Status of Syrian War

Why in news?

The Syrian Army single-handedly prevented the IS takeover of eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, and expecting a victory over the region.

What is status of Syrian war?

• Since the summer of 2014, the Islamic State (IS) has surrounded Deir ez-Zorand starved its people.

• Syria’s battlefield is so complex and fast changing ,recently about 300 IS fighters and an equal number of their family members boarded buses at the Lebanese border in western Syria to come to Deir ez-Zor.
• Half of them turned back for the Syrian government areas, while the rest attempted to move forward to certain death or capture in the west.
• Only about 1,000 IS fighters left in the city, which now has one hospital and little other resources for a population that has lived in terror for the past few years.

What is the complex nature of the battlefield?

• The fight has been going slowly, as the IS has positioned car bombs and mines to slow the entry of the SDF.
• Iran is believed to be spending billions of dollars a year to Syrian forces, providing military advisers and subsidised weapons, as well as lines of credit and oil transfers.

• The Syrian Army is even backed by Russian cruise missile strikes and by its own air force.

• There is a great deal of psychological warfare at work, with the battlefield covered in competing interests of regional and global powers.

What is the changing course of the battle?

• Each of the main forces the Syrian Army, the SDF, the Iranian militias, Hezbollah, the Free Syrian Army, the Turkish army and the U.S. military claims to be at the forefront of the battle to defeat the IS.
• The government of Bashar al-Assad is no longer the target of the major armed powers of Turkey, the U.S. and the Gulf Arabs that had pledged to remove him from his presidency.
• Even the Free Syrian Army has turned its guns against the IS, as it recently did in South Daraa.
• With the Syrian Army and its allies busy with the fight against the IS in Deir ez-Zor, Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Syrian opposition  fighters have deepened their hold on Idlib in preparation for the inevitable attack by the Syrian Army.
• The battle for Idlib will be dangerous and bloody, with a hardened and desperate HTS fighting an exhausted Syrian Arab Army and its equally stretched allies.

What will be the outcome of the war?

• President Assad could have been persuaded to the table after these battlefield successes.
• Head of the UN’s International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, is prepared to hold trials and prosecute members of Mr. Assad’s government for war crimes.
• If the siege continued, there would be a certain outbreak of cholera.
• The UN released a report that suggested that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on its own people.
• The Idlib attack will have major consequences for civilian lives that wishes to avoid.

Source: The Hindu