European Asylum Support Office

EASO COI Meeting ReportSyria

30 November & 1 December 2017
Valletta, Malta

March 2018SUPPORT IS OUR MISSION

European Asylum Support Office

EASO COI Meeting ReportSyria

30 November & 1 December 2017
Valletta, Malta

March 2018

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EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

— 3

Acknowledgements
EASO would like to acknowledge the members of the EASO COI Specialist Network on Syria
for their active contributions and participation. EASO would also like to thank the following
external experts and organisations for their presentations:
Christopher Kozak, Institute for the Study of War
Esther van Eijk, Maastricht University
Fabrice Balanche, University of Lyon 2 and Hoover Institution, Stanford University
UNHCR

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EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 3
Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... 4
Disclaimer .................................................................................................................................. 5
Glossary and Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... 6
Introduction............................................................................................................................. 10
Map of Syria............................................................................................................................. 11
1. Security situation (C. Kozak, ISW) ................................................................................... 12
1.1
Overview of Current Conflict Trends ..................................................................... 12
1.2
Local De-Escalation Zones / Administrations ......................................................... 16
1.2.1 Southern Syria Ceasefire Zone........................................................................... 16
1.2.2 Operation Euphrates Shield (OES) Zone ............................................................ 17
1.2.3 Damascus Local Ceasefire Deals ........................................................................ 19
1.2.4 Greater Idlib Province ........................................................................................ 21
1.3
Future of Syria as a Functional State?.................................................................... 24
2. Pro-Assad forces (C. Kozak, ISW) .................................................................................... 25
2.1
Syrian Arab Ba’ath Party ........................................................................................ 25
2.2
Syrian Intelligence Services .................................................................................... 26
2.3
Syrian Arab Army (SAA).......................................................................................... 27
2.4
Pro-Regime paramilitaries ..................................................................................... 29
2.5
Pro-regime foreign intervention ............................................................................ 32
2.6
Pro-regime foreign fighters.................................................................................... 34
2.7
Locating specific units and identifying command structures ................................ 37
Question and Answer .......................................................................................................... 37
3. Family law (E. van Eijk).................................................................................................... 42
3.1
Family law in Syria: Historical developments......................................................... 42
3.2
Family law in Syria: A plural legal landscape.......................................................... 43
3.3
Marriage ................................................................................................................. 46
3.4
Dissolution of marriage .......................................................................................... 49
3.5Child custody .......................................................................................................... 51
3.6
Question and Answer ............................................................................................. 51
4. New protection considerations for Syria (UNHCR)......................................................... 52
5. Situation in Kurdish areas/Rojava (F. Balanche) ............................................................. 53
5.1 Military, sectarian, and administrative divisions .......................................................... 53
5.2
Qamishli ................................................................................................................. 58
5.3
Hasakah .................................................................................................................. 61
5.4
Question and Answer ............................................................................................. 62
6. Socio-economic aspects of the conflict (F. Balanche) .................................................... 67
Question and Answer .......................................................................................................... 81
Annex: Reading suggestions from speakers ............................................................................ 83

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017— 5Disclaimer
This meeting report has been drafted by EASO on the basis of presentations, discussions, andparticipants’ notes to highlight the main content of the meeting and does not purport toreflect the entire proceedings. Content from the meeting has been adapted for readability
and usability within this report. Variations in style, terminology, and spellings used bydifferent speakers may also appear.
The external speakers validated the information in this report and have given their consent tobe quoted publicly from this report. Information provided by an external speaker in this report
should be cited under the name of the speaker and the context in which it was delivered. For
example:[Name of speaker], EASO (European Asylum Support Office), COI Meeting Report –Country name, Meeting date, Location, publication date, url.
Maps and graphics used in this publication are the intellectual property of the respective
individual speakers or creators, and are reproduced here with permission and credit.
Any opinions expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the individual speakers
and do not represent the official position of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).
Furthermore, this report is not conclusive as to the determination or merit of any particular
claim for international protection. Terminology used should not be regarded as indicative ofa particular legal position.
‘Refugee’, ‘risk’ and similar terminology are used as a generic terminology and not as legallydefined in the EU Asylum Acquis and the 1951 Refugee Convention.
Neither EASO nor any person acting on its behalf may be held responsible for the use which
may be made of the information contained in this report.
The target users for this report are asylum caseworkers, COI researchers, policymakers, anddecision-making authorities.

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EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Glossary and Abbreviations
AQ

Al-Qaeda; militant Sunni Salafist Jihadist armed group active
internationally; HTS is its affiliate in Syria

Ahrar al-ShamSunni Salafist Jihadist armed group active in Syria, particularly Idlib
Province; historical ‘partner’ of HTS in Syria

Ba’ath Party(Syria)Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party; the ruling political party in Syria headed by
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Hasakah

Al-Hasakah; the name of both a governorate and its capital city;
located in the furthest north-east corner of Syria

Daesh

Also referred to as Islamic State (IS), Islamic State of Iraq and theLevant (ISIL), Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS); Sunni Salafist
Jihadist extremist group active internationally

DFNS

Democratic Federation of Northern Syria; also called Rojava in
Kurdish; the defacto autonomous region in Northern Syria composedof three cantons - Afrin, Kobane, and Cizire (Jazira) - and led by the
Syrian Kurdish PYD

Faylaq al-Rahman

Sunni Islamist armed opposition group active in Eastern Ghouta
outside Damascus; rival of Salafist Jihadist group Jaysh al Islam

Fiqh

Islamic jurisprudence; the Hanafi school is prevalent in Syria; Hanafi is
Sunni fiqh and underlies the Syrian Law on Personal Status (SLPS)FSAFree Syrian Army; a loose umbrella coalition of armed oppositiongroups against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Harakat alNujaba

Iraqi Shia Islamist armed militant group backed by Iran and active on
behalf of Assad in Syria

Hezbollah

Lebanese Hezbollah; Lebanese Shia Islamist armed militant groupbacked by Iran and active on behalf of Assad in Syria

HNDZ

Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki; Sunni Islamist armed opposition group
active in Northern Syria; former component of HTS

HTS

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham; Sunni Salafist Jihadist armed militant group;
formal affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Syria

Iranian Corridor

Iran’s strategy to build a ground line of communication from the Iranto the Mediterranean via allied groups in Iraq and Syria

IRGC

Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; branch of the Iranian
Armed Forces charged with defending the Islamic Revolution; active
on behalf of Assad in Syria

Jaysh al-Islam

Sunni Salafist Jihadist armed opposition group active in Eastern
Ghouta outside Damascus; rival of Faylaq al-Rahman

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

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Kata’ib Hezbollah

Iraqi Shia Islamist armed militant group backed by Iran and active on
behalf of Assad in Syria; designated foreign terrorist organization by
the US State Department

Kobani

Also referred to as Ayn al-Arab; majority-Kurdish town in Aleppo
Governorate on the Syrian-Turkish Border

Liwa Fatimiyoun

Afghan Shia Islamist armed militant group recruited, trained, andfunded by Iran to fight on behalf of Assad in Syria

Liwa Zeinabiyoun

Pakistani Shia Islamist armed militant group recruited, trained, andfunded by Iran to fight on behalf of Assad in Syria

LSY

Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade; affiliate of IS/Daesh in Southern Syria; now
referred to as Jaysh Khalid ibn al-Walid

Mukhala‘adivorce

Divorce by ‘mutual consent’; wife initiatedMukhabarat

Arabic term for ‘intelligence’; usually refers to the Syrian intelligence
services

NDF

National Defence Forces; national umbrella organisation of irregular
pro-regime fighters trained by Iran and Hezbollah

OES

Operation Euphrates Shield; a defacto ‘safe zone’ created by Turkey
as a buffer and base of operations in Northern Syria

Peshmerga

Kurdish military forces of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq
(KRI) under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)

PFLP-GC

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command;
Palestinian armed militant group active on behalf of Assad in Syria

PKK

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK); a Kurdish armed militant groupfighting an active insurgency in Turkey; also active in Syria, Iraq, and
Iran

PLA

Palestinian Liberation Army; an affiliate unit of the Syrian Arab Army
(SAA) conscripted from Palestinian-Syrians

PMU/PMF

Popular Mobilisation Units/Popular Mobilisation Forces; nationalumbrella organization of irregular fighters mobilized by theGovernment of Iraq; dominated by Iraqi Shia Islamist armed militantgroups backed by Iran; some components active on behalf of Assad in
Syria

PYD

Democratic Union Party; dominant Syrian Kurdish political party thatmaintains armed wing in the Syrian Kurdish YPG; affiliated with the
PKK

Qutaa System

A military administrative system created by former Syrian President
Hafez al-Assad whereby combat divisions are assigned specificgeographical sectors (qutaa) and population centers with wide
discrentionary powers granted to military commanders; designed to8—

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

subvert defections by giving officers free reign to extract patronage
from their assigned qutaa
RojavaDemocratic Federation of Northern Syria; also called Rojava in
Kurdish; the defacto autonomous region in Northern Syria composedof three cantons - Afrin, Kobane, and Cizire (Jazira) - and led by the
Syrian Kurdish PYD

SAA

Syrian Arab Army; formal land forces of the Syrian Armed Forces

SDF

Syrian Defense Forces; umbrella organization of armed groups active
against IS/Daesh in Syria led by the Syrian Kurdish YPG; backed by the
U.S. Anti-ISIS Coalition

ShabihaMembers of historical Syrian Alawite criminal networks on the Syrian
Coast; leveraged by Assad to forcibly disrupt protests at the start of
the Syrian Revolution; used as a blanket derogatory term by
opposition to refer to all irregular pro-regime forces

Shammar Tribe

Sunni Arab tribe located in Northern Syria along the Syrian-Iraqi
Border; close partnership with the Syrian Kurdish PYD

shariashar’iyya; Islamic law

Sheikh Maqsood

Majority-Kurdish neighbourhood of Aleppo City controlled by the
Syrian Kurdish YPG

SIG

Syrian Interim Government; the alternative government-in-exile of
Syria formed by an umbrella of political opposition groups; based in
TurkeySLPS

Syrian Law of Personal Status of 1953; regulates family law in Syria

SootoroRegional irregular armed group in Hasakah Governorate; composed of
local ethnic Assyrians and Christians supportive of Assad in Syria

SotoroRegional irregular armed group in Hasakah Governorate; composed of
local ethnic Assyrians and Christians supportive of the Syrian Kurdish
PYD; also referred to as Sutoro

Suqour al-Sahara

Desert Hawks; former irregular armed group supportive of Assad in
Syria backed by wealthy Syrian Alawites

talaq

Unilateral divorce in Islam; only available to men

Tel Abyad

Majority-Sunni Arab town and district in Raqqa Governorate on the
Syrian-Turkish Border‘urfi marriages

Unregistered customary marriages in Islam

YPG

People’s Protection Units; Syrian Kurdish irregular armed group active
in Northern Syria; armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish PYD

YPJWomen’s Protection Units; Syrian Kurdish all-female affiliate of the
Syrian Kurdish YPG

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

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EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Introduction
On 30 November and 1 December, EASO organised a meeting for the members of EASO’s
Syria COI specialists network. These are specialists and researchers who focus on Syria andthe region. It was attended by COI research specialists from 20 EU+ 1 countries.
The purpose of the meeting was to facilitate discussions among participants on key issues in
Syria relevant to COI researchers, to update each other on recent information needs and newnational products, and to discuss future joint activities. Norway and Sweden discussed recent
fact-finding missions. External experts and organisations mentioned in theacknowledgements section of this report gave presentations on recent developments andspecific topics requested.
This meeting report presents information from the external expert presentations and‘question and answer’ sessions.
The external speakers invited to give presentations were:
Christopher Kozak, is a Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)
where he focuses on Syria with an emphasis on the Assad Regime and Iran in the Syrian Civil
War. He is the author of An Army in All Corners: Assad’s Campaign Strategy in Syria and has
published numerous articles on various actors in the Syrian Civil War, including ISIS, Syrian
Kurds, and pro-regime foreign fighters. He has also been invited to provide briefings topolitical leaders, military officers, and intelligence officials from the U.S. as well as foreign
allies.
Dr. Esther van Eijk, an affiliated researcher at Maastricht University who specialises in(religious) family law, particularly in Syria. She has researched and published extensively on
Syrian family law issues, including completing ethnographic field research in Syria. She is theauthor of Family Law in Syria: Patriarchy, Pluralism and Personal Status Laws, published by
I.B. Tarusi in 2016.
Dr. Fabrice Balanche, an associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2
and a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He forcuses on political
geography of conflict and development in the Middle East and Syria. His work has focused on
analysing the evolution of the Syrian conflict through the study of territory and politicalpower. His publications include Geopolitics of the Middle East (2014, in French), Atlas of the
Near East (2012, in English, French, and Arabic), the book version of his thesis, The Alawite
Region and Syrian Power (2006, in French), and many articles on Syria and Middle East. His
latest book, Sectarianism in the Syrian Civil War (in English), was published in February 2018.
UNHCR, UNHCR gave a presentation on new protection considerations for Syria.

1 EU Member States plus Norway and Switzerland

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Map of Syria

Map: United Nations, Syrian Arab Republic (Map No. 4203 Rev. 3), © United Nations

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EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

1.

Security situation (C. Kozak, ISW)

1.1

Overview of Current Conflict Trends

The Syrian Civil War is set to enter a new yet no less dangerous phase of conflict. It may on its
face seem like a less violent phase, but it not a post-war phase; it is a new manifestation of
the conflict. There is a strong push by certain countries - both those that are in the are the
Pro-Regime Coalition and others - to present the war as winding down and rush towards
reconstruction. So I want to start with top line trends and move to some case studies.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is now more secure than any other point since the beginningof the Syrian Civil War. He has regained large swaths of terrain - particularly in Eastern Syria since the fall of Aleppo City in December 2016 (Map: Control of Terrain in Syria: November
16, 2017).

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

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These gains are partly due to the creation of de-escalation zones brokered by Turkey, Iran,and Russia at the Astana Talks. The zones include local ceasefires which have more or less held
to varying degrees, although conditions are widely different across the ostensible deescalation zones. One function these zones did achieve was to reduce some of the pressure
on the pro-regime coalition and allow them to refocus assets east toward Deirezzor and Raqqa
Provinces (Map: Astana De-Escalation Zones). The Astana Talks and its implementation offour de-escalation zones thus reduced strain on Assad.

14 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

If you look at the Russian airstrikes map below (Map: Russian Airstrikes in Syria) – you can
see that the pro-regime campaign actually did shift away from Idlib Province and towards
Raqqa and Deirezzor Provinces starting in April/May 2017. This shift has driven new flows ofrefugees and IDPs coming out of eastern Syria – both moving north into Rojava and south to
the Syrian-Jordanian border. The pro-regime coalition did not conduct this shift solely tocounter ISIS, but also to constrain the anti-ISIS U.S. coalition in eastern Syria. Note that theshift from eastern to western Syria occurred after the U.S. conducted cruise missile strikes
targeting the Shayrat Airbase near Homs City in April 2017. The regime needed time and space
to redeploy its assets because for a long time the war in the east had lingered as a kind of‘forgotten fight’ while pro-regime forces focused on the conflict in the west.

The second key trend is that the regime has simultaneously neutralised the threat posed by
the Syrian opposition in western Syria through both the establishment of the de-escalation
zones as well as the implementation of military sieges - the so-called ‘siege and starve
campaign’ - to isolate, besiege, and force the surrender of opposition-held neighbourhoods,
districts, and towns. This effort has unfortunately been proceeding rather effectively for the
regime. We’ve seen numerous negotiated surrenders and evacuations in the opposition-heldsuburbs of Damascus over the past year as well as the evacuation of the Wa’er District ofHoms City. There has also been a successful campaign over the past year by LebaneseHezbollah to clear the Syrian-Lebanese border of ISIS, AQ, and other opposition groups in the

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

— 15

Qalamoun Mountains. These gains have allowed the pro-regime coalition to consolidate
terrain in western Syria and start ‘cleaning up the lines’ by constraining the opposition to more
and more fragmented pockets that can be prioritized one at a time rather than distributed
countrywide. Nonetheless, Assad remains unable to win a decisive military victory – this is a
key point. Even as these gains are happening on the ground, we are not moving towards a
regime military victory by any means. Assad continues to face a critical manpower shortage;
we have seen the ramifications of this shortage through the continued back-and-forth overthe past year with ISIS in Qaryatayn and Palmyra in Homs Province as well as similar struggles
to clear ISIS in Deirezzor Province. Assad continues to rely on, and require, support fromforeign backers such as Russia and Iran to maintain security and thus, in my assessment, Syria
still faces the prospect of a long term insurgency and instability.
At the same time, if we look outside of the pro-regime coalition, we face many otherintersecting issues. For one, Al Qaeda is advancing its efforts to infiltrate and subvert
opposition-held areas of Syria. The basic premise is that as the opposition forces have comeunder increasing pressure and constraints, AQ has positioned itself to take over opposition
governance institutions and military leadership, eliminate rival factions, and ultimately
position itself for a resurgence in Idlib Province and other parts of Syria. Al-Qaeda is advancing
its efforts to infiltrate, subvert, and transform the Syrian Opposition. The opposition is acontinuum and Al-Qaeda is pulling factions further along that spectrum towards Salafi
Jihadism. ISW ultimately expects that after pro-regime forces successfully clear eastern Syria
they will face a long-term AQ-lead insurgency that replaces or occurs in tandem with an ISISled insurgency.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Civil War is increasingly linked to a number of intractable regional
conflicts•••

Turkey vs the Syrian Kurdish PYD
Israel and Saudi Arabia vs IranUS Anti-ISIS Coalition vs Iran and Russia

This intersection of regional and local conflicts has been true throughout the war, but it iscoming to the forefront now. First, Turkey has intensified its conflict with the Syrian Kurdish
PYD (which they consider to be an offshoot of the PKK) in Northern Syria. Turkey has
deprioritised its fight against Assad (which had already taken a backseat) and instead
refocused on generating instability in areas held by the YPG in Northern Syria. Turkey has likely
mounted active efforts to set up and support insurgent groups carrying out assassinations androadside bomb attacks targeting the YPG in Manbij. Turkey also launched an intervention into
the majority-Kurdish Afrin Canton in January 2018 to further prosecute its war against the
YPG. Second, the growing regional instability between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel is to someextent driving further instability in the Syrian Civil War, particularly in southern Syria. The
conflict also raises the prospect of greater escalation that ultimately involves the U.S. So all ofthese regional conflicts and dynamics, along with the continued consolation of Assad and AQ,
form key trends in the conflict that indicate that we are not moving toward a post-war phase.
We are likely to see a mosaic of fractionalised conflicts across the country – a patchwork ofceasefires, de-escalation zones, and active frontlines that generates long-term instability inthe country. This phase could last for the next two years or more. The UN Geneva Processright now is not in a position to deliver a wider national peace and none of thesedevelopments portend success in negotiations to end the Syrian Civil War. We are no closer
to a meaningful peace but rather a new phase of conflict that remains unstable.

