In recent weeks, insurgents have been closing on the regime-held western section of Aleppo, advancing from the northwest and south and threatening to cut off Assad forces in Syria’s largest city. In the last week, opposition fighters have seized territory in northwestern Aleppo near Air Force Intelligence headquarters and taken a vital stretch of highway from the airport to regime positions in Aleppo and to the east.
Writing for Al-Monitor, Edward Dark offers a perspective on the conflict — that of Syrian troops:
I recently spent an evening with a group of regime fighters taking a night off from the Zahra front line in a “commandeered” apartment. Such a dwelling in Aleppo might be an empty home whose residents have fled the city (or are wanted fugitives) or an abandoned building at the front lines. Indeed, many buildings in the affluent Zahra suburb have been abandoned since the rebel assault began. Either way, troops from both sides of the conflict make ample use of them.
The regime soldiers and officers had settled in for a relaxing night of drinking, swearing and joking, far from the war outside, stocked with ample food and alcohol to last until dawn. Abu Sa’ad, a volunteer fighter I know well, showed me videos of recent combat on his mobile phone. He said the fighting was so intense that only a couple of dozen meters separated them from the rebels at times. He showed me footage of a commandeered apartment with a large hole in the wall from which a heavy caliber machine gun was firing away.
At that point, his friend spoke up, claiming, “We drove those scum away. They are two kilometers [1.2 miles] away now.” Abu Sa’ad then quietly whispered, “He’s a liar. They’re still there. We got reinforcements — Hezbollah fighters with one very senior officer, about 250 of them. They are very tough and fierce. Without them, I don’t think we could have held on,” he explained. “Of course there are drawbacks,” Abu Sa’ad mused, referring to the Hezbollah fighters. “We dare not drink or curse in front of them. They are very devout and austere men. They carry a Quran with them at all times and pray. I really think they loathe us sometimes.”
As the night wore on and Abu Sa’ad became more inebriated, he confided to me his frustration with rag-tag militias that had fled at the first sign of trouble. “They are criminals and cowards. They are only there to rob people’s houses. They can’t fight at all.” One of these militias is the Popular Committees, which not surprisingly had acquired a nasty reputation throughout the city, especially considering many of its members are ex-cons. Predictably, they abandoned their positions in Zahra when the fighting began, leaving the other overstretched formations, the army, the Ba’ath Brigades, a Hezbollah detachment, Air Force Intelligence personnel and the Al-Quds Brigades to stand alone against an overwhelming number of attackers.
Video posted on Wednesday of insurgents firing on regime positions in Aleppo:
