Table of Contents:
Syrian Front Lines Heat Up, Especially in Idlib Province: Khaled al-Khateb, Al-Monitor, Dec. 4, 2019
With Turkey Distracted, Syrian Regime and Russia Pressure Idlib: Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 29, 2019
Iranian Stakes in Syria, Efraim Kam, INSS, Nov. 12, 2019
In Syria, Health Workers Risk Becoming ‘Enemies of the State’: Rick Gladstone and Malachy Browne, NYT, Dec. 4, 2019
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Syrian Front Lines Heat Up, Especially in Idlib Province
Khaled al-Khateb
Al-Monitor, Dec. 4, 2019
On Dec. 1 and 2, Syrian regime fighters launched ground attacks on the opposition in eastern Idlib province, trying to retake their lost positions. In the fierce battles, regime forces succeeded in regaining control of Ijaz village but failed to recapture the rest of the villages, such as Suruj, Rasm al-Ward and Istablat. The number of those killed totaled around 100 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in Coventry, England.
Syrian and Russian warplanes bombed opposition areas in eastern and southern Idlib dozens of times, adding civilians to the casualty count. In Saraqib, at least one person was killed, and at least nine died in a raid on the vegetable market in Maarat al-Numan. The planes also bombed Idlib Central Prison, killing or wounding 23 people. The educational complex in Maarat al-Numan announced Dec. 1 it was suspending school because of the danger.
On Nov. 30, the opposition carried out a ground offensive against regime forces in eastern Idlib province in response to repeated ground attacks by regime forces since mid-November and was able to take control of a number of towns. On that day, regime forces attempted to advance toward Hawija in northwest Hama province but failed to overtake opposition positions in Tell Dam in eastern Idlib at dawn. A number of regime forces were killed Nov. 29 as they attempted to advance on the Kabana fronts and the highlands in the northern countryside of Latakia.
Activist Bilal Bayoush told Al-Monitor that Russian warplanes and regime helicopters carried out dozens of airstrikes in southern and eastern Idlib during the last week of November. Bayoush said thousands of civilians have been forced from the area, as frequent shelling focused on populated neighborhoods, which certainly means the beginning of a new battle by the regime forces.
The regime’s recent escalation in aerial and ground bombardments in Idlib province came after a period of relative calm after Russia announced a cease-fire Aug. 30. But since the regime resumed aerial and ground bombardment in early November, targeting vital facilities such as bakeries, killing dozens of civilians and displacing others, opposition forces again took up offensive military operations.
Regime forces have suffered heavy losses in counterattacks launched by the Turkish-backed National Liberation Front, which is affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, and with help from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. National Liberation Front spokesman Capt. Naji Abu Hudeifa told Al-Monitor that Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have repeatedly violated the cease-fire. He confirmed they have stepped up their shelling of civilian areas, forcing the people there to flee. “The regime forces … are striving to take control of more villages. They have significantly intensified their shelling since the beginning of November until now. The regime’s and Russia’s planes have destroyed many [critical] facilities,” Hudeifa added.
Meanwhile, activist Abdel Fattah al-Hussein told Al-Monitor, “Regime forces have … redeployed on a number of axes opposite Russian checkpoints in Sheikh Baraka and Abu Dhour.” He said Russia and the regime want to force the Turkish-backed opposition out of the way so they can reopen the international Aleppo-Damascus and Aleppo-Latakia highways. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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With Turkey Distracted, Syrian Regime and Russia Pressure Idlib
Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem Post, Nov. 29, 2019
While Turkey summoned thousands of Syrian opposition fighters to aid its invasion of northeast Syria, the Syrian regime and its Russian backers have focused new efforts to dislodge Syrian rebels and extremists from parts of Idlib. Turkey has backed Syrian proxies in its campaign against Kurdish fighters since October 9 when the US withdrew from part of northern Syria. The former Syrian rebel fighters who signed on to fight alongside Turkey as the Syrian National Army have been encouraged to aim their weapons at what Turkey says is the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The result has been a win for the Syrian regime and its backers in Moscow and Tehran.
Over the last week increased airstrikes in Idlib province in northwest Syria have seen civilians driven from homes, allegations of health clinics targeted and claims in local and regional Arabic media that the Syrian regime is preparing for a major offensive. The White Helmets Civil Defense Twitter account claimed on November 26 that a “humanitarian disaster threatens the lives of millions of civilians in northern Syria.” In the war of words in northern Syria, the Syrian regime sees the White Helmets as “terrorists.” For Turkey, which ahs observation posts in Idlib and claims to back the Syrian rebels, it is the Kurdish PKK that are the “terrorists.” I this trade off Turkey uses Syrian Arab units it recruited to fight Kurds in the east so that the Syrian regime and Russia can attack the families of those same Syrian Arabs in Idlib.