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1.2

Local De-Escalation Zones / Administrations

1.2.1

Southern Syria Ceasefire Zone

Southern Syria is held up as a model for de-escalation zones because it has been, by and large,
the most effective ceasefire on the ground. The U.S., Russia, and Jordan brokered theSouthern Syria Ceasefire Zone on July 9, 2017. On the surface, the deal appears to be largely
a success story. Violence – although still ongoing – has decreased significantly. Services areprovided by local councils supported by Free Dera’a Provincial Council as well as oppositionled structures such as Dar al-Adal Courthouse. It has on the surface reduced violence to a great
extent, although continued ceasefire violations remain ongoing, particularly in certain partsof Quneitra Province and near Deraa City. The return of 6,500 individuals to Dera’a Province
from Jordan in July – September 2017 shows that people are tentatively starting to buy into
the idea that there might be a more lengthy peace on the ground. The opposition provincial
council has reported that 15% of residents in Dera’a Province have started to rebuild or repair
their homes in opposition-held regions. Despite all this, southern Syria is not necessarily safe.
The deal fails to constrain Iran and al Qaeda despite the decreased violence in Southwest
Syria, which ultimately positions the region for some future instability and risk. Iran continues
to consolidate a long-term presence in Syria along the Golan Heights, which has been a longstanding Iranian objective. Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah have worked to build human andEASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017— 17

military infrastructure in southern Syria. The U.S., Russia, and Jordan agreed upon a
Memorandum of Principles for Southern Syria on November 8. The deal includes an“exclusionary zone” that requires foreign forces – including Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah - todepart from a five-to-seven kilometer buffer zone along the agreed-upon line of contact. Iranleft behind friendly local paramilitary groups and a small number of foreign fighters tocontinue to cultivate and recruit local groups not covered by the exclusion zone but ultimately
subordinate to Iran. Iran and Hezbollah are continuing their overt build-up on the outskirts ofthis zone as well as a covert ‘underground’ build-up within it. This buildup places Iran and its
proxies less than a one hour drive from the Golan Heights and Israel which will ultimately
generate potential future conflict along the Golan Heights. The ostensible reason forgenerating all this infrastructure is to create a third front for Iran and Hezbollah to pressure
Israel on the Golan Heights. Iran continues to consolidate its presence along the Golan Heights
through a network of proxy forces while retaining significant positions in Southern Syria.
AQ has also leveraged the ceasefire to deepen its presence along the Syrian-Jordanian border.
In May 2017, we received reports that AQ dispatched roughly 30 senior commanders from
Idlib Province to Dera’a Province in southern Syria. Their reported mission was to replicate
their success at transforming the opposition in Idlib Province in Dera’a and Quneitra
Provinces. This influx of leadership comes at a time when the southern opposition is relatively
fraught and facing an uncertain future. For instance, the Trump Administration recently issuedorders to suspend all covert assistance to the opposition, which includes certain anti-regime
groups in southern Syria. Thus, in December 2017, many of these groups are going to see theirfunding for salaries, weapons, and equipment reduced almost to nothing. This hit also comesat a time when the opposition is struggling to enforce security and governance in the south.
The opposition Free Dera’a Provincial Council, which is the overarching council that directs aid
and resources to other local councils on the ground, has suffered a shortfall of funding. The
primary judicial institution in the opposition-held south – the Dar al-Adal Courthouse - also isfacing a major resource cut and had to go on a week-long work stoppage in October 2017
after a jailbreak. The courthouse relies on armed opposition groups to provide security andenforce its decisions – as opposition resources decline, the prospect of enforcing governancein this environment also decreases. Into this environment, AQ has inserted a number ofcommanders to stir up the pot. AQ is positioning itself to fill the governance and militaryvacuum. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the AQ affiliate in Syria, launched an offensive in northern
Quneitra Province that marked one of the first major opposition-led operations against theregime in southern Syria since the implementation of the de-escalation zone in mid-2017. AlQaeda will likely intensify its attempts to coopt dissatisfied opposition fighters who aren’t
receiving salaries and redirect them to break apart the de-escalation zone in the coming
months. AQ likely also directed a recent wave of forty-two attempted assassinations to shape
the leadership of the opposition in southern Syria that began on August 7, 2017, killing overeleven ranking anti-regime opposition commanders and governance officials. More than halfof the attempts targeted former or current U.S.-backed opposition groups. There is a clear
effort to destabilize and transform the opposition, transform southern Syria into a safe havenfor AQ, and potentially reignite the fighting in the south. I don’t want to create the impressionthat the the descalation zone is already breaking down or that the south is a heavily
penetrated by AQ - the FSA still dominates the region - but this is a worrying long-term trend
for the de-escalation zone and stability in southern Syria.
1.2.2

Operation Euphrates Shield (OES) Zone

18 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

One of the other zones held up as a model is the Operation Euphrates Shield Zone - the buffer
region carved out by Turkey in northern Syria to function as a defacto safe zone. This area has
seen major investment by Turkey to create both a safe zone and a base of operations for the
Turkish Armed Forces that stretches from Azaz to Jarubulus. Turkey is actively working toestablish a de-facto ‘safe zone’ / buffer zone in Northern Aleppo Province by restoring utilities
and services, including funding for infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and mosques supportedby the relevant ministries of the Government of Turkey. Turkey has even connected border
towns to its own electrical grid and water system. It has promoted transborder trade throughthe Syrian Interim Government (SIG), which is the recognized opposition government basedin Turkey. Turkey has worked very hard to establish credible local governance and reform thearmed opposition inside of this zone on the Syrian-Turkish Border. Turkey trained 5,000 Free
Syrian Police in Northern Aleppo Province. Turkey is also consolidating armed opposition
factions into three ‘corps’ under the ‘National Army’ of the SIG Ministry of Defense. These‘corps’ are responsive to the SIG and Turkey. They have transferred their camps to the SIG toserve as training academies and even relocated their bases outside of civilian urban areas.
Northern Aleppo Province remains under the de-facto protection of Turkey – but not entirely
safe. There are frequent clashes / infighting between opposition groups in Northern Aleppo
Province. Most recent clashes have been sparked by deal to transfer border crossings to SIG.
The area is penetrated by Ahrar al-Sham and (likely) Al-Qaeda. Conditions remain poor forcivilians in Al-Bab and nearby IDP Camps with reports of typhoid outbreaks and lack of basic
services. There are even reports of IDPs who relocate from Raqqa City to the Euphrates Shield
Zone but later return to Raqqa City due to the bad living conditions in the Euphrates Shield
Zone. Turkey also, of course, intends to use this zone to leverage its position against the Syrian
YPG in the majority-Kurdish Afrin Canton as well as Manbij. We see constant skirmishing,cross-line shelling, and the possibility of more coordinated military actions against the YPG by
opposition groups backed by Turkey. Turkey for example leveraged the National Army to leadits offensive into Afrin Canton under Operation Olive Branch in January 2018. The risk ofviolence persists even though the zone has been stabilized to an extent that many other areas
have not due to of the unique footprint of Turkey in Northern Aleppo Province.

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017— 19

1.2.3 Damascus Local Ceasefire Deals
Damascus has witnessed a major transformation over the past year-and-a-half. The map
below depicts control of terrain in Damascus. The areas in yellow are opposition-held suburbs
that have reached reconciliation and forced relocation deals with the pro-regime coalition.
The areas in red/brown in Eastern Ghouta are opposition-held regions that pro-regime forces
have seized over the past eighteen months in military operations against the opposition. Now
for a broad overview of the security situation in Damascus. Eastern Ghouta - which is the large
agricultural region east of Damascus - remains under a punishing siege-and-starve campaignthat has only gotten worse over the past six months. Pro-regime forces seized the suburban
towns of Barzeh and Qaboun in northern Damascus west of the M5 Highway (see the yellow
mark west of the large green area) following operations launched in May 2017. Those districts
were the launch point for a number of tunnels and smuggling routes that provided medical
supplies, food, ammunition, weapons to armed opposition groups fighting in Eastern Ghouta.

Since May 2017, conditions have exponentially worsened inside of Eastern Ghouta due to theclosure of these smuggling routes - which is of course what the pro-regime coalition intended
to accomplish through its operations in that area. Eastern Ghouta remains under a punishingsiege campaign despite an alleged ‘de-escalation’ deal brokered by Russia and Egypt in Eastern
Ghouta in July 2017. The deal lacked buy-in from both regime and armed opposition groups
on the ground. It was drafted in Egypt and relied upon Russia to uphold the regime’s end of
the deal as well as the political opposition to enforce conditions on the armed opposition –neither of which proved sufficient to prevent violence. Eastern Ghouta remains under a tightsiege that prevents the delivery of food, medicine, and other essential supplies. We have also
seen an intensified pro-regime military campaign inside of Eastern Ghouta.
To understand what is really happening inside Eastern Ghouta, I will take a step back andexplain its internal dynamics. Eastern Ghouta is split between two primary opposition
factions: Jaysh al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman. Jaysh al-Islam holds influence primarily inDouma, which is the northern-most and largest town in Eastern Ghouta, as well as the rural
areas of the pocket. Faylaq al-Rahman controls the more dense urban suburbs - Ayn Terma,20 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Zamalka, Arbin, and Harasta – along the M5 Highway. These two groups have struggled forpolitical control over the opposition institutions inside Eastern Ghouta. This rivalry has
intensified to such an extent that it rendered them ineffective, with both groups engaging in
regular rounds of infighting that have killed hundreds of opposition fighters, destroyed
medical supplies and food warehouses, eliminated free transit through the establishment ofcheckpoints through eastern Ghouta, and directly impacted civilians through widespread
violence. These waves of infighting followed by reconciliation have generated tremendous
uncertainty and instability inside Eastern Ghouta. The regime is focused on exploiting thistension. Under the latest iteration of the de-escalation zone, the primary areas of calm havebeen the areas controlled by Jaysh al-Islam. Jaysh al-Islam has reportedly cut a direct deal withthe regime to participate in this de-escalation zone, unlike Faylaq al-Rahman. The primary
violence has therefore focused on the areas held by Faylaq al-Rahman such as the Jobar
District (the only opposition-held district inside Damascus City proper) as well as Ayn Termaand other districts held by the group along that densely-populated urban stretch. Eastern
Ghouta, despite the claims of being a de-escalation zone, is actually what we would deem avery ‘hot’ frontline.
Damascus Suburbs ‘Reconciliation’The regime likely intends to divide and conquer its remaining opponents in Damascus. The
regime has succeeded in forcing reconciliation deals on most of the opposition-held suburbs
in southern, western, and northern Damascus since May 2016. These gains are theculmination of the regime’s ‘siege-and-starve’ campaign, which has been ongoing for years,
to isolate these districts, cut off food and other supplies, and limit public access in order toforce negotiated surrenders of the population. This is exactly what happened. All of these
deals followed a very similar pattern: the evacuation of fighters and civilians, the end of thesiege, the restoration of municipal services, and amnesty for residents who remain behind.
Thousands of armed opposition fighters and civilians have been evacuated to Idlib Province
or allowed to stay in place under ostensible amnesty. Locals were given a choice – relocate tonorthern Syria away from your homes or stay under some form of amnesty. These deals havenot necessarily been honoured by the regime. In fact, in most cases, the regime is failing tohonour many of the critical terms of these amnesty and reconciliation deals.
Let’s take a case study of the town of Al Tal (north of Damascus). In late 2016, Al Tal agreed
to a reconciliation deal and 2,000 to 3,000 people relocated out of town. The remaining
residents were promised an end to the siege and a six-month amnesty period to regularise
their status if they were draft dodgers or deserters. They could then serve in a paramilitary‘home guard’ inside Al Tal, rather than face deployment elsewhere under the SAA. Almost
immediately after the evacuation, however, the regime began to renege on this deal. The
regime, within a month, began the active and indiscriminate forced conscription of residents– they targeted military-age males but also reservists and those who had already completed
their military service prior to the Syrian Civil War. Opposition activist sources stated that 10
to 20 individuals per week would be taken away for conscription. The deal for a six-monthamnesty never really came to fruition. In fact, many of these conscripts were also sent tofrontlines rather than retained as a home guard. The regime has not honoured many aspectsof the deal in Al Tal. In fact, in many of these opposition-held suburbs that have agreed toceasefire deals, we see a lot of similar reports of ongoing conscription and failures to honour
the deals, as well as continued limitations on access through pro-regime checkpoints on theoutskirts of the towns despite agreements to lift the heaviest aspects of the siege.

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1.2.4 Greater Idlib Province
The last aspect I want to touch upon is Greater Idlib province - the question of Syrian Rojava
will be covered by Fabrice Balanche. For Idlib Province, I want to stress that - although it has
recently been declared under a de-escalation zone at the Astana Talks – it represents a very
special case. It is a special case because it has become the clearing ground where the regime
has decided to deposit evacuated armed opposition fighters and opposition-supportive
civilians from across the country. Evacuees from Damascus, Homs City, and the SyrianLebanese border have all been transferred to Idlib Province in various forms. The front lines
in the province had been relatively quiet, despite the lack of a formal de-escalation zone
enforcement mechanism. That quiet - and the relative lack of pro-regime airstrikes - wasprimarily due to the fact that HTS had been busy consolidating its control inside Idlib Province.
HTS had been directed inwards against rival factions and opposition governance instituations
with the aim to consolidate and declare an ‘Emirate’ inside of Idlib province. Map of Idlib
Province showing green ‘opposition-held / AQ-penetrated territory’ – November 2017:

AQ has intensified its effort to consolidate military and political control over its Idlib Province‘Emirate’. We see this through a number of reflections – both in its violent campaigns against
armed opposition groups but also in attempts to take over governance structures. We haveseen, for example, HTS launch intensified attacks campaigns against potential rival oppositiongroups over the past year. We had a set of infighting between HTS and its ostensible ‘partner’Salafi-Jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham in July 2017 that resulted in HTS seizing the Bab al-Hawa
border crossing on the Syrian-Turkish border as well as large number of towns along theborder (Armanaz, Salqin, etc.). More recently, in November 2017, HTS clashed with Islamistgroup Harakat Nour al-Deen al-Zenki (HNDZ) in western Aleppo Province (directly west of22 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Aleppo City) as part of its continued campaign to knock out rival groups. HNDZ had formerly
been a member of HTS but also formerly recieved covert support from the U.S. Its loyalties
remains suspected. HNDZ was thus the latest number to be drawn as HTS moves toconsolidate and eliminate its rivals.
HTS has also been competing against the secular civil council infrastructure in Idlib Province.
The Province basically has two rival systems of governance: one is a series of dozens of local
councils that are supported by the Syrian Interim Government inside of Turkey, as well as
foreign aid ogranisations and NGOs that are coordinated to some degree by the Free Idlib
Provincial Council. Similarly to southern Syria, there is a network of local councils, local
technocrats, and local powers who distribute resources and hold the necessary credibility with
the international organisations to receive and redistribute aid through the overarchingprovincial council. That said, the influence of the overarching provincial council really only
comes into play to the degree to which they it is trusted as a venue through which to workwith local councils providing services on the ground. HTS has been busy building alternate
sources of governance and influence – particularly a system of sharia courts and local security
apparati that enforce its judicial rulings on the ground and that serve as defacto police forcesthat rival the Free Idlib Police supported by the SIG. HTS has taken active measures against
rival governance institutions. For example, HTS seized the Idlib City Council - a civilian-led,externally-funded, opposition administration – in August 2017. HTS has repeatedly seized
control of local service provision agencies to consolidate them under its own HTS Civil
Administration of Services. In late October/early November 2017, HTS formed the ‘National
Salvation Government’ (SSG) in Idlib Province as a counter-point to the SIG. Whereas the SIG
is based in Turkey and funnels resources to local councils, this SSG is based in Syria and backed
by armed opposition groups, particularly HTS. It draws upon the sharia court system as well
as from armed enforcement mechanisms of those courts. HTS is attempting to coopt local
councils into this network. As the struggle between these two rival governments plays out,
you see the increasing unwillingness of some foreign benefactors to support opposition
councils and opposition groups in northern Syria due to their perceived infiltration by AQ. This
paradoxically drives the cycle further – as foreign donors back away from local council
structures, fearing infiltration by AQ, it weakens the local councils further and provides
greater opportunity for AQ to continue coopting gernance structures in Northern Syria.
HTS is attempting to undermine the de-escalation zone with pro-regime forces in Idlib
Province. Over the past two months (October - November 2017), we have seen a resumptionof violence in Idlib Province. This is our latest Russian airstrikes map – and as you can see,airstrikes have resumed in Idlib Province beginning in September 2017 when HTS led an
opposition offensive against pro-regime forces in northern Hama Province. ISIS also invaded
opposition-held eastern Hama Province in October 2017. These events generated a whole setof turbulence that led to the resumption of pro-regime air raids across Idlib Province, which
had been relatively quiet for quite some time. We had even witnessed the start of some
limited returns – roughly 10 to 15,000 individuals - from Turkey to Idlib Province because of
the stoppage of airstrikes. The airstrikes have now resumed but the Syrian-Turkish borderremains closed. Most of those returnees, unfortunately, are now trapped in Idlib Province
without an option to exit Syria. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of civilians have been
relocated and transferred into this zone by the regime. So the population is becoming more
dense, the IDP concentration is becoming more dense, as the conflict moves on. But Idlib
Province is also positioned to be the zone where, in my assessment, the regime intends tofight one of the last battles of the Syrian Civil War. I can see a future where the regime reaches
a reconciliation agreement with Deraa Province and the opposition Southern Front. Not so in

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Idlib Province. Greater Idlib Province is likely going to be the next major humanitariancatastrophe coming up in Syria.

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1.3

Future of Syria as a Functional State?

The current trendlines are not moving toward a unified or coherent nationwide peaceagreement across the country but rather a mosaic of local peaces that are enforced todifferent degrees and for different time periods. These peaces will not be consistent or
uniform. We will thus see a Syria that remains divided and unstable for quite some time at themercy of overlapping and rival administrations – those of the regime, or Rojava, or Turkey in
the Operation Euphrates Shied (OES) Zone, or various other armed actors. Opposition
governance structures also compete with one another as much as the regime administration,
which actually maintains influence within many opposition-held regions. This local
governance – the local break down of control within the state itself - also contributes to thistrend of decentralisation inside Syria that will be very difficult to reverse. Over the next year,
I anticipate that the pro-regime coalition will likely attempt to reconcile with some local
administrations and factions (such as the Southern Front or the Syrian Kurds) while crushingothers (such as Eastern Ghouta or Idlib Province). The Syrian Kurds are actively being enticed
back into the fold by the Russians. The success of this effort would thereby return a third of
the country to the embrace of the regime. The regime thus has a unique relationship with the
Syrian Democratic Forces in that regard. In southern Syria, I suspect that the current
conditions - particuarly the lack of funding from foreign backers such as Jordan - are primed
for some kind of wider reconciliation deal between the opposition and the regime. Such a deal
would not prohibit the long-term problems that I mentioned earlier, including the prospect ofan AQ-led attempt to break any such reconciliation deal as well as the likelihood that theregime would not reliably uphold the reconciliation. These regime has thus far operated in a
half-hearted manner that serves its own interests to date. However, I expect more to see
violence in Damascus and Idlib Province. So these areas are going to be perennially violent. In
Eastern Ghouta, for example, the regime will likely pursue either the complete evacuation of
the zone or a complete military victory. Damascus has been a long-standing priority for the
regime to clear of opposition forces. Similarly, Idlib Province, as I noted – the conditions arebeing set for the regime to redirect resources back west toward Idlib Province, after it feelsthat it has sufficiently secured its position in eastern Syria. The regime will then challenge HTS
for control of northern Syria. Syria is not set to be reunited in the near-future by either militaryarms or political negotiations but rather to continue as an unstable and dangerous conflictthat threatens for civilians across the country.

