Forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad carry their weapons as they gather in the town of Safira November 1, 2013. Credit: REUTERS/George Ourfalian
Assessing The State Of The Syrian Army As ISIS Advances -- ABC News
The Syrian army said it had retaken the Shaar gas field near Palmyra – one of the country's largest – from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The battle and its heavy losses raised questions about the army's state of preparedness against the Sunni militant group; fueled by spoils from its June offensive in Iraq, ISIS has marched steadily across eastern Syria and into the country's Kurdish areas. Analysts have said it now intends to attack key regime assets in an effort to consolidate the amount of territory under its control.
We asked Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and Aram Nerguizian, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to weigh in on the state of the Syrian army and how it can respond to the challenge from ISIS.
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My Comment: This is an excellent summary on the current state of the Syrian military .... read it all.
I need to agree with this article, but a very important question has been unanswered, which for we don't know the answer. How big the will of ISIS to advance and focus more on Syria, instead of Iraq? As it was mentioned in the article, many don't see hight chance for a large scale offense (mostly in the west) of ISIS in Syria.
ReplyDeleteThe new frontline the ISIS want to open in the Qalamun is not really new. Just about a year ago ViceNews made a documentary video in Libanon, where they visited brigades and units who are nowadays just a part of ISIS. The whole liberation of the Qalamuns was a "strange" story. Rebels claimed that they had 30.000 soldier in the area, but somehow not many fighter fought and died in the battles there during this winter. They all just disappeared after the fall of Yabroud and even earlier. It's was reported they retreated to areas inside Libanon, but the Army of Libanon and Hezbolah should had stopped them, but this just not happened for some reason. The ones who now try to re-enter into Syria are just mainly those fighters and those who already fought in Libanon under the flag of ISIS/Al-Q.
Another not really mentioned but very important event happened in North-East Syria. About a week ago ISIS captured some villages and other positions in Hasakie province of Syria. The 121. ammunition base also has fallen (and the amount of the captured thing is another interesting story), but this weekend the SAA made a counter-attack in the area together with NDF and YPG forces. It was well known that the Kurdish forces are not realy fighting against the SAA for over two years or so, but as far as I know this is a major development in that front that YPG and SAA forces fighting together against the ISIS units. I think not need to mention ISIS retreated and lost about 8 villages plus the 121. ammo base, no reports of detailed casualties.
I got some more information about (which I will summarise later ) the fall of the 17th Division Base in Raqqa, there is some interesting thing about how ISIS developed their attacks on SAA positions. Also ISIS just put another military base under siege , which is just a few km north from Raqqa. If news agencies report the loss of another SAA base, than this will be it, and it's could happen in the next few weeks.
Thank you for your response mlacix. Your analysis on the war in Syria is always appreciated.
ReplyDelete"Rebels claimed that they had 30.000 soldier in the area, but somehow not many fighter fought and died in the battles there during this winter. They all just disappeared after the fall of Yabroud and even earlier."
ReplyDeleteMoved or propaganda to dispirit the Assad regime?
Aizino Smith: I think both, but seems more like propaganda. 30.000 fighter is a lot, really a lot. The SAA offensive in Qalamun from November of 2013 to May of 2014 (nowadays just called as the "Battle of Qalamun" or "1. Battle of Qalamun") was just a part of a way bigger offense, which combined ares of Tartus, Hama, Homs and Rif-Dimasq governates. The goal of the SAA offense was to fully cut the rebel's supplie lines from Libanon. Before the fightings started to rage in the Qalamun SAA already was on a big push around Al-Zara and step-by-step they closed the border line. Qalamun was just the "last step" of this operation.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that rebels retreated to the Qalamun from other areas, because it was easier them to move to the "pocket of resistance" North from the city of Homs. The last option of the rebels to live was to keep Al-Nabk which they failed in November/December of 2013, and so by that there were no way out than Libanon. Surly the fall of Yabroud was the point when they started to retreat even without orders for that.
I don't see any chance that the rebels could hide or move that much fighter in any way. I think the "fake army" was the main goal of the rebels because they knew there is not enough forces there to keep the area. When Al-Qussay had been liberated by SAA, many fighter from all around Homs were reallocad (the well known SAA desinformation ), and the rumors said they went to Aleppo, but you can't trust just a rummor. SAA probably well known that the rebels had just maximum about 10000 soldier in the area. Which is still a nice amount but many of them died during the fighting and the rest ( who mostly are part of more radical groups ) fled to Libanon.
To be honest I don't have to much expectation to this Qalamun frontline, because I think SAA with NDF and the Hezbulah can handle the situation. Also the Army of Libanon is very looks like will join to the fighting, because they not really like the ISIS kinda things in their territory.
The fighting around the border is just a very minor battle now, because SAA is in silent since early June when they had the last offenses (Al-Malahe, Nawa, the encircle of Aleppo), but I'm sure SAA planning something now, reallocating forces for something (or even more) new offense, but where will it be, I'm not sure. Probably one will be on the South-West corner but because of the current state of the frontline there I think it's will be just a small offense like to cut the supplie lines south from the town of Daraa or something similar small scale operation.
But the real big thing will happen somewhere else. The frontline at Hama is moving day by day but there the SAA could fix the frontline by local forces so they just waiting for the right time now, because the place is already selected, around the town of Morek. The colonel called "Tiger" will get the main attention very soon, and I'm sure on that one. He is one of the best general of the SAA, and he always were sent to the most critical frontline. He could do two thing, first is to finish the encircling of Aleppo before the winter which was probably their main goal and the most logical. While the other option is to go into war against ISIS and make them fall back to the Eastern side of the Assad Lake. Plus as a last emergency option I can expect an offense to liberate the town of Der-er-zor, but I think there aren't that many free forces the SAA have now. It's all depend on ISIS and SAA now, they are the main "gears" of this war.