Syrian troops advance in rebel bastion as war enters year 4

DAMASCUS, Syria – Syrian troops advanced Saturday, March 15, in the key rebel bastion of Yabrud as the country’s civil war entered its 4th year, with more than 146,000 dead, millions displaced and peace efforts stalled.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO, said army forces were advancing with support from Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hezbollah, a staunch regime ally.

A military source said “fierce clashes” were taking place between army and rebel forces inside Yabrud.

“The 13 rebel chiefs leading operations are dead,” he added, saying there were “very many deaths among the insurgents.”

Syria’s state television broadcast images of the town from its outskirts, reporting that “the Syrian army is progressing in the town.”

Yabrud is a key supply route for the rebels and their last stronghold in the Qalamun region, which lies along the border with Lebanon and on the highway between Damascus and third city Homs.

The Observatory said a Kuwaiti commander of Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda-linked group, known as Abu Azzam al-Kuwaiti was killed in Yabrud on Friday.

It identified him as the number two Al-Nusra commander in the Qalamun region. He had helped negotiate the prisoner swap that saw rebels release more than a dozen Christian nuns earlier this week.

Conflict overview

The latest battle illustrated the intractability of the conflict that began on March 15, 2011 after popular uprisings that toppled dictators in Tunisia and Egypt.

Protests erupted in Syria’s southern city of Daraa after teenagers were arrested over graffiti declaring: “The people want the fall of the regime.”

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime cracked down on the protests, civilians took up arms, soldiers began to desert and an insurgency became full-scale civil war after the regime bombed the central city of Homs in February 2012.

Two years later, the war appears to have reached stalemate, with some predicting it could last another 10 or 15 years.

Rebels control large swathes of the country, but are fighting both the regime and an Al-Qaeda-inspired group they once welcomed.

And the government holds the more densely-populated regions, seeking to protect “useful Syria” – the coast, major towns and key roads.

The regime is advancing on three fronts, south of Damascus, in the strategic Qalamun region and in Aleppo in the north.

Assad’s army advancing

In Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial capital, the regime has retained the city’s west, while advancing around the outskirts of the rebel-held east and securing and reopening the nearby airport.

Syria’s mostly exiled political opposition has secured Western recognition but is largely ignored by rebels on the ground.

And it failed to achieve any progress in talks with the regime in Geneva earlier this year, demanding Assad step down while the regime ruled that possibility out.

Instead, Assad is already gearing up for elections in mid-2014 that he is expected to win.

On the ground, both sides have been accused of carrying out abuses, with the regime jailing and torturing thousands and dropping so-called barrel bombs that rights groups say fail to discriminate between fighters and civilians.

Rebels too are accused of summary executions and other violations, particularly the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Nine million have fled 

The human cost of the conflict has soared, with 9 million people forced from their homes, creating the world’s largest displaced population, according to the UN’s refugee agency.

More than 2.5 million Syrians are registered or awaiting registration as refugees in neighboring countries, and in excess of 6.5 million people are displaced inside the country.

The exodus has strained neighboring countries, including small Lebanon, which is housing nearly one million Syrians.

UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday urged all nations to open their doors to Syria’s refugees.

“To see Syrian children drowning in the Mediterranean today after fleeing the conflict… is something totally unacceptable,” he said.

“Borders need to be open everywhere, visa policies need to be open everywhere, family unification programmes need to exist everywhere.”

Aid groups are urging government and citizens to continue to donate to relief efforts with no end to the humanitarian disaster in sight.

A generation risks being “lost forever” with millions of Syrian children deprived of health care, education and security, they warned.

Experts say neither side can score a decisive military victory and the country is gradually splintering.

“Rebel infighting has helped Assad take back some areas, but the advances are not dramatic enough to tip the balance and allow him to reclaim the rest of Syria,” Aron Lund, editor of the Carnegie Endowment’s Syria in Crisis website, told Agence France-Presse. – Rappler.com