Russian-Iranian Pro-Assad Coalition On Verge
Of Huge Victory In Syria Ahead Of Trump�s
Inauguration.
by Yochanan Visser.
The more than five-year-old Syrian civil war
seems to have reached a turning point.
Dictator Bashar al-Assad is on his way to
scoring a major victory over his opponents
in Aleppo, Syria�s second largest city and
in other areas of Syria as well.
The Russian-Iranian led pro-Assad coalition
launched a major offensive to bring Aleppo
under full government control in the middle
of November, a day after President Obama admitted
his Syria policy hadn�t worked.
At the beginning of this week, the coalition
finally scored a critical victory over the
Jaish al-Fatah alliance of Sunni Islamist
rebel groups in eastern Aleppo when it seized
the strategically vital Sakhour neighborhood
in east Aleppo that had been controlled by
Jaish al-Fatah since 2012,
An estimated 80,000 civilians have been displaced
by the offensive as they fled to areas held
by the Kurdish YPG militia and to other neighborhoods
in Aleppo held by the rebels.
Hundreds of others have been killed since
the beginning of the offensive.
The alliance of Shiite militias, the Russian
army, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps
and what is left of Assad�s army continued
to make stunning gains, and on Saturday media
reported that the coalition had captured more
than 60 percent of the rebel-held territories
in Aleppo after another neighborhood fell.
�Regime forces took the strategic district
of Tariq al-Bab in fighting early on Saturday
morning,� the Telegraph in Great Britain
reported, while Russian media claimed 12 neighborhoods
in eastern Aleppo had been brought under Assad�s
control again.
The British paper wrote that an estimated
8.000 rebel fighters are trying to stop the
advance of the pro-Assad coalition, but statements
by their commanders indicate that they realize
their defeat is imminent.
Bassam Hijji, a spokesman for the Nour al-Din
al-Zenki rebel group that is part of the Jaish
al-Fatah coalition, said the rebels would
launch an insurgency against the pro-Assad
alliance in case they lose the remaining few
square miles in east Aleppo.
�We�ll use all the forms of resistance:
guerrilla fighting, assassinations, explosions.
We won�t rule out any form of fighting against
the regime,� Hijji said.
�We didn�t rebel to take or lose a neighborhood,
or a village, or a city.
This is a total revolution against Bashar
al-Assad, his regime, his security forces,
his corrupted elite,� the al-Zenki spokesman
warned.
The fall of east Aleppo will not end the Syrian
war, but it will be a crushing blow to the
Sunni Islamist rebel groups who are in retreat
everywhere in the country.
In the Damascus area, for example, the pro-Assad
coalition has launched an offensive to drive
the opposition groups out of the suburbs of
Syria�s capital that succeeded to bring
two towns under government control.
On Monday, 1.400 civilians and 1.450 rebels
left the town of Khan-al Shih southwest of
Damascus.
They left the area as part of an evacuation
deal with the Assad-regime.
A day later, regime forces seized the city
of al-Tall north of Damascus and closed in
on Goutha, a city east of the capital.
Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst at the
Institute for the Study of War in Washington,
says the recent successes by the pro-Assad
coalition �remove American options for meaningfully
challenging the regime through proxy forces.�
She said U.S. officials were frustrated over
the �increasing collapse of U.S.-backed
Free Syrian Army rebels in eastern Aleppo
and the unwillingness of the U.S. to respond.�
�When Trump is sworn in come January, Putin,
and his allies will have created a new fait
accompli in Syria,� Michael Horowitz of
The Daily Beast wrote earlier this week.
�The Syrian army and its allies will likely
capitalize on the victory in Aleppo to launch
several other offensives in the Idlib, Homs,
and Hama provinces near the Syrian coast,�
Horowitz asserted.
He added that the fall of Aleppo will have
ramifications for the wider Middle East because
�five years after the wave of freedom and
hope that swept into the region, it is now
clear that revolutions can be crushed, they
can be buried, they can be bombed into oblivion.�
Horowitz blamed Obama�s Syria policy for
the unfolding debacle in Syria.
�Where America has been hesitant, incoherent,
and unreliable, Russia has been dependable,
forceful, and ruthless,� Horowitz fumed.
He wrote that Syria would be only the beginning
for Putin and predicted the Russian president
�will use this clear military success to
cement new friendships with the region�s
autocrats, who seek reliable partners to consolidate
their power,� and concluded the so-called
Arab Spring would die with the fall of Aleppo.
You might ask what the Obama administration
is doing, meanwhile.
While in Rome, Secretary of State John Kerry
presented his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov
with �new proposals.�
The proposals were �in line with the position
of the Russian experts at the talks with the
Americans,� the Russian foreign minister
said without elaborating.
Lavrov expressed his willingness to send diplomats
and military experts to Geneva where earlier,
negotiations about a ceasefire or a political
solution for the Syrian conflict failed.
His proposal seemed to be another ploy to
buy time and to give the pro-Assad coalition
the chance to �finish the job� before
the Trump administration comes in.
Some observers say Trump could change his
mind on Syria now that he has appointed Michael
Flynn as his national security adviser and
Michael Pompeo as director of the CIA because
they see Assad not as a potential ally in
the war against ISIS, but as a strategic asset
to Iran that is on its way becoming a regional
superpower.
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