Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[mongers]

Wonder what will happen if this turns out to be true? 
....

Nothing at all?

[Valmy]

Wonder what will happen if this turns out to be true? 

First of all what difference would it make?  Secondly I hardly think that guy is a reliable and objective source.

[Ed Anger]

captured a female Russian soldier

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like Assad just doesn't have the manpower to win, even with all the Iranian aid he's been recieving.

Not sure what more the Iranians can do, they may be forced to cut bait eventually, whether they want to or not.

http://news.yahoo.com/why-iran-standing-weakened-expensive-ally-syria-112503330.html

"Why Iran is standing by its weakened, and expensive, ally Syria

Iran already spends $35 billion a year to prop up the Assad regime, according to one estimate. Iranian officials say Syria is of supreme strategic importance.

Christian Science Monitor
By Nicholas Blanford
14 hours ago
     
Iran has proven critical in helping keep President Bashar al-Assad in power after four years of bloody war, dispatching thousands of soldiers and paramilitary fighters to bolster Syria's flagging army and billions of dollars in loans to prop up its economy.

Yet, despite this massive show of support, the Assad regime in the past month has lost ground against opposition forces in a series of battlefield reversals. And, crucially, it faces a serious shortage of fresh soldiers and militiamen willing to continue fighting, making it ever more reliant on Iran, its close ally of 35 years.

Iranian officials have declared that Syria is of supreme strategic importance, and appear unwilling to reconsider the military option in defeating the anti-Assad rebels. The question is how much longer Iran, a country burdened by international sanctions, can afford to continue allocating funds, materiel, and manpower to Mr. Assad while incurring ever greater animosity – and now blowback – from the region's Sunni states.

The Iranians could probably provide additional foreign fighters ... but at a certain point the marginal utility of additional foreign forces becomes smaller and smaller," says Robert Ford, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Middle East Institute and US ambassador to Syria between 2010 and 2014. "It's not that the rebels will overwhelm the regime, but I think the regime's position becomes harder and harder as the war of attrition slowly slides against it."

The Syrian Army is estimated to have suffered 80,000 to 100,000 dead and wounded in four years of war, dealing a punishing blow in terms of manpower and morale. To compensate for the weakened army, the Iranians brought in thousands of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps soldiers, fighters from Lebanon's militant Shiite Hezbollah party, and Shiite paramilitary forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. It also helped establish the 80,000-strong National Defense Force militia composed of Assad loyalists, mainly Alawites, a Shiite splinter sect to which Assad belongs.

While Iran's military aid has bought the Assad regime some breathing space, it still lacks sufficient strength to launch multiple offensives and is forced to choose carefully where to deploy its forces.

"There is not a critical mass available [for Assad] to achieve victory," says a former Syrian official who requested anonymity. "To prevail, 200,000 to 300,000 mothers need to be convinced to send their sons to fight. But why would a Sunni mother and father send their son to die for Bashar al-Assad?"

The critical manpower shortage is compounded by the recent coordination on Syria policy between the region's Sunni powerhouses – Saudi Arabia and Turkey – in cooperation with Jordan and Qatar.

In early March, Saudi Arabia's new monarch, King Salman, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, agreed on the "necessity of enhancing support to the Syrian opposition in a way that aims at yielding results."

STRATEGIC BRIDGE TO HEZBOLLAH

Those results have been quick to materialize. In just the past month, the Assad regime has lost the city of Idlib in the north, Bosra ash-Sham in the south, and the Nasib border crossing with Jordan. On Saturday, rebel groups captured another northern town, Jisr al-Shughour. In the south, an Iran-led offensive in Deraa and Quneitra provinces has stalled against tougher than expected opposition, while a much-anticipated Hezbollah-led offensive in the Qalamoun region north of Damascus appears to have been postponed.

The capture of Jisr al-Shughour means that anti-Assad forces control the two largest urban areas in Idlib Province. It also allows them to mount a westward offensive on Latakia, a regime stronghold on the Mediterranean coast. If the rebels succeed in driving Assad's forces further south from Idlib, the link between Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo would become perilously thin.

Syria represents the vital geo-strategic cog connecting Tehran to Hezbollah, the nucleus of an "axis of resistance" against Israel and Western ambitions for the Middle East.

In February 2014, Mehdi Taeb, a senior Iranian cleric, underlined the importance of Syria to Iran in stark terms, saying it is a "strategic province for us."

