President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is employing a new military strategy that could allow him to remain in power under a potential political settlement, according to a report.
Christopher Kozak, a research analyst at the Institute for the Study of the War (ISW), said the "army in all corners" idea is integral to Assad’s strategy in the war. Assad has abandoned any hope of an outright victory against the insurgent groups and has conceded the possibility of a political settlement. But if he maintains the appearance of control over a unified Syria, those negotiations will benefit his regime, Kozak wrote in a new ISW report.
"The regime seeks to win the political struggle for Syria by simply avoiding a clear loss on the battlefield," he wrote. "Regime forces do not need to eliminate the opposition completely in order to achieve victory—in this case, a favorable political settlement which acknowledges the supremacy and legitimacy of President Assad."
In a January interview with the magazine Foreign Affairs, Assad said the "Syrian army exists in every corner" of the country after four years of a civil war against a rebel opposition and jihadist groups.
"Not every place; by every corner, I mean north, south, east, west, and between," he said. "If you didn’t believe in a unified Syria, that Syria can go back to its previous position, you wouldn’t send the army there, as a government."
While Assad’s forces continue offensive campaigns in Damascus in the south, the heartland of his Alawite minority group in central Syria, and the Aleppo province in the north, he has also established defensive outposts in the rest of the country. These outposts are designed to attract and occupy rebel fighters in battles at a low cost to the regime. The nationwide presence also allows Assad to claim that he is defending a sovereign, contiguous country that should remain under his sway after a settlement.
"These fortified strongpoints also fix large amounts of rebel forces, drawing them into long-running siege operations for minimal investment of regime manpower," Kozak said. "However, these outposts are nonetheless vulnerable to being overrun when rebel forces succeed in organizing concerted offensives supported by heavier weaponry."
A newly consolidated rebel group called the Army of Conquest recently seized one of those strongholds in the northern Idlib province as government troops fled. The fall of Idlib, in addition to other insurgent victories in the south, has generated some speculation that the Assad regime could soon be ousted.
Government forces have been put under strain by the persistent rebel onslaught, prompting Assad to rely more heavily on his allies. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah have assumed direct control of some military operations, and the regime has also devolved power to local militias, Kozak noted.
Iran’s regional adversaries—led by Saudi Arabia—have responded by escalating their support for the rebel groups, heightening the sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict.
Assad could still prevail in this "war of attrition," Kozak said. But the consequences would be dire for the region and U.S. interests. The Syrian war has claimed the lives of more than 220,000 people, including several who died from the regime’s barrel bombs and chemical weapons attacks. It has also displaced nearly 11.5 million civilians.
"This war of attrition likely favors the regime over the long term barring any dramatic event which negatively impacts regime performance, such as a grounding of the Syrian Air Force or an internally-generated ‘palace coup’ against Assad," Kozak said. "However, this trend line does not lead to a stable Syria as an end result and over the short-to-medium term it results in a bloody and protracted near-stalemate which erodes regime combat forces, intensifies war-weariness among regime-supportive populations, radicalizes the remaining opposition, and generates waves of refugees."
Kozak said that a stalemate also threatens the U.S. homeland. Jihadist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, will flourish as long as Assad is unable to achieve an outright victory. Syria could thus become a haven for al Qaeda to launch attacks outside the Middle East.
Kozak recommended that U.S. forces help provide a no-fly zone to neutralize the Syrian Air Force and to prevent its attacks on civilians, as well as to expedite the U.S. train-and-equip program for Syrian rebels.