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| President Assad at the mosque (top) and a woman grieving the loss of a loved one on Eid day |
Did Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad's motorcade come under rebel attack as it headed to a Damascus mosque yesterday?
Yes.
Did the Katyusha and mortar
rounds fired in the direction of the motorcade hit their target?
No.
Did Assad seem perturbed while performing
Eid al-Fitr prayers after his arrival at the mosque?
Yes.
Was the attack a pointer to the
state of play on the battlefield?
Yes,
of course.
Syria's information minister denied rebel claims that they attacked
Assad's convoy as it headed towards the Anas bin Malek mosque
in the Maliki area, where the president has a residence.
Opposition activists
and residents reported what seemed to be the sound of several incoming mortar
explosions in the early morning.
The Eid prayers, which
hardly take five minutes and are usually held shortly after sunrise, started an
hour late at 8 a.m.
It was unclear whether
the pictures of the president aired on Syrian state TV were pre-recorded,
analysts at BBC Monitoring said. For
a brief moment they carried a “live” caption, which then swiftly vanished.
It is possible the
footage was pre-recorded, analysts told BBC News, as
reports that the president's convoy was struck while travelling to the mosque
had come around one hour previously.
Charles Lister, analyst
and head of MENA at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (JTIC) in London
tweeted in relatively quick succession:
(1)
“Combining
reports of Internet access cut in attack location + heavy air force presence
now over that location suggests something happened.”
(2) “#Damascus experiencing sig security this AM. New
checkpoints hurriedly erected in Abbasiyeen Square. Low-flying jets over
central districts.”
Two
Syrian rebel brigades claimed responsibility for the attack – Liwa’ a-Islam commanded by Zahran
Alloush and Liwa’ Tahrir al-Sham.
Alloush
told Aljazeera TV by Skype from the Damascus suburbs, “We fired the Katyusha
rockets in the direction of the motorcade, while Tahrir al-Sham used mortar
shells…
“We
are deployed in close proximity to the Presidential Palace and the Maliki area…
We have a sizable surveillance force inside Damascus and we are privy to
reliable and precise intelligence information.”
Having
watched TV footage of Assad praying, Dr. Zahran Alloush, a Jordanian
psychologist based in Amman, later told Aljazeera the Syrian president’s “body
language was telling. He looked rattled and worried.
“I
kept asking myself, ‘Why are his eyes looking left and right in quick
succession while performing the prayers?’
“He
also seemed in a rush. He just wanted to dash out. “
The
pointers to the state of play on the battlefront after the failed attack were
left for Egyptian military strategy
analyst Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Safwat el-Zayyat, who told
Aljazeera:
The
armed opposition formed the “Front to Liberate Damascus” a fortnight ago and
has started moving from Eastern Ghouta to the capital proper.
Within
two weeks, we’re seeing clashes in Umawiyeen and Abbasiyeen squares, which are
just over two kilometers from the site of the (motorcade) incident.
This
means the armed opposition is now fighting inside Damascus.
At
the same time, the regime is capitalizing on its airpower to bomb Qaboun,
Jobar, Barza, Ghouta and other places in the Damascus countryside.
The
armed opposition, in other words, has gone a long way since the regime
announced in mid-April that it was winning the battle for Damascus.
The
area targeted by the rebels today is a nerve center for the regime. It’s where
the presidential offices and palaces are.
Although
Katyusha and mortar rounds are not exactly accurate, I think the message was
delivered to the regime: the president’s motorcade is on our radar.
We’re
now into what is called fourth-generation
warfare
(4GW), in which no side lets its
opponent rest.
For
example, after capturing Minnigh airbase in Syria’s far north, we see the
rebels targeting political and military regime leaders in the heart of
Damascus. The purpose is to keep
the adversary under tactical, operational and strategic pressure.
On
August 1, the president paid a symbolic visit to troops in the battered town of Darayya,
southwest of Damascus, on the occasion of Army Day.
TV
footage showed him surrounded by scores of presidential guards and exchanging a
few words with 10 soldiers at most.
Why
would a head of state need special protection when talking to his troops?
The
answer came today in the capital’s Maliki area.
Also
on August 1, the rebels sent a wave of rockets slamming into a huge advanced weapons
depot in Wadi ad-Dahab, southeast of Homs.
How
did the rebels know it existed?
A
day later, they
captured a major munition depot
of anti-tank guided missiles in the Damascus northern countryside region of
Qalamoun, where the Syrian army’s famed 3rd Armored Division
is deployed.
Who
led them to it?
Then
came the armed opposition’s sweep on Latakia’s rural areas, where they captured
10 villages in two days.
This
tells me, the armed opposition is now getting a trove of intelligence
information from regime insiders.