Yesterday, there were reports of a UN deal allowing ISIS fighters out of the Yarmouk Refugee Camp in southern Damascus. Hezbollah today revealed the deal is much broader and included other Islamist factions, including al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.
All told, the expectation is that the buses will be evacuating some 2,000 Islamist fighters, along with their families, out of areas around southern Damascus. They will have to hand in heavy weapons, but can keep smaller arms, and will be taken into their respective territories.
A lot of the rebel-held suburbs around Damascus have been surrounded by the military and posed no real threat to launch offensives at the capital city, but worsening humanitarian situations eventually got them to agree to cede the territory outright just for a ride out of the area.
Such local deals have been presented by the UN as a potential bases for broader negotiation and settlements in the civil war. This seems unlikely with groups like ISIS, however, as both sides seem to be determined to downplay the chances of not being at war forever.
Is this a joke??? Bomb them to smithereens!!
Cleansing mixed populations into larger blocs is a tactic. It can be used either for more intense fighting or for making peace deals. It does not itself necessarily lead to just one of those options.
Long and stable peace tends to produce more mixing. Mixing is a characteristic of peace. It is not however necessarily a cause of peace.
Cleansing can be a symptom of defeat. Each side is acknowledging limits to its ambitions. Sometimes defeat leads to peace.
Cleansing can also consolidate strength. Withdrawal to stronger positions has often enough been used as preface to further attacks, a step to renewed fighting. However, consolidating political strength into blocs can also empower the blocs, which can then make peace.
This is significant, but it would be error to think it necessarily means either war or peace.
Unless mere membership of an insurgent group now constitutes an ethnicity, I don't see what has been "cleansed".
Very useful for ISIS. Blocked in Damascus, its fighters were more or less useless. Getting them out makes them available elsewhere. Heavy weapons can be replaced. More interesting, though, is that ISIS is now has to be part of any Syrian settlement.
If lobbying mortars at random into the centre of the city poses no "real threat" from the jihadists then of course the "evacuation" is useless.