Volunteers Versus Hired Thugs

Daniel Mabsout,

As we move from chapter to chapter the Syrian story seems to challenge all expectations . No one thought the Syrian army would hold together and keep resisting . All predictions said that the Syrian army will collapse after few months of fighting . The army has not collapsed and the question in Intelligence Services is : What held the Syrian army together ?
Instead of defending itself and the country the Syrian army is now attacking the enemy , and instead of falling apart, it is growing in size and is organizing Syria’s National Defense Forces (photo above) : an emergency army of volunteers whose number is around 8o thousands and will grow to become 390 thousand men and women who have undergone training to share in defending Syria. This growth in size of the defense forces is met on the other side by a decrease in the number of hired thugs among whom many have chosen to leave the battle field and many were killed as well.

The last visit of Obama to the region had for role to escalate the situation and push Jordan to introduce 1400 FSA soldiers to Syria after they received training in Jordan at the hands of US and British officers. Another 10 thousand thugs were introduced to Darayya . Weapons were shipped from France and Great Britain through Croatia who added weapons to the delivered arms of the opposition that were paid by the Saudis to be smuggled through Jordan and Turkey .This has been going on since last November and lasted until February .
In Lebanon, 1400 al Qa’ida fighter are staying in training camps sponsored by French officers on the ground who cross to Syria from time to time to operate there . Despite this, the situation on the ground is in favor of the Syrian army who is achieving many victories whether in Dar’a and Darayya, or in the vicinity of Damascus , in Aleppo and in Homs itself .
The goal of the army is to have full control over all major cities in Syria and to secure the main roads and highways so as to keep life going . In Homs, the army is controlling now almost the whole of the city and has taken possession again of Baba ‘ Amro after chasing the thugs out . THE FIGHTERS ARE INFORMING THE ARMY THAT THEY WANT TO WITHDRAW and soon Homs will become a safe city. Hama is under total control of the Syrian army and Aleppo is eighty percent under its control, while the outskirts of Aleppo are 50% under the control of the Syrian army and the Syrian army is getting ready to clean the whole city first, then than to proceed to the neighborhoods .

No doubt that the progress of the Syrian army is also due to the conflict among the factions of the opposition- mainly the FSA and the al Nusra- who lately targeted Riad al As’ad - chief commander of the FSA- in a car explosion that led to the amputation of his leg . The opposition also suffered great losses ; at least 300 were killed inn Dar’a alone .
At the political level , the opposition is not faring better. In exile, the Muslim Brothers of the Coaltion of Dawha are seeing their supporters on the ground decrease in number and the government formed in Dawha , with Ghassan Hetto as Prime Ministe, r cannot enter Syria and is forced to hide somewhere on the Turkish borders . The leader s of the so called opposition- especially the Muslim Brothers- are not doing much except staying at five stars hotels at Dawha or elsewhere. They are bankrupt politically and ideologically.


This does not mean that what the battles will end soon . No one knows when the confrontations with the criminal thugs will end, but now they have become on the defensive, and the terrorist attacks they make in Damascus prove their inability to take hold of one region and isolate it and keep it under their control as a foot for their fake government . Wherever the thugs of the opposition are found on the Syrian ground , it is because the Syrian army has not yet carried on the plan of evacuating them .

Numbers figuring in this post and the information related to them are from Lebanese Journalist : Ghalib Kandeel
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