An account at Al-Masdar news claims that the Syrian regime army “has sent another large convoy of reinforcements to the southern and southeastern countrysides of Idlib as they prepare to launch a major offensive against the jihadist rebels in the region.” According to this narrative the regime wants to retake Maarat Al-Nu’man near Khan Sheikhoun on the Aleppo-Damascus M-5 highway. It also wants to push towards Jisr al-Shughur.
As the Syrian regime and its Russian backers pressure Idlib, Turkey is in discussions with Russia about Syria. Russia has support 14 meetings of the Astana peace process with Turkey and Iran to solve the Syrian conflict. The US, excluded from the Russian discussions, has been sidelined to eastern Syria. The US has also sidelined its own Syrian Democratic Forces partners in eastern Syria from the Geneva peace process where a new constitutional committee is being worked on.
The main brokers of the conflict in northern Syria today are Turkey and Russia. Although they appear to be on different sides of the conflict, Turkey and Russia today have more in common than they have differences. This includes the S-400 air defense deal for Turkey and other agreements. Turkey’s Chief of General Staff Yasar Guler called his Russian counterpart Valery Gerasimov this week to discuss the country’s policies in the north. This is part of a ceasefire deal Russia worked out on October 22 with Ankara. They have conducted 11 joint patrols in areas formerly held by the US-backed SDF. Anadolu reported the Russia-Turkish discussions but did not give details. Russia is in the midst of several major defense initiatives at the moment, including its Yars-S missile system. …. [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Iranian Stakes in Syria
Efraim Kam
INSS, Nov. 12, 2019
There is no doubt that for the long term, Iran hopes that the military forces it sent to Syria remain there, including Hezbollah and other Shiite militia units, as well as the Revolutionary Guards and Quds Force personnel that oversee them. The ongoing Iranian/Shiite military presence in Syria is of great strategic importance to the Islamic Republic. First, and most importantly, while Bashar al-Assad’s regime may have stabilized, its survival is by no means guaranteed, and the Islamic State is liable to return and endanger Iran’s interests in Syria and Iraq. Therefore, leaving troops in Syria under Iranian command is intended to preserve and reinforce the Assad regime’s connection with Iran and its dependence on Tehran in future challenges to its stability. In addition, Iran seeks to protect its standing in and around Syria should the Assad regime be replaced.
Second, Iran wants to use its presence in Syria to magnify the threat to Israel via Hezbollah and other Shiite militias and to expand the front with Israel from Lebanon to Syria. In this sense, for Iran, its military deployment in Syria is the vanguard against its enemies, far from its own borders. Third, Iran’s presence in Syria enhances its influence on neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, which is important to Iran because of their large Shiite populations. Syria links Iran, via Iraq, to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. This connection allows Iran to strengthen the Shiite sphere, while continuously improving Hezbollah’s military capabilities. Intervention in Syria allows Iran to display before the Sunni world a multinational Shiite force with combat experience that can be deployed in other locations important to the Iranian regime.
To a great extent, the key to the continued presence of the Iranian/Shiite forces in Syria is in Assad’s hands. So far, Iran has succeeded in leaving its troops on Syrian soil despite the pressure to remove them, by claiming that its intervention in Syria was a response to a direct invitation from the Assad regime. Even Russia has admitted that it will be hard to remove these troops from Syria as long as Assad wants them to remain. And in fact, Assad is signaling that he wants and needs their presence for a variety of reasons. Assad owes his political survival to Iran (as well as to Russia). Syria has begun a difficult, complex, and long process of reconstruction, which depends on extensive Iranian economic and military aid. The Assad regime still has enemies liable to endanger it; resisting them would involve Iranian help, including the troops already on Syrian ground.
At the same time, Iran has presumably understood that the tide may turn. Assad still needs Iran, but less than he did four or five years ago, because the major threat to the survival of his regime is for the most part over. Furthermore, Assad is liable to realize that the cost of a long term presence of Iranian forces in his country outweighs any benefit, partly because it repeatedly places him in conflict with Israel and sparks friction in his relationship with Russia. Syria will likely continue to suffer external pressure from Israel and the United States – perhaps Russia and Turkey as well – to remove the Iranian forces. Also, Iran cannot ignore the possibility that the Assad regime, despite its current stability, might not survive in the long term and may be replaced by a regime that would prefer to keep its distance from Iran.