"If the enemy attacks us and wants to take either Syria or [the Iranian province of] Khuzestan, the priority is to keep Syria," he said. "If we keep Syria, we can get Khuzestan back too, but if we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran."

IRAN DOESN'T NEED ALEPPO

Diplomatic sources in Beirut estimate that Iran spends between $1 billion and $2 billion a month in Syria in cash handouts and military support. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy to Syria, recently told a private gathering in Washington that Iran has been channeling as much as $35 billion a year into Syria, according to one of the participants at the meeting.

"Iran has always considered Syria its gateway to the Arab region. I don't think that assessment has changed," says Randa Slim, a Hezbollah expert and a director at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

Still, Assad's recent setbacks in the south and north of the country may compel Iran to reconsider its military options in Syria, including the possibility of advising Assad to abandon Aleppo if the rebels extend their reach in Idlib province.

The loss of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and the country's commercial engine, would represent a major psychological blow to the regime. But Iran's strategic interests in Syria do not require Assad's control over the entire country, only the vital corridor connecting Damascus to Tartous on the Mediterranean coast, which runs adjacent to the border with Lebanon. That corridor would enable Iran to continue providing weapons to Hezbollah.

"Iran is not committed to the person of Bashar al-Assad.... They're committed to preserving their interests in Syria," says Karim Sadjadpour, senior associate in the Middle East Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

NO PARTNERS OTHER THAN ASSAD REGIME

However, Iran has invested so heavily in the regime – to the exclusion of other parties in Syria – that Tehran has little choice but to double down on its embattled ally.

"Outside the regime, Iran has no contacts in Syria. Syrian businessmen trade with other Arab countries," says the former Syrian official, adding, ironically, that the billions of dollars handed by Iran to Syria "is financing Syrian imports from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, not from Iran."

If the nascent deal between Iran and the international community over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program is concluded in the coming months, it could end the crippling sanctions on Tehran, swelling the country's coffers once more. But the combination of a more assertive Sunni regional alliance against Assad and the desperate shortage of manpower to fend off anti-Assad rebels potentially bodes ill for the Syrian regime – and Iran's reach into the Levant – in the long term, analysts say.

"I often think of this situation as the German army in World War I in 1917 being slowly ground down on the Western Front," says Ford, the former ambassador to Syria. "I think it's a slow progression, and the Iranians can slow it further, but I would be surprised if they can reverse this."

[jimmy olsen]

Just a few months ago it seemed that Asad would definitely hang on and manage to win, what with the FSA being ground down between the government and ISIS and with ISIS getting hammered from the air in Iraq. Now, everywhere I look all I see is predictions of doom. They're just running out of manpower.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/world/middleeast/an-eroding-syrian-army-points-to-strain.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=1

An Eroding Syrian Army Points to Strain


By ANNE BARNARD, HWAIDA SAAD and ERIC SCHMITTAPRIL 28, 2015

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian Army has suffered a string of defeats from re-energized insurgents and is struggling to replenish its ranks as even pro-government families increasingly refuse to send sons to poorly defended units on the front lines. These developments raise newly urgent questions about the durability of President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

"The trend lines for Assad are bad and getting worse," said a senior United States official in Washington, who nevertheless cautioned that things have not yet reached "a boiling point."

The erosion of the army is forcing the government to rely ever more heavily on Syrian and foreign militias, especially Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group allied with Iran. Hezbollah now leads or even directs the fight in many places, angering some Syrian officers, said several Syrian soldiers, and also the senior United States official and a Syrian with close ties to the security establishment, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments.

This month, government forces have crumbled or fled in areas long cited by officials as markers of enduring state control. Insurgents seized Idlib, a northern provincial capital, and the lone working border crossing with Jordan in the south. Counteroffensives failed, and advances this week have brought a newly cohesive insurgent coalition closer than ever to Mr. Assad's coastal strongholds. The coalition consists mainly of Islamist groups that include Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, but oppose the Islamic State.

Throughout the country, there are signs of strain that contrast with Mr. Assad's public confidence. The government recently dismissed the heads of two of its four main intelligence agencies after they quarreled; one later died, reportedly after being beaten by the other's guards.

Officials in provincial capitals like Aleppo and Dara'a are making contingency plans to preserve cash and antiquities and evacuate civilians. Foreign exchange reserves, $30 billion at the start of the war, have dwindled to $1 billion.

