Date: Feb 21, 2018 Source: The Daily Star Rebels cling on in Eastern Ghouta Maya Gebeily & Rouba El-Housseini| Agence France Presse BEIRUT: Despite a crippling siege, infighting and a ferocious wave of bombardment, Syrian rebels have clung on to their Eastern Ghouta stronghold near Damascus – but a looming ground offensive might finally oust them. A renewed regime air campaign has left nearly 200 civilians dead in just three days, and signals the government is gearing up to make an all-out push to seize the enclave. When Syrians broke out in protest against leader Bashar Assad’s rule in 2011, Eastern Ghouta joined in, and rebels captured it the following year. Rebel control is now divided between two groups: Jaish al-Islam and Failaq al-Rahman, both of which have pledged to mount a fierce defense against a regime assault. The fighters have already survived five years of bombardment and siege, drawing on their local roots and smuggling tunnels. “They are opposition organizations that have a social, political, economic and military approach to interacting with the population of Ghouta,” Nicholas Heras of the Center for New American Security said. To pull out those roots, the regime imposed a siege on the region in 2013 in what Heras called a “strategy of collective punishment.” That encirclement made food, medicine, and other daily goods nearly impossible to access for Eastern Ghouta’s 400,000 residents. “It is the regime saying to the people of Ghouta that their rebellion personally offended Assad’s regime,” Heras said. Both Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam are Islamist factions founded in 2013 that have joined in peace talks in Geneva and Astana. But the pair have also clashed multiple times in a struggle for influence in rebel-held parts of Ghouta, which amount to a little more than 100 square kilometers. Jaish al-Islam is a Salafist-inspired organization that controls the main towns of Douma and Nashabieh, with military positions outside the city centers. Failaq al-Rahman holds Eastern Ghouta’s other half, including the towns of Erbeen, Hammourieh, and Jisreen, as well as part of the Damascus district of Jobar. It has fought alongside Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which includes militants formerly linked to Al-Qaeda. Since Eastern Ghouta first fell under regime siege in 2013, rebels have been using tunnels and smuggling routes to bring supplies in. That means they also “actively and systematically profiteered from the siege,” said Will Todman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Rebel groups had developed bureaucratic systems to control the smuggling, charging fixed rates for certain goods to come in and requiring smugglers to submit application forms to operate,” he told AFP. They also stand accused of hoarding supplies and unfairly controlling aid distribution for profit. In 2017, government troops totally sealed off Eastern Ghouta, destroying smuggling routes and granting less access to aid groups. The situation has grown increasingly dire since then, with hundreds in desperate need of medical evacuations and others facing malnutrition. In May 2017, Eastern Ghouta was designated a “de-escalation zone” in an effort to still the violence, but Assad’s regime now seems more determined than ever to capture it. The government wants to secure the capital and put a halt to the salvo of rockets rebels launch from Eastern Ghouta onto Damascus. The regime pounded the area heavily for five days earlier this month and resumed bombing Sunday, leaving a total of almost 450 civilians dead. Sam Heller, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the regime was looking to “resolve the issue of Eastern Ghouta permanently – either with a military victory or through a negotiated settlement under military pressure.” Similar escalations have ended with rebels agreeing to “reconciliation” deals, exiting the area in exchange for a halt to bombardment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Monday hinted Syria was executing that very strategy in Eastern Ghouta. “The Aleppo experience – when the evacuation of fighters was organized – is completely applicable to Eastern Ghouta,” Lavrov said. In Aleppo in 2016, regime troops conducted a monthlong offensive, then secured a deal that evacuated the city’s rebel-controlled half. CSIS’s Todman says that could happen in Eastern Ghouta, too. “Rebels won’t be able to hold out indefinitely – several months or a year from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of evacuation deal was agreed for at least parts of the Eastern Ghouta, although some rebel factions will likely fight to the bitter end,” he said. But Ghouta resident Abu Zeid, 32, expects the regime is hungry for total conquest, not a deal. “I don’t think the rebels’ withdrawal will resolve the issue. The regime’s essential problem is with the people,” he said.