Brian M Downing
For over two weeks now, Syrian troops have surrounded Homs, a city of about a million people not far from the northern border with Lebanon. President Bashir Assad’s troops are firing indiscriminately into the hapless town, entering parts of it, and preparing a full assault to crush the resistance there and deliver a harsh warning to the rest of the country.
The world is wondering if Homs will share the fate of Hama, a city not far away that was pummelled in 1982 to break the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence. Tens of thousands were killed. Foreign powers are watching the siege of Homs for weakness in Assad’s military, strength in the Free Syrian Army, and possible ways to help oust Assad.
The Syrian army
At the outset of the insurrection, Assad’s military was one of the better ones in the region. By contrast, Col Qaddafi mistrusted his army and kept it small and only indifferently trained and armed, preferring to base his rule on a cult of personalty. This shortcoming contributed to his army’s defeat by ill-trained rebels with a moderate amount of foreign air support.
The Assad family, by contrast, made the army a symbol of national might and prestige. Syria’s army is large (about 220,000 on active duty), well trained, and owing to Russian, Chinese, and Iranian weapons sales, quite well armed. Further, Assad has loyal security forces composed mainly of fellow Shi’ites, whereas the regular army is conscripted from the general population, which is 70% Sunni.
Homs has been surrounded for over a week now with no full attack yet, only intermittent mortar and rocket fire, roving snipers, and occasional probes. As appalling as this has been, it can be increased to levels many times the present one. The army has heavy artillery, hundreds of mobile rocket launchers, helicopter gunships, and combat aircraft. Homs is not yet Hama.
Assad’s troops are well equipped and trained, but they are not prepared for urban warfare where defenders enjoy considerable advantages of concealment and knowledge of surroundings. The regular army has trained to fight a conventional war with Israel or Iraq, scatter unruly crowds, and intimidate the populace. They are not trained to go into a large city, send patrols down hundreds of streets, and fight door to door.
Defenders can fire from almost every rooftop and alleyway with rifles and RPGs, limited in numbers though they are. The usefulness of Molotov cocktails in urban warfare has been known since the term came into use in the Russo-Finnish War (1939-40), and fuel and bottles are likely being stockpiled. Even upon taking Homs, the army will then have to occupy it indefinitely and probably fight several other such battles in coming months.
A more murderous attack on Homs will present problems for the Assad government. It will certainly lead to greater international sympathy for the rebels and perhaps also more material assistance to them, with or without UN authorization. This would be especially so if air strikes rain down on population centers. After all, Damascus may reason, had Qaddafi refrained from air strikes and held his tongue on his plan for brutal repression, he would have reconquered Libya and been in power today.
The Assad government must also wonder of the effects on its own military. Many soldiers acquiesce to the present level of repression but would refuse orders or defect to the rebels should the level increase. The troops surrounding Homs are drawn from reliable security forces and equally reliable regular army units, but other army units may rethink things. Some will be concerned with their souls in the hereafter, others with their necks in the post-Assad world.
There are costs to delaying an assault on Homs. Every day the regular army suffers more defections. And every day the rebels, in Homs and elsewhere, have more time to receive arms from abroad and train their men to fight. Delay will also be taken, rightly or wrongly, as a sign of indecision and weakness.
Rebel Forces
Images abound of soldiers who deserted from the army and joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Evidence of their numbers and combat efficacy is not so abundant. Footage of serious young men wielding AKs and RPG launchers tells us frustratingly little of their numbers or how they will fare against the regular army, in urban warfare or up in the hills.
We do not know how many of them are former soldiers or simply determined civilians eager to do their part. If former soldiers, it might be wondered how many served in infantry or combat engineer units. They would be of greater help in tactical engagements and bomb making. The efficacy of soldier and civilian alike will be lessened by the same reluctance to kill fellow Syrians that haunts parts of the regular army.
Early on in the Libyan uprising, rebel forces claimed that whole units had come over from Qaddafi’s army. As Qaddafi’s forces rolled across the coastal roads, however, it became clear that the rebel army was little more than an assortment of disorganized bands who advanced jubilantly when no enemy troops opposed them, but who fled when they did face opposition.
It isn’t clear if the Syrian rebels are any better fighters than the Libyan rebels initially were. Homs will be a test. To keep the Libyan comparison another moment, Homs will be hoped to become the FSA’s Misurata – the Libyan city where untrained rebels took on the Khames Brigade, learned basic combat skills remarkably quickly, and broke the elite brigade.
Misurata need not be repeated for the FSA to win and the regular army to lose. Should the Syrian army take serious casualties in taking Homs, the effects on the army might be disruptive. It might be remembered that Pyrrhus, the famed general of Antiquity, won his costly victories not far from Syria, which ended only in defeat and death.
It will be watched with great interest if the FSA can mount attacks on the regular army’s supply lines to Homs and in other parts of the country as well. Such sympathetic attacks will degrade the regular army and buy more time for the defense of Homs.
Outside Parties
If the FSA fails badly in Homs and proves unable to launch attacks elsewhere, outside forces may judge the armed uprising to be a valiant effort but one unlikely to succeed and one difficult to give decisive support to. A solid defense of Homs, on the other hand, may encourage NATO and other powers to support the FSA, openly or clandestinely, even though the Libyan campaign hardly whet NATO’s appetite for intervention.
The FSA, or parts of it, may fall back into Turkey and train under the protection of NATO or Turkey alone, either in conventional or guerrilla tactics. Alternately, the unmarked military aircraft reported to be parked on Turkish tarmacs may streak south where they will find vulnerable troop concentrations and supply columns.
The determination of the Syrian rebels to oust Assad is at least equaled by Saudi Arabia’s determination to detach Syria from its association with Iran and turn it into a Sunni state aligned against Tehran. Saudi intelligence and their colleagues in the ubiquitous Salafi networks are already shipping arms into Syria via the stalwart smuggling routes that thrived during the Iraq insurgency. Traffic flows have simply reversed.
The Sunni insurgents of Iraq may also be sending well-practiced bomb makers into the war. And a Syria rent by protracted civil war, though not yet aligned with Riyadh, would minimally satisfy the Saudi interest in breaking down an ally of Iran.
Copyright 2012 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.