These are the reasons Iran decided, apparently some years ago, not to make do with providing Syria with economic and military assistance, including military involvement. Iran’s intention was and remains to exploit Syria’s upheaval and destruction to try to generate as much influence as possible on several ethnic and economic components in the Syrian system, thus forging an indissoluble tie between Syria and Iran, independent of Assad and his regime. Iran’s socioeconomic penetration of Syria has thus become a central component of Iran’s Middle East policy. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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In Syria, Health Workers Risk Becoming ‘Enemies of the State’
Rick Gladstone and Malachy Browne
NYT, Dec. 4, 2019
The nearly 9-year-old conflict in Syria has been punctuated by repeated violations of what is considered acceptable in war, including the military’s use of chemical weapons, torture of prisoners and recurrent bombings of hospitals in rebel-held areas. Less attention has been paid to another outcome: the government’s criminalization of medical care.
On Wednesday, Physicians for Human Rights, a group that has documented the collapse of Syria’s health care system, released a study asserting that over the course of the war, President Bashar al-Assad has successfully made medical assistance to his enemies a crime.
Whether it is disinfecting a fighter’s wound or even supplying painkillers to clinics in an insurgent-held neighborhood, such acts are punishable under a counterterrorism law enacted by Mr. al-Assad’s government just over a year after the conflict began in March of 2011. A special court has tried tens of thousands under the law, including many medical workers. “This report illustrates how the Syrian government has effectively criminalized the provision of nondiscriminatory care to all, regardless of political affiliation,” Physicians for Human Rights said in the study. Health workers who provide care in line with their legal and ethical obligations, it said, are branded as “enemies of the state” in Syria.
The study is based on extensive interviews with 21 formerly detained Syrian health care workers who have fled the country, including seven physicians, four pharmacists, three medical volunteers, one paramedic and one psychiatrist. All said they had endured torture and interrogations while imprisoned and did not want to be identified by name, fearing retribution against their families or against themselves if they ever returned. A majority of them were arrested, the study said, “because of their status as care providers, and their real or perceived involvement in the provision of health services to opposition members and sympathizers.”
The New York Times interviewed three of them who said they had been detained and interrogated for months. They described cells so cramped that inmates took turns to rest. Two of them — a pharmacist and a surgeon — said they had been arrested at their workplaces.
Most of the former detainees described a similar process of extracting confessions that could be prosecuted under the counterterrorism law, the Physicians for Human Rights study said. “Most had judicial review of their cases by either military field courts, military courts, or counterterrorism court, where due process protections are suspended in practice,” it said.
There was no immediate comment by the Syrian authorities to the study. Mr. al-Assad’s government has repeatedly defended the counterterrorism law as a necessity for what he contends is his success in retaking and stabilizing most of the country, where by some estimates a half-million people have been killed and roughly half the prewar population of 22 million have fled their homes.
Ibrahim al-Kasem, a Syrian lawyer who used to represent detainees, said that trials in military courts are held in secret, and detainees can be tried in the counterterrorism court without their lawyers. In such settings, he said, “the judges have the ability to do anything.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Jihadist Rebels Score Big Advance in Southeast Idlib After Launching New Offensive: AMN, Nov. 30, 2019 — The jihadist rebels launched a new offensive in the southeastern countryside of the Idlib Governorate on Saturday in a bid to capture several sites near the Abu Dhuhour Airport.
Several Said Killed in Airstrikes on Iranian-Controlled Weapons Depots in Syria: Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, Dec. 8, 2019 — Unidentified aircraft bombed three Iranian-controlled weapons depots on Saturday night, killing several members of Tehran-supported militias, Syrian media reported.
US to Keep About 600 Troops in Syria: Pentagon Chief: Al Jazeera, Nov. 13, 2019 — The United States will maintain about 600 troops in Syria, Pentagon chief Mark Esper said on Wednesday, despite Donald Trump’s desire to end US involvement in what the president calls “endless wars”.
Syria War: Why does the battle for Idlib Matter?: BBC, June 4, 2019— What’s so important about Idlib?
How ISIS Turned into the Syrian National Army?: ANHA, Nov. 9, 2019 — he groups that make up the so-called “Syrian National Army” include many who have been former leaders of ISIS mercenaries.