Battle begins for Assad’s last stronghold
As darkness descended over Damascus and its 1.7 million residents last Saturday, rebels prepared for what they hoped would be the decisive battle to wrest the city from the grasp of President Bashar al-Assad.
Insurgents gave the operation a name that reflected their hopes of a successful surprise attack on a city long regarded as an impregnable fortress for the Assad family: “Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake.”
“There is no going back,” Colonel Qassem Saadeddine, a spokesman for the joint command of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), told Reuters after the fighting had broken out. “We have started the operation to liberate Damascus.”
On Friday, six days after it began, rebels had seized control of border crossings and were battling loyalist troops on the streets of Damascus.
But Syrian army helicopters were pounding Damascus with rockets and heavy machine guns, and tanks bombarded the capital from the ring road, to try to reverse relentless gains by rebels.
The attempt to seize the lair of a man whose father was known as “The Lion of Damascus” had been long in the planning, Col. Saadeddine said. It involved 2,500 fighters who had infiltrated the ancient city’s suburbs a week earlier, he said.
Insurgents were specially redeployed from other parts of the country for the task, another FSA officer said separately.
The rebels struck first in the city’s southern Hajar al-Aswad district, engaging in sustained battles with government troops who must have wondered what had hit them.
The following day, July 15, the scale of the rebels’ ambition became clear. That day, a Sunday, a powerful blast tore through a bus in Damascus carrying security forces personnel, wounding many, and fighting spread to three other city districts.
Residents sympathetic to the insurgents burned tires to distract government troops. Government armoured vehicles poured into southern Damascus amid reports that the road to the airport had been closed.
Residents of one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities corroborated those accounts described the fighting as the fiercest to touch the capital yet since the uprising began in provincial towns 16 months ago.
Mr. Assad had — until then — largely succeeded in shielding his capital and its residents from the extreme violence that has convulsed the rest of the country while he battled to maintain his family’s 42-year grip on power.
Even as his tanks and artillery laid waste to parts of other cities, traffic in Damascus circulated, shops and markets remained open and students continued to study.
But as black smoke rose above the capital last Sunday and the clatter of machinegun fire rang out — interspersed with the sound of explosions — that illusion of normality was shattered.
On day two of the operation, residents of the central district of Midan said their area had become a war zone with snipers deployed on rooftops and heavy fighting between rebels and government troops.
The supply of electricity and water to some districts was cut. As violence escalated, activists said tanks were in action on the city’s streets, a move analysts interpreted as a sign the government was beginning to panic.
Using classic guerrilla warfare tactics, insurgents sheltered in the city’s narrow alleys in the knowledge that armoured vehicles and tanks would be unable to follow.
Syrian state TV made little reference to what was unfolding, saying only that security forces were chasing “terrorist groups” that had fled to parts of Damascus.
Video footage uploaded by opposition activists showed men in jeans crouching in sandbagged alleyways, firing rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns.
The rebels say they have adapted their tactics, becoming more organized and mobile, operating in smaller groups so as to present a smaller target for government forces. They have also turned increasingly to using homemade bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), they have said.
On the third day of the offensive, July 17, helicopter gunships were reported to have been pressed into action and
We have started the operation to liberate Damascus
the rebels said they had shot down one army helicopter.
Clashes of such intensity so close to Mr. Assad’s seat of power showed his grip on power was weakening, anti-government activists said.
“When you turn your guns against the heart of Damascus, on Midan, you have lost the city,” said Imad Moaz, a Damascus-based activist. Video footage showed the charred facades of shops and buildings.
Israeli military intelligence said Mr. Assad hurriedly redeployed troops serving near the Israeli border to Damascus in order to bolster his firepower.
The fourth day of the battle is the one that changed the course of the war. Battles flared in the morning within sight of Mr. Assad’s presidential palace, an imposing structure that sits on a hill overlooking the city.
Mr. Assad’s most trusted lieutenants, led by his brotherin-law Assef Shawkat, were holding a crisis meeting inside a security headquarters when a bomb blast tore through the room. Mr. Shawkat was killed, as was the defence minister and another top general.
The intelligence chief would die of wounds two days later, and the interior minister was also hurt.
Jubilant, the rebels claimed responsibility, boasting that they had pulled off what they called “a turning point in Syria’s history,” hailing the attack as “the beginning of the end.”
Shell-shocked or lost for words, Mr. Assad did not appear on state TV until the following day. He has yet to make any pronouncement on the attack.
One Western diplomat says it is understood that after the attack, the Syrian president called the head of a UN peace monitor team, General Robert Mood, promising to implement a UN peace plan if the West could get rebels to stop their attacks.
The authorities promised the rebels they would strike back hard, saying they would “cut off every hand that harms the security of the homeland.”
Syrian troops began turning their anti-aircraft guns on rebels in residential areas pointing the barrels at buildings instead of skywards. Helicopters and artillery fired on Damascus throughout the day.
For the first time, state TV showed government troops exchanging fire with rebels in central Damascus.
“This is the volcano we talked about, we have just started,” Col. Saadeddine said.
On day five, helicopter gunships pounded rebel positions. Artillery batteries nestled in the mountains overlooking Damascus rained down shells on two city districts.
Rebels torched and looted the Damascus Province Police headquarters, a huge building. Scared to venture out, many residents said they had locked themselves inside their homes for safety, while most shopkeepers shuttered their businesses.
On Friday, the sixth day of the rebels’ attempt to “liberate” Damascus and the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the insurgents suffered a setback.
Under heavy bombardment, they were forced to withdraw from the central district of Midan.
“It is a tactical withdrawal. We are still in Damascus,” Abu Omar, a rebel commander, said by telephone.
The FSA still may need more defections from the army to gain the expertise and weaponry to achieve final victory.
But like a wounded lion, Mr. Assad could still mount a robust response to the rebels’ most audacious attack on his powerbase.