Syria Power Brokers Schedule Date for Sochi Conference

A Russian-sponsored peace congress for Syria will be held in the city of Sochi at the end of January, Russia, Iran and Turkey announced on Friday, according to Agence France-Presse.

In a joint statement released at the end of peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana, the three states said the Syrian congress will be held on 29–30 January. The guarantor states will also meet in Sochi 19–20 January to hold preparatory meetings before the congress.

Talks in Sochi will involve “the participation of all segments of Syrian society,” the statement said. However, it remains largely unclear who will participate in the congress.

The Syrian opposition has rejected the Sochi conference, according to Reuters. A statement released by around 40 rebel groups on Monday accused Russia of committing war crimes in Syria and failing to push the Syrian government toward brokering a settlement for the war.

“Russia has not contributed one step to easing the suffering of Syrians and has not pressured the regime … towards a solution,” the rebel statement said.

“Russia is an aggressor country that has committed war crimes against Syrians … It stood with the regime militarily and defended it politically and over seven years, preventing U.N. condemnation of (Syrian president Bashar al-) Assad’s regime,” the statement said.

The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said on Friday that the Sochi congress should be assessed “by its ability to contribute to and support the U.N.-led Geneva talks on ending the war in Syria,” according to Reuters.

Pro-Government Forces Inch Closer to Israel Frontier

Syrian troops and allied forces moved deeper into a rebel bastion southwest of Damascus near the border with Lebanon and Israel, Reuters reported on Monday.

Citing rebel sources, Reuters said that Syrian army and Shiite paramilitaries backed by Druze militias advanced east and south of Beit Jinn, the last opposition enclave left in a region known as the Western Ghouta.

Their push was supported by heavy airstrikes and artillery shelling in the fiercest campaign in the area in months, Reuters said, adding that the Syrian army cut off insurgent supply lines on Monday.

Unidentified diplomatic sources told Reuters that the hundreds of rebels in the area are outnumbered by the “several thousand” Shiite and Druze fighters taking part in the campaign. Citing an unidentified Western intelligence source, Reuters said that Iranian-backed militias and commanders from the Lebanese Hezbollah were also playing a major role in the fighting.

Reuters described the push as “a new expansion of Tehran’s influence in the war-torn country.”

“The Iranian-backed militias are trying to consolidate their sphere of influence all the way from southwest of Damascus to the Israeli border,” Suhaib al-Ruhail, an official from the Liwa al Furqan rebel group that operates in the area told Reuters.

Unidentified Western diplomatic sources told Reuters that the loss of rebel territory in areas near the frontier will allow Hezbollah to carve out another arms supply route from its border in southern Lebanon into Syria.

Iran-Backed Iraqi Paramilitaries Deploy Along Syria Border

Iranian-backed Iraqi militias deployed along a section of the Iraqi-Syrian frontier to support border security guards who came under fire from within Syria last week, Al Jazeera reported on Saturday.

“After several Iraqi border guard positions came under several attacks by missiles, and backup from security forces was late, the 13th Brigade of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) was deployed and targeted the origins of the launch,” Qassem Mesleh, the PMF commander for Iraq’s western Anbar province, said in a statement on Friday.

The source of the attack on Iraqi border guards was not immediately clear.

“Operations command and the infantry brigade are now present on the Iraqi-Syrian border in border guard positions to repel any attack or movement by the enemy. This area is not within the PMF’s remit, but it is our duty to back up all security forces,” he added.

Earlier this month, Iraqi troops met with U.S.-backed forces in Syria to coordinate military efforts against the so-called Islamic State in the border region between the two countries.

In November, the PMF crossed the border to help Syrian pro-government forces fight ISIS in the Syrian town of Boukamal near the Iraqi frontier.

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