The bombardment of Ghouta is being followed by a ground attack:
An official with one of the rebel groups in eastern Ghouta said fighters were battling to repel an attempted incursion, and characterized the battle as “back and forth”.
A commander in the military alliance that backs Assad said an elite unit of the Syrian army, the Tiger Force, was taking part in the assault and advances had been made.
The Tiger Force, while sometimes called a division, is actually a light infantry battalion backed by tanks:
Tiger Forces or Qawat Al-Nimr (Arabic: قوات النمر) is a special forces unit of the Syrian Arab Army which functions primarily as an offensive unit in the Syrian Civil War. It has been described as a "hot commodity for any government offensive", but their relatively small numbers make it difficult to deploy them to multiple fronts at once. Despite officially being called a division, it is estimated that the actual size of the Tiger Forces is closer to a battalion.
Consider that such a small force is considered an important factor in the attack--or in any attack.
This reflects my comments that the bulk of Syria's forces are strategically static local defense forces. That is why the Tiger Force (as well as other select conventional units--from the very beginning--of what is really a zombie army) and the relatively small force of Hezbollah and Shia foreign legion fighters brought in by Iran are key offensive forces.
Bonus in my old post for speculating about an American-backed liberated zone in eastern Syria that we have established east of the Euphrates River along what I have called the Deconfliction Line (DCL).
So it makes sense that the front lines of Syria will become more static despite the dramatic changes in territorial control that took place as ISIL was broken down:
In the wake of the events in Afrin, Idlib and Damascus over the coming months, massive offensive battles will become less and less common in the Syrian civil war. The amount of territory controlled by militants with no state alliances is shrinking, and the front lines of the battlefields are gradually becoming fixed: The Turkish-rebel alliance broadly controls the zone in the northwest, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces dominate the east, and the Iranian- and Russian-backed Syrian government are holding strong in the west and south.
Remember, even the major Assad success at Aleppo--so far?--after years of failing to capture the city was a very small area of success.
Assad might well be restricted to controlling a core Syria based on most of western Syria (yet even pockets around Damascus are not under Assad's control) and small pockets or large but sparsely populated areas away from the core as I discussed over 6 years ago.
Although as the Stratfor piece above notes, with Turkey, Russia, Iran, America, and Israel now all directly involved, the possibility of international war is a dangerous possibility.
I just thank God we didn't further militarize the conflict back in 2012. Have a super sparkly day.
