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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Assad on the back foot |
| 2015-04-02 |
| From the Economist. An unfortunate accident may be not too far off for Assad. He may get lucky and score a villa on the Caspian Sea, but I doubt it. FOR the rebels fighting against President Bashar Assad, it was a huge victory. On March 28th a collection of Islamist fighters, including Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate, captured the city of Idleb. Long contested, it is only the second big one to fall to the rebels in four years of war. The first, Raqqa, was snatched by the jihadists of Islamic State (IS), who made it the capital of their caliphate. Only three days before the rebels won Idleb, they took Bosra, a town in southern Syria famous for its second-century Roman amphitheatre. This opposition surge suggests that Mr Assad is weaker than he was, not that the rebels are stronger. He and his main allies, Iran and Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shias' party-cum-militia, are struggling to hold their piece of the divided country, despite the West having turned its attention to fighting IS. Disputes within Mr Assad's camp are growing, too. "Militarily and economically the regime is worse off today than a year ago," says Noah Bonsey, who watches Syria for the International Crisis Group, a think-tank based in Brussels. In Idleb the rain helped the rebels by stopping Mr Assad's regime carrying out air strikes, which it relies on since it has long been short of soldiers on the ground. The embattled president increasingly banks on local and foreign militias. He has had to recruit more widely for the army, yet he cannot trust the conscripts drawn from Syria's Sunni-majority population. It is said that Sunni pilots are not now allowed to fly aircraft. A well-connected man in Damascus says many are flown by Russians, whose government backs Mr Assad. Elsewhere he is looking no stronger. His much-heralded offensive to take back Aleppo earlier this year seems to have fizzled. His troops are consolidating in the west, but only thanks to Hizbullah. IS fighters are creeping into his territory from the east. In the south he has gradually been losing ground to the most moderate of Syria's rebels, as Hizbullah and Iran focus on securing areas nearer Damascus. Yet it is unlikely that these victories for the rebels will spur America to increase its modest support for them, especially around Idleb, where Jabhat al-Nusra is the strongest force. The southern rebels have received more help, since they have fewer jihadists in their ranks and are less fragmented. But an American plan to train and equip 5,000 vetted men has still to get going. On March 27th Turkey said that the Americans had delayed their plans to start training there, for unspecified reasons. So Syria's fate may depend ever more on how well Mr Assad's regime hangs together--and on Iran. His army and paramilitary forces often clash. Hizbullah men talk of Syrian soldiers firing on them. Syrian soldiers, in turn, are annoyed by Iranian and Hizbullah checkpoints set up to ensure that they stay in line. Syrian soldiers have long found understandings with rebels; sometimes they agree not to fight, while the rebels sometimes buy ammunition from the soldiers. Overall, Mr Assad's position is being hollowed out. "The regime is in charge of administrative matters," says the same Damascus man. "But Iran is ever more in control militarily." That could pave the way to negotiations, since it still seems unlikely that either side will win militarily. Iran's rulers may be more pragmatic than Mr Assad, who wants to cling to power at any cost. There are signs that they see him as a burden; Hizbullah certainly does. If nuclear talks with Iran come good, some Syrians hope for a solution in their own country. "We'll get rid of Mr Assad at some point," says a Hizbullah commander. "I think Iran is just waiting until the right time." |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #16 Not to mention a naval base in the Med at Tartus. That business in the Crim wasn't just posturing. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2015-04-02 23:18 |
| #15 Don't forget RUSSIA. Moscow needs as many allies as it can get in the rear andor on the flanks of the Hard Boyz. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2015-04-02 22:31 |
| #14 To underline the difficulties facing Assad, he has to ward off a population of 16m Sunni Arabs, whereas Uncle Sam suppressed Iraq's population of 6.6m Sunni Arabs after the expenditure of 5K dead GI's and $1T, with Shiite and Kurd auxiliaries holding the fort. Whatever the issue with Assad, it's not incompetence that's holding him back. The (unspoken) math is implicitly why everyone's been expecting Assad to have caved in by now. Because it would be surprising if Iran has sunk even 1/10 of $1T into Syria, although it's certainly possible that it has lost 5K men. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 22:14 |
| #13 The advance of ISIS is causing some of these militias to return to defend their home villages. No mention whether not getting paid was a factor, but it wouldn't surprise if it was. They need money for food, water and gas. If they're not getting paid, they can't physically stay. The tendency for the media, which hires a lot of Sunni Arab stringers and relies on Sunni Arab media outlets, is to generate or repeat pro-Sunni Arab propaganda. We can't truly know how Assad is doing until the rebels are completely wiped out or Assad's head rests on the pointy end of a pike. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 17:48 |
| #12 One other snippet I caught this week is that Assad relies on allied tribes and militias to guard the roads. The advance of ISIS is causing some of these militias to return to defend their home villages. No mention whether not getting paid was a factor, but it wouldn't surprise if it was. And as I said the roads are key. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2015-04-02 17:28 |
