As Assad's army crumbles in Syria, it's becoming more extremehttp://thebea.st/YTGOGg
Inside Bashar al-Assad’s Army
Newsweek Inside Bashar al-Assad’s Army
The Syrian military is crumbling—and becoming more extreme in its fight for survival.
Like many young Syrian Alawites—members of the small Shiite Islam sect that forms the backbone of President Bashar al-Assad’s government—Khalil was pressed into military service after the revolution began in March 2011. The army called him up last May, just before he was due to finish his university degree, and posted him to the war-torn countryside outside of Damascus.
Residents walk near a tank in the town of Ras al-Ain, near the province of Hasaka December 6, 2012. (Handout / Reuters / Landov)
Khalil was no believer in the government’s cause. Faced with the prospect of killing his countrymen, he tried to flee this past summer, but a bombing closed the roads leading from Damascus and he was forced to turn himself in, pretending he’d been delayed while on leave for exams. The army threw him in prison for a month, then released him to continue his service.
Since getting called to duty in the revolution’s early days, Khalil watched as the once-fearsome military steadily deteriorated. Tanks and other heavy weaponry fell into disrepair. Thousands of troops, and hundreds of senior officers, were lost to death and desertion, and many switched to the rebels’ side. The same army that once rolled tanks and troops down the highway to assault the rebellious city of Homs took to shelling the opposition from afar, or bombing them from the sky. Now, rebel forces are even threateningthe government in its stronghold of Damascus.
But as Assad’s army weakens, rebels and analysts warn, it is also becoming more extreme in its fight for survival. And two of the grimmest scenarios observers have long feared—that Islamic extremism could come to dominate the rebel fight, and that Assad could decide to attack with chemical weapons—now look more likely than ever to take hold.
Many Sunni soldiers have left the military’s ranks, leaving behind a core of dedicated troops, most of them Alawites like Assad. Though the sect makes up a relatively small proportion of the Syrian population—around 12 percent—it has dominated the country’s political machine for decades, and Assad has painted himself as the protector of the Alawites, along with other minorities such as Christians, Druze, and Ismailis. Now, after months in which Assad’s forces have leveled cities—and during which more than 40,000 people have died, according to activist groups—many loyalist troops feel their backs against the wall. “They know that the people on the ground know who they are,” says Khalil, who finally escaped to Turkey this fall, “and they know that justice will be brought” if the rebels prevail. “Their support for the regime is getting stronger and stronger. They know they have to fight to the end.”
Syria once boasted one of the most feared armies in the Middle East. Itoccupied neighboring Lebanon for decades, turning Beirut into a puppet government. With the backing of its ally Iran, it intimidated Sunni rivals and was seen as one of the principal military threats to the Israeli state.
But the army has been on the defensive for months against an opposition that—though disjointed—has managed to carve out major gains in Syria’s countryside and cities. In recent weeks, the rebels have enjoyed a surge in momentum, overrunning key military bases around the country and even using anti-aircraft missiles to shoot army planes from the skies. At the same time, rebel forces have pushed ever deeper into Damascus. Not long ago, the capital was considered so secure as to beyond the opposition’s reach. Now, international airlines are cancelling flights to the city’s airport for fear of the intensifying conflict. The United Nations has pulled staff from the capital, and diplomats have fled.
“If the regime is pushed into a corner, it will use chemical weapons.”
In the midst of such high-profile successes, the rebels might be expected to boast about gaining the upper hand, as they’ve often done in the past. But for many, the recent progress in Damascus has been accompanied by a lingering sense of dread. Rebel fighters in the city suspect that they are nearing the government’s inner sanctum and that the fight to defend it will be vicious. Mattar Ismail, the spokesman for the formidable Ahfad al-Rasul rebel brigade in Damascus, says that the coming days will see a new surge of violence unleashed on the capital. “There will be a sudden increase in the regime army’s use of force,” he says. “We will see more destruction and more victims.”
