As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is moving towards his goal to recapture ‘every inch’ of the Syrian territory, Idlib governorate in northwestern Syria has been targeted by escalating military offensive from the regime, supported by Russia and Iranian-backed militias. In the last bastion of the rebel forces, an array of opposition factions, including jihadi group Tahrir al-Sham and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are holding on their positions, backed by Turkish military forces. But the pursuit for full military victory has been (temporarily) halted in March 2020 when Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan struck the truce for Idlib province.
Since then, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the worsening economic crisis and public pressure have pushed al-Assad to engage in several local agreements with rebel groups in northern Syria. The core of these deals is to provide for the exchange of prisoners and the opening of trade routes between the ‘liberated’ zones and the areas under the control of the Syrian regime. These agreements show how ongoing practice of local conflict management are shaped by power competition at the (inter)national level. In Syria, a wider survey of local agreements reveals that they often work, less as constructive peace initiatives and more as tactical tools to grant at least one of the signing parties a strategic advantage on the battlefield.
Three secret agreements and the release of 18 prisoners
In March and April 2020, the Syrian regime brokered three top-secret agreements with rebel groups to exchange a total of 18 prisoners. The first exchange took place around the city of Darat Azaa, in the western countryside of Aleppo, on 16 May 2020. Tahrir al-Sham – who aims to establish an Islamic Caliphate inside the Syrian borders – released a Colonel and a soldier of the Syrian regime forces in exchange for three fighters.
