‘Hit-and-run’ raids sow fear in Syria
U.S. plans to secure chemical stockpiles as regime keeps up attacks
BEIRUT— Gunfire and shelling rocked Damascus and its suburbs Wednesday, as opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad reported a widening campaign by the military to sow fear and death in neighbourhoods where rebels are strong and the government is too weak to assert full control.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the latest government raid Wednesday morning in Kafar Soussa — with tanks backed by infantry soldiers — left at least 24 dead. In the Damascus neighbourhood of Qaboun, activists said, Syrian forces executed dozens of others.
Opposition groups described both as “hit-and-run” assaults. Similar attacks have been reported in several areas ringing the capital in recent weeks, as troops and shelling intensify then fade and as the government kills and leaves.
Analysts said the effort — in which the government invades but does not hold an area — underscores the challenge that Assad faces as he tries to defeat an insurgency that often slips away, only to resurface. It is an effort that experts describe as the opposite of the “winning hearts and minds” model and is based instead on the Arabic saying “rule is based on awe.”
“Terror is the basic approach,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Center for the Middle East. “From the beginning of the uprising the logic was hit and hit hard, punish and scare, and that would be the way to do it.”
But he added: “It’s a crazy logic, and it has not served them well.”
The opposition throughout Syria has not broken; it has scattered and regrouped. In many areas, the government has claimed that its mission has been accomplished, or would be quickly, only to have the rebels resurface to fight with help from local residents.
In Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, the government has tried nearly everything, including missile strikes from fighter jets, but while rebel brigades have retreated temporarily from some areas, they have created what amounts to formal rotation schedules in others.
Around the southern city of Daraa, the pattern has been similar. On Tuesday, rebel leaders said they were retreating from several areas because of an ammunition shortage. Wednesday, they reported reoccupying places they had fled. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has made contingency plans to send small teams of special operations troops into Syria if the White House decides it needs to secure chemical weapons depots now controlled by security forces loyal to Assad, senior U.S. officials said. President Barack Obama implied this week that any effort by Assad to move or use his arsenal of chemical munitions in the country’s conflict could prompt swift U.S. intervention. But the Pentagon is more focused on protecting or destroying any Syrian stockpiles that are left unguarded and at risk of falling into the hands of rebel fighters or militias aligned with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or other militant groups. Securing the sites would probably involve stealthy raids by special operations teams trained to handle such weapons, and precision airstrikes to incinerate the chemicals without dispersing them in the air, the officials said. U.S. satellites and drone aircraft already maintain partial surveillance of the sites.