Balance of power in Syria shifts Assad’s way

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, considerably lowering the threat to 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.

TV interviews

In back-to-back interviews with Lebanese TV 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 defense to attack, but rather a shift in the balance of power in favor of the armed forces,” Assad said of his troops’ recent 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 Hezbollah group. “This has helped the armed forces to better carry out their duties and achieve results.”

Cities recaptured

Syrian troops and Hezbollah forces have successfully 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 six miles away.

In an interview with Al-Mayadeen TVWednesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said he expected the fall of Qusair to the regime “within days.”

Hisham Jaber, who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Political Research in Beirut, said troops have cleared up to 80 percent of the area around Damascus in the past two months.

“The army has broken the atmosphere of fear and terror inside Damascus that the rebels created by firing mortars,” Jaber said.

Equally important, he said, is the successful offensive in the area south of Damascus. Despite a surge in rebel advances near Jordan earlier this year, the government now appears to control much of Daraa province, an opposition stronghold and the birthplace of the uprising.

Peace talks unlikely

Meanwhile, Syria’s main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, an- nounced Thursday that in light of “massacres” in Qusair, it would not attend peace talks.

The decision torpedoes the only plan for trying to end Syria’s civil war that the international community had been able to agree on.

Assad, in his interview, called members of the Coalition “slaves” of the West and U.S.-allied Gulf Arab countries.

While saying his government is ready “in principle” to attend peace talks in Geneva, he 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.