Last night I saved an article, planning to blog on it this morning. The Syrian army retook a critical base outside of Aleppo which remains split between Assad's forces and rebels:
Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, backed by a dawn barrage of artillery fire and air strikes, drove Syrian rebels from a strategic military base near the disputed northern city of Aleppo on Friday, a local photographer said.
The advance into Base 80, a large military position which rebels have held since February, will help Assad's forces move towards rebel-held areas of Aleppo city and follows a string of successful offensives this month.
I wanted to note that sweeping in to an area is the relatively easy part. Insurgents can scatter and then infiltrate back in to contest that ground.
When Assad first tried to take Aleppo, I said it was not wise to endure the casualties to take that town outside of what I considered a Core Syria that Assad could hold. Even if Assad took it, Assad could not afford the number of troops needed to hold that large city:
I think Assad might be biting off more than he can chew. Sure, it is a big and important city with regime defenders to protect, but it is close to Turkey and adds more people to the defense perimeter of Core Syria than I think Assad has the forces to pacify.
Sure, after Assad smashed up his infantry in this bloody war, he now has shock troops of Hezbollah and a Shia Foreign Legion organized and paid for by Iran. While these fresh troops may be able to lead the dis-spirited Assad forces into a neighborhood, these foreign forces aren't large enough to hold them.
Recall that one problem we had with clear and hold strategies in the pre-surge phase of the Iraq War insurgency was that we cleared areas and relied on Iraqi forces to hold. And the Iraqi forces could not hold. In the surge, we cleared and then we held to break the enemy in that battle.
So once the shock troops move on, and Assad loyalists settle in to their outposts in the newly cleared neighborhood, the insurgents will return. Even the foreigners will get tired of taking the same neighborhood over and over.
What news do I wake up to read?
In Aleppo, rebels were able to fully recapture the military base of "Brigade 80" after government troops seized parts of it early Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center said.
That was fast.
Iran's foreign legion is clearing ground. Assad's forces have yet to prove they can hold the ground.
