Syria’s Interior Ministry announced May 8 the arrest of deposed regime brigadier Khardal Ahmad Dayyub (Dioub), a former head of Air Force Intelligence in Daraa, for his involvement in systematic human rights violations committed against civilians. Dayyub is accused of running an “assassination committee” in Daraa, as well as involvement in the chemical attacks on Eastern Ghouta during his later service in the Damascus regional branch. He is also said to have had a key role in coordination with Hezbollah and Iranian forces in Syria that were introduced to back up the Bashar Assad dictatorship. (SANA)

Despite some confusion in the reportage (e.g. Anadolu Agency), Dayyub appears to be implicated in the 2018 chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta, not the far deadlier 2013 chemical attack in Ghouta, which resulted in threats of US military intervention.

Photo: SANA

Since the fall of the Bashar Assad dictatorship in December 2024, Israel has seized and occupied large areas of eastern as-Suwayda, and is believed to have dropped arms to Druze fighters in the region. The province has been effectively divided since fighting broke out last year between Druze militia and central government forces and their local Bedouin allies. (ToI)

The new fighting came one day after Jordan carried out air-strikes on as-Suwayda, ostensibly targeting a depot storing arms and illicit drugs “controlled by rebel groups” in the village of Shahba. Contraband trade in the drug captagon has long been a source of revenue for warring factions in Syria. (AFP)

Syria’s transitional government continues to face other challenges. Damascus on May 5 announced that its forces had foiled a Hezbollah plot to assassinate members of President Ahmad al Shara’s government, with security forces seizing weapons and explosives in raids across the country. The raids, in which at least 11 people were detained, were the most extensive yet against Hezbollah since the fall from power of the group’s former patron Bashar Assad. (The National, UAE)

Map: Google

The $334 million plan was adopted on April 17, foreseeing full development by 2030. The government purports to make the small town of Katzrin the Golan’s “first city,” by bringing in 3,000 new Israeli settler families. Funds are allocated for infrastructure, housing, public services, and academic facilities.

Hiba Zayadin, senior Syria researcher at HRW, discussed the international legal aspects, declaring:

Israel’s cabinet has put public money behind a war crime in Syria at the same time as it is turbocharging settlement expansion in the West Bank alongside continued impunity for violence against Palestinians there. A permanent population transfer into Syrian territory violates international norms with grave implications for long-displaced Syrians.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer by an occupying power of any of its own civilian population into territory it occupies. Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), defines such transfers as war crimes.

Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Golan Heights has since been declared unilaterally annexed.

HRW has documented serious abuses by Israeli forces during further expansions into southern Syria, beginning in 2024, including holding families at gunpoint, razing homes with bulldozers, and cutting off access to traditional farmlands. The occupation also bars displaced Syrians from returning to their homes, which they have a right to under customary international law.

Zayadin also drew attention to US denial of “the reality that the Golan is occupied Syrian territory.” In 2019, Donald Trump declared that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel. No other state nor international body recognizes this declaration.

The UN affirmed the Golan Heights as Syrian in UN Security Council resolution 497, which was adopted unanimously in December 1981. The resolution declares that “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international effect.” The UN General Assembly has consistently reaffirmed this, including in a December 2025 resolution which called for Israel to withdraw from the territory.

The Golan Heights is fertile land with vital water sources feeding into the Jordan River, located about 40 miles south of Syria’s capital, Damascus. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied most of the territory. The UN Secretary General reported in 2025 that there were 35 Israeli settlements, making up a population of over 31,000 Israeli settlers. Prior to 1967, approximately 140,000 Syrians lived in the Golan, while only about 20,000 members of the Druze community now remain. Syria has never ceded the territory, but has had no success in efforts to take it back.

From JURIST, April 30. Used with permission.

Photo: Freedom’s Falcon via Wikimedia Commons

See our last report on the Assad regime’s crimes.