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2.

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Pro-Assad forces (C. Kozak, ISW)

Syrian Regime Structures
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2.1

Syrian Arab Ba’ath Party
Syrian Intelligence Services
Syrian Arab Army (SAA)
Structure
Conscription and Protected Populations
Pro-Regime Paramilitaries
National Defense Forces (NDF) and Other Paramilitaries
Recruitment and Incentive Structures
Russian and Iranian Initiatives
Pro-Regime Foreign Forces
Iran’s Hybrid Expeditionary Force
Pro-Regime Coalition Command Structures

Syrian Arab Ba’ath Party

The Syrian Arab Ba’ath Party has:••

19 branch commands: 13 provincial commands, 2 commands in Damascus andAleppo City, and 4 university commands. They report to the regional command.
Hilal Hilal is the Assistant Regional Secretary. He was promoted from the Aleppo
Province Branch Command in 2013 due to his role organising the ‘Ba’ath Brigades’

The Ba’ath Brigades are a politicalmilitia organised through the Baath
Party. It originated in the Sunni
merchant class in Aleppo City, but
the model was exported to otherplaces such as Damascus andHoms
City. For that effort, Hilal Hilal was
promoted to head countrywide
Ba’ath Party operations in 2013.
Currently, as the regime is trying topush the conflict towards what it is
optimistically terming a ‘post-war’phase, it is working on reforming theBa’ath Party. We have seen
numerous branch commanders
replaced, particularly in Aleppo City
and Aleppo Province. We have seen further such ‘churn’ as the regime tries to re-establish thetraditional pre-wer networks of patronage through the Baath Party. The regime has appointed
new branch commanders, rebuilt networks of government functionaries through the Ba’ath
Party, reappointed low-ranked officials to new positions, and rolled back a bit of thefragmentation and decentralisation that has occurred over the past six years of warfare.

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2.2

Syrian Intelligence Services

There are four primary intelligence organisations that were created to observe each other, as
well as the populace:••••

Military Intelligence Directorate
Political Security Directorate
Air Force Intelligence Directorate
General (State) Security Directorate

The intelligence agenies are organised into branches on a provincial basis. Each agency has acentral branch in Damascus as well as regional, city, and local branches across the country. In
terms of command structure, all four of these organisations nominally report to the National
Security Bureau which performs a function similar to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence,at least on paper. It is the one central clearing house that operates as the intermediary
between the four organisations and Assad. But the day-to-day reality is that these four
intelligence branches largely operate autonomously and often report directly up to the Officeof the President. The National Security Bureau, headed by Ali Mamlouk, does hold asignificant amount of sway over the four agencies and the wider security apparatus. The
intelligence branches nonetheless do operate quite autonomously on a day-to-day basis.

The intelligence agencies are further organised into sub- branches, so you’ll have Air ForceIntelligence which will oversee a number of local branches based at local air bases, on aprovincial basis, or on a city-wide basis. These are the branches through which the intelligenceagencies have mobilised their support networks of informants and paid agents. For example,
we do see indications in opposition-held regions of assassinations being conducted by proregime intelligence services. There has been a spate of ‘rock IEDs’ - basically custom
manufactured plastic rocks with explosives - that bear some of the hallmarks of Syrian
Intelligence. The agencies also participate in the mobilization of paramilitary groups – manyof the intelligence organisations, particularly Air Force Intelligence, actually pay competitive
salaries to raise their own paramilitary forces that protect the areas around their facilities andmaintain a forward presence in other areas. You could see this very prominently in Aleppo
City, where Air Force Intelligence basically operated its own militia in Western Aleppo City,but also in Homs City, Damascus, and other areas. These militias are paid salaries directly
through the agency budget so that each intelligence organization can maintain a presence on

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017— 27

the ground. The Political Security and Military Intelligence Directorates organized similar
militias in Dera’a Province in southern Syria. The former head of Political Security - Rustam
Ghazali - was from Deraa Province, so his local patronage network of paramilitaries was led
by intelligence commanders and facilitated through the agency branches. Of course, all four
intelligence agencies are implicated in widespread abuses, Air Force Intelligence being among
the most prominent. There is no clean intelligence agency in Syria. Most detainees areprocessed through one of the intelligence agencies in some way, shape, or form rather thandirectly through the police or judicial system. That’s the general trend we have observed.

2.3

Syrian Arab Army (SAA)

Structure
The Syrian Arab Army no longer exists as a unified or coherent fighting force capable ofindependently securing the entire country. Its formal command structures and manpower
have eroded during the civil war. Contributions from Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia have closed
the gap between the regime’s requirements and capabilities of the SAA. This is a fractured
and degraded force from the one on paper – there are not necessarily neat hierarchical lines
to explain how units are organised and how operations occur on the ground. This coalition
has major asymmetric advantages over opposition forces.
Three years of defections, desertions, and combat attrition have reportedly more than halved
the combat strength of the Syrian Arab Army. The Syrian Arab Army likely consists of roughly
100,000 soldiers as of January 2017 – mainly ill-equipped and poorly-trained conscript
soldiers. The manpower shortage is so dire that Assad found it necessary to come out andpublically admit the situation in mid-2015. The Syrian Arab Army as of early 2013 could reliably
deploy only a fraction of these forces in offensive operations – perhaps as few as 30,000 to
40,000 soldiers. (Graphic: Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Deployable Forces: A March 2013
Estimate).

28 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

These deployable forces stem largely from ‘elite’ units such as the Republican Guard, Special
Forces, and Fourth Armoured Division that draw heavily from pro-regime minority
populations including Syrian Alawites. The mobilization of paramilitary forces and foreign
fighters by 2013 – including the National Defense Force, IRGC-Quds Force, and LebaneseHezbollah - helped mitigate and reverse the operational immobility caused by the manpower
shortage. The regime nevertheless suffered from further attrition as late as summer 2015,
before the arrival of reinforcements from Iran and Russia. Some sources claim that the conflicthas resulted in the death of as many as one-third of fighting age males among Syrian Alawites
as of April 2015. The Syrian Arab Army operates under an increasingly decentralized and ad
hoc network of command-and-control structures that grants expanded operational authority
to junior officers in the field. These structures have been coopted by local strongmen as wellas Iran and Russia. Two key points:
Firstly, The Syrian Arab Army operates under the ‘qutaa system’ first implemented by Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad in 1984. The system assigns each combat division to a specificgeographical region/territory (e.g. in Dera’a Province – the 5th, 7th, 9th Divisions; 11th Brigadein Homs Province, etc.), gives it responsibility for local population centers, and grants wide
discretionary powers to the commanding officer – units are very much wedded to theirlocation. This transformed each operating areas into local fiefdoms from which commanders
could extract resources. It also served basically to harden those regions against insurgency or
revolution. If the commanding officer had a vested interest in retaining a patronage network
inside his unit or geographical assignment, he would keep the system working and actively
work to quell dissent. So where the qutaa system has been very well-established, such as
Deraa Province, it generated a form a durability even among conscript-heavy units that
contrasted with other areas where the qataa system was less entrenched. Pro-regime forces
have demonstrated greater ability to hold regions dense with such sectors, particularly Dera’aand Damascus Provinces. The elite units are the only force that actively get redeployed aroundthe country to different ‘hot’ fronts.
Secondly, the Syrian Arab Army had task-organized its maneuver units as low as the battalionlevel by 2013 in order to ensure their loyalty and improve their combat effectiveness. Whattask organisation means is that the regime will take a loyal (often elite) unit and break it up
below the brigade level and embed it in a regular unit to act as enforcers. For example, theregime will assign one company from an elite unit to work with two companies from a
conventional unit, forming a single battalion under the leadership of the elite unit. This boosts
the combat capabilities of each individual unit in the field. Such a unit will often be reported
as a battalion of elite forces in the media, but in actual fact it isn’t – it is a single small elite
unit sitting on top of a larger base of regular SAA. The regime used task organization very earlyin the conflict – as early as 2012 – 2013 – as it became a civil war. This organisation continues
to this day. For example, if try to find where the 105th Republican Guard Brigade was deployedin May 2012, you might find eight to ten locations because small chunks of the brigade had
been embedded and redistributed acorss the entire country. This makes our jobs much moredifficult in terms of figuring out which units were where at any one given time.
Both Iran and Russia have largely coopted the remaining command structure of the Syrian
Arab Army as their combat troops have become the most asymmetric advantage in theconflict. Much decision-making by the regime is a negotiated process with Iran/Hezbollah andRussia – both at the strategic echelon and on the battlefield – in which Russia and Iran havean outsized influence on the final course of action.

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•

Iran reportedly assumed control of key operations rooms (ad hoc headquarters) in
Latakia and Dera’a Provinces in 2015 through the use of force. Activist sources noted
claims of executions or transfers of low-ranking regime officers away from the area ifthey had a problem working under Iran (especially in southern Syria).

•

Russia took control over major operations in Northern Syria following its intervention
in the Syrian Civil War in October 2015, including key fronts in Latakia and Aleppo
Provinces. Its increasing influence can be witnessed in the ongoing changes to proregime campaign design, including the major cauldron battles.

Conscription and Protected Populations: The overall trend is that forced conscription
practices have continued unabated if at a lower level than 2015. We continue to see raids andflying checkpoints for conscription in all major cities, particularly on the Syrian Coast andDamascus. We continue to see the conscription of populations that would otherwise beconsidered ‘protected’ – whether that is individuals that just shy of the military service age orindividuals who have already completed military service. The regime clearly recognizes that it
continues to have a manpower problem and thus conscription continues largely unabated. In
terms of resistance, we have also seen the continued outflow of fighting-aged males fromboth regime-held and opposition-held areas due to fears about conscription, especially along
the Syrian Coast. We also see continued conscription avoidance among the Syrian Druze
population in Suwayda Province, which presents an interesting case. The Syrian Druze in
Suwayda Province have reached an informal understanding with the regime that local
residents will not be conscripted in Suwayda Province. Residents can volunteer for military
service outside the province but they will not be conscripted by force. Residents instead
volunteer to protect the province through local military factions rather than being deployedelsewhere. Every couple of months though, we will see attempts by the regime to conduct
forced conscription in Suwayda Province that quickly meet with popular protest. There havebeen incidents of crowds swarming security buildings to break people out of jail and conscripts
who flee to the homes of local Druze notables for protection. This dynamic is unique. The
wider threat of conscription remains very valid and active for individuals in regime-held areasof Syria and will likely remain active for the foreseeable future.

2.4

Pro-Regime paramilitaries••‘Shabiha’ / Popular Committees
National Defense Forces (NDF)• Organization• Recent Developments• Other Paramilitaries• Mobilization Vectors• Russia and Iran• 5th Corps• ISIS Hunters

Assad organized a network of paramilitary auxiliaries to supplement his flagging combat
forces on the battlefield. The regime and its allies quickly recognised that they needed to build
an apparatus outside the traditional state military that could serve as an auxiliary force. Oneof the major successes of this strategy is that it has made this regime much more resilient
because it appeals to populations that normally might flee or resist conscription – they havebeen able to tap into people’s willingness to work homeguard service or local defence in their

30 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

own areas even if they are unwilling to conduct formal service under the SAA. These
paramilitary groups have evaded regime efforts to impose state control and are instead loyal
to foreign powers, political parties, criminal networks, or individual benefactors despite
efforts to impose state control, further degrading regime command-and-control. These units
closely coordinate with the remnants of the formal military, blurring the lines between official
and unofficial combat forces.

At the start of the Syrian Civil War, minority populations and local communities organized
themselves into ‘popular committees’ in order to defend their towns and neighborhoods
against opposition forces. The regime also relied upon criminal networks of Syrian Alawites
linked to the Assad Family - known as the ‘shabiha’ - in order to break up protests. This termis thrown around a lot more in opposition publications than the Shabiha actually appear on
the ground. The shabiha were state-supported criminal networks based mostly on the Syrian
Coast that were mobilised through patronage networks to come to the streets and break up
early protests. The name became a derogatory term to refer to forces involved in massacreson the Syrian Coast and ultimately as a blanket term to describe all paramilitary forces – but
it is actually a very specific term for a specific force with its own local characteristics.
The regime took all of these groups, and took steps to consolidate these local militia groups
under state control in early 2013 with the formation of the National Defense Forces (NDF)
with assistance from Iran. At its peak the National Defense Forces represented most of thearmed factions on the ground. It incorporated anywhere between 80,000 to 100,000 fighters
during their peak in 2014 – 2015. The National Defense Forces largely focused on rear-areasecurity and defense along static frontlines, freeing valuable manpower for other offensive
operations taken on by the SAA. There were differentiations in pay scale – if you volunteered

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017— 31

on a checkpoint in your hometown, you received a low salary but if you volunteered for a
defensive active frontline you recieved a pay bump, and if you were part of an offensive unitthat actively fights alongside the SAA you would recieve a further pay bump on top of that.
The money to pay salaries is nonetheless often hard to come by in Syria – there have been a
lot of reports highlighting the fragmentation of the NDF since 2015. The National Defense
Forces have reportedly fragmented and reverted to local groups outside the formal command
structure, generally due to economic turmoil that has hampered the regime’s ability to pay
competitive salaries vis-à-vis foreign or private actors. The formal umbrella structure of the
National Defense Forces ostensibly remains in place over all paramilitary groups. Nonetheless,some sources estimate that the structure retains only 30,000 fighters under its command. The
National Defense Forces remain more coherent in certain geographic locations – particularly
in Homs Province where they are led by an engineer linked to the Syrian Republican Guard.
Paramilitary groups that do remain are linked to a wide variety of benefactors and causes whofight alongside the regime, generating friction in attempts to impose command-and-control:•

Political Party Militias (Ostensibly under the Ministry of Defence)o The Syrian Arab Ba’ath Party established the Ba’ath Brigades in Aleppo City in2012, raising thousands of pro-regime fighters from Western Aleppo City. The
Ba’ath Brigades later spread to other regions including Damascus and Homs
Province.
o The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) also operates a standalone militia
called the ‘Whirlwind Eagles’ that draws heavily from minorities including
Christians and Druze in Homs and Suwayda Provinces, and Damascus.

•

Palestinian militiasoo•Palestinians are subject to conscription although there are some unique aspects
to their service under the ‘letter of law’ depending on when you or your family
departed from Palestine into Syria and your current refugee status. Most
Palestinians are subject to conscription in some form – either in the regular SAA
or the affiliated Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA) which is mostly active inDamascus. Other factions of Palestinians such as the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) also operate alongside proregime forces in Damascus.
There are also several Palestinian militias organised outside of formal structures.
For example, the Palestinian Liwa al-Quds al-Filistini operates in Aleppo City. The
group stems from historic refugee camps in Aleppo City and originally served as alocal self-defence group in the camps that was then coopted under the state
structures. We have now seen them deployed as far as Raqqa and Deirezzor
Provinces. These militias also operate in a ‘grey space’ in which they are ostensibly
part of the regime security apparatus and - just like other paramilitaries - receive
ID cards from the Syrian Ministry of Defence, usually unique to their unit. But theyalso retain a lot of autonomy over local security in their areas.

Militias Backed by Wealthy BusinessmenoWealthy Syrian Alawites with close links to the regime fund a variety ofparamilitary groups. For example, Suqour al-Sahara (Desert Hawks) was aformer pro-regime militia funded by a businessman named Mohammad Jaber

32 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017oin Latakia Province. It was disbanded earlier this year due to issues oflawlessness that resulted in a formal order from Assad to dissolve.
Rami Makhlouf – the wealthiest man in the country and a relative of President
Assad – funds a variety of paramilitary groups through his Al-Bostan
Committee. These are local self-defence forces funded by his family.

These forces build redundancy for the regime but sometimes lack cohesion and thecapabilities necessary to operate independently against a sustained offensive. They often
cannot be trusted to garrison an area without support from other units, irrespective of theirdeployment location. For example, several hundred paramilitary fighters proved insufficient
to defend Palmyra against ISIS in December 2016 following the withdrawal of most combat
forces from the region by Iran and Russia.
The other problem is that the fragmentation of command authority among paramilitarygroups has granted the regime resiliency against immediate collapse at the cost of recedingstate sovereignty. These groups are jostling for resources locally – this leads to problems:
•
•

2.5

Paramilitary groups reportedly engage in a wide range of criminal activity in order toexploit local populations and bolster their incomes: extortion at checkpoints,
extortion of shop keepers, smuggling, etc.
At times, paramilitary groups have engaged in direct confrontations with stateauthorities. Local sources report that the regime cannot execute arrest warrants on
several wanted paramilitary leaders for fear of sparking armed clashes.

Pro-regime foreign intervention

Timeline of Foreign Pro-Regime Involvement
•
•
•
•
•

2011: Iran begins Advisory Mission to Syria with Lebanese Hezbollah
2012: Iran begins assembling paramilitary groups into the National Defense Forces
Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi’a Militias intervene in the conflict
2013: Lebanese Hezbollah intervenes in the conflict with the Battle of Qusayr
2014: Iranian-backed Afghan Shi’a Militias intervene in the conflict
2015: Russia intervenes in the conflict in conjunction with Iranian Ground Forces

Iran
Iran has played an integral role in the development of pro-regime paramilitary groups along
the model of the Iranian Basij. Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah reportedly provide training,funding, and leadership to a wide variety of paramilitary groups ostensibly under regime
authority. Iran likely desires to build the long-term infrastructure of a ‘Syrian Hezbollah’ toguarantee its influence in the country regardless of the outcome of the Syrian Civil War.
•

Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah played a key role in the formalization of the National
Defense Forces along the model of the Iranian ‘Basij’. Recruits to the National Defense
Forces received training in urban guerilla warfare from Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah instructors at facilities inside Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
Most of their initial efforts in the Syrian Civil War were directed towards the funding,training, and advising of domestic and foreign paramilitary groups.

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•

Iran has overseen enlistment campaigns across the country – in some cases
competing directly with the regime for new recruits. Iran provides these recruits withcompetitive salaries as well as military equipment. Iran may spend up to $15 billion
per year in support of the regime. This competition for buy-in and support happens
outside of the state’s control. Iran has been nurturing its pool of future manpower.
We have seen a lot of outreach to traditional Twelver Shia areas (Fu’ah and Kefraya
in Idlib Province, for example) and towns and villages in western Syria. Iran has also
funded reconstruction in neighbourhoods in an attempt to bolster its support. Their
eventual goal is to form a shadow state structure responsive to Iran inside of Syria.

•

IRGC-GF Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani lauded the establishment of a so-called“Second Hezbollah” in Syria in a speech given in May 2014. Iran and LebaneseHezbollah likely play a key role in the formation of increasing numbers of sectarianparamilitary organizations drawn from Syrian Shi’a. These groups – primarily
concentrated in Central and Coastal Syria – often label themselves as ”Hezbollah in
Syria” while using the rhetoric of the Axis of Resistance.

•

Iran also appears to be nurturing its pool of future manpower through religious
outreach. For example, Iran provided funding to theology schools on the Syrian Coast
as of early 2015 in order to strengthen religious identity among Syrian Alawites. Iran
has also praised the establishment of youth groups meant to promote the“spirituality” and “revolutionary values” of Iran in Syria.

