The last ~10 days have seen dramatic advances of various rebel factions across Syria. Government forces have been rapidly withdrawing on many fronts, often with scarcely any fighting. Aleppo fell just a week ago, Hama a couple days ago, and rebel forces are currently working on encircling Homs. If successful, this would cut Damascus off from the coast. And then beginning just yesterday, rebel forces began operating in the south, and now appear to “control” (i.e., are operating with near impunity in those areas) most everything south of Damascus.
This seems to be being mostly ignored by the mainstream media. I became aware of it because some of the channels I follow on Bluesky (and formerly on Twitter) to keep me apprised of goings on in Ukraine have been commenting on it.
Resource - a frequently updated map, clicking on any of the icons scrolls the right column to the corresponding news entry, and you can adjust the date to see how rapid the advances have been.
NYT reporting here (gift link) that Syrian forces are withdrawing from Damascus suburbs. The Iranians have already made it clear they will not be coming to the rescue and I doubt Russia could even if they wanted to do it.
Assad may find he needs to make a run for it in the next day or two. Probably to Moscow? It does look like the end is near.
Trump coming to power; French government falling; auto-coup attempt in South Korea; war in the Ukraine; health insurance vampire assassinated on the streets of New York; Justin dancing while Montreal riots; there’s only so much the poor mainstream media can cover, for the love of God!
FWIW, I used to use the Washington Post as one of my main news sources; I cancelled my subscription before the election. I now go directly to the AP, plus NPR and the BBC, and they have all been extensively covering the Syria story.
I lost interest in the Syrian civil war, it seemed to be a stalemate with Assad having the upper hand for a long while. I have seen plenty of stories on main stream media, it’s just not at the top of the webpage.
My concern is that the militia currently making the significant gains doesn’t seem to be supported by the US or any western power. And “formerly affiliated with Al-Qadia “. Though they claim they aren’t into that anymore.
I think that the biggest implication of this is that it’s a country that used to be in Russia’s sphere of influence, but now isn’t any more. That’s likely to be emboldening to rebels in other parts of the Russian empire.
Syrian rebels appear to have entered the capital Damascus after facing scant resistance from regime forces, as President Bashar al-Assad’s decades-long grip on power seemed to wane by the minute.
“The rebels are in Barzeh,” a neighborhood inside Damascus city, one resident told CNN, adding that clashes were currently taking place.
By early Sunday morning, a source familiar with the rebel’s advance told CNN: “Militarily, Damascus has fallen.”
The problem is that history has shown that when a brutal secular dictator is deposed in the Middle East, the regime that ends up replacing him is usually an even more brutal theocratic dictatorship.
Grain of salt and all that. But OSINTdefender is a generally reliable account that regularly calls out bullshit. They don’t fabricate things from whole cloth (at the same time, there are limits to “Open Source Intel”).
