Rebels are certainly more active around the capital:
Syrian rebels brought their fight within a mile of the heart of Damascus on Friday, seizing army checkpoints and cutting a key highway with a row of burning tires as they pressed their campaign for the heavily guarded capital, considered the likely endgame in the nearly 2-year-old civil war.
The government was able to counter-attack the last time the rebels tried to push into the capital. The rebels are stronger now and the government weaker. With so much of the dwindling state power concentrated in the capital region, the rebels will probably be pushed back again.
But rebels in other parts of Syria will surely have a better shot at expanding their gains as Assad focuses on Damascus. And will Assad be able to risk thinning the troops in the Damascus region to counter-attack in those areas? So even losing around Damascus will allow the rebels to gain ground in the war.
One of these days, if not this push, the Syrian ground forces will crack under the long strain they have been under. I'm pretty sure Syrian troops only rotate to the rear in a pine box.
If Assad can't hold Damascus, there's really little point to doing anything more than retreating to an Alawite core in the coastal and mountain northwest, with an inland buffer zone to provide some depth the way Lebanon was set up.
But will his troops have any fight in them to hold the new line? This contraction isn't an easy task, I freely admit. And if carried out when the troops are exhausted, the chances of a rout rather than an orderly retreat increase.
But what option is left for Assad that isn't a suicide charge?
