Syria announces amnesty for draft-dodgers and deserters

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has announced a general amnesty for military deserters who breached the country’s compulsory military conscription law, Syrian state television reports.

The decree, which was read out on air, said the law  -that would preclude criminal punishment being meted out to thousands of army deserters- applied to those outside and inside Syria.

In spite of being one of the largest in the region, the Syrian army has been over stretched by a four-year long insurgency on several major fronts against Islamist rebels and ultra-hardline jihadist militants who have seized large swathes of territory. Many young Syrian men have fled the country or found ways to avoid conscription.

In recent months the army has been forced to withdraw from large areas of the northwestern province of Idlib, under assault by a coalition of Islamist brigades and had been unable to defend the desert city of Palmyra in central Syria from being overrun by Islamic State.

With no end in sight to the war, the Syrian army’s manpower shortages have cause problems in recent months, leading to a growing reliance on recruitment by loyalist militias in state-controlled provinces, where those volunteering are offered lucrative pay.