Six months after being driven out of central Damascus, rebelfighters are again encircling Damascus. The Free Syrian Army has launched itsfirst concerted campaign against the military bases ” as well as theinternational airport ” that create an arc around the capital.
“We are calling on civilians not to come to the airport orits highway because it is now a military operation,” Abu Mohammed, a rebelfighter carrying out surveillance just a few hundred meters from the airport’ssouthern entrance, said. “The airporthas been out of service for a week and all employees are stuck inside. They areafraid to leave because they know we can hit any car on the highway.”
The airport is isolated among the impoverished satellitetowns south of Damascus that are strongholds of the opposition. On the desertedroad south, back out of the city, explosions rang out and black smoke filledthe winter sky. Regime forces relentlessly bombed the area as they tried towrest back control of rebel-held positions.
A Western diplomat still serving in Damascus said thestrength of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the capital, as wellas their superior training and firepower, meant rebels had no immediateprospects of toppling the regime. But with the rebel seizure of three strategicmilitary bases in northern Syria, the diplomat said the conflict had entered “anew phase.” “The regime may soon have toabandon the North and the East to the rebels, several important military baseshaving already been taken and little resistance left, including supply lines,”he said.
Bounded to its north by the Qassioun Mountain, centralDamascus is now encircled in a roughly 240 degree arc from the northeast to thesouthwest by neighborhoods hostile to Assad and hosting rebel fighters, who inrecent weeks have used heavier weapons, including surface to air missiles andmortars.
Communities that were once hotbeds of peaceful civil protest” painting banners, chanting songs and marching ” are now battlefields ofbroken concrete where rebels say they are planning not for peace talks but forthe death of the president.
Rebel commanders say they now have a coordinated plan totighten the noose around the regime’s key strongholds ” including thepresidential palace. “We have begun the second stage of controlling Damascuscity by moving from the rural areas into the suburbs and then into the city’sdistricts,” claimed Abu Omar, commander of a rebel unit fighting in Mleha, fivemiles southeast of the city.
Listing the neighborhoods that his rebel counterparts innortheast Damascus now control, Abu Omar pledged his forces would join in apincer movement as fighters converge on Muhajreen, site of Assad’s palace,office and home. Last month, rebels attempted to mortar the palace for thefirst time, but overshot.
“We have plans for all operations,” Abu Omar said. “We arenot fighting as a reaction but pro-actively. We want to control Damascus fromall sides and lay siege to it before we launch the third stage of the battle,moving from the countryside, to the suburbs, to the city’s districts.”