Russian Influence
Russia leveraged its intervention in the country in late 2015 in order to strengthen the formal
structures of the regime military and security services. Russia provides the majority of its
military aid including advanced weaponry and air support through the Syrian Arab Army.
Russia is trying to reconsolidate paramilitary groups under state control via new headquarters
and command structures, although these efforts have not yet proven successful. It haschanneled a lot of its support toward rebuilding the authority of the central state.
•

Russia provides advanced military support directly to the Syrian Arab Army. Russia
provided elite units such as the Syrian ‘Tiger Forces’ and Syrian Republican Guard withadvanced armored vehicles including T-90 Main Battle Tanks and BTR-82 Armored
Personnel Carriers in 2015/2016.

•

Russia coordinates closely with official state structures as its primary interlocutors
with pro-regime forces. Russia has repeatedly emphasized its presence in the country
as a bilateral agreement between two legitimate governments against terrorism.

•

Russia reportedly played a key role in the establishment of the Fourth Storming Corps
in October 2015 and the Fifth Storming Corps in November 2016. The Fifth Storming
Corps has been much more successful than the Fourth. These new structures
reportedly intend to help consolidate paramilitary groups back under state control
with command-and-control support, funding, and equipment provided by Russia.
Both formations have reportedly struggled to attract new recruits or demonstrate
results on the battlefield despite their foreign backing. The extent of Russian influence
cannot be overstated - Russian Lt. Gen. Valery Asapov (killed in action near Deir ezZour City in September 2017) allegedly led the Fifth Storming Corps – demonstrating
the depth the unit’s penetration of Russia despite its ostensible position under the34 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

SAA. They Fifth Storming Corps appears to blend manpower from both the SAA andparamilitary elements. It has become one of the reliable units for the regime and has
deployed to eastern Homs and Deirezzor Provinces.

2.6

Pro-regime foreign fighters
•
•
•

•

Pan-Shi’a Mobilization• IRGC, Pro-Regime Fighter Ratio
Lebanese Hezbollah
Iraqi Shi’a Militias• Harakat al-Nujaba• Kata’ib Hezbollah• Other Iraqi PMUs
Afghan / Pakistani Shi’a: Liwa Fatimiyoun, Liwa Zeinabiyoun

As we look at the regional pan-Sunni mobilization that has brought foreign fighters to ISIS and
Al-Qaeda, so too has there been an equally important pan-Shi’a mobilization directed andharnessed by Iran in Syria and the Middle East. Iran currently provides the high-end
manpower capable of securing significant gains for pro-regime forces on the ground. Beyond
the elite units, most active frontlines feature Iran and its proxies. Iran operates a coalition oftens of thousands of foreign fighters on the ground including members of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shi’a Militias, and Afghan Shi’a Fighters.
These forces likely constitute one-eighth of total pro-regime forces – this ratio only increases
when compared to the small number of combat-effective regime units. The foreign Iranian
backed fighters might be one-third or one-quarter the combat-effective fighting forces
available to the regime. There are efforts that Iran is willing to let the SAA lead but suchoffensives are always backfilled by the coalition of Iran and its proxy forces. This coalition offoreign forces sits underneath a hybrid command structure implemented by Iran. Iran has
been very effective at bringing in and implanting foreign IRGC officers on top of amultinational / multiethnic mix of Hezbollah, Afghan Shia, and Iraqi Shia - and somehow getthem to act effectively on the battlefield. Iran and its proxies maintain a countrywide presence
but weight their deployments to frontlines as needed. There is a big presence of Iranianbacked forces in Aleppo City; most are now concentrated in eastern Syria, Deraa Province insouthern Syria, and Damascus. These forces have a disproportionate role on the battlefield.
They made up more than half – a disproportionate factor - of the pro-regime forces musteredto tip the balance during the battle of Aleppo City, for example:•

Iran has steadily increased its involvement in the Syrian Civil War as the regime cameunder mounting pressure – from law enforcement advisors (2011) to direct
involvement of IRGC-Quds Forces military advisors (2012) to Lebanese Hezbollah andIraqi Shi’a Militias (2013)•

Iran currently maintains at least 7,000 of its own fighters – including elements of the
IRGC-Ground Forces, IRGC – Basij Paramilitary, and ‘Artesh’ Special Forces – on the
ground in the Syrian Civil War. This “whole of military approach” expands the abilityof Iran to conduct independent military operations and maintain long-term force
deployments in Syria. Iran also operates a coalition of roughly 15,000 – 20,000 foreign
fighters, including 6,000-8,000 Lebanese Hezbollah Troops, 4,000-5,000 Iraqi Shi’a
Militiamen, and 2,000-4,000 Afghan Shi’a Fighters – bringing the total size of the
deployment backed by Iran to roughly 25,000 fighters. These totals do not include the
Syrian Paramilitary Forces supported by Iran in Syria.

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

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•

Iranian Proxy Forces maintain a countrywide presence but remain largely
concentrated in several locations – Damascus, Aleppo City, and the Syrian Golan
Heights – that reflect their strategic priorities.

•

Lebanese Hezbollah is the primary actor securing the Syrian-Lebanese Border, in linewith its own strategic priorities to prevent regional spillover.

•Iranian Proxy Forces provide a disproportionate amount of the combat-capableinfantry in major pro-regime operations. For example, Iraqi Shi’a Militias reportedly
constituted more than half of the ten thousand fighters assembled for the year-longregime campaign to seize Aleppo City in 2015 - 2016. Iranian Proxy Forces also played
key roles in the seizure of Palmyra in March 2016. As seen below in the graphs
depicting the casualties of Iranian military advisors in Syria, their role most visiblearound the time of the Aleppo City and Palmyra campaigns. We can see that theoverall hybrid coalition approach which has been used with great effect. We arewitnessing a unique pan-Shia coalition that includes a range of nationalities.

Iran has developed a new model of coalition warfare through the implantation of leadershipover a range of paramilitary groups that vary in nationality, ethnicity, and language group.
Iran operates a sophisticated infrastructure to train, equip, manage, and redeploy these forces
across the region in line with its strategic priorities. Iran could export this model of irregularhybrid warfare to other theaters of operation including Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Bahrain.
The IRGC has developed a model of cadre-warfare that allows Iran to implant militaryleadership over a base of irregular fighters that it organizes, funds, and equips in a hostcountry. Iran deploys cadres of brigade officer corps with experienced non-commissioned
officers to embed with regional forces on thirty-to-sixty day rotations. These rotations pull

36 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017from multiple different units to spread combat experience throughout the IRGC – Ground
Forces. This style of combat comes at a cost of lives – including the death or injury of an entire
cadre in Khan Touman south of Aleppo City in 2016 – but serves as a combat multiplier to theeffectiveness of its proxy forces on the battlefield. Iran operates a sophisticated infrastructure
to maintain its foreign proxy forces in Syria. Iran operates a major strategic airbridge using
commercial aircraft that stretches from Tehran / Abadan to Damascus / Latakia via Baghdad.
Iran also runs its own efforts to recruit, train, and equip thousands of Afghan and Pakistani
Shi’a Fighters via the IRGC. The Afghan Shia Liwa Fatimioun is recruited through coercion andother leverage exerted by Iran on Hazara Afghans. There is a large Afghan refugee populationin Iran that is pressed into service through various ‘sticks’ and some ‘carrots’. Afghans who‘volunteer’ to fight can recieve residency papers; those who don’t risk deportion. If you arearrested attempting to cross the border, you are offered the option to enlist or join avolunteer unit in Syria. If you die, you will recieve a martyrdom payment for your family. These
incentives – beyond volunteerism - often press Afghan Shia into service. Afghan Shia often
take heavy casualties due to poor training and their deployment to areas with heavy fighting
in Syria. The IRGC – Quds Force operates in tandem with Lebanese Hezbollah in Syria toprovide leadership to other proxy forces. IRGC-QF and Lebanese Hezbollah often collocate on
the battlefield with Hezbollah serving as combat trainers and field advisors overseen by
Iranians. Iran adjusts the composition and deployment of its proxy forces in order to balance
its regional strategic objectives. For example, Iran expanded to deployment of LebaneseHezbollah and Afghan Shi’a Militias in Syria in mid-2014 in order to compensate for thewithdrawal of Iraqi Shi’a Militias following the Fall of Mosul in June 2014. Iranian Proxy Forces
also operate in close coordination with the Syrian Arab Army. The Syrian Arab Army often
provides heavy support including artillery, armor, and airstrikes to infantry forces composed
primarily of Iranian Proxy Forces (Map: Known Iranian, Russian and Proxies’ Positions).

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

2.7

— 37

Locating specific units and identifying command structures

As noted, it is very difficult to track military units because, unlike traditional militaries where
you have the deployment of a specific brigade to a specific location with a specific mission,
we witness a task-organised force under a fractured command structure and a confusedhierarchy that operates regular units in tandem with irregular and foreign forces. The
command structure is not clear or crisp on the ground due to the many hybridized units thathave been split, merged, or embedded atop others. The information available in open sources
may not be that useful to establish where units were. Most of ISW’s information on unit
deployments are based on two sources: first, opposition reports of capturing ID cards thathave a unit and recruitment area, division, officer signature; and second, interviews withdefected officers. Those sources of information are now out of date, so it it difficult toestablish an exact picture. The timing and location of deployments can be very difficult
establish in practice, with units subdivided and thus reported in multiple places at once.
Tracking down unit deployments can be very time consuming. With regards to seniority, rank,
and position – as I noted, with the decentralisation that is ongoing, local battlefieldcommanders hold a lot more sway. There is culpability for regime crimes at a very senior level– particularly through the Crisis Management Cell established early in the Syrian Civil War thatbasically micromanaged action against protests through the Ministry of Defence and Office of
the President. But the hierarchy has increasingly shifted to localised command structures thathave a lot of foreign influence over them, granting plausible deniability for how high up thechain of command any directive can go. In broad strokes, I would argue that most of thedecision-making is still linked in one form or another back to the central government. The
basic generalisation on how units receive orders is that the Syrian Ministry of Defence or
Office of the President will send out a demarche that says ‘accomplish this objective – seize
this x terrain in this x given time’. It is then up to the local battlefield commanders to muster
their resources in coordination with foreign backers and others to get an operation up andongoing. There is multiple levels of central touchpoints and oversight but that decentralisationand fragmentation of command authority is something that the regime and the pro-regime
coalition as a whole is still struggling to deal with. As I noted, elite forces and foreign forces
are the most likely to have participated in frontline operations or in any sort of operation thatwould involve moving into urban areas, clearing urban terrain, or seizing villages. This isn’t
always necessarily the case – there are certain times and places in which SAA units featured
prominently in different forms of clearing operations, particularly in the early days of the
Syrian Civil War in 2011 - 2012. At that time, there were task-organized regular army units
that conducted operations in Idlib and Homs Provinces, for example. A key point to note about
those units was that they were often the most loyal or perceived-to-be-loyal elements ofmultiple regular units that were pressed together into a task force for whichever operation
was ongoing – so for instance, the initial clearing operations in Idlib Province were actions
conducted by what was listed as a single brigade but was actually units from multiple brigades
pulled together, either on an individual basis, right up to company or battalion level. These
units were cobbled together into an battalion that the regime viewed as trustworthy enoughto conduct some of these initial clearing operations in the very early days of the Syrian Civil
War. The very method by which the regime has survived makes the identification of specificmilitary units, their activities, and their locations very difficult.

Question and Answer

38 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Do you have any information on recruitment to the Fourth and Fifth Storming Corps? Is it
happening on a voluntary basis or a forced basis? One one hand, they try to attract people
with better salaries but on the other hand there are some information that seems to show
it isn’t voluntary necessarily – how is the situation?
My understanding is that it is actually a mix – when the Fifth Storming Corps was originallyfounded it aimed to draw from the population paramilitary volunteers. Some of thesevolunteers were told to enlist in the corps by their commanders, but yes, initially they were
presented an attractive offer of good weapons, high salaries, and Russian training andadvisors. These efforts failed to meet all the benchmarks for recruitment. By early 2017, we
saw reports of individuals being conscripted into the Fifth Storming Corps. So it seems to be afusion of both. The core of it is formed from volunteers from paramilitary groups, but it isrounded out by conscripts added to the unit as required.
What are the possibilities for Sunni Arabs in all those elite structures? Given the suggestion
it would be that sometimes elite units are combined with regular units…?
None of these elite forces exclude Syrian Sunnis. The proportion of non-Sunnis in these units
is nonetheless disproportionate. The Fourth Armoured Division and the Republican Guard are
the most disproportionate in terms of drawing enlisted members and officers from Druze,
Alawites, and other minorities. The Special Forces Regiments have more inclusion for Sunnis.
The Sunnis that enlist in these elite units are often the lower-tier of basic infantry inside theunit (NCOs) rather the actual officer corps – though there are likely some Sunnis who serve as
officers in elite units. The (former) Syrian Minister of Defence Fahd Jassem al-Freij is himself
a Sunni from a Sunni family from Hama Province. So, there is a loyal network of Sunnis thatcertainly exist in Syria. The ranks of the elite units are still highly disproportionate, whenlooking at the numbers, compared to the demographics of Syria. Even when we see elite units
embedded with the conscript-heavy units in the SAA to execute tasks, the command of theoverall unit is retained with the elite unit, which is generally led disproportionately by minority
populations. Similarly, in the Syrian Arab Air Force, there are Sunni but the force is generally
disproportionately drawn from Alawites and other minorities.
Are you aware of any confirmed change that would see recruitment past the age of 42?
I have not personally seen any change to the maximum age of military service at 42. I haven’t
seen it formally. There have been rumours of arbitrary recruitment beyond that age, but asfor any announced change by a relevant authority – I have not found it. One of the otherthings that I have not found is the renewal on the general amnesty law that had been renewedin 2016 and set to expire in the spring of 2017. This law was the overall amnesty decree that
authorized a general amnesty, and local amnesties, for individuals who want to put down their
weapons and return to the fold of the state. I haven’t found any formal decree extending thatamnesty. What I suspect is that the government is moving towards more local reconciliations
and thus the general amnesty is perhaps seen as less necessary at this stage of the conflict.
The regime seems to be shifting more to local amnesties, which can be respected to a varying
degree depending on how the regime decides to respect it. Similarly, I haven’t seen a formalchange in the exemption ages. There have been changes that I’ve seen in the cost of deferral
for individuals who travel abroad – but not formal changes in the age of recruitment, that I
have seen. There might have been such changes but I haven’t seen them. We nonetheless dosee some individuals recruited outside the age of 42. We see this especially in the specialty
occupations – particularly among individuals with a specialisation in their military booklet suchEASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

— 39

tank or artillery operators – tasks that are more specialised and harder to train. There havebeen reports of people both older and younger than the benchmarks being conscripted.
Are traditional written convocations still issued for recruitment to military service?
My understanding is that written directives that get to the conscripts themselves are sent
down to the recruitment office first and then it gets sent to their home or posted. That still
exists in that there is still a formal state mechanism to do that – but that proceeds in parallelwith these other less formal forms of recruitment such as raids and checkpoints, which are
generally, at this point, the ones that are more proactive at pulling conscripts in. If you get a
notice, you’re more likely to disappear or avoid it. We have seen them modify the procedurefor how it works – so basically, going around the police stations and going directly to thecheckpoints rather than the recruitment division offering circulars to the local police, which
would then make a posting. They were circumventing the police stations because the police
would be the first point of contact for someone to pay an informant to tell them if their namecame up on a list at the police office, and then they would disappear. We have seen efforts tocircumvent that escape route and make the process more targeted against those whosenames appear on the list. But there are definitely these parallel processes.
They will conscript individuals displaced from other regions – for example, I remember in
2014, they called up reservists from Raqqa and Deirezzor Provinces, which, obviously theregime at that time did not hold a significant presence in. What these directives allowed theregime to do was mobilise individuals that had fled from eastern Syria and resettled in western
Syria. They still were issuing mobilisation, recruitment and conscription directives even inprovinces outside their control to target individuals from other areas.
Is it still a conscription without an end?
Yes, my understanding is that no unit has been formally dismissed. People pay sums to get
out or reach understandings with their commander, pay them off, for instance – but, since2011, no conscript class has been officially released from duty – that is my understanding.
My comment is on foreign fighters – we should single out Hezbollah in respect to other Shia
militias and the Iranians. Hezbollah is not a ‘proxy militia’, it is the direct arm of Iran –Hezbollah is special compared to all the other militias – it is the success story of Iranexporting itself. Most of the leaders were in Najaf studying when Khomeini was still there.
They know each other from this time – this is an organic relationship. I’m not talking about
the rank and file of the Lebanese fighting forces from outside. The Hezbollah structure is apart of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I think that is quite important to have in mind when we
discuss this – they are not like the Afghans, nor the Pakistanis. The Lebanese Hezbollah isvery special in this regard.
I’m in complete agreement with you there – Hezbollah, unlike all the other militias – Hezbollah
has its own leadership delegate in these operations rooms and crisis cells, along with Iran (so,Iran actually has two delegates) – but they do hold a lot of influence over pro-regime
operations. When we see foreign fighter units deployed to the frontline or even the training
of NDF militias, it is often Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah acting as an organic whole that are
acting as the trainer cadre. Pro-regime fighters get sent to training camps in Lebanon just as
often as they are sent to training camps in Iran. They send individuals out of Syria for
specialised training and then redeploy them back into the Syrian Civil War. The role that
Hezbollah plays here is much more proactive – you’re right. It is much more of a leadership

40 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

role, alongside Iran, where they almost always operate hand in glove. The area where that is
a little different is the Lebanese-Syrian border where you see less direct IRGC leadershippresence. Hezbollah has the command and control authority in that area.
Do units who retake an area conscript from that area? Is there competition between
different units in the army with regards to conscription because they all lack manpower? It
is not centralised to come extent. Can you comment on whether you have observed this?
I have heard some reports of this happening but I don’t know how widespread it is. Certainly
we have seen reports that – just as with paramilitary groups who extract resources when they
control an area - the SAA units will extract resources in the form of manpower as well as otherresources from the areas placed under their control. We’ve seen a lot more reports in the
open press of basically cross-branch competition, rather than within the SAA itself. But wehave seen some indications of this practice – particularly in the south where there are many
divisions bunched in the same areas and all competing for recruits – and in Hama Province,
where regime units are competing against each other to some extent. Again, because of theqataa system, the local commanders have a lot of discretion over their region and so it is very
decentralised – if you’re looking at the very senior levels of the SAA, it may look like the SAA
controls this, but actually it is a local commander who controls local areas, likely withoverlapping zones of authority and competition from paramilitaries and other groups thatdraw resources from the same areas within his zone of control. I can’t confirm it as very
widespread, though I’ve seen some reports of the nature you’ve described.
About Iraqi Shia militias – my understanding is that they were redirected back to Iraq todeal with the ISIS threat there – what is their level of presence in Syria now?
The Iraqi presence is back up. Yes, in 2014, the Iraqi Shia militias redeployed ‘home’ to Iraq
because Mosul had fallen and so this is when you had some of the Afghan Shia militias starting
up because they needed to backstop the Iraqi Shia militias who were leaving to go to Iraq andother foreign forces were stepping in. Particularly since November 2015, when Russia and Iranagreed in tandem – Russia started its intervention, but it started its intervention based on
basically the idea that Iran will up its manpower if Russia gets involved from the air and to an
extent on the ground. This is when Iraqi Shia militias also started coming back – now they arecoming back in different guises – whereas prior to 2014 you had a lot of umbrellaorganisations that would incorporate elements of Iranian proxy militias – they would takepeople from Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, or they would take people from Badr Corps and other things
and kind of enmesh them in together. Now, you are seeing units actually deploy basically inwhole – but they are unique in that they are not as active on the ground in Iraq as they are in
Syria. They are basically basing their command structure inside Syria instead of the other way
around. The most prevalent units on the ground right now in Syria are Hartm al-Nujiba – the
Nujiba movement – as well as Kata’ib Hezbollah, which is a designated terrorist organisationby the US government. Both those militias have a presence in Iraq but my understanding isthat the bulk of their fighters are in Syria. As the fight has moved down Deirezzor and closer
to the Iraqi-Syrian border, we’ve seen bleed-over of other Iraqi Shia popular mobilisation units(PMUs) that are ostensibly under the control of the Iraqi state – moving across the border tohelp pro-regime forces. That whole intersection is interesting because there is a command
cell called the quartet (Russia, Iran, Syria and Iraq)…and the whole tug and pull of PMUs thatare responsive to Iran on the Syrian side and the pull from Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi that the
PMU should be under the control of the state so we aren’t going to authorise them to go. It iskind of a gray zone where Abadi has said they aren’t going to formally cross over but uses very
couched language that allows this fudging of the lines.