Photo: SNHR

In related news, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week that he and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa hope to see 80% of Syrian refugees in Germany return to Syria in the coming three years. Merz’s call for Syrians to “go back to their homeland,” which came after his meeting with al-Sharaa in Berlin, drew condemnation from human rights monitors who pointed to continued violence and insecurity in Syria. (TNH, Jurist)

Photo: Sara Creta/TNH

Commissioners Monia Ammar and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin met with senior Syrian officials and various stakeholders to emphasize the importance of “transparency, accountability, security sector reform, and engagement with impacted communities” as core implementation priorities for the transition. The COI also called for a “legal system capable of fairly addressing the past” while also addressing “more recent violations,” underscoring that the transition must be defined by “equal protection” of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

The commissioners said they were encouraged by the growth of Syrian civil society organizations, including groups returning from exile. Still, they noted continued barriers and fears, and urged conditions that would allow civil society to operate “without restriction.” There remain legal questions about whether and to what degree authorities will tolerate independent documentation, advocacy, and victim participation, which are needed elements for credible truth-seeking, reparations design, and institutional vetting.

The COI was created by the Human Rights Council in 2011 to investigate violations of international human rights law in Syria since March 2011, to document facts and circumstances that may amount to crimes, and, where possible, to identify responsible actors to advance accountability. Its mandate also includes recommending reforms, international responses, and pathways to justice.

The COI statement explicitly linked transitional legitimacy to enabling civil society to operate “without restriction,” reflecting the reality that effective accountability depends on the safety and independence of non-state actors, especially where victims and witnesses may face retaliation.

The COI described spillover effects on Syria from the regional escalation following the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, including civilian casualties from falling debris from intercepted rockets, and raised concerns about “direct Israeli activity in southern Syria” interrupting internal stabilization efforts.

The statement emphasized core protection duties under international law, such as the obligation to protect civilians and to investigate potentially unlawful harm.

From JURIST, March 8. Used with permission.

See our last report on the transition process in Syria

Image: Damascus protest against Israeli intervention in Syria. Credit: The Syria Campaign via Facebook

Briefing for the first time as deputy special envoy for Syria, Claudio Cordone highlighted the ceasefire and “integration” agreement reached between the Syrian transitional authorities and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in late January. Cordone said hostilities had ended and that implementation work was progressing, including reported deployments of Interior Ministry forces in al-Hasakeh and Qamishli, alongside discussions on local governance and political appointments.

The agreement includes provisions on the return of displaced people and the protection of Kurdish civil and educational rights, building on last month‘s Presidential Decree 13, guaranteeing Kurdish linguistic, cultural and citizenship rights.

The transition briefing raised concerns about detention and accountability for rights abuses. In remarks delivered to the Security Council, Cordone said the UN is monitoring transfers of detained suspected ISIS collaborators, both Syrian and non-Syrian, to Iraq. He stressed that any proceedings must respect fair trial standards, while urging states to repatriate their nationals among the detained.

UN officials warned that relative stabilization in the northeast has not prevented renewed volatility elsewhere. In Suwayda (Sweida), renewed clashes between government forces and local Druze armed groups have reportedly caused material damage and electricity outages. Protests calling for self-determination have also resurfaced, prompting UN calls for confidence-building measures within full respect of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In southern Syria, UN officials cited continued Israeli incursions and operations, including reports of aerial herbicide spraying that damaged crops. They called for respect for international law and withdrawal from areas the UN describes as occupied in violation of the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement.

Humanitarian officials emphasized that insecurity is compounding acute civilian need. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that recent clashes have displaced tens of thousands, and that about 130,000 people remain displaced across al-Hasakeh, ar-Raqqa and Aleppo governorates, with a large majority women and girls. UN officials also reported flooding in Idleb and northern Latakia that killed two children and damaged or destroyed roughly 2,000 tents, affecting over 5,000 displaced people.

The next political milestone, Cordone said, is the formation of the People’s Assembly, with additional seats still to be filled and further presidential appointments pending. He stressed that meaningful representation, rights protection, missing-persons recovery, and transitional justice remain central to a credible transition.

