SYRIAN REBEL TOWN FALLS VICTIM TO A BRUTAL SIEGE AND A FICKLE FRIENDSHIP
▶ Khan Sheikhoun embodies the tribulations of going up against Al Assad, and Turkey’s complex and evolving priorities
The Syrian opposition lost a strategic town that came to symbolise its daring but uneven struggle against President Bashar Al Assad and Turkey’s failure to help Sunni co-religionists whose cause it espoused.
Backed by Russian air cover overnight on Monday, loyalist forces entered Khan Sheikhoun, the target of a sarin gas attack on April 4, 2017, that killed 89 people, which the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria blamed on the Assad regime.
Khan Sheikhoun, in rural Idlib province, was the centre of non-violent resistance to Mr Al Assad’s rule before the Syrian uprising turned into a full-scale armed rebellion in 2012.
Militants later dominated the rebel scene, partly due to the regime releasing top Al Qaeda-linked operatives from its jails in 2011 in a move that significantly undermined the civic nature of the revolt, helping Mr Al Assad appeal to his minority Alawite base by presenting himself as the only
option to prevent a militant takeover.
On Monday, the Al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir Al Sham said it had withdrawn to the outskirts of the town because of heavy bombardment.
The capture of the town is part of a plan to encircle remaining opposition forces in the nearby Hama governorate.
These forces include Jaish Al Ezza, a rebel brigade that resisted a takeover by Al Qaeda and rejected its ideology.
Jaish Al Ezza is one of the last remaining units of the Free Syrian Army, a loose rebel grouping formed by officers who defected from the army and led the armed revolt before the ascendancy of other militant outfits.
Now its fate, including that of civilians in areas in which it is present, is set to resemble that of countless cities and towns that fell to the regime after Russian bombardment and siege warfare forced them to surrender and agree to deals brokered by Moscow, resulting in Sunni inhabitants being forced to areas of Idlib near the Turkish border.
On Sunday, an armoured column, sent by Ankara and on its way to a Turkish observation post in Hama governorate, was stopped by air strikes in what appeared to have been a warning from Russia.
Early in the uprising, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made strong statements in support of the revolution. Mr Erdogan said that Turkey would not allow the Syrian regime to repeat the massacres of thousands of civilians that followed an uprising against Assad family rule in the 1980s.
Downtrodden rural Syrian Sunnis in particular identified with Mr Erdogan, as Ankara backed rebel attacks that were ultimately defeated after Russia intervened in Syria in late 2015.
Turkey reached an understanding with Moscow that helped Ankara take over areas in northern Syria that had fallen under the control of a Kurdish militia linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is banned in Turkey.
Ankara played a major role in preventing rebel groups it supported from joining a US effort to defeat ISIS, forcing Washington to rely on Kurdish forces not interested in the downfall of Mr Al Assad.
But Turkey, to the ire of Russia, last week entered into talks with the US to create a buffer zone in northern Syria that Ankara said would be free of Kurdish militia.
The talks may have contributed to the breakdown of an understanding between Turkey and Russia over Idlib and an intensification in recent weeks of Russia’s air campaign in the governorate.
Moscow said it was targeting terrorists but the bombings killed hundreds of civilians in Idlib and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes to areas near the border with Turkey that fall under Ankara’s control.
Attacks on schools, hospitals and other civilian buildings in Idlib by Russia and the Assad regime prompted UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to launch an investigation this month.
This led to a brief halt to the bombing campaign.
The bombing campaign appears to be aimed at opening the M5, the main motorway from Damascus to Aleppo, and the M4, the main link between Aleppo and the city of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, where Russian forces are concentrated.
Rebels are still present in the territory and that could prevent the regime from securing the roads. But to withstand the onslaught, they would need Turkish support, which, as Khan Sheikhoun has shown, has been fickle.
Ankara does not want to be drawn into a direct confrontation with Russia but it also has used its Syrian allies to realise its own interests.
The bombing campaign appears to be aimed at opening the M4, the main link between Aleppo and Latakia, where Russian forces are concentrated