Iran transformed Syria’s army into a militia to help Assad survive another year

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 A picture of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad riddled with holes on the facade of the police academy in Aleppo, after it was captured by Free Syrian Army fighters, March 4, 2013. REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano
A picture of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad riddled with holes on the facade of the police academy in Aleppo, after it was captured by Free Syrian Army fighters, March 4, 2013. REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassan

By David Axe
In early 2015, the civil war in Syria will turn four years old. If current trends hold, the terrible conflict — which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions — will almost certainly continue to rage through the end of the year. That’s my prediction.

This is largely because the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with Tehran’s help, has transformed its professional army into a militia-style amateur force that’s cheap and easy to train. Its ranks are filled by eager young men, who are numerous in pro-Assad Syria.

However, the same militia force that allows the regime to keep fighting also lacks the mass, mobility and firepower to mount a decisive offensive against the rebels. One that would stand a chance of recapturing northern and eastern Syria from secular rebels and Islamic State militants and end the war on Damascus’ terms.

Combined with the rebels and militants’ own similar limitations, it’s a recipe for a stalemate. And another year of grinding warfare.

When the war began amid mass protests in spring 2011, Assad’s army was a conventional force, organized along typical Middle East lines. It included some 220,000 soldiers. Officers were full-time professionals. Most junior enlisted soldiers were conscripts.

It was largely a mechanized army, one that Damascus had optimized for battling Israel’s heavy forces. In 2011, the Syrian army possessed as many as 5,000 tanks and thousands of other armored vehicles.

When regime forces opened fire on protesters, sparking the initial rebellion, thousands of soldiers defected to the opposition Free Syrian Army, which quickly grew to a force of roughly 200,000 men. The fierce fighting destroyed entire towns and cities, displacing millions of people, and the rebels seized much of northern and eastern Syria.

An injured man sits at a field hospital after what activists said was was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in the Duma neighborhood of Damascus, December 8, 2014. REUTERS/Badra Mamet
An injured man sits at a field hospital after what activists said was was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in the Duma neighborhood of Damascus, December 8, 2014. REUTERS/Badra Mamet

Defections had weakened the Syrian army. Unrelenting combat further sapped the army’s strength far faster than Damascus could train and equip fresh recruits. In the first two years of fighting, rebels destroyed, badly damaged or captured 1,800 regime tanks and other armored vehicles, analysts estimated. That’s one-third of the regime’s heavy weaponry.

At least 39,000 regime soldiers died in fighting through July 2014, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It’s safe to assume that many times that number were seriously injured.

But it wasn’t enough for the rebels to merely kill or wound tens of thousands of regime soldiers and damage or destroy thousands of tanks. Damascus has an air force — a key advantage. The regime also soon had serious outside help. Iran, Assad’s long-time ally, sent the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah into Syria to help the regime. Members of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps were also deployed to Syria to boost Assad’s forces, with roughly 5,000 volunteers from Iraq’s Shi’ite majority.

Meanwhile, foreign jihadists infiltrated Syria and drew many rebel fighters to their ranks, dividing the Free Syrian Army. This transformed the rebellion into a three-way fight among regime, rebels and militants. In the first three years of the war, about 18,000 rebels and militants died in combat, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

By 2014, the old Syrian army was a spent force. In May, a rebel sniper killed Iranian General Abdullah Eskandari in battle near Damascus. Opposition fighters seized Eskandari’s notebook and published its contents online, including a frank description of the Syrian army’s “dissipation and disintegration” in Hama province in west-central Syria. It’s safe to assume the army was in a similarly poor state in other provinces.

But that didn’t matter. Because by then the Iranians had essentially replaced the Syrian army with a militia called the National Defense Force, which draws many of its volunteers from the Alawite religious group — the regime’s main supporters — and also requires minimal training and support to function. What the volunteers lack in expertise and experience, they make up in patriotic fervor.

This fall, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps fighter named Sayyed Hassan Entezari gave a shockingly candid interview to a corps-funded website, in which he detailed the creation of the National Defense Force by Iranian agents.

“The Syrian army couldn’t handle this three-year crisis because any army would be fatigued [after that long],” said Entezari, paralyzed after being badly wounded while fighting in Syria. “Iran came and said why don’t you form popular support for yourself and ask your people for help.”

Tehran’s agents helped build support for the volunteer National Defense Force. “Our boys went to one of the biggest Alawite regions,” Entezari recalled. “They told the head of one of the major tribes to call upon his youth to take up arms and help the regime.”

Entezari explained that National Defense Force volunteers serve 45 days at a time on the front line before returning home. “Of course,” he pointed out, “some of them get martyred.”

At any given time there are an estimated 50,000 National Defense Force fighters under arms in Syria, in at least 37 brigades of slightly more than 1,000 men apiece. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers lead the volunteer units. Indeed, several high-ranking Revolutionary Guard Corps generals, in addition to Eskandari, have died commanding Syrian volunteers.

Damascus equips volunteers with weapons from the disintegrating army, including many of the surviving tanks. Spreading the heavy weaponry across widely scattered militia units bolsters the volunteers’ local firepower but also prevents Damascus from concentrating force for a decisive attack into rebel-held territory.

house hit by barrel bombs
A man inspects a damaged site hit by what activists said were barrel bombs thrown by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on al-Ghariya, in the east of Deraa province, December 15, 2014. REUTERS/Wsam Almokdad

This lack of decisive force worried Eskandari. In his notebook, he brainstormed ideas for punching through rebel lines. One was bringing in specialized “line-breaker” troops from Iran. But not long after Eskandari died, Iran diverted some troops in Syria to Iraq to help battle Islamic State. It seems unlikely Tehran will be able to significantly boost its contingent in Syria.

