After four days of massive withdrawalof flight from combat and territorial losses, the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Asadhave managed this Sunday to create a new defensive line in the north of the city of Hama150 kilometers south of Aleppo.
Aleppo, the second largest Syrian city, was captured by the Arab country’s rebel militias this Friday night, a few days after the start of the opposition offensive that started last Wednesday. The offensive, led by the radical Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) managed to completely overwhelm Assad’s forces in a few hours, decimated after his two great allies, Russia e Iranhave dispersed their attention in the region to devote it to Ukraine ones and the Lebanon the others.
“Terrorists only know the language of forceand that will be the language with which we will crush them,” said Assad in a televised statement this Sunday, whose whereabouts were unknown from Wednesday until Saturday night. According to unconfirmed reports and rumors, Assad was in Moscowmeeting with his Russian counterpart and supporter, Vladimir Putin. He Kremlin has not accepted the existence of such a meeting.
Despite this message and the halt in rebel advances in the south, HTS and the other rebel militias—supported by Türkiye— have continued this Sunday to conquer territories and towns in the northwest of the Arab country, previously controlled by both Assad’s forces and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militias.
Türkiye is the one that finances, arms and directs its militias in northern Syria, and its priority objective is not its fight against Assad – the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoganhas on several occasions in the past classified his Syrian counterpart as “killer” y “butcher”— but his fight against the YPG.
This coalition of Syrian Kurdish militias, allies of USA in the fight against Islamic State (IS) a little less than a decade ago, it is considered by Ankara as a subsidiary of the PKK Kurdish guerrilla group, at war against Türkiye since the 1980s.
Visit to Damascus and Ankara
Faced with the great fear of Assad’s forces, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchilanded this Sunday in Damascus to meet, as reported by Tehran, with his Syrian counterpart and the president of the Arab country. Araghchi’s agenda is tight: the Iranian travels to Turkey this Monday, where he will meet with the Turkish authorities to ask the Anatolian country, presumably, to stop the offensive of the rebel militias.
According to analysts close to the Turkish government, Ankarawith this rebel attack, seeks to force Assad to sit at the table with Erdogan so that both can discuss an agreed end to the almost 14 years of civil war in Syria. Turkey currently indirectly controls large territories within Syrian borders, and is seeking to reach a compromise with Assad to return more than three million refugees Syrians who inhabit the Anatolian country.
“Türkiye is in favor of reduce tensions in Syria. But the only way to establish this peace and tranquility [en el país árabe] It is a process of political dialogue between the regime and the opposition,” the Turkish Foreign Minister said this Sunday, Hakan Fidanafter a call with his American counterpart, Anthony Blinken.
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