Quick Take // By Ben FrankelAssad’s one-before-the-last stand
In the last few weeks, Syrian military units have begun to build what military analysts describe as “Maginot Line” east of Damascus in a last-ditch effort to defend the capital from the forces of the Southern Front, which threaten the capital from the south, and from Islamic State, which threatens the city from the east. The line consists of small military outposts, earthen berms, and approach roads. It is being built about fifty miles east of the Damascus International Airport, located east of the capital. The mini-Maginot Line being built east of Damascus is an admission by the Assad regime that battle for Syria is over. It is not yet clear who will control Syria, but it is clear it will not be Assad and the Alawites. Their forty-five years in power are over. The question for Assad, rather, is who will control Damascus and the Alawite region. The building of the line east of the capital is an indication that Assad is getting ready to fight for the control of the capital, but the battle for Damascus may be a delaying tactics, aimed to gain time for the preparations for the ultimate battle – the battle over the Alawite region. It will be a battle over more – much more — than the fate of the Assad regime. It may well be a battle over the very fate of the Alawites.
In the last few weeks, Syrian military units have begun to build what military analysts describe as “Maginot Line” east of Damascus in a last-ditch effort to defend the capital from the forces of the Southern Front, which threaten the capital from the south, and from Islamic State, which threatens the city from the east.
The Southern Front is a coalition of several rebel groups which includes U.S.-vetted moderate rebels who receive U.S. training (in bases in Jordan) and military gear, but also the Islamist Nusra Front, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda.
The line consists of small military outposts, earthen berms, and approach roads. It is being built about fifty miles east of the Damascus International Airport, located east of the capital.
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Endgame in Syria: Assad forces in retreat as rebels increase pressure, 20 May 2015
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Military analysts say there are two reasons for the regime’s new strategy.
First, the Syrian military is in advanced stages of disintegration (two weeks ago, General Yair Golan, Israel’s deputy chief of staff, said that the Syrian army, “for all practical purposes, has ceased to exist”). Since the beginning of the year, better-coordinated and better-equipped moderate Syrian rebels in the south and north — and the militants of Islamic State in the east — have inflicted heavy losses on the Syrian military and its Hezbollah supporters, capturing large military bases, airfields, and strategic roads.
ISIS controls about 50 percent of the territory of Syria (but only about 20 percent of the population, since the ISIS-controlled area is largely an empty desert in east Syria).
More immediately threatening for Assad are developments in the north, which threaten the Alawites, and in the south — which threaten the Druze and Damascus.
In the north, moderate rebel coalition, called Jish al-Fatah, which includes eight moderate rebel forces, now controls Idlib Province on the edge of the Alawite region in north-west Syria. The suburbs of Latakia, one of the two large cities in the Alawite region (the other is Tartus) are now within the rebels’ artillery range.
Numbering some 2.5 million in Syria, the Alawites are syncretic sect combining elements of Islam and Christianity. Deemed heretics by hard-line Sunni Muslims, the Alawites venerate Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, but also drink alcohol and celebrate Christmas and Easter. They predominate in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where they constitute over 70 percent of the population, with the remaining population mostly Christian.
