Cat-and-mouse game over Syria’s Palmyra continues

Smoke billows in the background as Syrian regime fighters advance to retake the ancient city of Palmyra from Daesh. (AFP)

BEIRUT: Daesh and the Syrian regime continued to play cat and mouse in the historic Syrian city of Palmyra on Thursday as President Bashar Assad’s forces claimed they had completed the recapture of the city with the help of Russian air power.
The oasis city has traded hands several times during Syria’s six-year civil war and become a symbol of Daesh’s wanton destruction of priceless cultural heritage in areas under its control.
Bolstered by airstrikes and ground troops from their ally Moscow, Syrian forces battled through the desert for weeks to reach Palmyra.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin of Palmyra’s recapture, a Kremlin spokesman told news agencies in Moscow.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said the terrorists had withdrawn from the desert city but not before mining several areas.
“The Syrian Army is still clearing neighborhoods of mines and has not spread out into the whole city yet,” said its director, Rami Abdel Rahman.
Meanwhile, a senior member of the main Syrian opposition said the prospects for progress after a week of peace talks in Geneva were “very dim.”
“We are convinced that there is no military solution, we are going for a political solution,” Basma Kodmani, a negotiator for the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), told a side event in Geneva.
“But there is no prospect as you can tell from the end of this second week or 10 days of talks here in Geneva. The prospects are very dim.”
Russia accused the HNC of “sabotaging” sputtering talks and questioned their ability to reach a deal.
“The results of the first days of the intra-Syrian dialogues, as before, raise questions over the ability of the Syrian opposition representatives to reach a deal,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Syrian regime negotiator Bashar Al-Jaafari accused the opposition of holding talks hostage because of their reported refusal to unify under one opposition delegation and include terrorism on agenda.
“Counter-terrorism operations will continue until the last inch of territory from our country is retaken from the foreign terrorists who are wreaking havoc,” Al-Jaafari said.
The lead negotiator said he hoped US President Donald Trump would correct the “catastrophic” errors of his predecessor Barack Obama to become a reliable partner against “devilish” Iran.
“The people in Syria paid a high price because of the catastrophic mistakes made by the Obama administration,” Nasr Al-Hariri told reporters in a briefing after meeting UN mediator Staffan de Mistura.
“Obama lied and he did not keep any of the promises he made for the Syrian people. He drew red lines that he erased himself, he kept silent on crimes committed by Bashar Assad.”
Hariri said: “We reiterated the devilish role that Iran is playing through hundreds of thousands of fighters on the Syrian soil.”
Trump’s administration has so far done little to suggest it is willing to engage in finding a political solution for Syria.
“Their policy is still unknown,” said a Western diplomat at the talks. “They are almost not here.”
While Western envoys were coordinating with the Syrian opposition in Geneva, the US envoy kept his head down and left after a few days to deal with other issues.
“The US is not a direct participant in the UN-led talks,” a spokesperson for the US Mission in Geneva said. “The US remains committed to any process that can result in a political resolution to the Syrian crisis.”
When asked during a White House briefing this week about the talks, spokesman Sean Spicer gave no clear answer on how Washington saw the process or Assad’s role. 
Hariri said the opposition had common ground with Trump because both wanted to fight terrorism and curtail Iranian influence. Washington, he said, should support the opposition.
Separately, Al-Qaeda confirmed that a US-led coalition drone strike had killed senior leader Abu Al-Khayr Al-Masri in Syria.
A statement issued by the militant group’s Maghreb and Arabian Peninsula branches said he died in a “treacherous” drone strike it described as a “new crime by America and the crusader coalition.”