Bosra: Fighters in southern Syria who helped topple President Bashar Assad are reluctant to disarm and disband as ordered by the country’s new rulers, their spokesman told AFP.
An Islamist-led offensive ripped through Syria from the north and into Damascus on December 8, bringing to a sudden end five decades of rule by the Assad clan.
On December 25, the country’s new Islamist rulers said they had reached an agreement with rebel groups on their dissolution and integration under the defense ministry.
New leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa said the authorities would “absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control.”
But a spokesman for the Southern Operations Room, a coalition of armed groups from the southern province of Daraa formed on December 6 to help topple Assad, said the alliance did not agree.
“We’re not convinced by the idea of dissolving armed groups,” said its spokesman Naseem Abu Orra.
“We’re an organized force in the south... headed by officers who defected” from Assad’s army, he told AFP in Daraa’s town of Bosra.
“We can integrate the defense ministry as a pre-organized entity... We have weapons, heavy equipment,” he said.
Abu Orra said the group, led by local leader Ahmed Al-Awdeh, included thousands of men, without any Islamist affiliation.
Awdeh has good relations with former Assad ally Russia, as well as neighboring Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, sources close to his group said.
Daraa became known as the birthplace of the Syrian uprising after protests erupted there in 2011 against Assad’s rule.
As they spread across the country, government forces cracked down on the demonstrators, triggering defections from the army and one of the deadliest wars of the century.
After losing swathes of territory to rebels and jihadists, Assad’s forces clawed back control of much of the country with the backing of Iran and Russia.
Daraa returned to government control in 2018, but under a deal mediated by Russia, rebels were allowed to keep their weapons and continue to ensure security in their region.
Then, after more than 13 years of civil war that had killed more than half a million people and ravaged the country, everything changed.
In the north of Syria, an Islamist-led rebel coalition called Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) moved rapidly out of its bastion on the Turkish border to seize second city Aleppo from Assad’s forces on December 1.
Its fighters then advanced southwards toward the cities of Hama and Homs on their way to the capital.
“We... decided to begin liberating the south of the country to reach Damascus” from the other direction, Abu Orra said.
He said they elaborated their own military plans in Daraa, but there was “some coordination” with HTS in the north.
Several witnesses have told AFP that they saw Awdeh’s men, recognizable by their headdress typical of southern Syria, posted near the Central Bank and in several neighborhoods in the early hours of December 8.
By then, Assad had already fled the country, former officials have told AFP.
“It was chaos but we were briefly able to take control of vital institutions to ensure their protection,” Abu Orra said.
He said the Southern Operations Room also stood guard outside several embassies, including those of Egypt and Jordan, and led some foreign diplomats to a prominent hotel to ensure their safety.
He said “several foreign countries” had called Awdeh to request his help.
When HTS forces arrived in town at the end of the afternoon, the Southern Operations Room withdrew to Daraa to avoid “chaos or armed clashes,” Abu Orra said.
Two days later, Awdeh met Syria’s new leader Sharaa. But he did not attend the December 25 meeting during which other rebel factions agreed to disband and join a future army.

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across Gaza killed at least 22 people on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said, as the US stepped up efforts to overcome sticking points between Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire to end the war.
One of the airstrikes killed at least 10 people in a multi-story house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on Wednesday, while another killed five in the nearby Zeitoun suburb, medics said.
In Deir Al-Balah city in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, an Israeli airstrike killed three other people.
In Jabalia, where the army has operated for more than three weeks, an Israeli airstrike killed four people, medics said.
On Tuesday, Israeli military strikes killed at least 24 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, medics said, with two airstrikes hitting tent encampments in Mawasi, to the west of the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 18 people. The dead included several women and children.
There was no comment by the Israeli military on those incidents.
As Israeli continued its bombardments, the US, Qatar and Egypt were making the most intensive effort in months to reach a ceasefire, with one source close to the talks saying this was the most serious attempt to reach a deal so far.
The outgoing US administration has called for a final push for a deal before President Joe Biden leaves office, and many in the region view President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 as an unofficial deadline.
“Things are better than ever before, but there is no deal yet,” the source told Reuters.
But with the clock ticking, both sides accuse the other of blocking a deal by adhering to conditions that have torpedoed all previous peace efforts for more than a year.
On Tuesday, Hamas stood by its demand that it will only free its remaining hostages if Israel agrees to end the war and withdraw all its troops from Gaza. Israel says it will not end the war until Hamas is dismantled and all hostages are free. Hamas also said that Trump was rash to say there would be “hell to pay” unless the hostages go free by his inauguration.
Osama Hamdan, an official with the Islamist group, told a news conference in Algiers on Tuesday: “I think the US president must make more disciplined and diplomatic statements.”
Nearly 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to health officials in the enclave. The assault was launched after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli territory on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.