About a thousand insurgents are trying to hold territory in Syria's biggest city Aleppo. The Syrian army is certainly capable of defeating them with an all out assault but that would be costly in lives and it would lead to the destruction of those neighborhoods. So far the Syrian army has not tried to assault the insurgents in those suburbs but so far uses only probing skirmishes to find their exact position. It may be going for a kind of siege. That again may be part of a plan to suck more insurgents into the fight before fixing them in place and finishing them off.
It could also be a sign of a weakening army. But I have yet to see any other symptom for that to be the case. Sure the army has made and makes mistakes. There recently was a video showing a platoon of tanks trying to assault an insurgent stronghold in urban terrain without infantry support. As any capable tactician would have predicted they got slaughtered by RPG volleys from the side streets. But the Syrian army still has lots of resources. There has been no attack by the air force yet and helicopters have been used only sparsely. There are certainly more troops and reservists available and willing to join the fight on the government side.
But my impression is the general situation in Syria is still deteriorating. The Syrian insurgency consist of unemployed youth, some army defectors and bandits and criminal gangs. But more and more foreign Jihadist arrive every day with seasoned al-Qaeda fighters in the lead. The insurgency is increasingly sectarian and brutal in its behavior. Today some insurgents overran two lightly armed police stations, killed all 40 policemen (video, graphic) and ransacked the buildings. Christians and other minorities are starting to arm to defend themselves. If this downward spiral continues as more Jihadists come ine Syria will get wreaked.
The Obama administration is only now starting to understand that a continuation of its confrontational policy of arming the rabble and Jihadists will lead to the total destruction of the Syrian state with bad secondary effects all around. Yesterday it sent out defense secretary Panetta to warn the opposition that it will have to keep the Syrian state and its institutions intact.
But the insurgents will not listen to that and will continue their destructive path. They just revealed a plan to create a military dictatorship in Syria with their local leadership in the role of the dictator. The Wahabbi U.S. allies in the Gulf states will also not agree with Panetta's begging. They want a Sunni dominated Islamic state in Syria that will put Christians and Allawis into a second class citizens role (if not to death) and will exclude them from any relevant posts. They will continue to send their unwanted revolutionary youth and lots of money to the most radical parts of the insurgency.
Schemes like a junta in a box around the playboy soldier Manaf Tlass are stupid dreams and like the bickering Syrian National Council very unlikely to be acceptable to the Syrian people.
There is only one way to stop the carnage and to keep Syria intact. That is to let Assad win enough to make a political deal possible. For that all foreign support for the insurgency has to stop and new negotiations will have to be started including Russia and Iran. There is no guarantee that such negotiations will lead to an outcome that is acceptable to everybody. But as it is becoming more and more clear the alternatives are worse.
Washington is not yet ready to climb down. It may need another six month, a new secretary of state and more serious consequences of the destruction of the Syrian state coming into view before a different policy will be pursued.
