Eight thousand Syrian Islamist rebels and their families are being moved from Lebanon to northern Syria in one of the biggest evacuation deals of the six-year civil war.
The Nusra Front fighters surrendered last week after a six-day battle with President Assad’s allies, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, at their last stronghold along the border.
Hezbollah’s victory and the huge evacuation brings President Assad a step closer to regaining control over what his allies call “useful Syria”, the belt of urbanised territory running from the capital Damascus to the coast and the northern city of Aleppo. Such evacuations have helped Assad to recapture several rebel bastions over the past year.
Under a deal brokered by the Lebanese government, the rebels will be relocated to northern Syria’s Idlib province, next to the Turkish border, which is controlled by myriad rebel groups.
As part of the deal Nusra released three Hezbollah fighters in return for three Syrians held by the Lebanese government. There had already been an exchange of corpses between the two sides.
Advertisement
“Three members of Hezbollah, Mahmoud Harb, Hussam Fakih and Hafez Zakhim, were released in exchange for two inmates in Roumieh prison [in Lebanon] and a third that was in the custody of Lebanon’s General Security and had finished his sentence,” Lebanon’s national news agency reported.
The first convoys of coaches carrying the fighters and their families departed for Idlib hours later. The rebels agreed to release another five Hezbollah prisoners once the first convoy arrived at its final destination.
The evacuated rebel fighters had been held in the town of Wadi Hamid, just inside Lebanese territory, after burning their headquarters in their stronghold of Jurud Arsal in a final act of defiance.
The Nusra Front was al-Qaeda’s Syria branch until it severed ties and rebranded last year. It now spearheads the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Islamist alliance in the Syrian civil war.
Hezbollah, a Shia militia which has been openly fighting in Syria on Assad’s side since 2013, began its offensive on Nusra strongholds around the border town of Arsal in late July. Tens of thousands of displaced Syrians live in camps in the area, which were used as hideaways by militants.
Advertisement
Hezbollah’s victory has cleared opposition forces out of all but two small pockets of territory along the Lebanese border, but commentators have questioned why the operation was left to the militia and not the national army.
“I disagree with Hezbollah’s activity, and would have preferred to see the Lebanese army operating in its place in Jarud Arsal,” said Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, who is an outspoken opponent of Assad. “We do not like to see them in Syria.”
The evacuations, which the rebels insist are forced displacements, decant the surrendering gunmen into the last major patch of rebel-controlled territory in the northwest of Syria. They suggest that Assad is willing to forfeit some areas of his country in order to regain control over the rest.