defiance of the Assad regime. We will not give up our weapons before victory. The fight has only just begun ”, he added to the cheers of his supporters.
Behind this bravado speech, there is a completely unique political situation in Syria today. The province of Daraa, although considered, since the summer of 2018, as reconquered by the loyalists, in fact looks like a gray area, oscillating between sedition and submission. The regular army has certainly regained control of the border with the Hashemite kingdom and of the governorate’s main lines of communication. In many towns and villages, state institutions have made a comeback and the flag of the Syrian regime has replaced the banner of the revolution.
But several localities, such as Bosra Al-Cham and the old center of Daraa, have managed to retain a form of autonomy. These areas remained under the control of the rebel factions which held them until then, in exchange for their surrender, the abandonment of their heavy weapons and the integration of their men in units dedicated to the fight against what. it remains of the Islamic State organization. This separate status, guaranteed by Russia, has dissuaded most of Hauran’s anti-Assad fighters from taking refuge in Idlib, the last stronghold of the insurgency, in the northwest corner of Syria, where thousands of Routed rebels, coming from Aleppo or the Damascus suburbs, failed.
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