The already-crowded coastal provinces are straining with new arrivals from Idlib, with some saying officials have turned them away. In central Damascus, checkpoints are fewer and more sparsely staffed, as militiamen are sent to fight on the outskirts, and young men increasingly evade army service.

Even in areas populated by minority sects that fear hard-line Islamist groups like Nusra and the Islamic State — such as Druse in the south, Assyrian Christians in the north, and Ismailis in Hama — numerous residents say they are sending their sons abroad to avoid the draft, or keeping them home to protect villages.

That has accelerated the transformation of Syria's once-centralized armed forces into something beginning to resemble that of the insurgents: a patchwork of local and foreign fighters whose interests and priorities do not always align.

Four years ago, Syria's army had 250,000 soldiers; now, because of casualties and desertions, it has 125,000 regulars, alongside 125,000 pro-government militia members, including Iranian-trained Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghan Hazaras, according to the senior American official in Washington.

Continue reading the main story

And Syrians are not always in charge, especially where Hezbollah, the best trained and equipped of the foreign militias, is involved.

"Every area where there is Hezbollah, the command is in their hands," said the Syrian with security connections. "You do something, you have to ask their permission."

That, he said, rankled senior security officials who recalled the rule of Mr. Assad's father, Hafez, in the 1980s, when Hezbollah's patron Iran was the junior partner in the alliance with Syria.

American officials are exploring how to exploit resulting tensions between Syrian and Hezbollah commanders, said the senior American official.

An official in the region sympathetic to Hezbollah said that enemies were trying to exploit natural tensions that "happen between allies, and between brothers and sisters in the same house," but would not succeed.

"Even if Hezbollah does battle alone, it is with Syrian approval," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. "Hezbollah is only a stone that helps the builder."

But others see a loss of Syrian sovereignty to Iran, which needs Syria as a conduit to arm Hezbollah. Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Brookings Doha Center in Doha, Qatar, said Iran with the help of Hezbollah and other militias is building "a state within a state in Syria — an insurance policy to protect itself against any future Assad demise."

Ali, 23, a soldier on leave in Damascus from the southern front, said one of his officers, a major, had complained that any Hezbollah fighter was "more important than a Syrian general."

Then there is simple jealousy. Hezbollah fighters are paid in dollars, while Syrian soldiers get depreciating Syrian pounds. Hezbollah fighters get new black cars and meat with rice, Ali said, while Syrian soldiers make do with dented Russian trucks and stale bread.

A student who recently fled Damascus after being constantly stopped at checkpoints to prove he is not a deserter said that Hezbollah now runs his neighborhood in the old city and once helped him solve a problem between his brother and security forces. (Syrian police, he said, are so little seen that people now smoke hashish openly.)

"If you have Hezbollah wasta," or connections, he said, "your problems will be solved." The student identified himself only as Hamed Al Adem, a name he uses as a performance artist, to protect family members still in Damascus.

Even so, Hezbollah is not in a position to bail out Mr. Assad the way it did in 2013, when it sent hundreds of fighters to crush the insurgent hub of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah now has more fighters and advisers in Syria than ever, about 5,000, American intelligence officials said. But, said the Syrian with security connections, they "only interfere in areas that are in their own interests."

The official sympathetic to Hezbollah said it has "maybe thousands" of fighters along the Lebanese border, hundreds in the south, bordering Israel, and only dozens around divided Aleppo, Syria's largest city.

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

It had none in Idlib city, which he said may have fallen because some Syrian officers failed to correctly assess threats.

The Syrian with security ties said the leadership had not made a priority of defending Idlib. Many government troops, he said, fled after insurgents knocked out their communications network and called "God is Great" from the mosques.

"Damascus and the Syrian coast, other than this nothing is important. Nothing," he said, adding of Mr. Assad: "He doesn't give a damn if Syria is destroyed."

One long-serving soldier said his cousin called from a hastily dug foxhole near Idlib to send shaky goodbyes to his mother. The soldier, who serves on another front and has lost an uncle and a cousin in battle, was enraged to hear that the 10 men pinned down there lacked even a vehicle to flee.

"If I have a kid, I won't send him to the army," he declared, complaining that his monthly pay covers just 10 days' worth of expenses. "Why be killed or slaughtered?"

