In the past few days, there was a military escalation by the Syrian regime forces supported by its allies, targeting the south west of Syria, in particular vast areas of Dara province. This resulted in several casualties and triggered a displacement wave from the area. This escalation, as the case has always been with the Assad regime, seeks to undermine the political process and impose a de facto situation on the political opposition, to make it accept solutions that are do not meet the Syrian people demands of freedom and dignity. This escalation is a continuation of the regime practices that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, to subjugate the Syrian people to accept to be ruled by the regime’s iron fist, which the Syrian people revolted against in the first place.

It is noteworthy that this area was one of the de-escalation zones according to an agreement reached in July 2017 between Jordan, the United States and Russia. Such campaign is a clear violation of this agreement. The regime is seeking to provoke factions present in the south, which respected the de-escalation agreement for the safety of civilians in the area, and to push them to fight, using that a pretext to continue its military campaigns targeting civilian residential areas to force factions surrender these areas to the regime. The response of the international community to this campaign was complete silence and evasion of its moral and human responsibilities. This international passiveness gives the regime a green light to continue this campaign leaving residents of the area before two options only: submission to the regime or displacement, and that’s what recently happened in other areas in Syria. However, we have seen that the majority of people from areas where the regime regained control chose to leave their cities, towns and homes – or what is left of those homes – and move to areas outside the control of the regime, in spite of the risks of living there, as they are targeted by the regime forces and its allies. This led to over crowdedness there, which increases the risks of high number of massacres and innocent casualties.

We, in SWPM, demand the international community to break its silence towards that campaign, which is harming civilians in southern Syria the most, due to the regime’s practices supported by its allies, which use civilians as tools of war and pressure to achieve military gains. We plea to the international community to assume its legal, moral and human responsibilities to stop this bloodshed and to interfere with all available means to put pressure on the regime and its allies to stop the military campaigns in all Syrian territories, which seek to put Syrian people before the options of either accepting the regime to remain in power, dying, or becoming internally displaced or refugees in neighboring countries or beyond.

May the martyrs rest in peace, the detainees and disappeared persons be free and our great people emerge victorious

General secretariat of the Syrian Women’s Political Movement

June 24, 2018