Western airstrikes unlikely to impact Assad’s war machine

BEIRUT (AP) — The Western airstrikes targeting suspected Syrian chemical weapons facilities might have rained down punishment from the sky, but they will not fundamentally degrade a war machine whose main bases, weaponry and personnel remain in place.

As a symbol, they might reflect the inability to prevent President Bashar Assad from marching toward a professed victory in the civil war — still denying he ever even used banned substances, and perhaps not even needing them.

Any opposition expectations that the airstrikes might try to destroy or degrade Assad’s lethal air power or target bases where his warplanes and helicopters begin their bombing missions were quickly dashed: The U.S., British and French precision attacks only singled out Assad’s alleged chemical weapons capabilities.

The Pentagon said the strikes targeted three facilities — a scientific research center in the Damascus area, allegedly linked to the production and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology; a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs; and a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and key command post, also west of Homs. “If this is it, Assad should be relieved,” Randa Slim, an expert with the Washington-based Middle East Institute, wrote on Twitter.

For Assad, it was business as usual Saturday — or so his office sought to portray it, posting a short video of him walking into work, briefcase in hand.

More pertinently, the Syrian army declared the battered town of Douma “fully liberated” after the last group of rebels left. Douma was the site of the suspected April 7 chemical weapons attack and also the last rebel-held town in the eastern Ghouta region that was once a sprawling rebel-held bastion at the doors of the capital. Thousands of hard-line rebels capitulated in Douma following years of siege and an air and ground campaign that killed hundreds in recent weeks.

The recapture of Douma effectively ends a nearly seven-year rebellion near Damascus and marks Assad’s most significant victory since his forces retook the northern city of Aleppo in late 2016. With seemingly open-ended support from allies Russia and Iran, the Syrian military will most definitely turn its attention to remaining opposition-held territory, namely in the south and the northern province of Idlib.

Assad has already consolidated control over most of Syria and its major population centers.