A powerful alliance of Syrian Islamist rebels rejected upcoming peace talks yesterday, meaning that even if the talks reach an unlikely breakthrough in the three-year-old civil war, it will be harder to implement it on the ground.
Syria’s main political opposition group in exile, the National Coalition, agreed on Saturday to attend the talks beginning on Wednesday in Geneva, setting up the first meeting between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its foes.
Activists say Assad using inaccurate barrel bombs in Aleppo
But the Islamic Front, an alliance of several Islamist fighting forces that represents a large portion of the rebels on the ground, said yesterday it rejected the talks.
Syria’s future would be “formulated here on the ground of heroism, and signed with blood on the front lines, not in hollow conferences attended by those who don’t even represent themselves,” Abu Omar, a leading member of the Islamic Front, said on his Twitter account.
Some 130,000 people have been killed and a quarter of Syrians driven from their homes in the civil war, which began with peaceful protests against 40 years of Assad family rule and has descended into a sectarian conflict, with the opposing sides armed and funded by Sunni Arab states and Shi’ite Iran.
In what appeared to be a symbolic conciliatory move ahead of the talks, Syria permitted some aid to reach a besieged suburb of Damascus on Saturday and yesterday, state media said. Saturday’s shipment included only 200 food parcels for Yarmouk, a camp of Palestinian refugees where 15 people have died of malnutrition so far under a seven-month siege.
UN Relief Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness said it would feed just 330 of the camp’s 18,000 residents for a month.
It was not clear how much aid made it through yesterday.
Cold War foes Moscow and Washington, which have emerged as the leading pro- and anti-Assad powers, have urged both parties to make concessions, including ceasefires, access for aid and prisoner exchanges, to build confidence before the conference.
But there is little sign of violence abating or of either side winning a final victory on the battlefield.
Activists around the country, from the capital to Aleppo to the eastern province of Deir al-Zor on the border with Iraq, said that the Syrian air force was using jets and helicopters to bomb rebel-held areas.
Rebel fighters from Syria’s Qalamoun mountain range, near the border with Lebanon, said more than 60 opposition militants had been killed in an ambush by forces loyal to Assad yesterday.