When the uprising in Syria began 3 years ago, the small country at the heart of the Middle East was notably different. Whilst the other uprisings in the region lost their initial momentum the people of Syria stood tall in the face of indiscriminate air attacks and artillery fire. The initial success the rebel groups made gave way to a protracted struggle against regime forces and the balance of power in the country is today evenly balanced. Whilst the rebel groups control the North of the country the regime controls the country’s heartland from Damascus to the mediterranean coast. The rebels control more territory than the regime but the regime continues to maintain its grip on key territory. There are a number of reasons why the rebels struggled to capitalise upon their initial success, these can be encapsulated into 4 fundamental reasons.
Firstly, many rebel groups are small and do not deploy away from their home provinces. Throughout 2013, the exceptions were groups in large rebel coalitions, such as Suqur al-Sham and the Tawhid Brigades part of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SILF) and Ahrar al-Sham and the Al-Haqq brigade in the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF). These coalitions have since merged with other groups, but the groups continue to organize and lead attacks involving multiple rebel groups under the banner of the Islamic Front. Rebel groups have continued to fight the regime under multiple umbrellas rather than unifying or merging into a cohesive whole, which could then challenge the al-Assad regime. The effect of this has been that results have been local rather than national.
The successes in the north of Syria has been partly due to the regime giving up the region as it struggled to deal with a nationwide insurgency which was stretching it across the country.
Secondly, the rebel groups lack a national-level command and control system and have relied on a decentralized system which created multiple centres of gravity for the opposition. This diversified the risk of a systemic collapse by rebel groups when the regime attacked on any given front. This structure undermined al-Assad’s firepower as the army could not fight every rebel group simultaneously across the length and breadth of the country. With the regime giving up on the north of the country, al-Assad’s forces fell back to the country’s heartland from Damascus to Latakia and have focussed on rooting out rebels rather than engaging in offensive operations. Launching an operation on the heartland or the seat of the regime will need a sustained assault from multiple directions by the rebels and this needs coordination and planning as well as the amalgamation of most of the rebel groups. Whilst attempts have been made to shift to this more conventional structure, rebel infighting, which escalated in January 2014, is now diminishing the advantages gained from the original dispersed structure.
Thirdly, rebel discord has resulted in rebel infighting which is now taking up more resources than fighting the regime. The rebel discord has fundamentally been due to the actions of the ISIS. Their actions have led some rebel groups to turn against them. The ISIS has focused its effort on carving out territory for itself in north-eastern Syria, which is not aligned with the opposition’s goal to defeat al-Assad’s military. These distinct opposition campaigns are now much more prominent and have impacted attempts at leading a coordinated assault on Damascus, the seat of the regime. Throughout the summer of 2013, ISIS established areas of control in key terrains in northern and eastern Syria along the Turkish border, with a significant presence in towns such as Atmeh, al-Bab, Azaz, Manbij, and Jarablus. ISIS persecution has included the abduction, torture, and killing of the Ahrar al-Sham member Dr. Hussein al-Suleiman (Abu Rayyan), whose mutilated body was found on January 1st 2014.[1] ISIS is composed of fighters, who should be on the front lines facing-off against the regime, but many remain in rebel held territory running checkpoints, acting as judges and distributing resources.
Rather than elect people from amongst the indigenous population, those best experienced in fighting are governing over people, and as a result maintaining cohesion has been through the gun.
Fourthly, the external support provided to the al-Assad regime has allowed it to maintain its position despite the loss of territory and mass defections from its armed forces.
The West led by the US has provided the regime cover through creating a façade of doing something when in reality they stood by when al-Assad launched a chemical attack on his people. The West has been organising conferences and summits to establish a national coalition who will negotiate a transition deal with the regime. Defected official Brigadier General Zaher al-Saket confirmed the al-Assad regime was on the verge of collapse, this is what led to the intervention of Iran and thousands of fighters from Hizbullah.[2] Iran propped up the al-Assad regime by providing weapons and deploying its revolutionary guards. The Muslim rulers in the region also contributed by allowing their territories to be used for shipping arms to the right groups and ensuring arms did not end up in the hands of those calling for Islamic change.
The rebel groups have managed to hold the more capable and equipped regime military forces to a stalemate. One of the main challenges standing in the way of the rebel groups is the US strategy of maintaining the status quo. The US has however failed in cultivating a loyal opposition in order to achieve this. The biggest threat is now is the growing friction amongst the rebel groups. This trend has serious implications as ISIS has rejected almost all talks and more and more rebel resources will need to be dedicated to them at the expense of the regime.