More than 24,000 National Defense Force volunteers have died in combat, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. But there are three million Alawites in Syria, more than enough to sustain the National Defense Force for years to come, barring an unlikely collapse in Alawite support for the regime.

That means Damascus can keep fighting through 2015. But it can’t win — and neither can the rebels or the militants. The rebels still struggle to obtain heavy weaponry for their two-front war. For their part, Islamic State militants have picked simultaneous fights with the Syrian regime, the Free Syrian Army, Iran, Iraq and a growing U.S.-led coalition.

I predict that a year from now not much will have changed in Syria. Except for increases in the death toll and the roster of the displaced.

 

Reuters

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19 responses to “Iran transformed Syria’s army into a militia to help Assad survive another year”

  1. The real lebanese Avatar
    The real lebanese

    Assad’s current survival can be choked up to the large but unorganized opposition. They are everywhere, but aren’t fighting under a unified banner and goal. Meanwhile, Assad and co. have only one goal, keep the Assad Regime going.

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar

      True enough. – (that’s ‘chalked up’ …. like the scoreboards … 😉 )

  2. 5thDrawer Avatar

    ASSad continues to be blight …. Australia was only one guy … Peshawar was a larger horror … But I think all the Gangs are competing now to see which one can mess up another Christmas for the rest of the world.
    Biggest Numbers Competition goes on ….
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30529178

  3. it’s like they’re telling him: hold on a little longer , we’ll come to your rescue soon…problem is- they can’t help him win, only stay alive

  4. cook2half Avatar

    I don’t see why its so hard for them to beat the rebels? Syria isn’t exactly like Vietnam

    1. like East Ukraine also

      1. Hind Abyad Avatar

        Yes Israeli Phoenicians recruiter.

    2. 5thDrawer Avatar

      Every baby is gonna be a gun-carrier in 15 years. I’ll lay odds that births still outnumber deaths -especially in refugee camps. It will be a generational war … and like the Vietnamese did to the French, they can just keep feeding the fodder to the guns until the bullets are gone.

  5. Iran has warned about the conduct of military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz

  6. Assad doesn’t have any hope and Iran will get a silent defeat in Syria. The article is great to read and the prediction seems viable. Assad can last another one and a half years. The Roman invasion of Egypt may change the course of the game and Assad might get a upper hand for a while but that wont last very long. In the end the Alawite/Shit casualty rate will be very high when their remaining tanks are destroyed and the solders are running around like chicken ready to get shot by the rebel. Its going to be ugly for Assad and Iran. That fat boy in Lebanon and his gang will face a humiliating defeat too.

    1. Hind Abyad Avatar

      “How foreign imams radicalized Syria’s war”.

      Yes, since WW1 all the Saudi want to do is ruin the Levant!!
      Because it’s where Christianity was born it “was” where they “were” living.

      It was them… Wahhabi had the ultimate power with the British, after WW1 it was them who sold Palestine to Standard Oil- Rothschild, now Syria is the rest, Israel not only get to keep the Occupied Golan Heights, but will grab whatever they want, on top.
      http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/syria-east-aleppo-rebel-control-religious-radicalism.html?utm_sour

      1. The Arabs and the Romans will jointly attack Iran according to the prophesy. But thats not happening anytime soon. When you see the Romans invade Egypt then you know that the next attack would be on Iran.

        1. Hind Abyad Avatar

          hmm..

      2. The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said: “Even if but a single day remains in this world, Allah will certainly prolong that day so that one from my family (Al-Mahdi) can take possession of Mount (or the land of) Daylam (in Iran) and the city of Constantinople (Istanbul).” (Al-Burhan fi Alamat al-Mahdi Akhir al-Zaman, p. 74 and Death-Doomsday-The Hereafter and the Portents of the End Times, p. 440)

        1. Hind Abyad Avatar

          Mount what? I understand you’re pro ISIS..so we will all be doomed, that’s why you’re fighting in Irak and Syria?

      3. Abdullah bin Masud said that the Prophet said (Peace be upon him) : ” Between the Muslims and the Romans, there will be a Hudna (truce) and reconciliation treaty to the extent that they will fight together an enemy for Romans (non-Muslim nation) and they will split the war acquisitions. Then, the Romans with the Muslims will invadePersia (Iran). The Romans will say: Split with us the war booties (spoils) like we did. So, Muslims will split with the Romans the war booties and children of Polytheists. The Roman will say: Split what you got of the (Persian) Muslim children. The Muslims will say: We cannot split with you the the children of Muslims. … The Romans will invade and take over all of AshSham, except Damascus and Ma’taq mountain near Homs (in Syria) where Muslims will keep their children. Victory will be withheld until one third of the Muslims dies, one third flees and one third remains fighting……….” (Nuaim bin Hammad’s Kitab al-Fitan)

        1. Hind Abyad Avatar

          I understand nothing about all that. I’m not a connoisseur, just a human being.

  7. Hind Abyad Avatar

    Dear Reuters..so dear to…

  8. Hind Abyad Avatar

    …and Saudi Family behind Syrian civil war created ISIS to conquer the Levant, now Frankenstein turned against it’s creator??

    http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/royal-monarchs-shield-islamic-state/

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