WarSclerotic

Syrian war enters new phase, no end in sight – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Syrian army building forces around Aleppo, as rebels look to relieve pressure with counter attacks; Iraqi Shiite fighters seen entering Syria

Reuters

Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad are massing around Aleppo in preparation for an offensive to retake the city and build on battlefield gains that have swung the momentum of Syria’s war to Assad and his Hezbollah allies.

Rebels reported signs of large numbers of Shiite Muslim fighters flowing in from Iraq to help Assad end the civil war that has killed at least 80,000 people and forced 1.6 million Syrians to flee abroad.

The move to a northern front comes as Syria’s war is increasingly infecting its neighbors – Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel – and widening a regional sectarian faultline between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

For the first time since the start of the uprising in March 2011, an Israeli minister suggested on Monday that Assad might prevail in the war, thanks in large part to support from Shiite Iran and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

However, efforts to dislodge rebels in Aleppo will be a much tougher proposition than last week’s capture of the town of Qusair, with military analysts predicting that the conflict will probably drag on for months or years as Assad’s many foes are likely to be galvanized by recent rebel reversals.

Alarmed by Assad’s swift advances and hoping to turn the tide, Washington might decide later this week on whether to start arming the rebels, a US official said.

Assad’s army is preparing to lift sieges on areas close to Aleppo before turning its sights on the country’s second city, according to the semi-official Syrian al-Watan daily

“Any battle in Aleppo will be huge and most certainly prolonged,” said Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.

“You have large numbers of rebels in several areas of the city. There will have to be a lot of very close combat fighting that always takes a lot of time and leaves many casualties.”

Rebel brigades poured into Aleppo last July and have more than half the great merchant city under their control. The front lines are largely stable and a growing number of radicalized, Islamist foreign fighters have joined rebel ranks.

Pincer Movement

Opposition activists and military sources said the army was airlifting troops to Aleppo airport and to the Kurdish area of Ifrin behind rebel lines, as well as reinforcing two rural Shiite Muslim enclaves, Zahra and Nubbul, north of the city.

“The regime appears to be making a pincer movement to try and regain the major cities across the north and east of Syria ahead of the Geneva conference,” said Abu Taha, a northern rebel commander, referring to proposed international peace talks.

The United States and Russia hope to hold the conference in Switzerland next month, but Britain has warned that Assad’s recent success might make him reluctant to offer the sort of compromises believed necessary to end the bloodshed.

After appearing to seize the initiative in 2012, the rebels have suffered a series of setbacks this year, with Assad’s demoralized forces significantly bolstered by the arrival of well-trained fighters from the Shiite Muslim group, Hezbollah.

Rebels said these guerrillas had played a determining role in the emphatic victory last week in Qusair, which controls vital supply routes across Syria and into Lebanon.

A security source in Lebanon said Hezbollah would continue to assist Assad, but unlike the battle for Qusair, which lies close to its home turf, it might not dispatch its troops north to Aleppo, preferring instead to offer training.

Looking to relieve the growing pressure on Aleppo, rebels attacked two major military compounds on Monday in northern Syria – on the outskirts of the city of Raqqa and the Minnig airport in the adjacent province of Aleppo.

“The rebels have raised pressure … in the last two days to pre-empt any attack on Aleppo,” said Abdelrazzaq Shlas, a member of the opposition administrative council for the province.

Activists said the army had retaliated by bombing Raqqa, killing at least 20 civilians and fighters.

“There is a big loss of lives, but the aim is to deflate the morale boost that the regime received after Qusair and not allow it to go to Geneva as a victor,” Shlas said.

But in a worrying development for the rebels, Shlas said there were reports of militiamen loyal to Iraqi Shiite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr streaming into Syria to bolster Assad‘s forces.

Their arrival would underline the increasingly regionalized nature of the war following Hezbollah’s entry into the fray.

Jihad

Lister, who monitors Sunni Muslim Jihadist forums, said it seemed a growing number of Sunni men appeared ready to take up arms in Syria with the mainly Sunni rebel forces.

