As expected, Palmira is free. The final offensive has been resolved ahead of schedule and the winners' wagon adapts, crowding ahead according to script. Within 48 hours, after Washington's declarations that it intends to continue fighting terrorists in Syria (when? Where?), The interest of the United Nations also arrives, attentive to the archaeological heritage of the Syrian city. The projections on the times of restoration overlap but it seems that everyone is ignorant of the focal point: for 10 months and in the days immediately preceding the reconquest, the "Bride of the desert" did not exist for the international community.
The news and newspapers today speak of ISIS in difficulty with a certain impudence: except for the Syrian Armed Forces and their allies, one wonders who can claim the right to consider Palmira as a turning point in the fight against terrorism. The battle around Tadmur, is the concretization of a new phase in the war, anticipated on this heading by Online Defense at the beginning of the year. While the peace talks following the ceasefire in Geneva languish in the most murky politics, real changes are made, as it was logical to imagine, on the battlefield.
And it is from the ground that we must start to understand what to expect from the Syrian theater in the near future.
After the reconquest of Palmira, the 120a the 81a and 67a Damascus army brigade backed by the paramilitaries of the Falcons of the desert and by voluntary militias, they began the final assault to free Quraytayn, a city 90 km from Homs characterized by a strong Christian presence. The ancient Assyrian city enjoys a strategic position because it leads to the south-eastern quadrant, facing the Iraqi border. The reconquest could be imminent and will inevitably mark another important step for a substantial reduction of the Syrian territory in the hands of the Caliphate. The same territorial continuity between Iraq and Syria in the hands of the fundamentalists would be called into question.
Sources from the front confirm that the incessant Russian air raids would aim to pulverize everything that moves around the city, on the flanks not covered by Damascus forces.
In this regard it must be said that after the victory at Palmira, Assad's forces are repositioning themselves according to the strategic importance of the various fronts. The infamous Tiger Forces, special departments commanded by the charismatic Suheil Al Hassan, they would be on their way to the north, on the Jisr al Shugur front, in Idlib Governorate.
The current military framework sees two major sectors of friction between loyalist and Islamist terrorists: the band around Aleppo and the south-east front, beyond the Palmyra desert, towards Deir ez-Zur.
In the first sector the road to the east would now be free and the current major efforts concern the reconquest and the reclamation of the mountains around Idlib, towards the Turkish border.
On the desert front, it is unquestionable that the reconquest of Palmyra's Easter opens the doors to the eastward hook, to Deir ez-Zur where General Issam Zahreddine and his parders of 104a Republican Guard Brigade resist entrenched for years against the Islamist siege. Between the Syrian army and this objective there are thousands of mines and IEDs placed by the terrorists on the run and just over 100 kilometers of flat desert.
To these two pictures are added the rebel pockets south of Damascus and the fluid situation in the triangle that forms the South of Syria, between the sea, Israel and Jordan, where the rebel militias are fighting for a backlash of the Caliphate, in a struggle all Islamist intestine.
As we have argued for months, similarly to the evolution of military scenarios, the state of the art in politics is updated, with Assad's government increasingly at the center of the game.
The Western international recognition arrived at the Damascus institutions after the reconquest of Palmyra, even if passed through the filter of archeology, has an enormous geopolitical weight. In the hope of the UN envoy Staffan de Mistura regarding the progress of the negotiations, the Syrian government has already replied that the "presidency" argument is not negotiable.
Syria's dismemberment plan with a Sunni component in the east, a Turcoman near Turkey and an Alawite on the coast in the Latakia area, now seems to have failed.
The victory of the loyalists in Palmyra has definitively established two truths:
- even if at the cost of sacrifices, the Caliphate can be won on the field;
- the Syrian national state, for now, is virtually safe.
Already in April we expect repercussions in the Mediterranean basin, with a significant fundamentalist osmosis towards Libya and the European Union. We will follow what is happening and the important political adjustments that Europe and the United States will have to implement at this point.
(Photo: SAA)
