Another base has been captured by rebels, this time west of Aleppo:
The attack on Base 111 at Sheikh Suleiman, about 25km (15 miles) west of the city of Aleppo, on Sunday, was said to have been led by Islamist militants.
Video posted online showed them seizing military vehicles, including a tank.
I wonder if "Base 111" implies that it housed a regiment numbered 111?
Yet there are no reports of Syrian army prisoners or retreating columns being ambushed. The Syrian army withdrew in reasonably good order, it seems.
Since I've long figured Assad had to contract his realm to survive, are these recent rebel captures an indication that Assad is abandoning large parts of Syria to retain his regime?
Certainly, more analysis is assuming Assad is going down:
"Armed rebels are co-ordinating better, which is making their fight against Assad more effective," Gerhard Schindler told the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung newspaper, in an interview made public on Saturday.
"Assad's regime will not survive."
That is certainly what Secretary of State Clinton asserted, concerning her meeting with the Russians concerning Assad:
[Secretary Clinton] says Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave power to secure a democratic future for the Arab country.
Assad is losing. But I don't assume he will not survive. Perhaps just Syria won't survive as a single political entity.
And given the growing power of Islamists, including al Qaeda jihadis, Assad's departure does not lead to democracy any more than Mubarak's departure led to democracy in Egypt.
Mind you, dealing with jihadis in Syria won't be a new problem. In the past those jihadis had state protection and flooded into Iraq to battle us both during (remember that Saddam imported jihadis before we attacked--Saddam's Fedayeen) and after the 2003 invasion as Assad funneled suicide bombers into Iraq.
With territorial and base losses not being accompanied by troop surrenders or the destruction of units, it sure seems like losing power (possibly by dying in a last stand) or fleeing abroad (or winning the war, if you want a technical fourth option if Assad truly believes chemical weapons could be his salvation) aren't the only options open to Assad:
The most likely option, however, and one that appears already to be under way, is for the regime and the core of the army and security forces to retreat to the Alawite-populated mountains on the Mediterranean coast. Diplomatic sources say that there are unconfirmed reports that the regime is planning to register all Sunnis who live in the coastal cities of Tartous, Banias, and Latakia which could potentially form part of an Alawite-dominated enclave. The coastal cities are predominantly Sunni-populated while the mountain hinterland is mainly Alawite.
Indeed, the article says part of Syria's government is now it Tartous and that regime supporters are slowly moving to the coast.
The article speaks of Assad fighting for Damascus as long as possible and then retreating to the Homs area. After abandoning the north and east, of course, which is already happening.
There are questions about whether a rump Alawite state could survive. If Russia wants a naval base in this rump state, Assad might convince Moscow that Russian troops would be an invaluable guarantee. Russian troops and a good portion of Assad's chemical arsenal brought within the new borders, of course.
Leaving most of Syria's chemical arsenal open to possible theft by jihadis as Assad retreats would be an alternative--or supplemental--survival mechanism to keep the rebels from pursuing into an Alawite-dominated mini-state. Assad could send us the inventory and coordinates of every chemical depot and say that as of a certain date, Syria will not guarantee their security.
Western forces moving in to Syria to contain this proliferation threat would need to spend a lot of time destroying those stockpiles in place, and while there would tend to come into conflict with the jihadis whether the Western (including Turkish) troops want that, or not. Western troops in the abandoned portions of Syria would also appear to be a bigger threat to the jihadis than the surviving Assad forces in the west.
And once Western troops are in for chemical weapons, staying for state building would be an easy choice to make--or to not make, but just letting the mission creep take place as we experienced in Somalia after coming in for famine relief.
Assad may choose to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a dead fish in a big pond.
