Syria off the cuff thoughts..18 Dec 2016 12:04
EASTERN Aleppo, the rebel-held half of what was once Syria’s biggest city, has fallen. Once the resistance there has totally collapsed/dispersed, things may move very fast in Syria, and the biggest question will be do the outside powers that have intervened in the war accept Bashar Assad’s victory, or do they keep the war going? Even one year ago, it seemed completely unrealistic to talk about an Assad victory. The Syrian government’s army was decimated, demoralised and on the verge of collapse: Every time the rebels attacked, it retreated.
There was even a serious possibility that so-called Islamic State (IS) and the Nusra Front, militant group that dominated the rebel forces, would sweep to victory in all of Syria. But then, just 14 months ago, the Russian air force was sent in to save Assad’s army from defeat. It did more than that. It enabled the Syrian army, with help on the ground from Shiite militias recruited from Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq and mostly trained and commanded by Iranian officers, to go on the offensive. Assad’s forces took back the historic city of Palmyra. They eliminated the last rebel-held foothold in the city of Homs. And last summer they began to cut eastern Aleppo’s remaining links with the outside world.
In July government forces took control of the Castello Road, ending the flow of food and supplies for eastern Aleppo’s 10,000 rebel fighters and its claimed civilian population of 250,000 people. A rebel counter-offensive in August briefly opened a new corridor, but government troops retook the lost territory and resumed the siege in September. For almost three months almost nothing moved into or out of the besieged half of the city, and both food and ammunition are run short inside. So the resistance eventually collapsed. The Hanano district fell early December and Jabal Badro fell also. The capture of Sakhour on the Monday after had cut the rebel-held part of Aleppo in two, and the remaining bits north of the cut quickly pinched out by the Syrian government’s troops.
The southeastern part of the city may stayed in rebel hands a while longer, but military collapses of this sort are and have been infectious. Now Assad controls all of Aleppo, bringing a swift end to resistance. Once Palmyra is recaptured, which may happen by the end of this tear, Assad would then control all of Syria’s major cities, at least three-quarters of the population that has not fled abroad, and all of the country’s surviving industry. He would be in a position to offer an amnesty to all the rebels except the IS and the Nusra Front, and a lot of the less fanatical Syrian rebels would be tempted to accept it.
Even Turkey and Saudi Arabia, however much their leaders may loathe Assad, could not openly put their armies at the service of the Islamists.
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