Syrian rebel forces aim to topple Assad’s regime in strategic advance

AFP | Beirut

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Rebel forces pressing a lightning offensive in Syria aim to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, their Islamist leader said in an interview published yesterday. After wresting other key cities from government control, the rebels were at the gates of Syria’s Homs, a war monitor said, though the defence ministry denied claims it had withdrawn its troops.

In little over a week, the offensive has seen Syria’s second city Aleppo and strategically located Hama fall from Assad’s control, for the first time since the civil war began in 2011. Should the rebels capture Homs, that would cut the seat of power in the capital Damascus from the Mediterranean coast, a key bastion of the Assad clan, which has ruled Syria for the past five decades.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel alliance, said the goal of the offensive was to end Assad’s rule. “When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal,” Jolani told CNN in an interview. The rebel alliance conducting the offensive that began on November 27 is led by HTS, which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda but has sought to soften its image in recent years.

According to the Observatory, Syrian troops and Iran-backed forces “suddenly” withdrew from Deir Ezzor in the east and headed towards central Syria where Homs is located. The Observatory later said the army had withdrawn from Homs city towards its outskirts, and rebel military commander Hassan Abdel Ghani said armed forces were “collapsing as they fled before our forces on the frontlines”. Syria’s defence ministry denied the report, saying: “There is no truth to news... about the army withdrawing from Homs”.

The rebels launched their offensive in northern Syria the same day a ceasefire took effect in the war between Israel and Lebanese group Hezbollah, which along with Russia and Iran have been crucial backers of Assad’s government. Turkey, which has backed the opposition, yesterday said it would hold talks this weekend with Russia and Iran in Qatar to discuss the situation in Syria. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped the rebel advance would go off “without incident”.

Syria’s Kurdish-led force expressed readiness for dialogue with Turkey and the rebels, saying the offensive heralded a “new” political reality for the country. Fearing the rebels’ advance, tens of thousands of members of Assad’s Alawite minority began fleeing Homs on Thursday, residents and the Observatory said. Homs was the scene of a yearslong government siege of opposition areas and deadly sectarian attacks in the early years of the civil war.

The war began with Assad’s brutal crackdown on democracy protests, and activists referred to the city as “the capital of the revolution” against the government. Syrians who were forced out of the country by the crackdown on the revolt were glued to their phones as they watched the developments unfold.

“We’ve been dreaming of this for more than a decade,” said Yazan, a 39-year-old former activist who survived the siege and is now living as a refugee in France. Asked whether he was worried about HTS’s agenda, he said: “It doesn’t matter to me who is conducting this. The devil himself could be behind it. What people care about is who is going to liberate the country