Homs is the site of the latest fighting:
President Bashar al-Assad's forces pounded Sunni Muslim rebels in the city of Homs with artillery and from the air on Sunday, the second day of their offensive in central Syria, activists said.
They said rebels defending the old center of Homs and five adjacent Sunni districts had largely repelled a ground attack on Saturday by Assad's forces, backed by guerrillas from the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah, but reported clashes and deaths within the city on Sunday.
If Assad wants to run Syria rather than an Alawite-dominated satrap, he needs to hold the capital. And if he wants Damascus, he needs Homs and the region to connect to his Alawite base area and the coast.
In recent days, Assad'f forces have been fighting around Damascus, too. You don't read too much about Aleppo. Was it a head fake or are Assad's forces still deploying and moving equipment prior to attacking in the north? After all, with Hezbollah at Homs, how many could there be for Aleppo?
I still think Aleppo is too much to hold given Assad's shrunken ground forces.
Heck, Damascus might be too much. But I haven't heard much on government casualties--especially among those new militias that were established to bolster numbers.
The misplaced confidence in a no-fly zone is highlighted by what Assad is using to kill Sunnis:
Regime forces were using mortar shells, rockets, tank shells and heavy artillery in the assault, said the monitoring group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground for its reports.
There were some air strikes, but their effect is slight compared to the basic tools of an army.
Of course, a lot of people say "no-fly zone"--a mission that denies Assad the ability to fly his planes over his own country--when they mean bombing raids against government targets and ground support for rebels, like in Libya.
In the south, close to the Jordan training area, the southern front has made some progress:
Syrian rebels have captured a major army post in the southern city of Deraa after nearly two weeks of intense fighting, activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists around the country, said rebel forces led by members of the the Nusra Front, captured the checkpoint on Friday after a two-week siege.
Mind you, Nusra Front are jihadis and not the favored rebels we hope to arm, but it is a rebel success and an Assad defeat.
Assad's forces are too few to be everywhere. He has already given up on 60% of the country and is struggling with what is left. He hopes to have enough territory to be called "Syria" when it is all over.