“If you believe what you read in the forums, then there are a lot of people heading to Syria to take up the fight,” he said, adding that there were also a growing number of death notices for foreign fighters appearing on the web, including six in one day last week.

Israel, which shares a tense border with Syria, has regularly predicted the fall of Assad. But on Monday, Minister for Intelligence Yuval Steinitz offered a very different view.

Speaking to foreign reporters in Jerusalem, he said Assad’s government “might not just survive but even regain territories.”

Western nations, including the United States, have said Assad must stand down, but have thus far refused to arm the rebels, worried the weaponry might fall into the hands of radical elements, including groups tied to al Qaeda.

On a visit to Aleppo earlier this month, a Reuters correspondent saw a marked increase in the number of hardcore Islamist groups, who seemed to have gained ascendancy over the more moderate Free Syrian Army that led the initial combat.

Rebels in the city also seemed more focused on resolving day-to-day issues, rather than taking the fight to Assad.

“The biggest problem we have is thievery. There are thieves who pretend to be rebels and wear rebel clothes so they can steal from civilians,” said Abu Ahmed Rahman, head of the Revolutionary Military Police in Aleppo, an organization set up to resolve disputes between rebels and civilians.

But there were also signs of anti-Assad forces digging in, preparing for an eventual army onslaught.

“This conflict has no discernable end-point at the moment,” said Lister.

Assad warns of ‘strategic, not local’ reply to IDF strikes | JPost | Israel News.

( Threats and more threats.  In the meantime he begs Israel not to hurt his tanks in the Golan.  Bluster is a euphemism. – JW )

First clash between Syrian rebels and Iraqi soldiers. Baghdad bankrolls Assad’s war.

Iraqi troops provide service for Bashar Assad

Syrian rebel forces attacked two Iraqi military positions at the southern tip of their common border Sunday, June 9. They failed to beat the Iraqi troops back although a number of Iraqi officers and soldiers were killed. Shooting incidents flared during the day near the Al-Waleed Syrian-Iraqi crossing, but the Iraqi forces held fast.

This was their first engagement with Syrian rebels in the 28-month Syrian civil war – but unlikely to be the last.

The Syrian Sunni rebels were anxious to break through the Iraqi lines which were blocking their access to supplies of weapons and fighters sent over by Sunni militias in the Western Iraqi Anbar region. The failure of the rebels’  first assault set back their bid to loosen the grip of loyalist Syrian troops on this strategic border crossing.
debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report that while all eyes have been drawn in recent days to Hizballah’s proactive military involvement in Assad’s war, the Iraqi role has been under-reported an treated as scattered and sporadic military actions, whereas in fact, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has even outdone Hassan Nasrallah in the generosity of his assistance for propping Assad up.

We have learned that he has advanced unlimited Iraqi credit for his war chest,, placing Iraq’s multibillion-dollar oil revenues at his disposal. US, British and French importers may not realize they are contributing to Assad’s war effort against the rebels with their purchases.
A Western intelligence source told debkafile that al-Maliki is even footing the bill for Syrian government’s imports, from flour to Russian weapons systems and arms bought on the international market for the Syrian army and Hizballah.  Baghdad is also covering Syria’s consumption of petroleum, benzene, fuel distillates and oils for the Syrian army’s logistical systems.

And as we reported in the last DEBKA Weekly, the Iraqi prime minister has detached 20,000 troops for the mission of sealing the Syrian border against the entry of rebel reinforcements and assistance originating in the Persian Gulf and from Iraqi Sunni militias. The Syrian rebel attacks Sunday battered the Iraqi lines ranged there but failed to force any gaps.
Assad is therefore furnished with ample funds and soldiers by Iraq, fighting men by HIzballah, new and replenished weapons by Russia and Iran and aircraft, tanks and artillery for Syria’s own stores.

With hefty financial, intelligence and military aid from four allies, Bashar Assad is better equipped than ever before to rout an opposition that is divided and starved of assistance, arms and support.

Sykes-Picot and Israel | JPost | Israel News.

The breakdown of the old Sykes-Picot political order is testing Israel’s border with Syria along the Golan Heights.