Can Aleppo’s war-weary rebels hold out against Assad and his allies?

BEIRUT // When opponents of Bashar Al Assad began picking up arms against the state in 2011, they were a ragtag group, fighting as guerrillas with light weapons and limited resources. Over time they grew, capturing cities, amassing arsenals and even threatening victory.

Eventually, their strongholds in the big cities were chiselled away: Homs fell to the government, Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to ISIL. The border with Lebanon – and the flow of fighters and arms from there – was sealed.

But throughout the hardship and the losses, the rebels held on to huge chunks of Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city before the war. And in holding on to Aleppo and its nearby routes in and out of Turkey, they held on to hope.

Today, however, there are increasingly dire warnings that Aleppo too may be lost.

As a temporary ceasefire in place since February and peace talks in Geneva seems to have collapsed, an offensive on the city by the Syrian government and its allies looks imminent. Nearly encircled, divided, ill-equipped and worn down by years of war and the resumption of daily bombardment, rebels in the city face few options as the assault looms.

“Their options are to go to Saudi Arabia and Turkey and beg for more stuff, more money, that kind of thing. They’re as poor as church mice,” said Joshua Landis, director of the University of Oklahoma’s Centre for Middle East Studies. “They’re going to have to ask for better weapons, that’s the only thing that can keep them alive.”

If the rebels’ backers decide to give them more advanced weapons they may have to act fast: when the Syrian government strikes, they will likely cut the rebels’ last route out of the city and bring them under siege.

“The attack is always the best defence,” said Fabrice Balanche, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The rebels must attack if they can, because if they are waiting, in a few days [or] in a few weeks there will be a great offensive by the Iranian, Russian and Syrian army side.”

Overnight on Tuesday, rebels looked to divert government forces by launching an assault on Aleppo’s western suburbs. Reports said the offensive reduced artillery and air strikes on rebels in eastern Aleppo – the regime’s main target – as government forces focused their firepower on the attackers in the west.

Efforts toward a diplomatic solution are still being made, however.

As rebel-held eastern Aleppo takes a daily beating from resumed air strikes and death tolls mount, the US has pushed for Russia to bring about a fresh ceasefire in the area, ostensibly the first step to get stalled peace talks in Geneva back on track. And on Wednesday evening, US secretary of state John Kerry said an agreement on a truce in Aleppo had been reached. At this point though, even that might not be enough.

“A full opposition return to Geneva looks extremely unlikely at this point,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute and the author of The Syrian Jihad. “Even if a ceasefire was agreed that covered Aleppo city, I don’t think the opposition will ever trust that it’s more than a temporary pause in the regime’s plans,” he added, speaking before news of the Aleppo truce agreement broke.

Thomas Pierret, a Syria expert at the University of Edinburgh, said he believes the truce and the Geneva talks were a stalling tactic employed by the regime to give them more time to bring reinforcements to Aleppo.

“It’s always the same for regime troops – it’s always about manpower, and they were short of it,” he said. “Basically the truce was a cover for what’s coming next.”

In the weeks leading up to the February 27 cessation of hostilities agreement, government forces had made major gains around Aleppo, but were unable to completely surround the rebel-held part of the city and bring it under siege. During the truce, Russian artillery moved into position in Aleppo and the government sent more troops to the area.

“They think that there is some low-hanging fruit in the region of Aleppo, so they are going to take it,” said Mr Pierret.

While the US invested time, money and effort in trying to back some Syrian rebel units in north-western Syria, Washington is now believed to be increasingly distancing itself from the fight around Aleppo.

“The United States has written the rebels off, it’s quite clear,” said Mr Landis. “They’re not going to try to get a rebel win here.”

Mr Landis highlighted the recent losses that rebel units north of the city have suffered against ISIL – fights in which the US has not provided the kind of overwhelming air power it has employed at other times to help allies against ISIL advances.

As the Syrian government has prepared for the Aleppo offensive, the US line has increasingly focused on the role of Syria’s Al Qaeda chapter, Jabhat Al Nusra, in the area. In recent days, US secretary of state John Kerry has said that the US was encouraging moderate Syrian rebels to separate themselves from Al Nusra.

“I think that the US now are very sceptical about the chance of the rebellion in the north of Syria and they don’t want to play with fire and support Al Nusra,” said Mr Balanche.

While Al Nusra is not the dominant force in the city of Aleppo as the US has suggested, it is powerful outside the city.

More troubling for the US perhaps is the close relationship many mainstream rebel factions have with Al Nusra: despite the group’s extremist ideologies, Al Nusra is regarded as a key and organic part of the rebellion by many factions.

These reservations could potentially cause friction between the US and its allies in the region if they want to arm the beleaguered rebels with more advanced weapons that could fall into the hands of extremists.

“Al Qaeda is very much implicated in the whole fabric of this rebel effort, not only in Aleppo, but in the entire province of Idlib,” said Mr Landis. “If the Americans mean to stop Assad from taking that region, they will be supporting Al Qaeda ... [and] guaranteeing the survival of Al Qaeda in that region.”

jwood@thenational.ae

* With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse