Syria faces decisive battles in north, south - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/syria-decisive-battles-south-north.html
Tout est à lire dans ce très très bon article. Je sélectionne et surligne malgré tout quelques passages :
While events on the regional diplomatic scene are moving rapidly, there is renewed momentum to draw the outlines of a final endgame in Syria. This momentum is boosted by the imminent historic agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, which if concluded will convince the world that Iran can negotiate in good faith, and the Iranians can become key partners in working out solutions to the region’s other pressing issues, the war on the Islamic State (IS) and the Syrian conflict.
(...) The momentum seems to be on the regime’s side, with the imminent siege and fall of Aleppo city, and advances into the rebel stronghold of Ghouta in Damascus. But one area where the rebels seem to be gaining the upper hand is the south, namely in Daraa province and the border region with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. (...)
... we must understand what each front means in the grand scheme of the Syrian conflict. The southern front has always been one of the gravest threats to the capital, Damascus, and is important to a regime seeking to firmly re-establish and secure its claim to the central Syrian state. (...) threatening the southern front is an excellent way to pressure and scare the Bashar al-Assad regime, and this is exactly the message the powers allied against it — namely the United States and its European and regional allies — want to send. In the framework of the final countdown, every side seeks to reveal his trump cards, or at least hint at them.
(...)
In the northern front, however, it is a completely different calculus...
(...) The United States, which lacks any reliable ground allies inside Syria, might see the regime as the only force capable of holding IS back in the north. To that end, it has no problem in “allowing” it to seize the areas of Aleppo city and its countryside still outside its control. This would put it face-to-face with IS, (...) this seems to be what the Americans are now hoping — or working — for in the north.
The rebels and the regime both seem to have realized this, and are both fighting fiercely and desperately in Aleppo’s key front, Handarat. The fall of east Aleppo would most likely precipitate a spectacular collapse among rebel ranks and herald their end as an effective actor in the civil conflict.
(...) Absent a strong military intervention, including air support and large supplies of weapons and ammunition, the fate of the rebels in Aleppo is sealed.
(...)
It seems anti-Western and anti-coalition sentiments are running high, but such is the intrigue of war and its fickle alliances. Pursuit of victory — or in Syria’s case an acceptable resolution — dictates how this dirty game is played, with no morals. Squarely on the receiving end of this destructive cynicism are the hapless Syrian people.