Balance of power shifts in Assad’s favour
Syrian troops gaining ground from rebels
BEIRUT — As hopes for a Syrian peace conference fade and the opposition falls into growing disarray, President Bashar Assad has every reason to project confidence.
Government forces have moved steadily against rebels in key areas of the country over the past two months, making strategic advances and considerably lowering the threat to the capital, Damascus.
With army soldiers no longer defecting and elite Hezbollah fighters actively helping, the regime now clearly has the upper hand in a two-year civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people.
In back-to-back interviews with Lebanese TV stations this week, Assad and his foreign minister both projected an image of self-assuredness, boasting of achievements and suggesting that the military’s offensive would continue regardless of whether a peace track is in place.
“What is happening now is not a shift in tactic from defence to attack, but rather a shift in the balance of power in favour of the armed forces,” Assad said of his troops’ recent battleground successes.
“There is no doubt that as events have unfolded, Syrians have been able to better understand the situation and what is really at stake,” he told Al-Manar TV, owned by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. “This has helped the armed forces to better carry out their duties and achieve results.”
Military analysts and activists on the ground in Syria say Assad’s forces have shown renewed determination since roughly the beginning of April, moving to recapture areas that had long fallen to rebels.
Significantly, Syrian troops appear to have gained the edge in the country’s central Homs region. The regime considers Homs strategically important partly because it links Damascus with the coastal heartland of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The rebels are mostly from the country’s Sunni Muslim majority. The coast also is home to the country’s two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus.
Syrian troops and Hezbollah forces have been clearing the town of Qusair in Homs province, where rebels have been entrenched for a year.
State-run Syrian TV said troops on Friday captured the village of Jawadiyeh outside Qusair, closing all entrances leading to the town and tightening the government’s siege.
For the rebels, holding the town means protecting their supply line to Lebanon, just 10 kilometres away.
On Wednesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said he expected the fall of Qusair to the regime “within days.”
The commander of the main Western-backed umbrella group of Syrian rebel brigades, Gen. Salim Idris, said that unless rebels receive weapons quickly, they might not be able to hold Qusair.
The army has also successfully pushed back rebels in some areas around the capital. According to residents, that’s led to a decline in mortar shells on the city centre that only a few weeks ago were a daily occurrence.
“The army has broken the atmosphere of fear and terror inside Damascus that the rebels created by firing mortars,” said Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese army general who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Political Research in Beirut.
Jaber said troops have cleared up to 80 per cent of the areas around Damascus in the past two months.
Equally important, he said, is the successful offensive the army is conducting in the area south of Damascus that links the capital with the Jordanian border. The government now appears to control much of Daraa province, an opposition stronghold south of Damascus and the birthplace of the uprising.
Experts say the defection rate from Assad’s military has sharply dwindled by now, and he has more than made up for it with the help of paramilitary forces and Shiite fighters from Iraq and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Politically, Assad can still count on the support of his Russian and Iranian allies.
On Friday, Russia’s MiG aircraft maker announced plans to sign a new agreement to ship at least 10 fighter jets to Syria, a move that comes amid international criticism of earlier Russian weapons deals with Assad’s regime.
MiG’s director general, Sergei Korotkov, said a Syrian delegation was in Moscow to discuss a new contract for MiG-29 M/ M2 fighters.
Hours after the Russian announcement, the U.S. and Germany lashed out at Moscow’s intentions to provide the Assad regime with an advanced air defence system, which they believe could prolong Syria’s civil war.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia’s transfer of the S-300 missiles would not be “helpful” as the U.S. and Russia jointly try to get the Syrian government and opposition into peace negotiations. The peace talks were initially planned for Geneva next month but have been delayed until July at the earliest.
While saying his government is ready “in principle” to attend peace talks in Geneva, Assad said any agreement reached there would have to be put to a referendum. He also said he would “not hesitate” to run for re-election in 2014 if the Syrian people so wished.