From JURIST, Feb. 16. Used with permission. Internal links added.

See our last report on the transition process in Syria

Map: PCL

A last-minute “permanent ceasefire” may mean that northeast Syria is back from the brink of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war. But ceasefires have repeatedly broken down since fighting resumed earlier this year, with Damascus demanding disbandment of the Rojava autonomous zone, and the integration of its institutions—including its military wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—into the central government. While the new pact sets a more “gradual” pace for this integration, the Kurdish aspiration to regional autonomy and the central government’s insistence on centralization may prove a long-term obstacle to peace. In Episode 315 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg weighs the odds for avoiding a conflict that holds the potential for escalation to genocide, with the connivance of the Great Powers that so recently backed the SDF to fight ISIS.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Production by Chris Rywalt

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Photo via Facebook

This development came to light this week as Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa was on his second trip to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. As during his last one in October, the chief issue on the table was Russia maintaining its two major military bases in Syria, on the Mediterranean coast at Khmeimim and Tartous.

Speaking at a press conference before their meeting on Jan. 28, al-Sharaa thanked Putin for the “historic” role Russia has played in the “stability of the region”… a strange euphemism for the years of savage bombardment of Syria to keep al-Sharaa’s own rebel forces from taking power! Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for his part, said before the meeting that “the presence of our soldiers in Syria” would be discussed. (PRI, Al Jazeera, NYT)

Abdulkarim Omar, a senior Syrian Kurdish official, told The Telegraph in Qamilshi as the Russians withdrew that Moscow had sacrificed its outpost in Rojava in order to a secure a continued presence on the government-controlled coast. “Russia wants to retain its base on the Mediterranean,” he said.

In some tentative good news, Damascus and the SDF agreed Jan. 30 to a “permanent ceasefire” that would see Kurdish-led forces and institutions gradually integrated into the structures of the interim government. The speed and completeness of this integration has been the critical factor at issue between the two sides, and has led to ceasefires repeatedly breaking down over the past weeks. In welcoming this latest deal, SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi said: “There was a threat of genocide against our people.” (Rudaw, Rudaw)

Photo: SOHR

The Syrian interim government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reached an agreement Jan. 18 to immediately halt fighting and integrate SDF-held areas into state institutions. The deal follows days of renewed clashes, in which government forces routed SDF strongholds in the city of Aleppo and then pushed east, taking several towns that had been under the control of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration. Just hours before the agreement was reached, autonomous authorities in the Kurdish region, known as Rojava, had announced a “general mobilization” in support of the SDF, citing an “existential war” launched by Damascus against their territory.

Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said the agreement was signed remotely with SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, who was unable to come to Damascus due to bad weather. Earlier in the day, Sharaa met at the presidential palace with the US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, who seems to have had a hand in brokering the agreement.

Key provisions of the agreement include the integration of SDF personnel “individually” into the Syrian Army rather than as a unified force, the full handover of SDF-held areas of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa provinces, and the integration of all institutions and employees of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North & East Syria (DAANES) into national ministries. The deal also establishes the central state’s control over all border crossings and energy resources, including oil and gas fields.

Implementation of a March 2025 integration agreement between Sharaa and the SDF/DAANES had stalled after the SDF pushed to be incorporated into the Army as a unified bloc, a demand rejected by Damascus.

Barrack said the US “looks forward to the seamless integration” of the SDF and the Syrian Army in the fight against ISIS.

The new agreement references and pledges to uphold a decree issued by al-Sharaa two days earlier guaranteeing cultural, linguistic and citizenship rights to Syria’s Kurdish population.

Significantly, it also calls for the removal of the heavy military presence from the contested town of Kobani (Ain al-Arab), and the formation of a local security force drawn from the city’s residents, under joint administration by municipal authorities and the Ministry of Interior.

The agreement also calls for transfer of massive detention camps for suspected ISIS collaborators from SDF control to that the Syrian government. (Rudaw)

Photo: Rudaw