The fall of the Assad government in Syria took almost everybody by surprise and has created uncertainty for competing foreign interests that had established lines of control most assumed were frozen in the region.
Launched barely two weeks ago, the operation by opposition militias had speedy success in achieving its initial goal — seizing Syria’s second city, Aleppo. From there, in a little more than a week, the rebel alliance reached Damascus and on Sunday put an end to five decades of Assad family rule.
The overthrow of Assad came at a time when his allies were unable to muster the decisive firepower that had propped him up for years. Iran and Hezbollah-backed forces could not mount a decent ground defence, and while Russian warplanes struck at the militants early on in their campaign, Moscow military backing of the rebels faded away as the pace of the opposition’s advance quickened.
Citing satellite images, military observers said Russia had appeared to move several ships away from its Syrian naval bases out to sea.
According to a Kremlin source cited in Russian state media, Syrian opposition leaders had agreed to guarantee the safety of Russian military bases and diplomatic institutions in Syria. But some Russian war bloggers said the situation around the bases was extremely tense and the source did not say how long the security guarantee would last.
Israel has sent tanks over the border into its buffer zone with Syria to prevent a spillover from the turmoil but has declared its intention of staying out of the conflict engulfing its neighbour. Defence Minister Israel Katz said, however, that the military would step up airstrikes on Syrian stores of advanced weaponry “including surface-to-air missiles, air defence systems, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, long-range rockets and coastal missiles.”
