Foreign powers obstruct more Assad gains in Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters): Syria’s war is reaching a point where President Bashar al-Assad will not be able to win back much more territory without risking conflicts with foreign powers that have sent military forces to the country.

The expected conquest of eastern Ghouta will be another milestone in Assad’s effort to crush the rebellion as the war enters its eighth year with Russia and Iran still firmly behind him.

Assad’s foreign enemies have condemned the assault but failed to stop it, as was seen in Homs, Aleppo and other areas where pro-government forces crushed outgunned rebels. But the map of the conflict suggests difficulties ahead for Assad in his quest to recover “every inch” of a country fractured by a war that has killed half a million people and driven 5.4 million abroad.

The US military is in much of the east and northeast, which is controlled by Kurdish groups that want autonomy from Damascus. It has used force to defend the territory from pro-Assad forces.

Turkey has sent forces into the northwest to counter those same Kurdish groups, carving out a buffer zone where anti-Assad rebels have regrouped.

In the southwest, where rebels hold territory at the Israeli and Jordanian border, Assad faces the risk of conflict with Israel, which wants his Iranian-backed allies kept well away from the frontier and has mounted air strikes in Syria. Some believe a divided Syria may stabilise for some time – perhaps years – with Assad forced to accept a de facto partition and no prospect of a negotiated peace. Others fear further escalation involving Turkey, the United States, Israel, Iran and Russia.

“I don’t think victory is as near as the Syrian government perceives it to be,” said David Lesch, an expert on Syria, noting that Assad was now facing “a diplomatic quagmire”.

Assad believes he can “wait out” foreign powers, notably Turkey and the United States, but it is going to be a very long time, if ever, before he can extend real control over the rest of the country, Lesch said. The conflict grew out of popular protests against Assad and evolved into a violent insurgency and civil war after the government responded with force. It has laid waste to swathes of Syria, helped the rise of Islamic State, fed sectarianism, and seen the deadliest use of chemical weapons since the 1980s.

Backed by Iran and Russia, Assad has recovered ground from rebels whose supporters - the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey – never gave them the weapons to defeat him.

Reflecting confidence in Damascus, first lady Asma al-Assad, has stepped back into public life. She has visited special needs children and accompanied Assad to meet the wounded. Assad has appeared on the currency for the first time.

Any serious discussion about Assad’s future has been off the table for some time: Western and Arab states that backed the opposition sidestepped the issue entirely in recent recommendations to the moribund UN-led peace talks.

The West still hopes Russia will put pressure on Assad, and is withholding reconstruction aid until a negotiated political transition to end the war is underway. But many Syria analysts say that for Russia there is no dependable alternative to Assad.

At its weakest point in 2015, the Syrian state held less than a fifth of Syria. Russia’s air force arrived to turn the tide in September of that year, working with Iranian and Iranian-backed forces spearheaded by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has been fighting in support of Assad since 2012.

After defeating insurgents in Aleppo, Assad and his allies swept across Syria last year, recovering territory all the way to the Iraqi border from Islamic State’s crumbling “caliphate”.

Assad now holds 58 percent of Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, including the main cities, the coast, and an expanse of desert west of the Euphrates.

The government is now trying to finish off the rebellion in western Syria. The defeat of eastern Ghouta may hasten the demise of remaining rebel pockets near Damascus, Homs and Hama.