Assad’s motorcade and the state of play in Syria

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 3^rd 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.

Syria: Assad isn’t winning and rebels aren’t losing

Anti-tank guided missiles seized by rebels in Qalamoun

Two body blows to the Syrian army this week dented incessant claims Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is winning the war.

He isn’t. And the armed opposition is simply not losing.

Between them, the town of Qusayr and the neighborhood of Khalidiya in Homs city – recaptured by the regime in the past two months -- don’t make up even 0.01 percent of Syria’s territory.

Assad can’t be winning the war if it takes his army – enhanced by Vladimir Putin’s arms supplies, Barack Obama’s perfidy and the complicity of Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki, Iran’s Ali Khamenei and Lebanon’s Hassan Nasrallah -- over two years to “retake” 0.01 percent of so-called “strategic” territory.

Rebels battling Assad's army captured five depots of Konkurs, Kornet and Milan anti-tank guided missiles, arms and ammunition in the Qalamoun area on the doorstep of Damascus early on Saturday.

The massive explosions in Wadi Dahab near Homs 

Two days earlier, the rebels sent a wave of rockets slamming into regime strongholds in the Wadi Dahab area of Homs, triggering a succession of massive explosions in a weapons depot that killed at least 40 people and wounded some 120. The rocket attack sent a massive ball of fire and a black mushroom cloud into the sky and caused widespread damage and panic among residents, many of who are Assad supporters.

Egyptian military and strategy expert Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Safwat el-Zayyat last night gave an enlightening news analysis of the two body blows to the regime.

Speaking live to Aljazeera TV anchorwoman Khadija Bengana, he said:

The implications of the rebel attacks on the weapons depots in Qalamoun and Homs are very significant.

The Qalamoun area, chiefly the village of Baqaa, where the rebels overran the depots, is teeming with regime forces.

It’s the nerve center of the Syrian army’s famed 3^rd Armored Division, which is renowned for its blind loyalty to the regime and is tasked with shielding the northern gateway to Damascus.

Legitimate questions need answering.

Why? Because:

§ The 5^th Armored Division, which is only 10 kilometers away from the scene, failed to send reserves to protect the site

§ The depots are close to the surface-to-surface missile brigade raining Scuds on northern Syria

§ The site is in the vicinity of al-Nasiriyah military airbase.

The rebels’ raid must have lasted several hours. Where were the reserve and mechanized units during that time?

Is this a sign that regime forces are extremely exhausted, overstretched and unable to secure the area between Homs and Damascus?

What if we also factored in the rebels’ rocket attack on the army’s weapons depot in Wadi Dahab, southeast of Homs city?

Does all this show the armed opposition is now privy to military intelligence information from within the regime?

The 3^rd Armored Division is one of the strongest in the army. It is not a simple matter for the rebels to storm the five depots under its nose and walk away with the booty in their own time.

The Kornet anti-tank guided missiles seized by the rebels -- of the type used by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in summer 2006 -- are superior to the Konkurs type they have been using lately.

The 3^rd Armored Division’s evident vulnerability could now embolden the armed opposition to go one step further, which is to cut off and win control of the highway between Homs and Damascus. They could even target Qusayr for that matter. Who knows where they will be heading next!

The army and allied militias are now busy fighting for the suburbs – in Qaboun, Jobar and Barza.

The armed opposition, for its part, has put Eastern Ghouta on the back burner and turned westward to knock at the door of Abbasid Square in central Damascus.

The regime is clearly lacking foot soldiers and unable to maneuver on the ground. It is mostly using heavy artillery, airpower and missile strikes.

But fighting without moving ground forces to occupy, or control, or in one way or another liberate areas, towns, townships, villages or a neighborhood raises many question marks (about Assad winning the war).