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

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What is the purpose of using poorly trained Afghans and Pakistani militias on the frontline
activities when they might endanger your frontline activities?
You’re right, they are not very effective. They have largely been used as a source to provide
bodies, basically, on key fronts where they can help to break through – they are often used as
the frontline probing force – the first wave of testing a front followed by the more premier
Iraqi Shia militias, or elite Syrian units or what have you. We have seen the Afghan Shia militias
perform that kind of combat leading role in certain areas of Deraa Province – Busra al-Harir
was one such area where the Afghan Shia led an attempt to punch through that failed. Also incentral Syria the Afghan Shia have played a leading role in some campaigns, although they
have shifted more to an auxiliary role in the fight in eastern Syria. The Afghan Shia aregradually taking less of the cannon fodder frontline role but they initially served as a backstop
to garrison the areas from which the Iraqi Shia had to leave in 2014. Then they wererepurposed in an attempt to exert pressure on opposition frontlines that had not traditionallybeen tested – where the regime needed manpower to press a sector of the frontline in areas
where the opposition density was lower and see if they could break through. In a couple ofplaces it worked, and a couple it didn’t – and where it didn’t, it went very badly for the Afghan
Shia militias. Their value has really been just for additional manpower, more so than any
unique capabilities – they often receive very minimal training. It is more bodies for garrisontasks and breakthroughs. A lot of the IRGC advisors for the Afghans that we see killed in action
were former Basij commanders, or came from Basij units. It is very similar.
Syrian paramilitary groups normally operate regionally - are they on the frontline as well?
Some of them are. Some tend to operate very locally focused – particularly ones that are
drawn from ethnic communities, especially in western Homs and Hama Provinces. But there
are subsets of paramilitary groups that get deployed on the frontlines and outside of theirhome regions on a much more regular basis. The Desert Hawks got deployed all over thecountry, even though they were ostensibly from Latakia Province on the Syrian Coast. The
Palestinian Liwa al-Quds actually has a large footprint now even though they are supposedly
drawn from just local factions in Aleppo City. I think their recruitment pool has expanded. It
basically depends on the paramilitary group – a lot of groups stay active in just their provinceor their local area, but there are select groups that get deployed further afield either because
they actually have superior fighting capabilities, they have a lot of foreign support, or they areattempting to curry favour with regime structures by contributing to regime offensives.
Are Palestinians’ military booklets the same as regular military service booklets?
My understanding is that it is the same military booklet.

42 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

3.

Family law (E. van Eijk)

3.1

Family law in Syria: Historical developments

We are now already 6.5 years into the Syrian conflict – in mid-March 2011, when the first
popular protests were held in various places in Syria, we could not foresee that – that whatstarted as a revolution, would turn into a full-scale proxy war with many different factions
fighting against the Al-Assad government and fighting each other. Now, 6.5 years into theconflict, the situation does not look promising. We cannot predict what this conflict entails forthe future of Syria: the country, its people, the composition of the government and – relevant
for today’s subject – the legal system.
However, despite the ongoing, disturbing events taking place in Syria today and not knowing
what the future will hold, Syrian family law has a number of antecedants that are important
to clarify. I want to clarify that when I talk about Syria’s legal system and family law inparticular, I refer to the pre-2011 situation, so before the outbreak of the current conflict.
Moreover, since the legal system has not been disbanded and still appears to function, at leastin the government-controlled areas, I will consider the official Syrian legal system, its laws andinstitutions as currently in force. First, it is important to understand the religious make-up of
the country – it is a multi-faith country made up of:••••Sunni Muslim majority and various non-Sunni Muslim minorities
Druze community
Various Christian communities (Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants)
Very small Jewish community (most of them left in the 1990s).

Before we look at the present time, I would like to briefly point out some of the major
historical episodes that are relevant to the contemporary legal system: a mix of Ottoman(millet-system of separate personal status laws distinct for each religious group), French laws
(under the French Mandate), Egyptian legal traditions, including religion-based law(predominately in the domain of family law).
Independent Republic (1946-present)
Following the independence from France in 1946, Syria was subjected to a string of military
regimes (1946-1963), followed by the United Arab Republic with Egypt (1958-61) underleadership of the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. It is interesting to note that manylaws that are still in force today date back to the period of early independence and politicalinstability (between 1946-63, i.e. before the Al-Assad’s came to power), e.g. Civil Code (1949),
Code Penal (1949), Nationality Law (1951), and the law that is of great importance when wetalk about Syrian family law: The Syrian Law of Personal Status (SLPS) (1953). The SLSP applies
to all Syrians, though the Jewish, Christian and Druze communities are exempted from mostof its provisions.
The United Arab Republic was the materialisation of the nationalist dream of Arab unity andsocial equality for all. It only lasted only 3.5 years. Syrians, especially members of the socialistBaʻth Party, were disappointed with the union, mostly because of Egypt’s political dominance.
On 18 September 1961, a group of army officers staged a coup d’état, which led to Syria’s
secession from the UAR and the Syrian Arab Republic was reinstated. Socialist Ba‘th Party
seized power in 1963. After a few years of internal party struggles and the Six-day war with
Israel in 1967, army officer Hafez Al-Asad seized power in November 1970. With his ascension

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to power, Syria entered a period of relative political stability. The new regime established itself
as a strong authoritarian power; it controlled the country by creating a strong state apparatus
dominated by Baʻth Party members, aided by a vast omnipresent secret police force. The Arabsocialist Baʻth movement was an intellectual movement, founded by two Syrians in the early
1940s: Michel ʻAflaq and Salahadin al-Bitar. The movement advocated a social revolution
which would lead to one Arab nation, free from Western imperialism, in which Arab and social
values would be guaranteed. As pan-Arab nationalism and socialism were the dominant
ideologies, any form of religious, sectarian, regional or tribal factionalism had to be resisted
for the sake of national unity. Under Hafez al-Asad the ‘Personal Status’ system wasmaintained, despite attempts to introduce a secular ‘Personal Status’ system. The most recent
serious amendments to the SLPS date back to 1975.
The Syrian Constitution of 2012 contain a few significant articles for family law, under Article
3. In particular, the second and fourth paragraph of this article are of importance to family
law.
•

Article 3, paragraph 2 reads ‘the Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) is a main source of law’.
At present, the Islamic legal principles are most obviously and predominantly present
in the 1953 Syrian Law of Personal Status (more than any other law code);•

Article 3, paragraph 4: this paragraph is relatively ‘new’ (added in 2012, no similar
provision in the 1973 Constitution); it states that ‘the personal status of the religious
groups shall be protected and respected’.

The Republic prides itself on being a secular nation where the various religious communities
co-exist peacefully. The major Muslim and Christian holidays, for example, such as ‘id al-adha(Sacrifice Feast), Birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, Easter (both Catholic and Orthodox)
and Christmas are officially observed because Syria is, officially, a secular state and it therefore
has no state religion. That said, Islam remains the prevailing religion and maintains the upper
hand in all strata of society, including the Constitution. Seemingly contradictory, this is (Iwould say) typical for Syria. Officially it is a secular state, which prides itself for being
multireligious and where the different religions peacefully coexist, but Islam nevertheless has
a prevalant, dominant position (which also has a historical origin), also in the ‘Personal Status’system. Nevertheless, the recognised non-Muslim, minority communities, including their legal
and judicial autonomy in personal status, are respected and guaranteed.

3.2

Family law in Syria: A plural legal landscapeThe term ‘Personal Status’ (ahwal al-shakhsiyya) refers to ‘family law’. Where we use the term
‘family law’, in Syria, like many other Arab countries, we use the term ‘personal status’. I use
the terms interchangeably. Family or personal status law in Syria is characteristised by:
1)
2)

religion, and;plurality.

The various religious communities - Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Jewish - have the right toregulate matters of personal status according to their respective religious laws and customs.
Family law is organised according to religion or denomination, meaning that the religion (din)or denomination (ta’ifiyya) of a person is the determining feature in choosing which personal
status law applies (i.e. a continuation of the millet-system from the Ottoman times). The

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religion into which one is born determines which jurisdiction applies in matters of personal
status. If you are born as a Muslim, your family relations are governed by the 1953 SLPS (i.e.
the law for Muslims). If you are born as a Greek Orthodox Christian, your family relations aregoverned by the 2004 Greek Orthodox Law of Personal Status. Hence, Syria’s family law is amosaic of various personal status laws and courts. The different laws are all religion-basedlaws and many personal status courts are – to varying degrees – religious courts.
The term ‘statut personnel’ originates from Medieval Europe and was used to denote rules
and regulations concerning the status and capacity of persons, vis-à-vis the term ‘statut réel’,
which referred to matters connected to property. The term ‘personal status’ (in Arabic: ahwal
al-shakhsiyya) was only introduced in Arab legal writings in the late nineteenth century, mostnotably by Muhammad Qadri Pasha in Egypt.
The most important law in this legal landscape is the Syrian Law of Personal Status (SLPS),
Law no. 59/1953 :•••Art 306: provides that the provisions of the law apply to all Syrians (the general law,
qanun ‘amm), expect for what is stated in the following two articles:
Art. 307: provides that the Druze community is explicitly exempted from those
provisions that run counter to their beliefs,
Art. 308: provides that the Jewish community and the various Christian communities
are exempted from numerous SLPS provisions, and thaty they will – instead – apply
their own religious regulations in matters of personal status (in other words: they
have their own personal status laws & courts),

BUT in some cases Christians, Druze and Jews are still required to refer to shar‘iyya-courts (i.e.
the courts that apply the SLPS), namely in matters related to paternity (nasab) and legal
guardianship (wilaya). The result is a legal maze of overlapping regulations and jurisdictions.
The system is complex, also for practising Syrian lawyers; also because, for example, law
graduates receive little to no training in Christian family law. It is particularly complex ininterfaith marriages – which, although rare, do occur (no numbers/statistics available). The
plurality of the ‘Personal Status’ system does not, however, entail equality between the
different religious communities, but rather an asymmetrical plurality, because of the SLPS andthe shar’iyya courts clearly have the upper hand. The supremacy of the SLPS and the shar’iyya
courts is explained by the concept of public order (al-nizam al-‘amm). The supremacy of the
SLPS becomes especially apparent when the jurisdictions of different religions intersect. Whena non-Muslim woman marries a Muslim man, the SLPS will be applicable; when a Druze
woman marries a Sunni Muslim man, again the SLPS will be applicable. A Christian or Jewish
woman, that is, a woman who belongs to the ahl al-kitab (the recognised monotheistic
religions), can marry a Muslim man, but it is not possible for a non-Muslim man to marry a
Muslim woman, for Article 48.2 SLPS states that a marriage between a Muslim woman and a
non-Muslim man is considered invalid (batil). If a non-Muslim man wants to marry a Muslim
woman, he needs to convert to Islam.
Below is a graphic which presents an overview of the Syrian family legal system. It should be
noted that the Assyrian Church of the East is not included in this graphic. I have no informationon the legal situation of this ‘group’, but I assume its members are governed by a separate
personal status code, as they are recognized as a religious community with legislative andjudicial autonomy in personal status matters.

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017— 45

The SLPS is based on Islamic legal principles, mainly derived from Hanafi fiqh and it covers all
matters of personal status, i.e. marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance. Amendments weremade in 1975, 2003, 2010. The courts implementing the SLPS are shar‘iyya-courts (24 in total).
Although judges of these courts administer, for the most part, shari‘a-based law, they are partof civil law system. The judges are trained at regular law faculties and function as civil law
judges. However, this does not exclude the fact that most shar‘iyya judges appeared, in myobservation, to be faithful Muslims. When we look at the Christian communities, we see
something different. The different Christian communities not only have their own laws, butalso different denominational courts (not civil courts), presided over by clerical judges (notlaw graduates).
For those who are more familiar with contemporary Muslim law, might be interested to knowthat the SLPS also contains a so-called ‘residual’ article (similar to many other present-day
Muslim family laws). This states: ‘[i]n every matter in regard to which there is no relevant
provision in this Law reference shall be made to the most authoritative doctrine in Ḥanafī
school’.
This is a welcome option for legal practitioners as the substantive text of the SLPS is rather
brief in many areas. For the practical application of Article 305, judges and lawyers stillconsulted and referred to the personal status code compiled by the Egyptian jurist Qadri
Pasha in 1875, which is much more detailed than the SLPS. The edition of the SLPS issued by
the Syrian Bar Association consists of two parts: first, the substantive text of the SLPS itself,followed by the complete text of the Qadri Pasha code (647 articles). The Hanafi doctrine thus
remains not only the point of departure of the SLPS (main source of law), but also the final
resort. With Article 305, the Syrian legislator facilitated resort to references outside the SLPS.

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This inherent flexibility of the SLPS and its open norms allows judges wide discretion in
deciding personal status cases.
Christians and family law
About ten per cent of the population belongs to one of the Christian denominations. The
various Christian communities of Syria can be divided into three groups: the largest group are
the Orthodox Christians (est. 704,200 souls), the Catholic churches (est. 204,600 members),
and the Protestants or Evangelicals (est. 20,100). Nearly every denomination or group has its
own family law, including for example: the Greek Orthodox Personal Status Law (2004), theSyriac Orthodox Personal Status Law (2004), and the Catholic Law of Personal Status (2006).
For example: For Catholics:
•
•
•

•

The Catholic churches of the East are united in communion with the Bishop of Rome,
which means they acknowledge the Pope’s authority;
There are six Catholic denominations but they are governed by one personal statuslaw, promulgated in 2006 (Catholic Law of Personal Status, Law no.31/2006);
The main source of the 2006 Catholic law: Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches(CCEO), issued by late Pope John Paul II in 1990. A significant part of Law no. 31/2006
is a direct translation of the Eastern Codex. The CCEO governs the ecclesiastical life of
the Eastern Churches, including organisation of the Church, religious practices such as
prayer, celebration of the Eucharist, and other sacraments such as marriage &nullification procedures.
The Catholic judges are priests and trained in Oriental canon law in Rome.

Each personal status court has its characteristics, routine and distinctive character. The
proceedings in the Catholic court and the demeanour of the Catholic judges, however, were,in my observation, rather different, compared to their colleagues of the shar‘iyya and Greek
Orthodox courts. The Catholic court’s setting and performance appeared more religious thanlegal. For example: the court room is located on the church premises; every court day started
with a community prayer led by the presiding judge; the judges’ and court personnel’s attire
was quite distinctive: the judges were dressed in a cassock (clerical robe), the other court
personnel usually wore a clerical collar; and finally, whereas a shar‘iyya judge would be
addressed as ‘ustadh’ (polite form of address for an educated, respectable person), a Catholic
judge preferred to be addressed as ‘abuna’ (i.e. ‘father’). In fact, litigants or lawyers would becorrected by the judges or the scribe if they used the word ‘ustadh’ by mistake.

3.3

Marriage

Below is a comparison of how marriage is treated according to classical Islamic law and under
the SLPS. These components (on the left) are required according to (classical) Islamic law, tomake it a valid Islamic marriage. On the right the requirements according to SLPS are listed,which are similar to classical Islamic legal principles. I show this table to show that theprovisions of the SLPS closely follow classic Islamic principles, and because of the similarities
in requirements, it is easier to register (ex post facto) an unregistered Islamic marriage, tomake it an official legally valid marriage (according to the SLPS).

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

Muslim marriage••

Marriage is commendable (sunna)
Marriage legalizes sexual relations;preservation of paternal lineage•

Marriage is a contract, requiring:- Offer & acceptance- Legal capacity and ‘of age’(bride & groom)- 2 witnesses- Dower (mahr)- Legal guardian (wali)- Equal social status (kafa’a)(Hanafi)

SyrianLaw
of(Law No. 59/1953)

Personal— 47

StatusArt. 1 SLPS: ‘Marriage is a contract between
a man and a woman, who is lawfully
permitted to him, with the aim to establish
a bond for a joint life and procreation.’
Requires:• Offer & acceptance (Arts. 5-11)• Legal capacity and ‘of age’ (Arts. 1520)• 2 witnesses (2♂, or 1♂+2♀) (Arts.
12)• Legal guardian (Arts. 20-25)• Equal social status/suitability of thegroom(Arts. 26-32)• Dower (Arts. 53-64)

Legal marrying age
Marriage under the SLPS provides that the age of capacity for marriage is 18 years for thehusband and 17 years for the wife (Art. 16 SLPS). Marriage at younger age is possible:‘When an adolescent boy (murāhiq) claims to be physically mature (i.e. bulūgh) after
attaining the age of 15, or an adolescent girl (murāhiqa) after attaining the age of 13,
the judge may allow the boy or girl to be wed, if he deems the petition to be sincere
and they are physically capable.’ [i.e. to have sexual relations] (Art. 18.1 SLPS)The conditions to marry at an age younger that the SLPS prescribes are:• permission of the judge (Arts. 18.1, 19)• permission of the legal guardian (wali) of the (minor) bride (Art. 18.2)• both spouses have to be physically mature
Marriage by proxy
•
•
•
•
•

Marriage by proxy is possible under SLPS Arts. 8-9;
Druze: marriage by proxy possible (Art. 14 Druze Law on Personal Status);
Eastern Catholics: marriage by proxy not possible (however, some exceptions), Can.
837 CCEO;
Protestants nothing about proxy marriages in their PS Code;Other Eastern churches: nothing about proxy marriages, probably also not allowed ->because same doctrine as Eastern Catholics.

