By ANNE BARNARD
Published: November 16, 2013
The New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian government forces have recently ousted rebels from a string of suburbs outside Damascus, threatening their yearlong control of territory south of the capital city, cutting supply lines and surrounding strongholds that one fighter called their “last castle” in the area.
Around the northern city of Aleppo, rebels are also newly on the defensive. They are demanding that all fighters mobilize against a government offensive or face consequences in Islamic courts.
These recent battlefield successes — allowing the government to threaten rebel strongholds in and around Syria’s two main cities — prompted Syria’s prime minister, Wael al-Halqi, to declare on Thursday that the government was heading for an “astounding victory,” just as President Bashar al-Assad prepares for peace talks that the United States and Russia hope to convene by year’s end.
Yet early declarations of victory may be premature, as has been the case many times with both sides in this two-and-a-half-year-old civil war.
Still, Mr. Assad has made gains, and the momentum has tipped, at least for now, in his direction even while the nation remains badly fractured. He has kept rebels from advancing into a partially encircled Damascus and has now retaken crucial suburbs that rebels relied on to keep pressure on the capital. He forestalled a United States attack with a chemical weapons deal that solidified his global position. And the rise of extremist Islamists among the rebels has kept the West at bay and demoralized supporters of the rebellion.
The coming weeks will show whether the government can make lasting gains and move battle lines that have shifted only marginally in the past year. Until recently, escalating tactics have yielded little but mounting civilian suffering, with neither side advancing even as the government was accused of using siege and starvation as well as chemical and incendiary weapons, and rebels shelled civilian areas to chip away at the comfort zone inside central Damascus.
In recent days, rebels say, the government has come close to encircling rebels in the southern suburb of Hajar al-Aswad and neighboring Yarmouk Camp, a district once home to both Syrians and Palestinian refugees that has been a battle zone for more than a year and is now fiercely contested by pro- and antigovernment Palestinian fighters.
But just one neighborhood away, in Tadamon, on the southern edge of Damascus, pro-government militias remain dug in, facing rebels along long-static front lines. On a recent visit, officers there — surveying deserted, rubble-strewn streets as rebel automatic rifle fire smacked into nearby buildings — said it took them weeks last November to push invading rebels back just a few hundred yards in fighting that shattered blocks of apartment houses.
They said they viewed the opposing fighters as their equals in skill and equipment, and that they had no plans to try to advance, to avoid military and civilian casualties that would further stress hospitals and fighters already stretching their capacity.
“We don’t need more mortars or injuries,” said an officer who asked to be identified as Abu Salim. He said his mission was simply not to let the enemy advance, “whatever it costs.”
Pro-government militias like his have been left to guard such areas while better trained and equipped army units fight more crucial battles, sometimes alongside the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias, whose fighters have long been gathered around Sayeda Zeinab, home to a revered Shiite shrine southeast of Damascus.
Part of the failure of Syrian forces to capitalize fully on their gains, according to government fighters and supporters, stems from conflicting strategies within the government. Some officials are trying to moderate the fighting and seek local cease-fires, especially after the threat of an American strike and the government’s effort to portray itself as seeking peace on the international stage. Others are advocating a more aggressive strategy.
And while the government has sought to project itself as in control of Syria, the crisis has only deepened: The number of refugees has increased more than fourfold. The death toll has doubled, Shiite militiamen have flooded the country to aid the government, Kurds have declared an autonomous zone in the northeast, and Sunni jihadist groups have wrested some areas from rival rebels in attempts to establish religious rule.
Even if government advances stick, no quick military resolution is in sight, experts said. When the government aided by Hezbollah took the city of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, in May, supporters said it would soon go on to sweep rebels from pockets in and around Homs and Aleppo to the north. But despite some advances around those cities, the government has yet to repeat a wholesale takeover of a rebel population center, nor has it been able even to normalize the small city of Qusayr, which remains a military zone bereft of residents and patrolled by the government and its Hezbollah allies.
In September, after the chemical deal, government officials declared that broad segments of rebel-held Damascus suburbs from the southwest to the northeast would be retaken within weeks. Two months later, the current advance is just beginning to gather force.
For weeks, government opponents and supporters have said they expect the next major battle to be over Qalamoun, north of Damascus, an area that has replaced Qusayr as the rebels’ main conduit from Lebanon. On Friday, people from the town of Qara began fleeing across the border, saying the government was fiercely shelling the area, according to a rebel fighter in the Lebanese border town of Aarsal. But residents and analysts say the battle for Qalamoun’s mountain towns and villages could be a harder slog than taking over lowland Qusayr, especially in winter.
Farther north, the government solidly holds the coastal cities of Tartous and Latakia but has been unable to push rebels from the mountains north of Latakia near the Turkish border — nor have insurgents there been able to hold southward advances, instead squabbling and sometimes killing one another in disputes over authority and weapons.
Along the border with Turkey, neither rebels nor the government can control the flow of the jihadists who are increasingly seen as enemies of both. Abu Mohammed, a smuggler, said in an interview in the border town of Azaz that he had brought in many foreign fighters from across the Muslim world and Europe for $3,000 a head, easily bringing them as far south as Homs by bribing government troops at checkpoints for as little as a carton of cigarettes.
Near Aleppo, the government took Base 80, important for its location near the airport, on Nov. 9, along with nearby towns that it could use to threaten rebel control of half of the city, and killed and wounded top rebel leaders in an airstrike. Rebels say they are still fighting for the base. And while around Damascus it is the government that blockades rebel areas, in Aleppo rebels control the flow of food in and out of a government enclave, whose residents wait hours to cross checkpoints to the rebel side to buy cheaper food.
A shopkeeper in Damascus, who identified himself as Abu Subhi, 55, said he tuned out the news and watched religious videos on a small television in his shop in the Rukineddine district.
“If Bashar stays or goes, I don’t care,” he said of the president. “But I’m sure if he stays in power, there will be no stability and security in Syria for years.”
Both sides, he said, talk of “big victories” but fail to deliver. “I don’t see any change,” he said. “Every day there are mortars, checkpoints, no fuel, long blackouts, no cooking gas and inflation.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Karam Shoumali from Istanbul, and an employee of The New York Times from Syria.
A version of this article appears in print on November 17, 2013, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Syrian Government’s Forces Gain, but a Siege War Goes On.
_____________
What do you think?
“If Bashar stays or goes, I don’t care,” he said of the president. “But I’m sure if he stays in power, there will be no stability and security in Syria for years.”
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
17112013
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
No comments:
Post a Comment