Bashar al-Assad and his father before him maintained totalitarian control of Syria. The mere possibility of decent, let alone an uprising, was enough for the states intelligence services to kidnap in the hundreds or for whole towns to be bulldozed. The last uprising was in 1982 and it resulted in a massacre in Hama. The city was besieged for 27 days in order to quell the uprising. So when the Arab Spring spilled into Syria, many around the world believed the regime would quickly quell the uprising. After 3 years Basher al-Assad has been barely able to maintain control and has lost large tracts of the country. Despite carrying out indiscriminate air attacks, aerial bombardment, carpet bombings and the use of chemical weapons the al-Assad regime maintains a tenuous grip. There are 4 main reasons for this.
Firstly, the strength of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has really been a mirage. The regime was able to maintain its hegemony for decades due to the fear it instilled in the people through its notorious secret services. The Syrian security apparatus had been successful in clamping down on the entire country. Political dissent was virtually non-existent and any Syrian citizen wishing to travel abroad would have to pass a number of stringent security checks. When the uprising began in 2011 rebel forces not only attacked government buildings, but targeted the security apparatus, killing security personnel and driving others out of towns. In December 2012 Major General Abdulaziz al-Shalal — whose job was to monitor the security services for the regime — defected to the rebels saying he was leaving the “regime army” to join the “people’s revolution.“[1]
Once this factor changed, the ears and the eyes of the regime were cut and al-Assad’s forces have since struggled to defeat the uprising. This is why much of the country is outside the control of the government today.
Secondly, although on paper the Syrian army consists of 220,000 soldiers, most of the Syrian infantry is composed of Sunni soldiers, who Assad could not rely on and thus he only had a small force to tackle the uprising. Consequently, the burden of the fighting fell on two elite units: the 4th armored division and the Republican Guard. Together, these formations only possessed a fighting force of around 30,000 men – less than 14% of the army’s total strength and they were forced to bear the lion’s share of casualties.[2] Basher al-Assad was forced to utilize only a small fraction of the army as he could not count on the loyalty of the majority, i.e. the Sunni Muslims. The situation became dire by mid-2013 for Assad when the rebels began launching attacks on Damascus – the seat of the regime. Defected official Brigadier General Zaher al-Saket confirmed the Assad regime was on the verge of collapse, this is what led to the intervention of thousands of fighters from Hizbullah. By August 2013 matters were even more dire and in a telephone call intercepted by German spy chiefs, a senior Hezbollah commander told the Iranian embassy in Lebanon that Bashar Al-Assad launched the chemical attack which killed hundreds of people because he ‘lost his nerve’ in a moment of panic and worried that Damascus would fall to rebel troops.[3]
Thirdly, the decentralized nature of the rebel groups forced the regime to fight simultaneously across the country, overstretching the regime forces. Conducting simultaneous operations crippled the regime which led to the army sustaining more losses than it could replenish. The rebel forces operated as a guerrilla force and and lacked a national-level command structure that could be attacked by regime forces. This created multiple centers of gravity for which the regime could not possibly target simultaneously, thus nullifying the risk of systemic collapse on the part of the rebels. As a result, the success the regime forces did have in terms of regaining territory in one part of the country did not have an effect on other parts. It also meant that the death of rebel leaders and fighters did not impact the overall rebel advance
Fourthly, as the uprising dragged on the regime lost the capacity to launch decisive operations to clear rebel held territories. As a result, the regime gave up on regaining the north of the country and the countryside. The amount of combat power the regime needed to secure and retain territory in the north became so high that it was not able to conduct operations quickly and efficiently. As a result, the regime gave up reclaiming the north of the country. The regime then focused on holding onto territory rather than conducting offensive operations. It began securing the heartland of the country which is the territory from De’ra to Latakia. Retaining terrain is now its main focus of the regime. This has mainly consisted of regime forces carrying out mass atrocities, inflicting heavy casualties on civilians in order to relieve pressure on territory in the heartland.
Despite Bashar al-Assad’s forces possessing more firepower and heavy weaponry, after three years, they have failed to defeat the people of Syria. Were it not for external support, the al-Assad regime would have fallen in 2013. Iran has played a central role in propping up the regime thorough economic support and deploying its revolutionary guards in the country. Similarly Hizbullah has played an active role in beefing up Syrian armed forces as many Syrian soldiers defected to the rebels. Bashar al-Assad has also received significant support from abroad as the West has turned the other way as he continued his massacres. These factors are what have stoped the end of the al-Assad regime from complete collapse. Despite his al-Assad will need to ensure he survives every attack and every organized offensive, the Ummah of Syria just need to be successful once in order to achieve real change in the country.