Unregistered marriages
SLPS allows for legal enforcement of extra-judicial customary practices, i.e. retro-active
registration of:

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Customary (‘urfi) marriages
Proof of paternity (nasab)

Customary Muslim marriages, called ‘urfi marriages, are usually Islamically valid, provided thebasic conditions are met (i.e. offer and acceptance, 2 witnesses, contract and dower; see table
above). These ‘urfi marriages are marriages that are concluded outside the legal system(usually at home, in the presence of family members and a religious figure).
For a ‘urfi (or Islamic legal) marriage to be legally valid, it has to be registered in court. Art.
40.2 SLPS stipulates that a ‘urfi marriage can be registered once the legal requirements are
met. These requirements are listed in Article 40 paragraph 1, which stipulates that a couple
needs to submit a marriage petition to a shar‘iyya district judge (qadi al-mantiqa), whichshould include the following documents:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.

a certificate issues by the local official (i.e. mukhtar) stating the name, age, and placeof residence of both parties, the name of the marriage guardian, and a statement that
there is no lawful impediement to the marriage (Art. 40.1 sub A);
a certified extract from the Civil Registry (qayd nufus) certifying the betrothed parties’civil status (Art. 40.1 sub B);
proof of a premarital medical examination attesting that there are no medical
impediments to their marriage (Art. 40.1 sub B);
permission for marriage for those who serve in the army or those who are subject tomilitary service (Art. 40.1 sub D);
permission from the Security Department when one of the spouses is a foreigner (Art.
40.1 sub E). 2

Article 40 paragraph 2 stipulates that a customary marriage can be registered once therequired legal procedures are met. If, however, a child is born or a pregnancy is apparent, themarriage will be recognised without the required procedures. In the event that a child is bornor a pregnancy is apparent, judges tend to agree to register the marriage, regardless ofwhether the required procedures are met.
Unregistered marriages and paternity of children
Customary ‘urfi marriages are common practice in Syria. Proof of marriage and paternity arerecurring issues in the shar‘iyya courts; a child’s paternity is generally registeredsimultaneously with a ‘urfi marriage. In the pre-conflict situation for ordinary Syrian couples,both registrations were often straightforward. Once a ‘urfi marriage is registered, it will beconsidered a legally valid marriage. As a result, the regulations pertaining to paternity ofchildren born during a valid marriage are applicable (Art. 49). In line with the Islamic notionthat the child belongs to the marriage bed (al-walad li-l-firash), the SLPS considers a child born
during a valid marriage attributable to the husband (Art. 128 ff.). Sharia judges generally adopt
a non-legalistic stance in these matters because of best interest of the child and mother; theywould end up in a difficult position, i.e. an illegitimate relationship and illegitimate children if
it is not recognised.
•

NB - According to Arts. 469-61 Penal Law the (religious) man who concludes themarriage, the spouses, their representatives, and the witnesses are liable to legal

2 van Eijk,E., Family Law in Syria: Patriarchy, Pluralism and Personal Status Laws , London: I.B. Tauris, 2016, p. 218.

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

•

•

— 49

punishment if the ‘urfi marriage is contracted without consideration of the legal
requirements.
However: shar‘iyya courts generally turn a blind eye to ‘urfi marriage practices.
Couples do not just register their ‘urfi marriage but also their born and unborn
children. The child’s paternity is generally registered simultaneously with the ‘urfi
marriage before the court; both registrations can be settled promptly by the court.
When a ‘urfi marriage is registered, it is considered a legally valid marriage, andconsequently, establishing proof of paternity should pose no problems.
The possibility to register customary marriages and establishment of paternity ofchildren born from these marriages offer room for creative solutions and is a good
example of the versatility of Syria’s family law.

For the registration to be legally valid it has to be recognized and registered in the government
courts. It may be possible to register with a ‘rebel’ court but it will not be acknowledged by
the Syrian state. Apparently widows (of foreign or rebel fighters for example), children born
outside Syria (neighbouring countries) or in rebel/IS controlled areas, experience difficulty
registering their marriages and children. Leaving many children and (unofficially) married
women unregistered. If they do not have access to Syrian courts/authorities (for registration),
hopefully they can find someone (proxy arrangement) to do it on their behalf.
Marriage rights and duties
Marriage is a reciprocal marital bond: maintenance by the husband, in exchange for theobedience of the wife. The husband is obliged to pay wife a dower (mahr) plus ‘maintenance’(nafaqa). There is no ‘community of goods’ – the dower remains the wife’s property after
marriage. Marriage must be consummated and co-habitation should occur after the after
payment of dower. Obedience of the wife is understood by the co-habitation - when the wife
leaves the conjugal house, without her husband’s permission, she is considered disobedient(nashiza). When a court receives a claim for marital obedience it will have to investigate
whether the wife has in fact left the house and what the reasons for the abandonment are.
To determine whether the wife is really disobedient, witness statements are crucial,preferably coming from relatives and others who know and interact with the spouses
regularly, for example neighbours.
Christian marriage
Marriage is a sacrament, a union between a baptized man and woman. It is celebrated inchurch (of the husband) and recognized as a valid marriage by the state. The Church informs
the Civil Registry and the marriage is registered at the Civil Registry Office. A patriarchal familymodel also visible in Christian personal status laws & courts. There are similar rights andduties, such as the husband’s obligation to provide maintenance and the wife’s obedience toher husband.

3.4

Dissolution of marriage

Under the Syrian Law of Personal Status (Law No. 59/1953)
There are three types of Muslim divorce:
1. Repudiation/unilateral divorce (talaq) (Arts. 85-94)

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- prerogative of the husband- revocable (2x) during waiting period (‘idda)- husband has to pay the remaining dower amount and post-divorce
maintenance during the wife’s waiting period.
2. Divorce by mutual consent (mukhala‘a) (Arts. 95-104)- negotiated contract- talaq for compensation paid by the wife
3. Judicial divorce (tafrīq) (Arts. 105-115)
Grounds of divorce:- disease or impotence husband- absence or disappearance husband- non-payment of maintenance by the husband- marital discord (shiqaq)
Mukhala‘a divorce (by mutual consent)
This is the most popular way to divorce, also when it started as a judicial divorce petition, it
often ends in mukhala’a. It is seen as a ‘fast and cheap’ way to divorce, often for both thehusband and the wife. Judicial divorce procedures are often costly and long-winded (a wife’s
only alternative to mukhala‘a). A divorce by ‘mutual consent’ (mukhala‘a) is characterized by:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Often called a wife-initiated divorce;
consent of both spouses is needed;
wife compensates husband in exchange for talaq;
compensation: usually (unpaid) deferred dower and her right to post-divorce
maintenance;
signed contract (wife needs to appear in court);
final divorce;
Husband released from further financial obligations.

Out-of-court divorce
Both talaq and mukhala’a are possible inside and outside of court.
• SLPS allows for (ex post facto) registration of out-of-court divorce (talaq andmukhala‘a)• Out-of-court divorces outnumber divorces issued by a judge
Wives in a state of limbo – they do not know whether they are legally divorced or not divorced.
Because talaqs are often pronounced but not registered, women come to court to determine
whether or not their husbands have divorced them. The courts need to establish, based on
the statements of the litigants and witnesses, for example:•••

Was talaq pronounced or not? How many times?
Did the husband take the wife back? When?
Did the husband pay the deferred dower and/or post-divorce nafaqa?

Christian ‘divorce’EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

— 51

Christian marriage is seen as a sacrament and divorce is problematic or ‘not possible’.
Catholics only recognize nullification of marriage (butlan). The grounds for divorce are forexample: Conversion to another religion, adultery, impotence or sexual dysfunction. The factthat marriage is considered a union before God is an essential property of a Christianmarriage, therefore dissolving such a union is deemed problematic. In fact, ‘indissolubility’ isseen as another essential property of marriage. The Catholic church even renounces the very
word ‘divorce’ (talaq), and only acknowledges nullification of a marriage (butlan al-zawaj),meaning that the spouses have to prove that the marriage was unsound from the very
beginning. Through annulment, a marriage can be terminated, but only those marriages thatwere never valid in the first place. The one filing a nullification petition will have to proof thatthe marriage (in theory) never legally existed.

3.5

Child custody

Guardianship (wilaya) is a concept that includes:• Guardianship over the person (wilaya ‘ala al-nafs)• Guardianship over the minor’s property (wilaya ‘ala al-mal)
The father of the child is the default guardian (wali) under Art. 170 SLPS. Guardianship belongs
to the agnatic (male) line. An appointed guardian (wasi) is possible under Art. 173 ff SLPS. )Custody/nursing rights (hadana) are:
• Prerogative of the mother (Art. 139 SLPS)• Girls until the age of 13, boys until the age of 15 (Art. 146 SLPS)• When mother remarries (a non-mahram) she loses hadana-right (Art. 138
SLPS)

3.6

Question and Answer

Are proxy marriages by Muslims possible?
According to van Eijk Marriage by proxy is possible on the basis of law of personal status(SLPS), however she has no further information about such practices. Among religious
minorities marriage by proxy is possible among Druze, but not among Christians (at least notamong the Eastern Catholic but possibly also among other Eastern churches). Concerning thepossibility for both parties to get married by proxy it was discussed that there are no
limitations and that neither party needs to be present during the ceremony.
[UNHCR] stated that concerning the format of the proxy contract UNHCR commented thatthe proxy contract should be presented in written form.
What about women who marry foreign fighters?
On marrying a foreigner (e.g. a foreign fighter), it was discussed that a Syrian woman needs apermission from the security department if the man she is planning to marry is a foreigner. It
was added that the process involves a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork, but that thepermission itself is not that difficult to get. On Syrian nationality: A woman can only pass her
Syrian nationality to her child if the following conditions are met: I) the father is unknown; II)
the child is born on Syrian soil. On ‘urfi marriages: In Syria, it is possible to fabricate a ‘urfi

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marriage contract with local judges approving it while being aware that the document is fake.
This can be done for various reasons, e.g. to register a father to a child.

4.

New protection considerations for Syria (UNHCR)•UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), International Protection
Considerations with regard to people fleeing the Syrian Arab Republic, Update V, 3
November 2017, url•

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Relevant Country of Origin Information
to Assist with the Application of UNHCR's Country Guidance on Syria: "Illegal Exit"from Syria and Related Issues for Determining the International Protection Needs ofAsylum-Seekers from Syria, February 2017, url

EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

5.

— 53

Situation in Kurdish areas/Rojava (F. Balanche)

5.1 Military, sectarian, and administrative divisions

I have been most recently in March 2017, to the Kurdish areas of Syria. My first impression
was at the time of my first visit (2011) was that it was of the ‘cultural revolution’ - I was in
Rojava where they were creating a multicultural place where Kurds, Arabs and others will beequal. When you visit the municipality of Hasakah you will meet a young Kurdish female
mayor. But the real power holders – at that time the real mayor was with the YPG and was in
Sinjar fighting with the Peshmerga. She was there as a picture of the local administration. I
visited Rojava, Qamishli, Hasakah and Tel Amar, where you have the Assyrian villages. The
demographic situation – you can see in yellow you can see the Kurdish area today. The yellow

54 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017is really the SDF / Kurdish area. The leadership of the SDF you can say are Kurdish though half
the fighters are Arab. The SDF are controlling today about 28% of Syrian territory, or about 3
million people. The majority of the population are Arab today. Before the war, the Kurds wereabout 3 million in Syria but you have two kinds of Kurds – 2 million feel they are Kurds, and 1
million who are ‘Arabised’ Kurds who were in Damascus or other areas before the war andmore generations. They speak Arabic and Kurdish but not strongly involved in the Kurdish
cause – it was clear they prefer to go to Lebanon than to get involved in the civil war. Theynever joined the PYD like the people from Afrin or Kobane, for instance. The Kurds in Alleppo
are more ‘Kurdish’ – speak Kurdish and are proud to be so, especially those in Sheikh Maqsood
area north of Aleppo city. The Kurdish middle class we can see in Alleppo neighbourhoods –they want to be integrated in Syria and don’t want to be part of the Kurdish cause. The issueof ethnicity is very difficult to define. If you are from Kurdish parents but you live in Damascus,
you don’t feel Kurdish. But identity can change – if you are half Arab and half Kurd from
Qamishli and the Kurds are leading the region, it is better to say you are Kurd if you want tobe part of the winning group. Kurdish identity is thus difficult to define because of personal
circumstances but also because of the situation in which you find yourself, and the place
where you are living (Map: Sectarian Distribution in Levant).

This map (Map: Ethnic Divisions in Northern Syrian) shows the exact localisation of the Kurds
in Syria (pink) and the dashed line are mixed areas. In pink you have 90% of Kurds. Pink/green
shows about 25-75% of Kurds. The more you go north, the more you are in a Kurdish area.
The dotted line is the area claimed as the Rojava. They want this area because also Afrin is astronghold of the PYD. During the 80s when Ocalan was in Syria, 25% of PKK fighters were
Syrian because Assad let the Kurds join the PKK and they weren’t obliged to do military service
at that time if they joined the PKK. Fifty percent of the fightres were from Afrin (only 200,000

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people). It is very important for PYD – most of them are from that area even if they are in
Qamishli or elsewhere in Rojava – they are from Afrin, as are most leaders of the YPG. The
junction between Kobane and Afrin is very important for them and they don’t want toabandon it. It is still a potential fight with Turkey to occupy the area between Azaz andJarublus.

And when you see also the official maps of the PYD, Rojava is divided into 3 cantons:

The three cantons are Afrin/Efrin, Kobane, and Cizire (also called Jazeera) – and you see Afrin
and Manbij – even if the area has a Kurdish minority and the area has been destroyed by the
Kurdish intervention and the residents expelled . The Kurdish population is 55% in Kobane,

56 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 201755% in Cizire, and 30% in Afrin. Even in the so-called Kurdish cantons, the Kurdish populationis the minority of the population in those areas. What they say of this region is that when we
will take this area, Kurds who are Arabised will come back because we will be the masters of
the area and the people will feel Kurd. Two hundred years ago, the Kurdish population wasprobably the majority but with Arabisation and migration, of course, they are now more Arab.
You have place east of Latakia – very famous because it was an opposition battle – the nameis Jabal al-Akrad, which means ‘mountain of the Kurds’, but the population there don’t speak
Kurdish, they speak Arabic. It was at the time of Sultan Balbar in the 13th century that hebrought some Kurdish tribes settling around Jabal al-Akrad – these are middle age period
Kurds but now they are Arab. But they say perhaps it is possible to ‘re-Kurdishize’ the area
and will have the majority in the free cantons. That’s why ‘teaching’ is very important forthem.

This map (Map: SDF Extension in November 2017) shows the extension of the SDF today(November 2017) – they are now until the Euphrates river. In Raqqa, now there are no Kurds,
but before the war you hav a 20% minority in Raqqa but they fled – for Daesh this minotiry
was a ‘fifth column’ – they were seen to be working with YPG, so they expelled them. Between
Manbij and Azaz you have the Syrian army, the Turkish army, but they are waiting for the
Turkish army to leave the area. When I was in Rojava in March 2017, Rojava was surroundedby the Turkish to the North and to the South, by Daesh. But when the Syrian army reopened
the road between Aleppo and Manbij, it was very important for the economy of Rojava
because they were no longer dependent only on Faysh Khabur (in Dohuk, Iraq) border point– it means from the KRG, from Barzani, who could open and close the border. The Kurds
started to move more politically on the Damascus side because it was possible to buy somegoods in Syria, to export wheat and oil to Afrin, for example. Today, Afrin is surrounded byTurkey because Turkey entered to Syria and is occupying many villages and are always in thisarea and want to take this land bridge to Al Bab. Erdogan is going to do something here – but
it depends on the Russian reaction. If the Kurds don’t move closely to the Russian side, Putin
will say to Erdogan to do whatever he wants in Afrin as a lesson to the PYD for their alliancewith the US.

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When I was in Rojava, Faysh Khabur (in Dohuk, Iraq) was the only gate for Rojava. On the Iraqi
side you have to take a small boat (civilians) across the Tigris river and you arrive at theunofficial Rojava border where you take a taxi to go to customs (5 km). There is a bridge fortrucks to cross with goods. You take a mud road as it is an unofficial border. The roads arevery bad – you can see oil wells there. In Derik, about one third of Syrian oil production isthere (180,000 barrels per day) – and it is a chance for Rojava as a potential source of revenue.
Probably they don’t increase their production (no more than 10-20k barrels) because they
couldn’t export that much until last summer. It is useful for electricity because in eachneighbourhood you have a motor producing electricity only for 8 hours per day starting atnoon. They can have gas for the car, but you can’t drive more than 60 km per hour maximum
because the gas is not well refined. What is more important – it is fuel for the motor pumps
for irrigation and in this area, you can’t have agriculture without irrigation, and you also haveto pump water to wells 200 m below ground. Without oil, all the economy of Rojava will be
destroyed.

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The map (Map: Energy Production in Syria) shows the importance of oil in Rojava. Today thisarea is exploiting in cooperation with the Syrian state oil company. The Kurds take 35% of thebenefits. The Shammar take 10% (Arab tribe) as the oil field is on their territory, and also there
is a little money for the Arab tribe who control and protect the pipeline. They made this deal
in July when Raqqa was surrounded and all this territory was controlled by the SDF and SAA.
Last October, the SDF took the Omar oil field (50% of Syrian production). Likely to have asimilar agreement to share the oil. PYD and the Syrian government are not enemies; they are
dealing since the beginning. Since 2014, the Syrian government gave weapons to the Kurds
against ISIS after the Kurds got weapons from the US. But they are ready to move on the otherside if the US withdraws or don’t protect them against Turkey, or if they have no interest in
staying with the Syrian government. So to define the PYD as a party – there is no freedom,strong ideology, there are pictures of Ocalan everywhere. It is a Kurdish PKK branch in Syria,
basically ruling the area.

5.2

Qamishli

In Qamishli, before the war it was about 300,000 people, now with the IDPs, that is double.
When you arrive in Qamishli you have this door/gate and pictures of the YPG and Ocalan, andthe martyrs killed in the war. There are 5,000 Kurds who have been killed since 2012 – anenormous number. There are 1.5 million Kurds in the area, half are children, - so
proportionally, 5,000 is an enormous number of young Kurdish fighters killed. If you compare

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to the KRG in Iraq, it is 6 million people – the war with Daesh resulted in the loss of 2,000
fighters. So in relative terms, it is a high loss in Rojava. Also, 80% of Qamishli is informal
settlement because the Syrian government never took this area into consideration, it was aninternal settlement just producing wheat, oil, cotton – no industry. It was prohibited to haveindustry in this area (strategically) because the Syrian government did not want developmentin this area but they wanted the Kurds to move. This area was left underdeveloped. The
suq/market of Qamishli has everything, but you need money to pay. Wages are about 20-30
dollars per month. One kilo of tomatoes is a dollar; one kilo of potatoes is 80 cents; one kiloof chicken is about 5 dollars, so you work one week and you can buy one chicken. Many people
have money from abroad because many young people are in Europe and they send backmoney to their family to help them survive. Those without anyone on the outside of Syria arein a bad situation. This is also why it is not a problem from the YPG to recruit – when the YPG
propose $200 per month that is 10 times the salary of a civil servant in the Rojava
administration, if you even have a chance to get such a job in the administration. So the cityof Qamishli is divided in three parts divided between Kurdish control, shared control (Kurdish
and loyalist), loyalist control, Christian neighbourhoods, and SAA controlled areas; there is aregime area including around the airport, the administrative city has the municipal offices
close to the border with Turkey, and, there is a Christian neighbourhood (Wusta)– which is alittle bigger and had 20% of the population who were Christian. There is a Christian militia(Sutoro) there who controls that area. There are two Sootoro forces: The Sootoro is a Christian
militia that is pro-regime/pro-loyalist and there is a Sutoro which is with the Kurds (proAsayish). In Hasakah, for example, the Sutoro are with the Kurds but there it is not a Christian
militia – in Hasakah you have less than 10% of Sutoro are Christian and 90% are Arab muslim.
I visited the branch in Hasakah and most were Arab Sunni – they prefer to be in the Sotoro
than in the YPG because in the Sotoro you are less on the front line and more on checkpoints
and are not as much at risk. But the Kurds pretend that they are Christian militia that are withthem, but this isn’t completely true. The formal city area of Qamishli (20-25%) is one part of
the Christian area; it is under Kurdish control, but because we are in the Christian/Arab area
of Qamishli you can see the portraits of Syrian army martyrs. Qamishli is very different from
one neighbourhood to the next, with Christian and Syriac churches. In 2015, there were many
attacks in the Christian neighbourhoods; the Kurds say it was Daesh, but it not Daesh, it was
the PYD putting bombs in the area to push Christians to stop supporting the regime and stop
claiming Kurds were oppressing them. In February 2016, Asayish tried to take control of theChristian neighbourhoods and there were big clashes between Asayish and Sotoro. And whena Christian sotoro was killed, there was a strong anti-Kurdish feeling in the Christian areas.

