Assad’s assault on Aleppo

Syrian fighter jets, tanks, and artillery pounded rebel-held neighborhoods in the commercial hub of Aleppo this week, as aid workers warned of an impending humanitarian disaster in the sprawling city of 3 million people. The United Nations said that more than 200,000 residents had fled the city, which has become the focal point of the 18-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Those who remained were struggling to meet their basic needs. “There is no water or electricity in many areas,” said Abou Raed, an activist in Aleppo. Despite being outgunned, rebels said they had seized several regime bases inside Aleppo, and claimed that a growing number of government troops were defecting. “They can shell us from afar with tanks and helicopters,” said rebel commander Col. Abdel-Jabber Al-Oqaidi. “But inside their morale is zero.”

Assad is now “president in name only,” said David Blair in The Telegraph (U.K.). By launching a full-scale assault on the country’s largest city—until recently a regime stronghold—the dictator has proved that he’s clinging to power by force alone. Of course, “the core of his security forces can still be counted on to obey orders and defeat the rebels in pitched battles, but the clock is clearly ticking.” He might hold on for a few months, “but he cannot win.”

Neither can the rebels, said John Allen Gay in NationalInterest.org. If the Assad regime loses Aleppo and Damascus, it will simply withdraw its forces to the homelands of the country’s Alawite and Christian minorities. “These homelands, centered on the cities of Tartus in the south and Latakia in the north, are a natural fortress,” defended by the soaring mountains of the Jabal an Nusayriyah range. “The war will not be over. The balance will merely have shifted.”

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And the U.S. might not like Damascus’s new rulers, said Matt Gurney in the National Post (Canada). “While the West has been loath to cozy up to the rebels,” Saudi Arabian Islamists have been supplying the opposition’s more extreme elements with guns and money. That firepower has given the radicals more clout in the rebellion, pushing secular rebels to the sidelines. Ironically, this lends credence to Assad’s claim that the uprising was driven by jihadists and al Qaida. “That wasn’t true before. But if current trends continue, it might become true soon enough.”