In Sweida, the mostly pro-government, mostly Druse southern province, "In every single house there is one man at least wanted for the army service," said Abu Tayem, a Druse activist there.

Last week, he said, after a friend of his was arrested for evading the army, residents attacked security officers, captured one and traded him for the prisoner. Recently, the government tried to recruit Druse forces to be trained by Hezbollah, but few signed up after hearing they would be asked to fight Sunnis in neighboring Dara'a.

To enlist at this point would be foolish, not to speak of dangerous, said Majed, 19, a Druse whose father helped him evade the draft. "When the regime is gone, then our neighbors will be our enemies," he said.

Fayez Korko, 48, said he helped organize an Assyrian militia in northeastern Syria after villagers concluded that the government's promises of protection were "empty words." He called the government "the best of the worst" — better than extremist Islamists — but said that Assyrians would rather die defending their villages than on faraway fronts.

Events like the fall of Idlib, said the Syrian with security ties, are frustrating even a core government constituency — minority Alawites, who belong to Mr. Assad's sect and disproportionately serve in the military. They are beginning to doubt that the president can protect them, as they gambled in sticking with him for an existential fight, said the Syrian, who is Alawite.

"Syria is not you," he said, addressing Mr. Assad, "and you are not Syria."

Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad reported from Beirut, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Maher Samaan and Ben Hubbard from Beirut; Somini Sengupta from Amman, Jordan; and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.

[jimmy olsen]

Tons of evidence regarding Assad's atrocities have been smuggled out of Syria

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/12/syria-truth-smugglers-bashar-al-assad-war-crimes

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Tons of evidence regarding Assad's atrocities have been smuggled out of Syria

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/12/syria-truth-smugglers-bashar-al-assad-war-crimes

and still he's preferable over the ISIS-types

[jimmy olsen]

Bad news all around 

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-13/assad-is-said-to-be-hiding-chemical-weapons-in-syria

U.S. Says Assad Caught With Sarin. Again.

Josh Rogin Eli Lake
comments icon33 time iconMay 13, 2015 6:00 AM EDT
By  Josh Rogin   &  Eli Lake   

The U.S. government was informed months ago that an international monitoring body found traces of chemical weapons that President Bashar al-Assad had promised to turn over, including sarin gas -- a clear violation of the deal he struck with President Obama after crossing the administration's "red line" two years ago.

Officials from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the Obama administration early this year that its inspectors had found traces of two banned chemical weapons during an inspection of the Syrian government's Scientific Studies and Research Center in the district of Barzeh near Damascus, two administration officials told us. A report by Reuters May 8 said that OPCW inspectors had found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at the site in separate inspections in December and January.

The discovery set off a months-long debate inside the administration about how to respond. President Obama is said to have not yet decided. Meanwhile, a coalition of rebel groups on the ground has been attacking the area around the facility, raising the danger that the chemical weapons could fall into the hands of the rebels, many of whom are linked to Islamic extremists.

"The real danger is if the regime loses control of these chemical materials," one administration official who works on the Middle East told us.

This official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the highly sensitive intelligence gathered by the OPCW, said that the discovery confirmed long-held suspicions inside the U.S. government that Syria was not completely forthcoming when it declared its chemical weapons in 2013 (part of a bargain to avoid U.S. airstrikes).

"The sarin revelations shouldn't be a surprise given the regime's track record," former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told us. "It's a violation of the deal we struck with the Russians and it's a violation of the deal the Syrian regime struck with the UN."

The OPCW's discovery shows that Assad has violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 2118, which codified the deal in 2013 and required Assad to declare all of his chemical weapons stockpiles and turn them over for destruction, Ford said. The resolution provides for penalties against the Syrian government for violations under Chapter 7, including possible sanctions or use of military force.

Ford said that the Syrian regime was also in violation of the deal because it has used chlorine gas against civilians; U.S. officials say that continues to this day. The use of chlorine as a weapon is a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Assad acceded to as part of the 2013 deal.

"Deterrence needs to be established, and that is going to require Chapter 7 action by the international community. It's time to move forward on that," said Ford, now a resident scholar at the Middle East Institute. "Regarding the sarin, I have not seen any signs that the administration has followed up on that."

U.S. officials said that the response to Assad's chemical weapons is still being debated within the administration and that their use against civilians was part of discussions between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian officials Tuesday in Moscow.

The officials said that the Assad regime was informed of the discovery and subsequently barred OPCW inspectors from returning to the facility. OPCW spokesman Peter Sawczak declined to comment on the chemical weapons discoveries but said that no final determination had been made.

"Consultations between the OPCW and Syria to clarify Syria's declaration are ongoing," he said. "These consultations are necessarily of a confidential nature."

The State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also declined to comment.

Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn said his assessment was that Assad was concealing many chemical weapons sites and most likely still has chemical weapons capability. "It's nearly impossible to confirm that Syria got rid of all their chemical weapons," he told us. "Their track record is not one of full compliance on anything."

A senior intelligence official told us that the U.S., working with the UN, the OPCW and other international partners, has intelligence indicating that more than 10 of Assad's suspected chemical weapons sites had not been disclosed. But the U.S. didn't always favor confronting Assad about them.

"We knew of sites that Assad didn't declare," this official said. "It's a balancing act. You want to do something to get rid of it, but you also don't want to show them all your cards."

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was the first high-ranking U.S. official to publicly call out the Assad regime for the "discrepancies" in its declarations of chemical weapons stockpiles, last September. Power's skepticism came only one month after Obama's "mission accomplished" moment, when he said that Syria's "declared" chemical stockpiles had been eliminated.

Last week, Power told Charlie Rose that the international community has destroyed 98 percent of Assad's "declared" chemical weapons. When asked how many chemical weapons Assad hasn't declared, she said: "That is an open question. That is something we are pushing the OPCW on."

"I think you are going to see a push on diplomacy in the coming weeks, and it is our hope is that if the nuclear deal can go forward and we can get the terms we need in that space, that you will start to see a shift in Iran's posture," said Power.

She also said that although the OPCW has no mandate to assign accountability for the use of chlorine bombs, "everybody knows" the Assad regime is responsible because, among other things, they are the only involved party that has helicopters to drop those bombs.

The administration has always said that the deal to get Assad to turn over his chemical weapons was one of the successes of U.S. policy on Syria, but within Syria chemical weapons are still killing civilians at an alarming rate.

For the international community, the inspectors' revelation that Assad has kept banned chemical weapons is important; with that report, the UN would have grounds to hold the regime accountable for breaking the 2013 deal. But first, the OPCW has to publicly declare what it found in Barzeh.

[Tonitrus]

I wonder what a non-alarming rate of people killed by chemical weapons looks like.

[jimmy olsen]

al-Nasura has captured a key regime military base.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/19/syria-rebels-seize-key-regime-base-mastouma-idlib

The Telegraph claims that a third of Alawite men of military age have been killed in battle. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11518232/In-Syrias-war-Alawites-pay-heavy-price-for-loyalty-to-Bashar-al-Assad.html

[jimmy olsen]

If true, this  would be another huge ISIS victory.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565341-syria-regime-prepares-deir-ezzor-evacuation

Syria regime prepares
Deir Ezzor evacuation

Following its victory in Palmyra, ISIS now threatens the regime's eastern holdout

BEIRUT – Reports have emerged that the Syrian regime has been preparing a military evacuation from Deir Ezzor after ISIS' victory in Palmyra cut ground routes to the besieged city.

"The Syrian regime is preparing to withdraw its forces in batches from Deir Ezzor," as ISIS continues its offensive to seize the city, Alaraby Aljadeed reported Monday.

A local media activist, identifying himself as Mujahid al-Shami, told the London-based daily that Damascus had begun to move military supplies out of a key base northwest of the city.

Another media activist, who refused to disclose his name, said that "the regime is emptying the city's museum of all its statues and artifacts."

Meanwhile, pro-opposition Souria Net reported Tuesday that signs suggesting the regime is about to "withdraw en-masse" have appeared in the city.

Deir Ezzor residents from the regime controlled Al-Jawra and Al-Qusour neighborhoods told the outlet that patrols passing through the areas have become less frequent due to a lack of manpower.

Reports of Damascus preparing the withdrawal come after ISIS seized Palmyra earlier in the month, cutting the last ground resupply route to the regime's besieged position in Deir Ezzor.

In early May, ISIS launched a new offensive against regime troops holding out in the city, the latest in a series of campaigns against the Syrian army that began in mid-2014.

Last fall, the militants failed in a bid to seize the military airport and the city's industrial area, as well as Huweijat Sakr, an Island on the Euphrates River, which runs through the middle of Deir Ezzor.