| #11 test |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-04-02 17:22 |
| #10 That's not even counting open Turkish support for the rebels. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 17:16 |
| #9 One other point not brought out by the Economist article is that for a state to fight a war they need the economic resources of the state and for Assad's Syria these are pretty much all gone. He is reliant on money and resources from Iran. And in war, as in most things, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. That's true for both sides. Could the rebels stay in business without Gulf Arab funding? The difference between Iraq and Syria is 5000 dead GI's and $1T worth of American intervention. Given that Assad is outnumbered 7 to 1 whereas Maliki outnumbered the Sunnis 3 to 1, Assad's continued survival without Uncle Sam as his guardian angel is testament to impressive political and military skills. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 17:15 |
| #8 Mitch, I agree the road from Damascus to the coast is key. But let's say you are sitting in Tehran and discussing how to retain control of the Damascus region and resupply. Thru Hezbollah controlled Lebanon will look a shorter and more secure route. Losing territory in the north doesn't look that much of a problem. One other point not brought out by the Economist article is that for a state to fight a war they need the economic resources of the state and for Assad's Syria these are pretty much all gone. He is reliant on money and resources from Iran. And in war, as in most things, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2015-04-02 16:47 |
| #7 The regime is really weak in the east Given that the east looks like it's mostly barren desert, it's probably not that big a deal. The only important things located there are the border crossings with Iraq. Since ISIS began running wild there, the border crossings have vanished, anyway. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 16:35 |
| #6 If the map is correct, and I have no reason to think it isn't, the rebels are around 20 to 30 km from Latakia, the presumed Allawite last bastion, on a fairly broad front. That Assad can't keep the rebels at bay from the Allawite's heartland, supports the article's contention that he is no longer in charge, and Iran and Hezbollah are focused on securing the Damascus area and contiguous territory to Hezbollah controlled territory in Lebanon. Idlib cannot be held securely by the regime, any more than Guam could be, by the US against Imperial Japan, for the reasons described previously. Its see-saw status speaks to rebel weakness, given that it is a mostly Sunni Arab area and close to supplies from Turkey. Latakia, the traditional homeland of the Alawites, is ~30 miles to the Turkish border, but has never been remotely close to being overrun by the rebels. This, too is a sign of rebel weakness. Why don't the rebels hold a 100-mile belt of positions along the Turkish border, given the proximity to Turkish training facilities and supplies? What will happen to the rebel position in Idlib when it stops raining, and Assad can resume airstrikes? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 16:28 |
| #5 phil_b, various rebel factions and coalitions have been near Latakia for most of the civil war. At one point, it looked like they were going to cut off Damascus from the Alawi heartland on the coast, with substantial if not monolithic positions in Homs, Hama, and Qusayr as well as in Idlib. In the last two years, they've been driven back or out of most of those positions. The Islamic State mess relieved a lot of the pressure on the regime, wrecked those rebel factions which aren't al-Nusra or ISIS or the Kurds, and generally made a mess of things. The regime is really weak in the east, and not particularly strong south of Damascus, but those aren't strategically urgent sectors, whereas the spine of the country, from Damascus to Latakia and to a lesser extent, Aleppo, is vital to regime survival, and they've got effective control of that right now. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2015-04-02 16:16 |
| #4 If the map is correct, and I have no reason to think it isn't, the rebels are around 20 to 30 km from Latakia, the presumed Allawite last bastion, on a fairly broad front. That Assad can't keep the rebels at bay from the Allawite's heartland, supports the article's contention that he is no longer in charge, and Iran and Hezbollah are focused on securing the Damascus area and contiguous territory to Hezbollah controlled territory in Lebanon. I'd add that the rebels have no need to take the cities, except for propaganda purposes. My read is that the significance of Idlib, is not that the rebels took it, but the Assad regime gave up trying to retain it. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2015-04-02 15:57 |
| #3 Why would Hizbullah speak out against Assad? Assad was the senior partner in the alliance. Hizbullah was his marionette. Hizbullah presumably fantasizes about becoming the senior partner. The problem here is that Syria has traditionally viewed Lebanon as a lost province, which was in part why Assad pere invaded. If Sunni Arabs win against Assad, Lebanon will once again be under threat, and Hizbullah doubly so. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 15:39 |
| #2 The thing about Idlib is that it's 10-15 miles from the Turkish border, and the rebels' supplies and foreign recruits. That the area isn't securely in rebel hands speaks either to Assad's relative strength, or the rebels' relative weakness. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 15:31 |
| #1 Pro-Sunni Arab wishful thinking or analysis? Idlib has been the center of see-saw battles between the regime and the rebels for years. Rebels have taken it over, lost it and now taken it over again. Who knows what the next roll of the dice brings? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2015-04-02 15:07 |