CEP Research Analyst Gregory Waters writes: "Damascus has adopted many strategies during its decade-long war in an attempt to adapt to and overcome serious opposition gains and international interventions. The most ubiquitous of these are the brutalizing of dissident civilians while announcing substance-less reforms, legalizing loyalist militias as legitimate forces, besieging and forcibly cleansing anti-regime neighborhoods, and finally using the guise of “reconciliation” to reimpose its will over destroyed regions and people. All of these approaches had one thing in common: the use of violent coercion dressed up as political diplomacy. Today, with much of the country back under Assad’s control, Damascus continues to try to strong-arm its remaining enemies into “negotiated settlements,” akin to the so-called reconciliation agreements that saw thousands of families expelled from their homes and thousands more men forcibly conscripted into the armed forces. But the Kurdish-led government in northeast Syria and the Turkish-protected zones in northwest have proved much more difficult to threaten than besieged rebel towns."