Syrian Rebels, Government Forces Renew Fight in South

A southern rebel alliance is making another a big push to try to capture Dara’a city, and Syrian government warplanes are lashing back with intensive air raids.  Rebel commanders and political activists say the raids include the dropping of barrel bombs on predominantly civilian districts.

The offensive, which started June 25 on the city and nearby towns including Al-Ghazleh, has seen battlefield advantage seesawing between the insurgents and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, with early rebel advances reversed. 

The intensity of the fighting is testimony to the strategic and symbolic importance of Dara’a, where the bloody 2011 suppression of reform protests against the government triggered the four-year-long civil war.

Independent verification of the two-week offensive is hard to obtain; the battlefront has been too dangerous for rights workers and Western journalists to risk.  But commanders and analysts say the insurgent position has not been helped by some Islamist brigades and al-Nusra deciding to form another alliance, the Army of Conquest, modeled on one that helped northern rebels capture the city of Idlib.  FSA brigades resisted the rival, which was announced June 20, and declined to cooperate with it.

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“The insurgents have complained … about a lack of coordination between the two main coalitions fighting Assad in the south, blaming a lack of cohesion for their inability to deal a decisive blow to the regime,” according to Thomas Joscelyn, an editor of the Long War Journal, a publication reporting on jihadist groups.

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