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Map: The situation in Qamishli (Agathocle de Syracuse www.agathocledesyracuse.com)
This is a border of the Sootoro control in the city; so you don’t have checkpoints like on thegovernmental side and Kurdish side – the Asayish and the Kudish militias don’t enter theneighbourhood, but the civilians can enter easily – the checkpoints are not heavily guarded,
but they just mark the border with some pots to show the border. The Arab tribes are working
with the Kurds – you have the Shammar who have a militia (the Sanadel militia), and they are
5,000 strong – the chief of the Shammar is the Vice President of Cezire Canton; an important
man and he is very close to the Kurds. His brother in Qamishli is living in the regime area of
Qamishli and there you have the portrait of Bashar Al Assad and support for him; he doesn’t
support the Kurds, but he has no problem with his brother. So, within the same tribe, within
the same family, you can have one with the Kurds, one who supports the regime, and theother who is with the Syrian opposition. This is the idea of not putting your eggs in the samebasket; you don’t know what will happen in future, so, if the regime comes back, there will be
the link between the Shammar and the regime and vice versa – the tribe is therefore
protecting their interests. You cannot buy a tribe you can only rent a tribe. A tribe is working
for its own interest – today the Kurds are the leader so they deal with that; they are very
patient, but on the other hand, they don’t want to live under Daesh or Kurdish authority. You
can imagine when Daesh now is nearly finished that the tensions between Arabs and Kurds isgoing to grow.
You have this new administration of Rojava. The base of the new administration is thecommune (communad, neighbourhood council – like a village level council) – each council has
about 1,000 people and is named after a Shaheed/martyr. There is a council of the communeof about 6 people; you have always women and Arabs who are part of those. In the room of
the council you have the portrait of the local martyrs from the neighbourhood. In eachadministration, in each commune I visited, you have someone who doesn’t speak Arabic. I
was able to speak Arabic everywhere, but in each place there are some people in theadministration who do not speak Arabic; it means he is possibly not Syrian – he is from Turkey,

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he is from the PKK, likely). There is someone from the PKK in each administration to control
everything.
Lal il hijrah al watan watanna - “Don’t immigrate, the country is all of ours” – This is a painted
mural you can see in the area.
They are very conscious in Rojava that the main problem is immigration because young people
leave due to the bad economic situation; they don’t want to join the YPG and go to the frontline so they try to escape, and also for political reasons – if you don’t want to follow the PYD
line and you don’t want to stay in this area, you have no job opportunities. I meet many
doctors in Erbil and Dohuk who left Rojava because they were earning only 50$ per month. In
Rojava, if you need surgery or to see a doctor, your only option is to go to Damascus. That’s
also why the Kurds do not want to fight the regime around the Qamishli airport to take control
of it because if they do that the population will be very angry because they will lose access toDamascus for medical services. There are Ocalan images everywhere. When you visit the PYD
headquarters in Qamishli, there is also an image of Che Guevara, as many leftists and foreigndelegations visit and they want to give a ‘good impression’. It is only in the PYD headquarters
you see that, not in the commune or administration. It is only in this place for public relations.
They want to show that they are promoting women’s equality, not ‘PKK terrorists’ like theTurkish claim they are so they put forward the progressive image but they are tied to PKK.

5.3

HasakahI also visited Hasakah (Map: The Situation in Hasakahh City, 20 August 2016). Hasakah is thesame situation as in Qamishli, you have the regime in the centre with the market and main
administration. In spring 2016 here was a huge battle between the Kurds and the regime andthe regime lost the neighbourhood south of the river but it is the same situation as Qamishli,
but the regime area in Hasakah is just smaller.
Map: The situation in Hasakah City (Agathocle de Syracuse www.agathocledesyracuse.com)

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After that I have been to Tal Tamer, where I also visited Assyrian villages. These Assyrian
villages were taken by Daesh in winter 2015. Daesh destroyed all the churches in the villages
and the population fled: 35,000 Assyrians are now less than 1,000. Everyone has fled. I spoke
a lot to the Assyrian Father of Tel Tamer, where you have an Assyrian minority, and he told
me that they will not want to come back because they are afraid, and they have not been
supported by the local population. The Arab villages, Daesh took them, they say the Kurds
were waiting for Daesh to clean the Christians out the area and then they take the the land
and then they will steal everything.
The main problem for Rojava is the land problem. It is a good area for agriculture but you need
irrigation. In the 2001-2009 drought, this area lost 35-40% of cultivatable land due to lack ofwater. There is no dam, there is only irrigation with well. There is a reduction of agriculturalland in the Rojava, but increase in the area around Euphrates. We need water, the Arabs havewater, we have fought Daesh, why give the water to the Arabs? They have in mind to build asystem to take water from the Euphrates to irrigate the land. You can see the water problem
will be a major problem between Kurds and Arabs. The other problem is in Hasakah – theagrarian reform has stopped because of Hafez Assad in the 1970s. Land here was notredistributed as it was in other parts of Syria. The state kept the land and rented the land to
the former land owners. You still have in Hasakah the majority of the agricultural population
are landless. It is the Kurdish peasants who are the ones without land. It is the social base of
the PYD and the YPG - they give their sons for the construction of Rojava. Now they want land.
However the PYD administration of Rojava says they don’t want to make any agreement onland reform during the wartime because it will create problems between Kurds and Arabs.
The Rojava administration started in 2017 to rent for free 5 hectares to the poor family. For
the moment the administration distribute only the former State land. When redistribution
time will come, the Arab tribes will not be so happy. The chief of the Shammar has thousands
and thousands of acres. It is sure that the Kurds will take land from him and redistribute it to
the Kurds. Probably they won’t take too much from the Shammar because he is VP and they
are working closely with them, but from other tribes like the Tays, who have repressed theKurds in 2004 it will another treatment. That is why the Tay tribe is trying to work more closelywith the SDF now.
I don’t know when they are going to start land reform but there is a huge demand from theKurds, but it would create a lot of problems, potentially like ethnic cleansing in the area.
In conclusion, Daesh is only now in small pockets in Iraq and now the problems will growbetween Arabs and Kurds. The question is how many month the US army will stay in the area.
I think the US is in an uncomfortable position in Rojava. Today, Turkey is not anymore an
enemy of the Syrian regime because of the Kurdish issue. There is huge pressure from Turkey
on the US to force them to leave the area. Russia and Iran are also not happy to see US troops
in the area. Because of the tension between Arab and Kurd and economic problems of thearea, if the US troops want to stay they have to rebuild Raqqa and rebuild a kind of MarshallPlan for this area. I don’t think this is in the mind of the current administration in the US toinvest in the Rojava region. The future is not very clear but there will certainly be problems
between Arabs and Kurds, and that the PYD will stay. It is not in the interest of Putin to see
Ergodan destroy the PYD. But the new generation of PYD is ready to fight.

5.4

Question and Answer

What is the situation in Rojava regarding YPG recruitment?

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In YPG you have 9 months obligatory military service for everyone who reaches 18 years. But
people are joining the YPG also voluntarily because it is to earn $200 per month and you areon the winner’s side. Many Arabs are joining the YPG because this question of land reform isin everyone’s mind in Rojava and if you want to keep your land and to have land, it’s better tobe in the winning camp than the losing one. To belong to the YPG gives you power and because
today there is no more fight to be against Daesh now, being in YPG is more in fashion.
Can you tell us more about the civil service and administration of the Rojava area? What do
Arabic teachers do?
In Qamishli, you have many Arabs schools that were closed because they refused to introduce
the Kurdish curriculum. For example, 80 primary schools were closed by the Kurds. And since
September 2017, they are imposing the Kurdish curriculum in secondary schools. Only
Christian private schools are exempted but every 6 months there is huge pressure on theprivate schools to teach in Kurdish. So now in Qamishli, the Kurdish administration just allow
the Christians to go to the Christian schools, and they don’t want the Arabs or the Kurds going
there. In Qandil, there is a lot of corruption of course, this is the law. You still have Arab schools
but the money is from the Syrian government in Damascus. When you had protests thissummer in Hasakah about the Kurdification of the teaching, you had four days of protests andwhat happened? – car bombs from Daesh (or probably by PYD claiming it was Daesh) –protests ended. This was a message from the PYD to Arab protesters.
Are passports and family books issued in the area? Are documents issued by the Kurdish
administration only valid in northern Syria?
Yes, the Kurdish administration started to give papers to people - issue birth and wedding
certificates and driving licenses, etc. It is valid in the Kurdish Rojava area. But at the same time,
people will ask for birth certificates and other documents from the Syrian administration. So
you make double registrations so you have both Kurdish and Arab certificates because theKurdish ones are not recognised by the Syrian government.
What is the administrative relationship of the PYD with the regime in Aleppo’s Kurdish
neighbourhoods?
The YPG control Sheikh Maqsood neighbourhood and Ashrafyeh neighbourhood in thenorthern area of Aleppo – the Syrian police and army don’t enter this area. How viable is thisarrangement? We don’t know. When the Syrian regime will be strong enough to retake Idlib,
and the NW area – the arrangement will be over. The Syrian government will never let the
YPG control a part of Aleppo. A part of Afrin, a part of Kobane or Qamishli is more tolerable
to let the YPG control a part, but not Aleppo – that is not possible. So maybe in one year or
two we will see this arrangement change in Aleppo but it depends on the battlefield.
Is the term ‘Rojava’ recognised and used by all parties in the conflict in the area?
Rojava, officially, is not the official term for the area – it is now the ‘Northern Federation’ since
December 2016. They changed it from Rojava because Rojava is too Kurdish and they havealready expanded onto Arab territory and they say they want to have a multicultural,multisectoral country. So they don’t officially use Rojava anymore, but everyone speaks about
it when to talk to people – even the administration. But they have to give a different image.
This is the term used by the Kurds – the Arabs or others, they say the ‘Kurdish administration’,they say the ‘local administration’. Rojava is a Kurdish term. Poor people follow the PYD. They64 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

want to stay because they can’t move. The Kurdish middle class, who are more in favour of
the KDP(KDP, Kurdish Democratic Party), they prefer to move. The Arabs – it depends on yourpolitical means and social situation, but even the people who are supporting PYD, if they havethe chance to move, they will, but you need money. The Christians left; they want to leave
because they see no opportunity for them to stay and they feel that they are in danger andbecause they have networks outside it is easier for them to move.
What is your impression of the number of people in the Kurdish area who cannot read/write
Arabic?
Very few – at the time of the Baathist regime you had schools everywhere and the children
were forced to go to school. You have illiterate Syrian in the Arab and the Kurdish communities
but very. The old people who have not been to school, of course – the women who havestayed home – they don’t speak much Arabic. But for the young people who are in the forties,
say, nearly everybody speaks Arabic or is able to understand. I don’t know if they are able towrite Arabic. Of course the Kurdish children left school early at around 10 to help theirparents, or because it is Arabic and they can’t understand, or because of large class sizes of60, they maybe preferred to leave the school and to work instead. But they are able tounderstand Arabic. It’s not like in Iraq where you have the young generation who don’t speak
Arabic anymore because since 25 years all the teaching is in Kurdish, so people under 40 they
don’t speak Arabic so much but in Syria it’s not the same situation.
Arabs who were born and raised in Kurdish areas – can they speak Kurdish?
Yes. At home they would speak Kurdish in Kurdish areas. But in Damascus, for instance,
Kurdish people don’t speak Kurdish in Kurdish areas there.
Do you have any information about women being forced to join the YPJ under threat ofharm (i.e. not talking about the social pressure)?
They don’t force women to join the YPJ (popular protection units for women); it is on a
voluntary basis that they join this militia. The women are not so exposed to frontline fire as
the men. Only 2% of those killed are women – only 2% of the YPG/YPJ killed are women. The
women who join the YPJ, they join very early – they are 14 or 15 years of age– or some ofthem belong to an all-PKK family where it is a family tradition. Other times the Arab women
who want to escape the social pressure who join.
What is the percentage of Arab fighters in the SDF and how do see that affecting thesituation in Rojava?
The SDF, the US Centcom says there are 50,000 fighters (31 August 2017) in it. The YPG they
are 25-30,000. Among the YPG you have 20% who are Arab. Why do they join? The salary.
Also, there is more discipline in the YPG and they are not under the control of the tribal chief.
The Arab groups who join the SDF – like Raqqa, or the military council of Manbij, for example– they are tribal groups. So the tribal chief is the head of the militia. You have some Arabs whowant to escape this tribal structure, ort they are in trouble with the chief. It is a means toescape from the social hierarchy of the Arab tribes and to have a kind of promotion throughthe YPG. You have about 15 Arab groups in the SDF. The YPG don’t encourage the unificationof these Arab groups because they prefer to have 15 smaller ones than one united group. The
Shammar is probably the strongest Arab group and are very close to the Kurds – they arelocated close to Qamishli. The problem is with the Arab groups who are far from the core

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areas of the Kurds (Raqqa and Deirezzour). In Deirezzour especially, for example, you have
new Arab groups here joining the Kurds and SDF – and these Arab groups were very corrupted– they were with the Free Syrian Army, after they have been with Daesh, and now they arewith the SDF because they want to be on the winning side, and they only want to be there forthe power and the money. The Kurds don’t want this. They want more discipline. The Arabs
don’t want to be ruled by the Kurds. They fight with the Kurds against Daesh because theywant to be on the winner side, which is the best to stay on their lands showing their loyalty to
the new master. They do not want to be expelled from their land – Tel Abyad is a big hotspot
in this regard. However, most of the Arabs are in the SDF now only for the salary (140 to 200$/month), the only source of income for many young men.
In Ras al-Ayn, it is more Kurdish. The problem in this area is around the former ‘Arab Belt’. You
have people who have moved from Assad Lake to this area and they built this ‘Arab Belt’ area
– until now the Kurds haven’t retaken the land. Originally it was Kurdish land that was stolen,
but the Kurds have not retaken it, though the Kurdish population want to retake it. The
allegiance of these Arabs is more to the Assad regime in this area. You have many Arab
refugees in Ourfa area who are militarily organised by the Turks for the ‘coming back’ of theserefugee Arabs to the area supported by Turkey – because the Turks want to take Tel Abyad –it is a weak point - 75% of the population is Arab. The Turks want to do here what they did in
Al Bab – they want to break the continuity between Kobane and Qamishli.
When this 9 months of military service in the YPG is over, what do they do?
They go home, if they survive. Or if they stay, they continue.
The regime will not let the Kurds take Aleppo, but the Kurds claim Aleppo.
When you speak with the Kurds about Aleppo there is an ambiguity because it is an Arab city,
but there is Sheikh Maqsood (Kurdish controlled part of Aleppo)…no they don’t really think
to take Aleppo. But they would like to have a special status for Sheikh Maqsood to keep theauthority in the neighbourhood. Because when you see on the map of the Kurdish population– Afrin is nearly 100% Kurd, but then you have other areas that are Arab, basically. They
cannot pretend to go south of Afrin. Around Kobane and Qamishli, you have mixed areas. At
the south of Afrin, you have a gap – there is an ethnic border – very clear. The Arab refugees
from Tal Abyad are ready to come back and are supported by the Turkish military and are just
waiting for the US troops to leave the area. They are ready to intervene in Tel Abyad.
Turks cannot accept the Kurds having Afrin, as it is seen as a PKK stronghold. We have seen
when the Turks said that they can’t accept it that the Russians moved in and establishedbases there. So it seems they might be using it as a bargaining chip with the Turks. What isyour take on this?
The Kurds are hostages between the Turks and Russians. Why did Erdogan join the Russian
coalition in August 2016? Because he understands that the US is reinforcing the Kurds with
their presence, so he switched his allegiance to Putin, who let him to invade Jarablus and Al
Bab. Erdogan enter in Bab al Hawa, at the same time he kept Hayat Tahrir al Sham undercontrol because the Syrian army needs peace in the West. It was a bargain. What is the bargain
between Erdogan and Putin? It is about Idlib, of course. You help me clean Idlib, and I give you
something in Afrin – Tal Abyad, or…it is this kind of game… the Russians are in Afrin to show
to the Kurds that they can protect them against Erdogan; they are smart with Damascus. If
the Kurds stay with the Americans, Putin will say to Erdogan, ok, do what you want with them.
Erdogan also is dealing with Trump – yesterday the Pentagon said 400 US soldiers withdrew

66 —EASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017from Raqqa, that they will not give anymore weapons to the Kurds…and the message is very
important – at the same time the US says they want to stay in the area until 2021 (presidential
election), because they want to push the Russians to remove Assad. It’s the plan, but who
knows if it will work. They want to block the Iranian corridor which is why the US wants tostay. But if Erdogan can get want he wants without using force – to get the YPG to leave andgo out of Afrin….but if they refuse, you can have a limited Turkish intervention in Afrin. At thislevel, we don’t know what is the deal between the US, Turks, and Russia. Tal Abyad is not
negotiable because the Arab refugees are ready to return with the Turkish army supporting
them. They are ready to intervene in Tal Abyad. Manbij – in the Turkish area between Azaz
and Jarablus there is electricity, health, development to show that under Turkish occupation
life is good and normal. The Kurdish occupation leads to a bad economic situation – by thissoft power, Erdogan tries to influence the Arabs to expel the Kurds. Some Kurds are ready tomake sacrifices to build Rojava, the Kurdish state, but the Arabs are not ready to do this for a
Kurdish project. Erdogan, if not by force, tries to push the Kurds from Manbij by this soft
power.

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6.

