Syrian regime takes advantage of coalition strikes
While the world focuses on the Islamic State, the Syrian army is making significant gains in Damascus and Aleppo.
As the world’s focus remains firmly fixed on the Kurdish enclave of Kobani, under assault for three weeks now by a relentless and determined Islamic State (IS) force despite airstrikes by the US-led coalition, other significant events on the Syrian battlefield have largely gone unnoticed. As the Syrian army, backed by various local and foreign militias, makes significant gains in both Damascus and Aleppo, the question being raised is whether President Bashar al-Assad is the ultimate beneficiary of the coalition's campaign against IS and other jihadist groups.
The short answer is yes. The long answer is, as always with the Syrian conflict, complicated. The regional anti-IS campaign is steadily gaining momentum, with Syria’s powerful northern neighbor under enormous pressure to join. Turkey’s involvement is crucial if the campaign is to have any chance at success, but Ankara's anxiety over empowering the Kurdistan Workers Party-linked Kurdish rebels battling IS, including in Kobani, as well as preconditions to establish border buffer areas and no-fly zones with the ultimate goal of ousting Assad likely mean Turkey will remain an ineffectual and reluctant ally.
Turkey is frustrated, and rightfully so, that it is expected to provide the much-needed "boots on the ground" when other key players in the coalition have refused to do so, prompting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to go on an anti-Western tirade. Caught between a rock and a hard place, whatever decisions the Turkish leadership takes now will have a profound impact on the future of the whole region and the dynamics of the conflicts reshaping it.
This Turkish turmoil greatly complicates the already muddled picture of the Syrian conflict, and that’s just fine as far as Damascus is concerned. Greater global scrutiny and alarm at the rise of jihadist groups in Syria and the roles some US allies and key supporters of the Syrian opposition may have played in that is translating into tighter border controls and severe restrictions on the flow of men, funds and weapons that have fueled the Syrian conflict for so long.
