Syria has inadequate force to control space outside a few cities

Washington Post:

War came late to this little farming town set amid rolling hills in the Syrian countryside east of Aleppo, where the absence of upheaval was long construed as an implicit signal of support for the government led by President Bashar al-Assad. 

But once the battle started in May, it unfolded at lightning speed, at least by the standards of a revolt that is dragging into its 17th month. Residents are celebrating their near-complete victory over regime loyalists after the town’s last army garrison fled Sunday, its food supplies gone and its morale shredded. 

With that, al-Bab became the farthest point in a swath of rural territory stretching south from the Turkish border toward the city of Aleppo that has slipped beyond government control in recent weeks. 

The unraveling of the regime’s authority here in this northern province has been overshadowed by the battles for control of the cities of Homs, Damascus and, most recently, the provincial capital Aleppo, where government forces are waging a full-scale offensive to recapture neighborhoods seized by rebels in recent days. 

But even as Assad’s forces have poured resources into sustaining their hold on major population centers, they have steadily been losing control of the countryside, in a series of seesawing battles that have not yet proved decisive but that appear to be giving the momentum to the rebels. The story of the battle of al-Bab, an overlooked front in a war of many fronts, suggests that the government’s hold here was always more fragile than had been thought and that it has become significantly more so in the past few weeks. 

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On April 20, as bloodshed was accelerating elsewhere and the province of Aleppo was beginning to stir, everything changed in al-Bab. On that day, troops opened fire on a protest for the first time, killing seven people. Among them was Ammar Najjar, 20, an engineering student who had led calls for peaceful protests in the town. 

His father, Kamal, wept last week as he recalled his son’s death. “He only asked for freedom from tyranny. This was his weapon,” he said, pulling his son’s camera phone from his pocket. 

The killings triggered a race to arms in the town. On May 20, a group calling itself the Abu Bakr Battalion became the first to declare its formation. Within weeks, 14 more groups followed. With names such as the Martyrs of al-Bab, the Ansar Battalion and the Salman Farsi Battalion, they collectively describe themselves as part of the Free Syrian Army. But they have no formal contact with the army’s leadership, based in southern Turkey, according to Yasser Abu Ali, a rebel spokesman in the town. 

“We rely only on ourselves,” he said. “Everything we have, we bought it with our own money or we took it from the regime.” 

By July, the rebels had mustered enough weaponry and ammunition to launch an offensive to drive government forces from the town. The effort culminated July 18 in the much-trumpeted liberation of the post office, the last of a string of government institutions to fall to the rebels. For 24 hours, a regime sniper had held out on the roof until a Free Syrian Army fighter hit him with a rocket-propelled grenade, a moment described by many in the town and immortalized in a video posted on YouTube.

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The fight has become an insurgency and it appears to be one that has stretched the government's resources beyond their ability to respond.  Assad is left trying to control a few population centers with a shrinking army and a growing opposition.  Al Qaeda is taking over large areas in the eastern part of Syria near the Iraq border.  The attacks in other areas further alienate the Sunni population.  It will be very difficult for Assad to survive long term, unless he gets outside help from Iran and Russia.