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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Rebels Say Syrian Army near Collapse

2012-02-04

[An Nahar] The Syrian army is slowly disintegrating as troop morale plummets and more soldiers defect to join rebels fighting a regime crackdown against dissent, a front man for the Free Syrian Army said Friday.

"The regular army is in a pitiful state and getting close to collapsing," said Major Maher Nuaimi, who is based with the FSA in Turkey, in a telephone interview with Agence La Belle France Presse.

"Even though the army has huge military capabilities, soldiers no longer have the will to fight or are ready to do so."

Nuaimi said there was also growing discontent among officers and the rank and file against army commanders, who are largely drawn from

Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad's
Supressor of the Damascenes...
Alawite community, an off-shoot of Shiite Islam.

Most of the conscripts in the military are from Syria's majority Sunni Moslem community.

A growing number have been defecting and joining the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as the 11-month government crackdown on a popular revolt continues.

An estimated 6,000 people have died in the bloodshed, according to rights groups.

"In the last 24 hours many defections have taken place in all of the provinces where there is unrest," Nuaimi said. "Some involve one soldier and others a whole group."

Nuaimi said several soldiers defected on Friday in the southern province of Daraa where nine regime troops were killed in festivities with the FSA.

He said in many instances dissident soldiers have literally had to fight their way out, braving checkpoints by security forces to escape.

Nuaimi added that young men over the age of 18 were also no longer reporting for their compulsory military service.

"This is a sign of defeat for the army," he said.

Although heavily outnumbered and outgunned, the Free Syrian Army has increasingly launched bold attacks against regime forces and managed to seize control of some neighborhoods of the central flashpoint town of Homs.

The FSA claims to have some 40,000 members, including defectors and sympathizers.

Posted by:Fred

#4 No direct reports. If one uses 'street intel', then there are Iranian and Palestinian elements involved, with the latter as indirect fire assets (snipers) and the former as a combination of technical advisers, discipline enforcement and special forces.

I wouldn't discount Russian military assets being used in technical support. To go out way on a limb, the Bekaa Valley is likely a favorite 'vacationing' spot.

Posted by: Pappy 2012-02-04 12:10

#3 The usual response of a tyrant in such cases is to use foreign soldiers. Any reports of Iranian/Lebanese troops engaging the population?

If Pencil Neck is serious threatened, I would expect him to bring Hezbollah forces in, dress them in Syrian uniforms, and have them in the street doing his dirty work much like Qaddafi used other African nationals for that sort of job.

Posted by: crosspatch 2012-02-04 11:53

#2 It's heartening that Baghdad Bob ~~Major Maher Nuaimi~~ has found gainful employment with the Free Syrian Army. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia has the following on the Syrian military:

The majority of the soldiers in the Syrian armed forces are Alawites, like President Bashar al-Assad. Alawites make up 12 percent of the Syrian population but are estimated to make up 70 percent of the career soldiers in the Syrian army.[8][9] Of the 200,000 or so career soldiers in the Syrian army, 140,000 are Alawites.[10] A similar imbalance is seen in the officer corps where some 80 percent of the officers are Alawites. The militarys most elite divisions, the Republican Guard and the 4th Mechanized Division, which are commanded by Bashar's brother, are exclusively Alawite. Most of Syrias 300,000 conscripts and air force pilots are, however, Sunni.[8][11] Because of the Alawite composition of the Syrian armed forces, its interests are closely aligned with those of President Bashar al-Assad and the Assad family.

If true, that would explain how the Hama massacre was carried out without too many hiccups. The Ottoman empire, which carried out similar punitive massacres against rebellious non-Turkish populations, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, was a small minority within its territorial boundaries. The key to its longevity, at over 6 centuries, was that the core of its military was always composed of ethnic Turks. The Assads appear to have heeded the lessons of history, and kept the Syrian military mostly Alawite.

Posted by: Zhang Fei 2012-02-04 09:23

#1 The rebels have a huge advantage in that all they have to do is yell to the Syrian forces, "Hey! We are Sunni, you are Sunni. Why are you working for a heathen Shiite?"

In past this sort of thing has been devastatingly effective against draftee standing armies in comparable situations.

Another big plus is that pencilneck himself comes across as a weakling, with brutal underlings.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2012-02-04 08:33

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