Assad is focused on clearing and holding the western part of his country, from Aleppo down to the Jordanian border. With Iranian financial support to bolster Assad's civilian supporters and pay for Hezbollah and a Shia foreign legion to spearhead Assad offensive operations, the rebels are not having as much success in taking and holding ground.
So the jihadis are descending the escalation ladder to more acts of suicide bombing terror attacks:
That suicide-bomb attack on February 6 by the Pakistani-born Majeed, appeared to be part of a resurgence of such attacks that represented a disturbing shift in tactics among radical jihadists in the sectarian killing grounds of Syria and Iraq. ...
With Assad using his full firepower against rebels who lack sophisticated arms, the military balance tipped against the rebels last year, driving foreign fighters to carry out suicide attacks to make up for losses on the battleground.
At one level, there is a bit of satisfaction in seeing Assad suffer from what he aided in Iraq for years by harboring Baathists and funneling foreign jihadis into Iraq where they became suicide bombers to kill Coalition troops and Iraqi civilians in large numbers.
But it is not a tactic we can be happy with--not even when it is directed against Assad.
Yet without a secure foreign sanctuary (as Syria was for Iraqi terrorists and insurgents--we'll see if Iraq's al Qaeda and Iran's recruitment of Iraqi Shias for that foreign legion can provide that role in a significant fashion), lots of skilled bomb makers (as Saddam had produced before his defeat in 2003), and lots of ammunition within Syria for the raw material of bombs (again, a feature of Saddam's oil-fueled arsenal), I doubt the suicide bombing campaign could be as widespread as in Iraq. It never did really take off in Afghanistan, after all.
This demonstrates a growing weakness of the terrorists in the west. It is arguably a confirmation of my argument during the Iraq War that increased casualties caused by a massive increase in suicide bombings, IEDs, and indirect fire rather than direct firefights was a sign of enemy defeat and not strength.
Classic revolutions go from such tactics to build larger and larger rebel formations to defeat government troops in battle until they can contest and then control territory--and then defeat the government's army.
In Syria, we see the Assad government abandoning the east (as I said that they'd need to do) in order to concentrate forces in the more critical west. And in this area Assad's forces are clawing back territory from the rebels and terrorists (although the casualties needed for the success thus far might yet break Assad's forces). One response is the increase in suicide bombings at the expense of conventional firefights to hold and take territory.
If we'd countered the Iranian and Russian support for Assad, allowing the rebellion to continue to fight for control of territory, the use of suicide bombings probably would have remained relatively rare. But we didn't want to "militarize" the conflict. Hopefully our belated efforts to support rebels will allow the rebels to step up the escalation ladder to fight for control of territory.
The bottom line is that regardless of whether Assad can win this war in the west and regardless of whether he can expand his offensive to reconquer Syria's east, right now he is winning the battles in the west.
