BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS: Air strikes by the US-led coalition killed 13 jihadist fighters and 14 of their relatives on Friday in eastern Syria, a war monitor said.

The strikes came two days after US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria raised fears the militant Islamic State group would use the vacuum to regroup.

“At least 27 people were killed this morning in Al-Shaafa,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

He said eight children were among the 14 civilian victims and added several people were seriously wounded in the strikes.

The raids targeted IS positions in Al-Shaafa, one of the two main villages in the last pocket of territory still controlled by IS in the Euphrates River valley.

Close to 1,000 IS fighters have been killed since Kurdish-led forces, backed by coalition air strikes, launched an operation on that pocket in September.

Trump said he was ordering a withdrawal of the estimated 2,000 US troops in Syria because IS had been defeated, an assessment rubbished by many, including in his own camp.

On Friday, the leadership of the Kurdish force that has spearheaded the fight against IS warned it might have to pull back from the anti-jihadist front if a US withdrawal invites a Turkish military assault against them.

According to the Observatory, 545 members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were killed battling IS since the start of the operation on Sept 10.

More work needed on constitutional committee

The UN special envoy for Syria said in his farewell UN briefing on Thursday that an “an extra mile” is needed to form a committee to draft a new constitution for the conflict-torn country because a list of participants submitted by Russia, Iran and Turkey is unacceptable to the United Nations.

Staffan de Mistura told the Security Council that the 50-member list provided by the three countries was unbalanced and dropped experienced experts, so it “needs a further review and revision.”

The nearly yearlong effort to form a 150-member constitutional committee, which is key to holding free elections and hopefully ending the seven-year civil war, has been dogged by objections from the Syrian government over the 50-member list representing experts, independents, tribal leaders and women. There is already agreement on 50-member lists from the government and opposition.

De Mistura was authorised to put together the third 50-member list representing civil society at a Russian-hosted Syrian peace conference in Sochi on Jan 30.

But Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government objected to the list that he put together. The foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey the guarantor states in the so-called “Astana process” aimed at ending the violence in Syria handed de Mistura their own agreed 50-member list of civil society representatives at a meeting in Geneva on Tuesday.

“The United Nations, having examined the names, assessed that we would not feel comfortable yet giving the UN stamp of legitimacy to all 50 of them as meeting the necessary criteria of credibility and balance hence the need for going an extra mile,” de Mistura told the Security Council.

He said the list from the Astana guarantors included some names from his list, but experienced experts with excellent credentials “who would also have been natural bridge builders” were dropped.

“No list will be perfect,” de Mistura said. “But in our assessment, the list needs a further review and revision.” Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council that the civil society list handed to de Mistura “was approved let me underscore this by Damascus and the Syrian opposition.” But French Ambassador Francois Delattre and British Ambassador Karen Pierce said the list from the guarantors was “unbalanced and unworkable.” Pierce noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had set a deadline of the end of the year to form a constitutional committee, and “if progress can be made then we absolutely urge the Syrian authorities and their supporters to take it.”

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2018