Rebel holdouts face stark choices in besieged town
BEIRUT — Three years ago, the Army of Islam, one of Syria’s most powerful armed opposition groups, held a massive military parade that included thousands of opposition fighters marching in formation and a striking display of tanks and armored vehicles at the doors of the Syrian capital.
The parade, held in the town of Douma in the spring of 2015, demonstrated the Saudibacked group’s growing clout in the eastern Ghouta suburbs, which for years were seen as a potential launch pad for a ground attack on Damascus, seat of President Bashar Assad’s power.
The Army of Islam now stands alone in eastern Ghouta, its fighters facing a stark choice: Surrender or die.
Haitham Bakkar, a Doumabased opposition activist, said the situation in Douma is very tense because it is unclear what will happen next. He said it was a question of existence for the Army of Islam fighters, most of whom are from Douma.
“If the Army of Islam goes to northern Syria, it will be its end,” he said.
Douma, on the northeastern edge of Damascus, is the last rebel holdout in the eastern Ghouta region after thousands of fighters from the Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Rahman groups ceded their towns to government control under a deal brokered by Russia, a key ally of Assad.
For days, their fighters have been exiting from the southernmost pockets of eastern Ghouta, leaving in a fleet of buses, including the limegreen municipal buses that have come to symbolize defeat for the Syrian opposition as the government takes back control of cities around the country.
The Ghouta fighters join tens of thousands of rebels from other areas of Syria, including Aleppo and Homs, who were driven out in the past few years following similar deals with the government that granted them safe passage to the north in return for abandoning the rebellion.
With the help of Russian air strikes, the army has waged a crushing air and ground offensive to recapture eastern Ghouta, killing more than 1,600 people since Feb. 18, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Five weeks later, the eastern Ghouta region, once a cluster of around 15 rebel-held towns spread east of Damascus, has been overtaken by government forces, except for Douma, where the Army of Islam is headquartered.
Rebels who have left eastern Ghouta so far have all gone to Idlib, an insurgent-held region dominated by al Qaeda-affiliated fighters near the Turkish border, where they either have a presence or good relations with Turkey.
By contrast, the Army of Islam, called Jaysh al-Islam in Arabic, is homegrown and has no other strongholds in the country.