Admitting military ‘fatigue,’ Assad pulls back, redeploys Syrian forces

Nevertheless, in recent days Assad has issued an amnesty for army deserters and draft dodgers in a desperate attempt to boost recruitment. And he admitted that the army has been forced to abandon some parts of the country, hinting that his regime is now prioritizing which areas to defend.

“Sometimes we concentrate our arsenal and the army in an important area, but that comes at the expense of other areas, which become weaker,” he said. “We are obliged in certain circumstances to abandon regions in order to move troops to regions that we want to hold on to.”

This candid assessment is at odds with comments made in January, when Assad articulated his strategy of deploying troops across the country in order to preserve Syria’s unity.

“If you look at a military map now, the Syrian army exists in every corner. … 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,” he told Foreign Affairs magazine in an interview.

The notion of an “all corners” strategy was important to Assad, as it allowed him to continue presenting himself as the president of a unitary state able to deploy his forces wherever they are needed to stamp out the “terrorist” threat.

Six months ago, when Assad gave the interview, he was in a reasonably secure position. His forces had clawed back some rebel-held areas, and his government enjoyed the diplomatic, logistical and financial support of Russia and Iran. The rise of hardline groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) also had dampened some of the anti-Assad rhetoric in Western capitals.

Since then, however, Assad has suffered a series of battlefield setbacks in the north and south of the country. Jaysh al-Fatah, a newly formed coalition of rebel groups, seized most of Idlib province in the north, including the city of Idlib and the town of Jisr al-Shughour. Much of southwestern Syria is now in rebel hands. In May, ISIL captured the central Syrian town of Palmyra and continues to inch its way westward toward the critical highway linking Damascus to the Mediterranean coast.

The sudden reversals are due not only to the Syrian army’s manpower shortage but also to decisions by the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to set aside their differences on Syria policy and cooperate more closely. That cooperation has led to more coordination on the ground from the disparate and often rival rebel factions.

Iran appears to have accepted the rationale behind a pullback to the west, which would pull back the Syrian army to a line extending roughly from Damascus to Latakia on the Mediterranean coast in northwest Syria. The enclave could include the cities of Homs and Hama and possibly Jisr al-Shughour if it can be recaptured from Jaysh al-Fatah. Recent reports indicate that the Syrian army has renewed efforts to take back the strategically located town that sits at the junction of routes leading to Hama and Latakia.