Syrian Rebels Threaten Damascus, Assad from North and South

The Washington Post / Loveday Morris, Mohamad El Chamaa, Liz Sly, Susannah George, Mustafa Salim, Suzan Haidamous

17:38 JST, December 8, 2024

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad faced the most acute threat to his 24-year rule Saturday as rebels pushed into the strategic hub of Homs, seized a sweep of southern cities, and closed in on Damascus, the capital.

Rebels accumulated regime territory at lighting pace as an offensive from the north, led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, ignited opposition factions elsewhere in the country. Syrian troops fled en masse, according to Iraqi officials, who said at least 1,500 entered Iraq.

Groups in the south seized Daraa, the birthplace of the 2011 protest movement to oust Assad, the southeastern city of Sweida and Quneitra, near the border with Israel.

HTS, which has made stunning gains in the north over the past week, said Saturday evening its forces were conducting operations inside Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, around 90 miles north of Damascus. Sham FM, a news radio station that backs Assad, reported that the Syrian military was “repositioning itself to the outskirts” of the city – language it has used previously to describe withdrawals from cities and towns that have fallen to the rebels.

By midnight, videos showed jubilant scenes of residents celebrating around the city’s iconic clock tower.

A senior U.S. official monitoring events in Syria on Saturday said there was “significant risk” that the Assad regime would soon collapse. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, also cited warnings by Iranian and Russian officials to their citizens to prepare to evacuate the country.

HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani promised soldiers who laid down their arms would not be harmed. “The overthrow of the criminal regime is very close,” he said.

The group said it was coordinating the defections of senior officials in Damascus and had “completed arrangements” with intelligence chiefs to control the capital. Neither claim could be verified.

In the suburbs of the capital, stunned residents were panic-buying supplies as Jolani’s forces claimed they were just 12 miles outside the city.

In the south, the Syrian military said, it had “carried out repositioning,” but officials denied withdrawing from areas around Damascus. Videos showed government opponents pouring into the streets, ripping down posters of Assad and chanting for freedom in scenes reminiscent of the early days of Syria’s uprising.

The rebel advances on Saturday added to stunning gains over the past week. The HTS-led offensive has seized Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and Hama, its fourth-largest. Homs, capital of Syria’s largest governorate, is strategically important; it lies at the crossroads of the north-south highway that connects Aleppo and Damascus and the east-west highway that connects the desert and the Mediterranean Sea.

Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected more than a decade ago, said the end is near. The only question now, he said, is whether Assad will agree to step aside peacefully, perhaps under a deal that offers him safe passage out of the country, or attempt to stand and fight.

But with government forces crumbling across multiple fronts, it was unclear how much of a fight his loyalists could put up. Government forces in Damascus suffer from the same problems as troops elsewhere, including a lack of weaponry, undernourishment and, evidently, Barabandi said, poor morale.

Assad’s allies Russia and Iran, to whom he owes his survival for the past decade, are distracted by conflicts elsewhere and have offered no meaningful support, giving the rebels an opening. Russia, which has backed Assad with airstrikes since 2015, is now bogged down in its war in Ukraine. Iran has been shaken by its growing conflict with Israel, which has stepped up attacks against the Islamic republic and its proxies, including Hezbollah. Hezbollah, a Shiite group based in Lebanon, has forces in Syria supporting Assad.

Iran began withdrawing military commanders from Syria on Friday, according to an Iraqi official and a regional diplomat. It’s also evacuating nonessential diplomatic staff from Damascus, according to the Iraqi official, who said “they feared they would be trapped after the collapse.”

Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, a former intelligence chief in Lebanon, said Iranian movements suggest Tehran believes Assad will be unable to hold back the rebel advances.

“For the Iranians, to choose between their country and Hezbollah, certainly they chose their safety over Hezbollah,” he said.

Russia has also urged its citizens to leave the country. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, when asked on Saturday whether Moscow believes the Syrian president can hang on to power, told Al Jazeera he was “not in the business of guessing.”

Even regime supporters appeared resigned to the apparent inevitability of his ouster. “We supported him because he represented the only secular option presented to us. It was not about him,” said a staunchly pro-regime businessman who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety. But now, he said, “people are ready to accept a newer, more advanced and more free secular state.”

Assad has vanished from public view since appearing with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi last Sunday in Damascus and has made no statements. Expectations among regime supporters that he would address the nation on Saturday evening went unfulfilled.

Syrian state media denied rumors that he had fled to Moscow, Tehran or the United Arab Emirates. People with connections to his inner circle said he was almost certainly still in Damascus. But since announcing a 50 percent pay raise this week for the army, he has taken no discernible action to rally his followers.

Earlier Saturday, regime forces appeared to be ceding territory with little fight to focus on Damascus, its surroundings, Homs and the coast, said Haid Haid, a research fellow at London-based Chatham House.

“The regime has given up on all nonstrategic areas,” he said.

But soon the regime’s strategic strongholds were also teetering. Capturing Homs would enable the rebels to pressure the capital from the north and the south. A rebel victory in Homs would cleave Asaad’s territory in two, splitting the capital from regime strongholds on the Mediterranean coast.

Iraqi government spokesman Bassim Al-Awadi told the news network Rudaw that 2,000 Syrian soldiers were now in Iraq. Two senior Iraqi army officers estimated their number to be the equivalent of three military divisions. A third official put the number at 1,500. The government in Baghdad gave the Syrian troops permission to enter through the Al-Qaim border crossing.

Jolani, the HTS leader, was formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda but has broken ties and is attempting to present himself as the face of a unified, more moderate opposition. In a bid to reassure panicked residents and foreign aid groups, HTS said all government and international institutions, including the United Nations, were “serving the people, and it is our duty to protect and preserve them.”

It’s not surprising that the regime has pulled back from the south, where it has battled a sporadic insurgency for years, said Gregory Waters, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute who studies Syrian forces. But its shaky hold on areas around Damascus points to an army in a state of collapse.

“If the idea is to reinforce Damascus, this is meant to be the fortress,” he said. But local groups, he said, appear to have overrun neighborhoods in the suburbs with little effort.

Zeina Shahla, a 42-year-old Damascus woman, said stores were running out of goods.

“We’re watching the news and don’t know what to do,” she said. “People are scared. People are tired. They cannot bare another war. They don’t want to see more violence and blood.”

In Jaramana, less than 10 miles from the presidential palace, men used ax-like weapons to hack and topple a giant bust of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, video verified by The Post shows. When the massive head fell, gunfire and celebratory cheers erupted.

“It’s just a matter of time now,” Waters said.

It was unclear whether rebel groups in the south or opposition factions around Damascus were coordinating with HTS or had simply jumped on the opportunity to make gains against Syrian forces in disarray. “It’s not as if HTS has the puppet strings for everyone, but without their operations this wouldn’t be happening,” said Waters.

The Southern Operations Room, a newly announced faction, said it had taken control of Daraa governorate. Videos posted online showed a statue of Hafez al-Assad being toppled in Daraa city. “Different groups are racing to capture as many areas as possible,” Haid said.

The Syrian state news agency SANA said that “the sounds heard in some areas of the southern Damascus countryside are of long-range targeting and shooting at terrorist gatherings in Daraa.”

Sweida, inhabited by members of the Druze religious minority, was under the control of Druze factions Saturday morning after the army withdrew, according to a local activist who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for security.

“The governor’s house is empty, the governor is heading to Damascus, the province is empty, the police chief’s office is empty, everything is empty from the soldiers,” she said. The people, she said, had seen “this was their chance.”