Assad has stopped fighting to control all of Syria. And without the need to even think of how he'll get the acceptance of the majority Sunni in the post-rebellion peace, he's just decided to kill as many as he can:
In Syria the Assad government has either listened to its Iranian advisors or is simply returning to the brutal methods of the founding dictator of the Assad government. This can be seen in the new tactics used by government forces. The new drill involves the heavy use of mass murder to terrorize civilians into not giving any support to the rebels. The basic drill is to send in these special troops, accompanied by secret police operatives skilled at sniffing out those who might really be rebels. These Iranian trained troops proceed to round up military age males and kill them, along with any women and children who get in the way. Any of these males who might really be rebels are taken alive for questioning and usually killed later.
By abandoning most of the Sunni Arab regions, Assad makes his own minority less outnumbered in the smaller territory he is trying to control. Just smashing the Sunnis within that area into terrified passivity is now possible. And it may make his own side more loyal out of fear of retribution if they lose this new extra-brutal phase.
This article notes Assad's increased confidence but misreads the reasons, I think:
Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies are showing renewed confidence that the momentum in the civil war is shifting in their favor, due in part to the rapid rise of al-Qaida-linked extremists among the rebels and the world's reluctance to take forceful action to intervene in the fighting.
His invigorated regime has gone on the offensive — both on the ground and in its portrayal of the conflict as a choice between Assad and the extremists.
I don't think the causes listed are accurate. The world is increasingly helping the rebels, so that shouldn't be a cause for increased regime confidence. And the jihadi rebels are growing stronger but are still a minority. Has the coming out of al Qaeda really affected opinion given that the government has been constantly claiming the rebellion is a foreign jihadi invasion?
Being brutal to the Sunnis to make it less likely the rebels will settle for less than victory over the Alawites and their allies is a separate thing altogether. And the increase force-to-space ratio achieved by recruiting militias and abandoning territory is not even mentioned.
Of course, despite the advantage to Assad of abandoning terrain that can't be held, if the Sunni rebels can organize the abandoned areas of Syria, that will be a resource that can be used to generate more power to attack the smaller Assad realm. And the Assad forces have to be getting pretty punchy after the casualties they've taken and the stress of fighting for so long. By contracting their area of operations and adding poorly trained Alawite militias to his force pool, Assad truly has regained some of the initiative, it seems.
But that doesn't mean the tide of the war has turned. I think the rebels can absorb these hits without breaking. Local forces might break, but that won't affect other rebel groups not pressured so much. That's the advantage of lacking a hierarchy. And the price of going on offense will weaken the newly formed Assad militias to the point that they will break. In the end, I think trying to hold Damascus is too difficult. A year and a half ago, I said he could do it. Now I'm not so sure. Even if Assad uses chemical weapons, I don't think that will be enough to win.
At that point, if the Assad forces can't hold Damascus, will they be able to rall to hold a rump Alawite state based on the coastal region and some variable buffer zone inland--perhaps from Homs in the south up to Idlib?
UPDATE: A description of the Assad offensive:
The recapture of [the Homs neighborhood] Wadi al-Sayeh, which links the besieged rebel stronghold in Khalidiyah to the opposition-held old city, appears to be part of a series of carefully focused counter-offensives that mark a shift from the indiscriminate campaigns earlier in the two-year-old conflict.
Homs is a link in the corridor connecting Assad's Damascus powerbase with the traditional Mediterranean heartland of his minority Alawite community. It was an early center of the mainly Sunni Muslim uprising against four decades of Assad family rule.
Of course, holding territory out to Homs and down to Damascus requires Assad to control a lot of Sunni Arabs even if they aren't as numerous as the entire country's Sunni Arab population.
And we are reacting by openly thinking of arming the rebels, according to reports on TV. It should be a no-brainer, so this is probably just a trial balloon to see how it is received.