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Socio-economic aspects of the conflict (F. Balanche)

There are many different territories divided between forces (Map: Military Situation in Syria:
December 2017) –territories divided among Kurds, regime area, rebel areas. Inside each area,
there are smaller areas that are controlled too – at each checkpoint you have to give moneyat each checkpoint you pass through. Life is very difficult - there is no unified market.
Reconstruction will be slow. I visited the regime areas in March 2016 – I try to go every year
to Syria both to regime and Rojava areas (not the rebel area). I also made interviews with
Syrian refugees in Lebanon to see to what extent refugees feel they want to return to Syria or
not – the answer so far has been no due to the security situation, economic and politicalsituations. Information on the economic situation today is virtually impossible to collect. The
most important data are 13 million people in need on 17 million people reside in Syria; 7million refugees outside Syria (5.5 million according to UNHCR) – all detailed in the last OCHA
report.
Thirty percent of the territory is in SDF (Kurdish) control but it is only 3 million people. On theregime side you have 11.5 million people – most of the IDPs are in these areas actually. I did

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interviews with IDPs from Ghouta. Ghouta was bombed so they went to Damascus because it
is a safer area, not because they love Assad. It is a strategy of the regime to destroy
infrastructure in the rebel areas to prove to people that the rebels cannot provide security topeople. It is counter-insurgency strategy. It is what happened in Ghouta very clearly. They use
starvation to push people to leave the area to separate civilians from fighters and then destroy
the fighters who remain. It is a strategy used by the regime.
The main problem will be Idlib soon (Map: Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham Strongholds in Idlib Area).
In dark green you see the HTS areas and their allies. On the map you see that they arecontrolling the border, meaning they are controlling the humanitarian aid, they control
smuggling, weapons and munitions. They are the masters of this area because the other rebel
groups cannot get any support through from outside. HTS is also controlling the main roadand can then control the whole province and economic life, taking taxes on goods andindividuals traveling on the road network. HTS like Daesh – they are basically the same –though HTS is less efficient – they have the same strategy to build a caliphate as a territorial‘statelet’ and for that need money to reduce the influence of other groups and to clientalise
the population. They try to threaten Hama and Aleppo. There have been fights there with the
Syrian army – but for not the SAA is more in a containment strategy towards HTS than rollback. The rollback will come after the situation in the east is finished. This area has about
60,000 fighters in the region – 20,000 of which are with HTS.

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The other main area of concern is in the south of Syria (Map: Military Situation in Southern
Syria, June 2017).

It is quieter due to the agreement between Russia and the US and Jordan for a de-escalation
zones because it is close to the Golan Heights and very sensitive. I don’t think in this region
you will see large fights between the Syrian regime and the rebels because of the proximityof Israel. You have some small pockets of fighting. It is clear that the regime will take the areaeast of Deraa – that is clear – because it is the road with Jordan and it is important to re-open
the road to Jordan for the economic relationship and for the symbolic opening of the road up
to Turkey. The regime wants to reopen the connection between Turkey and Jordan to obtainroyalties from the traffic – this is important for their income streams. They need to control

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the roads and checkpoints for this income. This is very important now that Syria is divided up
by many warlords who want a piece of the cake. For reconstruction is will be a problem
because even if Syria is reunified under the regime, there will be divisions between many
chiefs who will control their small areas, like in Lebanon. They don’t allow you to invest
without giving them a share.
So there is still potential for migration (Map: Potential for New Migration from Rebel and IS
Areas) in the area. In Deraa you have about 400,000 people under rebel control; in Ghouta
it’s about 300,000; In Idlib , 1.2 million by my data (2 million is an over-evaluation); in the
Euphrates area between Raqqa and Abu Kamal you have about 1.2 million people.

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Potential migration related to the security situation – destruction in the cities is very serious(Map: Estimated Damage to the Housing Sector). I made this map before the destruction of
Raqqa – half of that city is now destroyed. The most destroyed city at the time of this map(July 2017) was in Deirezzor – half of that city was destroyed. One third to 25% of Aleppo wasdestroyed. The northern part of Syria has been most destroyed; more so than the south andthe west. There is a kind of US blockage on aid for reconstruction happening until Russia
decides to remove Assad. If there is no international reconstruction for Homs and Damascus,
Syria and Russia will be unlikely to allow reconstruction funds to go to the North of Syria, tohelp the Kurds. Raqqa for instance will be blocked too. The Kurds will not be happy to see
Raqqa reconstructed (which supported Daesh) versus Kobane and Hasakah (who supported
the fight against Daesh) – they will not be happy with that. Corruption is an overall blockage
for reconstruction across Syria. According to Transparency International, it is 173 out of 176
in its level of corrupt countries in the world. Every checkpoint requires payment. I met awoman from Aleppo in Lebanon and she wanted to see her flat – she had to pay $100 fromthe Lebanese border into Aleppo – paying $1 at every checkpoint. I brought milk and tea formy family in my suitcase and when I arrived – it was empty. Before entering Syria you haveto be checked against the blacklist of the government. If your name is on the list you go
directly to prison. So before you arrive at the border, a person must pay someone, to pay
someone, to verify on the computer if your name appears on the list. Even if your name is noton the list, they put you in jail – the Mukhabarat (intelligence services) – they have full power
to do so. And if they know you are coming from Lebanon, they will think you have money, andthey will still put you in jail just to pressure your family to pay a ransom to release you. If they

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know you have someone in Europe or the Gulf, they will charge even more. Huge corruption
and insecurity in this regard is not good for the economy. There is no job creation. The statecreates jobs for widows, families of martyrs, injured soldiers, to give a salary for survival but
the industry sector is has been destroyed in many places. Some industry has been rebuilt but
only for the internal market. Most large industrialists have gone to Turkey or Egypt. Others
outside Syria smuggle in and out of Syria and run business that way. Aleppo will never comeback to how it was in 2011 with a strong industrial base. Today you have some people comingback to make real estate bargains if they are close to the regime. Economic sanctions havedestroyed small businesses but have reinforced the wealthy business men close to Assad –they make business smuggling on the black market for sugar, etc. A small group close to theregime then finance pro-regime militias. The regime is also planning some long termreconstruction projects. For example, that will result in displacing the people who once lived
there but left in the conflict. See Map: Syrian Army Damascus Strategy - the destruction of
the informal settlement in Southern Damascus and in the Eastern Ghouta during the fighting
is also a violent program of “urban renovation”.
What’s happening now is the creation of an Iranian corridor – this is a reality – Iran is
projecting its power on Lebanon, Iraq, Syria – it is creating an economic market and for its
military influence. Iran wants to integrate these economies, for instance, to interconnect theelectricity network. This is also political. Electricity is a main problem for these countries andif Iran can resolve this problem this will increase their influence with the poor and Shia
population. In Syria, after they retook the gasfield, the gas is going to the power stations, so
in some areas you do have 24 hour electricity. This is also soft power for the regime – to show
the population they can provide. There are very few power stations in the east of the country
with small capacity; most power comes from the west. The power didn’t build the stations
there to keep it underdeveloped.

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Reconstruction will eventually focus on Damascus, Homs, where the Syrian diaspora withmoney might return – the Syrian state will not invest in the small cities or the countrysidewhere warlords are located. One of the roots of the crisis was the return of the centreperiphery cleavage in the 1990s. In the 70s and 80s, there was more development in the rural
areas but this stopped in the 1990s. With the liberalisation of the economy in the 2000s, Assadsaid – no more development of the countryside, no more regional planning – so, in the past
decade there has been a wealth concentration in the main cities, abandonment of the‘periphery’, and we have seen the uprising in Deraa – in the suburbs. There are huge socioeconomic reasons for the Syrian uprising too – with the reconstruction we are also going to
see this concentration of wealth and investment in main cities. The roots of the uprising willin my opinion be reinforced.
Demography is a time-bomb and we see the results after 20 years. The fertility rates show this–for example, demographic growth is about 3.5% per year in Raqqa - fertility rates are about
8 children per women in Raqqa. Moreover, Raqqa attracts population from the ruralcountryside. The Sunni belt has a very high fertility rate in Deraa and Damascus – when wecompare with the geography of the Syrian uprising, we see the connection between the
demography and uprising (Maps: Demographic Growth in Syria by District and Geography of
the Syrian Uprising).

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By the contrary, Alawites, the Ismaili, the Druze – these populations have a low demography
rate – they have about 3 children per woman, while rural Sunnis still have about 6-7 each. For
me it is no surprise that one of the strategies of the regime is to keep 6-7 million Sunni Arabs
outside the country – because this population is too fertile and are threatening the weak
demography of the minorities. Minorities were 30% in 1980, then 20% in 2011 – then theregime had difficulty to recruit new Mukhabarat, new forces, among the Alawites for example.
So one of the solutions is to expel several million people – that’s why you meet Syrian refugees
in Lebanon – these people are coming from Tabkah, for example, and they don’t want to go
back to Syria. Even if they were not opponents – there is no possibility to come back. They live
in bad conditions in Lebanon, but at least they can eat – they are unsure what they would door if they would be welcomed back in Syria. I met some refugees, people from close to Idlib in
HTS area, who would like to come back but with HTS there it isn’t possible – they are waiting
for the Syrian government to retake the area so they can return. There are many, manydifferent situation. People from Bab Amer in Homs city – they will never come back – because
they are on the blacklist of the regime. People from Al Qusayr will also never come backbecause they are blacklisted. These people were in the Sunni corner at the corner at the southof the Alawite stronghold, the Shia Mecca, across from the highway between Homs andDamascus - it was a stronghold of the revolt and a door for jihadists to enter Syria from
Lebanon. Al Qusayr was completely destroyed when Hezbollah retook the city (Al Qusayr) andthe population has been expelled, and for the people from Al Qusayr it is clear they cannot
return to Syria. In Syria, I think Al Qusayr is an example of ethnic cleansing directed at the topof the regime in Damascus, and possibly due to an Iranian presence in the area. But in otherplaces, ethnic cleansing is decided by the population themselves – for example, Qalat al Hosen(in French: Le Krak des Chevalier (Crusader Castel) in Idlib – close to the Christian valley ofWadi Nasara - here you have Christian and Alawite area but Qalat al Hosen is a Sunni village.
This village supported the rebellion since the beginning and was taken by the rebels early on.
It was also a point and base for jihadists going into Homs and you had many fights with theChristian militias and many civilians were killed by the rebels. So when the SAA retook thevillage and the castle in July 2014 with the help of the army and Christian militias, they burned
the village. But it was not decided in Damascus. It was decided by the local population who
decided that they did not want the local Sunni population coming back. We have many
examples of local kinds of cleansing that will prevent some people from coming back. The
regime is clearly willing to push out millions of people; Syria lost about 50% of its humanEASO COI MEETING REPORT - SYRIA: COI MEETING 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER 2017

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capital due to the war – intellectual elites, job creators, business people – all this is also a
blockage for the reconstruction.
I don’t expect a quick reconstruction of Syria – the US will block it, France will block it – andthe regime will not accept political concessions for economic aid – there will likely be a lengthy
continuation of the counter-insurgency so do not expect economic stabilisation to occur verysoon or quickly. There are ethnic cleansing issues on both sides. There will be a redistributionof the land/properties of those who left the country to the people who are still in Syria and to
those who have remained loyal to the government. They will become so loyal as a result, thatrefugees will not be welcomed back. I saw a law taken by Parliament taken last month –Syrians who are abroad and who have not done their military service have to pay $8 000 USD
if they don’t want to have their family’s property confiscated. Who, displaced into Lebanon,
can pay $8 000? It is to have a legal mechanism to steal this property and a mean to shakedown money from those who have the money to pay. But it is also the case that you cannot
just pay the $8 000 to solve it – because although this is the ‘official’ price – it doesn’t include
all the bakshish (the bribes needed) – it isn’t that the Syrian government will automatically
accept your payment even if you try to pay. You have to pay them to accept your payment.
The bad economic situation for the majority of the situation will encourage migration tocontinue in tandem with the conflict.

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Syria and the Shia Crescent

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In 2004, the Twelver Shiites constitute 35% of the Lebanese population (1.4 million out of 4
million inhabitants), 1% of the Syrian population (180,000 out of 18 million), but 55% of Iraqis(15.4 million out of 28 million). The Arab Sunni are 28% of the Lebanese population (1.1
million), 65% of the Syrian population (11.7 millions) and 25% of the Iraqi population (7.8
millions). The total population of the area was 50 million; the Arab Sunni were 41% (20.6
million) and the Shia Twelver 34% (17 million). 8 million of Kurds live in the area, mostly Sunni(2.5 million in Syrian and 5.5 million in Iraq) who represent 16% of the population. The
remaining 10% are Christian (1.5 million in Lebanon, 1.2 million in Syria and 1.5 million in Iraq),
Druze, Alawite and other very minority denominations. The proportions have not changed
much since 2004, except for the Christians who left Syria and Iraq in droves. If the departureof the Syrian refugees is final (5 million Sunni Arabs out of 6 million) this will reduce the Arab
Sunni relative weight too.
If the King of Jordan included the Druze, Alawite, Ismaili and Yazidis minorities in his approachto the Shia crescent, this increases their proportion in Lebanon and especially in Syria with the
Alawites. However, in Lebanon, the Druze leaded by Walid Jumblatt were rather in the proSaudi camp, in addition they have little in common with the Twelver Shiites on the religious
point of view. The Alawites officially belong to the great Shia family, but theologicaldifferences are enormous between these two branches of Shi'ism. The Alawite proximity to
Iran comes more from the geopolitical alliance saddled between Hafez el Assad and theIslamic Republic in 1981. The Kurds in Syria and Iraq are almost all Sunnis, with the exceptionof those of Sinjar who belong to Yezidism and some communities in eastern Iraq that are Shiite
Twelver. However, the 8 million Sunni Kurds living in Syria and Iraq dissociate themselves from
Sunni Arabs and form separate communities. Therefore, neither Arab Twelver Shiites nor Arab
Sunni have the majority in Levant.
The civil war in Syria was quickly interpreted as a threat against all Shiites in Middle East. The
rapid rise of Sunni jihadists, attacks on Shia minorities, and threats against the Sit Zainab
Mausoleum were elements of mobilization in the Shia world. As early as winter 2012, attacks
on Shiite villages on the outskirts of Homs forced Hezbollah to intervene, otherwise the Shiite
clans of the Beqaa would have come to Syria themselves in the name of tribal solidarity.
Damascus and Homs are close to the Lebanese border, so it could make sense as part ofCedar's defense for Hezbollah to send fighters to secure the border against jihadist incursions.
On the other hand, it was harder to justify sending Hezbollah fighters to Aleppo. However, thedefense of the Shiite villages of Nubol-Zahra and Foua-Kefraya is using as a mobilizing
element. The Shiite history of medieval Aleppo has been abundantly recalled as well as theFoua origin of many Lebanese families. In Iraq, the destruction of the Samara Mosque in 2006
has been remembered to justify the presence of Shia militias to Damascus and Sit Zainab.

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Question and Answer
Syria is one of the most corrupt countries – and reconstruction would probably cement thecorruption rather than solve it – that isn’t a very peaceful way to build a stronger state –which way do you think it will go? Can it survive being as corrupt as it is now?
It will not tolerate any opposition – he will allow the corruption to develop – it isn’t a problem
for Assad. You can arrest anyone under the context of corruption to eliminate your enemy.
The regime will be under the protection of Iran. To understand Syria we have four different
components of Syrian society – minorities, rural Arab Sunnis, urban Arab Sunnis, Arab tribes– the regime will let autonomy happen in the west of Syria (with Kurds) – they will leave themas long as they are recognising Assad’s power in exchange for a portion of the oil; social peacein exchange for funds. The state doesn’t intervene in local affairs and he is ruling indirectly ina way. In the western main cities you will have direct government from the regime, in thesuburbs you will have indirect government – like Aleppo before the war – tribal mafias alignedwith the state. Even the Druze will have more autonomy because they have been loyal. This
will be the new governance of Syria – many political and legal insecurities (Maps: Structure
territoriale et sociale de Syrie).

I want to ask about the role of President Assad in this regional power game and how long
do you think he will be in office?
A very long time – Assad if the keystone of the system. Why the Iranians and Russians don’t
want to remove him? Syria is a ‘godfather state’ – they have spent 30 years to build this systemand to catch the loyalty of the different warlords etc. The father gave this legitimacy to hisson. I met Assad two years ago – nobody took him seriously before the war – his name was a‘giraffe’ – no one calls him that anymore. He has proved his legitimacy as a ‘strong’ man who
has ruled by ferocity and threat. So he will be the key man in the war, and plays between
Russia and Iran. But if he has to be careful. He knows where he is going – I interviewed him

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for two hours a couple of years ago – on the domestic level it was less clear, but on thegeopolitical point of view, he understands very well the situation.
A question on southern Damascus – in Eastern Ghouta, in your opinion, why is Assad leavinggroups like Daesh and Jaysh al Islam – why is he leaving them there like that?
It is difficult to retake this area Yarmouk, Ghouta – today, in 2012, the rebels – these small
points (Alawite/Christian/Ismaili) and central Damascus were loyal to the regime because they
were minority populations there. So since the 1970s Hafez al Assad settled minorities in the
key points around Damascus to break the ‘Sunni belt’ around Damascus. Whoever controls
Damascus controls Syria. All the urban planning of Damascus is done in this way – very large
avenues / highways useless for transportation but - used to break the territory – very usefulfor fighting an insurgency. But they left the smaller roads in the Sunni Arab belt where it ishard to enter with tanks – it is very narrow – hard to penetrate inside of some of those area –otherwise, you have to destroy the whole area. The problem is that the regime let the Sunni
Arab belt areas develop into informal settlements. This the core area of the rebellion where
you have the strongest rebels. This is the urban difficulty of penetrating inside so they can’t
get deep into Ghouta. You can’t just retake the area, you have to be able to deal with andcontrol the area through a land war.

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Annex: Reading suggestions from speakers
Pro-Regime Forces (C. Kozak)••••

Iran’s Assad Regime, ISW, March 2017
The Decay of the Syrian Regime is Much Worse Than You Think, War on the Rocks,
August 2016
Strength in Weakness: The Syrian Army’s Accidental Resilience, Carnegie, March
2016
The Assad Regime: From Counterinsurgency To Civil War, ISW, March 2013

Opposition-Held Syria and ‘De-Escalation Zones’ (C. Kozak)
•
•
•
•
•

Southern Syria Deal Fails to Constrain Iran and al-Qaeda, ISW, November 2017
Jihad Wins in Idlib, Foreign Affairs, August 2017
Into the Tunnels, Century Foundation, December 2016
Keeping the Lights On in Rebel Idlib, Century Foundation, November 2016
Syrian Armed Opposition Powerbrokers, ISW, March 2016

Family Law (E. Van Eijk)•••

Van Eijk, Esther. Family Law in Syria: Patriarchy, Pluralism and Personal Status Laws
(2016), London: I.B. Tauris.
'Pluralistic Family Law in Syria: Bane or Blessing?' (2014) in: Electronic Journal ofIslamic and Middle Eastern Law Vol. 2, 73-82‘Unity in Multiplicity: Shared Cultural Understandings on Marital Life in a Damascus
Catholic and Muslim Court’ (2013) in: Erasmus Law Review 3/4 (December 2013),
special issue on Legal Pluralism, 204-213.

Rojava region/Kurdish issues and Socio-economics / development in Syria (F. Balanche)
Articles by Fabrice Balanche:• Not Money Alone: The Challenges of Syrian Reconstruction: url• A Half-Million Syrian Returnees? A Look Behind the Numbers: url• Syria-Iraq: Limiting Iranian Influence Implies Returning To Realpolitik: url• The Kurdish Path to Socialism in Syria: url• From Qamishli to Qamishlo: A Trip to Rojava’s New Capital: url• Assad Needs 'Useless Syria' Too: url• Sectarianism in Syria’s Civil War (February 2018): url

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