Fierce back-and-forth fighting has since raged in the city, with the regime and ISIS launching a series of attacks and counterattacks against each other.

Transferring weapons

A member of the Deir Ezzor Is Being Slaughtered Silently activist group told Alaraby Aljadeed that "a large quantity of military ordnance in depots in Ayash belonging to the 137th Artillery Brigade is being moved to the Deir Ezzor Military Airbase."

His claim was echoed by a resident of Deir Ezzor's Al-Rawwad suburb, who told Souria Net that he had seen Soviet-made ZiL military trucks arriving empty from the direction of the Syrian army's 137th Brigade base and heading towards defense depots in the Ayash area.

The trucks then returned loaded with what were clearly large quantities of weapons and military equipment, he told the outlet.

The eye-witness explained that the depots in the Ayash area were built at the end of the 1970's and that some of them can be seen clearly while others are subterranean.

The Deir Ezzor resident added that people who have done military service at the location say it houses enough war materiel "to oust the regime and all the rebel factions."

Bribes to leave

Amid reports of an evacuation, Souria Net cited another Deir Ezzor resident as saying that regime soldiers with connections are buying their way out of the city.

"We no longer see them strutting around as they used to do, day and night," Sari, an Al-Jawra resident, told the anti-Damascus outlet.

"Whenever I ask about any of them I hear that he has gone on a mission to Damascus."

"Then I find out that he paid a bribe of hundreds of thousands so that he could go without asking anyone."

"There has been talk that some of the officers who were a pillar of combat operations here have absconded."

"There are also rumors of a dispute between the top security and army chiefs. [Apparently] each side has held the other responsible."

Precarious position

The Syrian regime has managed to maintain its presence in the city of Deir Ezzor despite the rebel takeover of the rest of the surrounding province in 2013. One year later, the eastern Syrian region was seized by ISIS.

The regime holds most of the city's neighborhoods along the western banks of the Euphrates, while ISIS has established a bridgehead in the center of the city as well as outside of the airbase to the southeast.

Pro-government forces also maintain control over a swathe of territory stretching to the west and northwest of the provincial capital, and have counted on a ground re-supply route running from Homs through Palmyra to the city as well as aerial supply via the Deir Ezzor Military Airbase.

However, the mid-May ISIS offensive in Syria's desert region worsened the already fraught situation of the Syrian military in Deir Ezzor after the Islamist militants seized Palmyra and the nearby town of Sukhna, effectively cutting land-based logistical lines.

The regime has attached importance to the defense of Deir Ezzor, as part of the strategy repeatedly vocalized by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to hold onto all areas of Syria.

Damascus demonstrated this in 2014 when it dispatched the crack Republican Guard's 104th Brigade to the city under the command of Brigadier General Issam Zahreddine, a leading Druze officer within the regime's ranks.

Amid recent regime reverses elsewhere in the country, most notably in Idlib and Palmyra, reports have emerged that Damascus was considering a change in strategy to withdraw its forces to protect core government-held areas stretching from Syria's coast through Homs down to Damascus.

On May 24, AFP quoted the head of Al-Watan, a leading pro-regime paper, as saying that "it is quite understandable that the Syrian army should withdraw to protect large cities where much of the population is located."

Meanwhile, an unnamed government figure told the agency that "the division of Syria is inevitable. The regime wants to control the coast, the two central cities of Hama and Homs and the capital Damascus."

[jimmy olsen]

Another important army base has fallen to the rebels.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/moderate-rebels-take-key-southern-base-in-syria-dealing-blow-to-assad/2015/06/09/9d6ff9c2-0ea5-11e5-a0fe-dccfea4653ee_story.html

[The Minsky Moment]

Wonder what will happen if this turns out to be true? 
....

Nothing at all?

Russia will deny.  We have no secret troops in Syria.  They are all in Ukraine.

[The Minsky Moment]

Tons of evidence regarding Assad's atrocities have been smuggled out of Syria

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/12/syria-truth-smugglers-bashar-al-assad-war-crimes

and still he's preferable over the ISIS-types

If Assad falls it will simplify the situation on the ground.  As long as he hangs around, the effort to coordinate vs. ISIS will be hampered by the perception that it benefits Assad.

[Queequeg]

For America maybe.  Sunnis will still be less likely to support western Syrian ethnic minorities against any type of Sunni, though thankfully Erdogan might be out.