Syria’s Assad regains his confidence

Syrian President Bashar alAssad delivered prayers for Islam’s Eid al-Fitr holiday in Hama on Sunday, showing his growing confidence.

Syrian President Bashar alAssad delivered prayers for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Hama on Sunday, the furthest he has travelled in Syria in years, showing his growing confidence.

State television showed footage of Assad standing to pray in a large mosque in Hama with a large crowd of worshippers.

State news agency SANA quoted the mosque’s imam as saying that Assad’s presence in the city for Eid showed that victory and the return of security were only “a few steps” away.

Syria’s civil war has turned in Assad’s favour since 2015, when Russia sent jets to help his army and allied Shi’ite militias backed by Iran turn back rebels and win new ground.

Since the war began in 2011, it has killed hundreds of thousands, driven millions from their homes, sparked a global refugee crisis and drawn in regional and world powers.

Rebels still hold swathes of the country including in Idlib province near Hama, and launched an attack in Quneitra in the southwest on Saturday.

Rebels also hold the Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus, parts of the desert in the southeast and a large pocket south of Hama around the city of Rastan.

As recently as March, rebels advanced to within a few kilometres of Hama, before the army and its allies pushed them back in weeks of fierce fighting.

However, the army drove insurgents from the city of Aleppo in December 2016 and forced several important rebel enclaves to surrender over the past year.

FOCUS ON ISLAMIC STATE

Assad has not made a declared visit to Hama, which is 185km from Damascus, since the war began. Last year, he delivered Eid prayers in Homs, about 40km closer to Damascus.

Early in the crisis, he visited Raqqa, which has become the Syrian capital of Islamic State and now faces an assault by a US-backed coalition.

The fight against Islamic State, which has attacked western cities, has become the focus of western leaders, some of whom have softened demands that Assad must quit.

In March, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Syrians would decide Assad’s fate, a change in rhetoric after years of the US insisting he step down to allow a political solution.

The US and other western states, along with Turkey and Gulf monarchies, have long supported some of the rebels.

Assad describes them all as terrorists.