BEIRUT—Shiite fighters, largely from outside Syria, are
advancing toward the country's largest city backed by Russian
airstrikes, giving the Assad regime the most significant momentum
it has had in years just days ahead of new cease-fire talks.
Syrian and Russian airstrikes routed rebels from long-held
territories in northern Syria, while pro-government forces led by
Iranian, Lebanese Hezbollah, and other Shiite fighters are
advancing on Aleppo, according to rebels on the ground and
officials tracking the conflict.
They seized the village of Kifeen north of Aleppo on Sunday
night, rebels said, putting the regime forces about 15 miles from
the Turkish border—the closest they have been since late 2013.
More than 35,000 Syrians seeking to escape the assault over the
past week have already converged on the border with Turkey,
creating a new humanitarian crisis. Some are sleeping out in the
cold in open fields or amid olive trees. Others have taken refuge
in schools and mosques, waiting to be allowed into Turkey.
The offensive by President Bashar al-Assad's regime has turned
the tide against rebels in the north and especially around Aleppo,
Syria's largest city, which has been partly controlled by rebels
since 2012. That effort may take months. But the gains offer the
clearest example yet of the impact of Russia's foray into the
Syrian war—something that rebels are unlikely to reverse without an
infusion of military support from their regional and Western
backers.
Meeting in Washington on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry
and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir discussed a Saudi
proposal to send ground forces to support the rebels. U.S.
officials were welcoming but said they needed to know more.
Escalated Russian bombing coincided with United Nations-mediated
peace talks on Syria held in Geneva last week, helping
pro-government militias break a rebel siege on Shiite-majority
villages and advance toward Aleppo city.
The talks quickly collapsed, with the U.S. and rebel groups
laying much of the blame on Moscow and the Assad regime.
Moscow has ignored calls from the U.N. and U.S. to end its
campaign—jeopardizing chances for much success when global powers
meet Thursday in Munich to discuss implementing a cease-fire.
The landscape has quickly grown more tangled. Kurdish fighters
who aligned with the U.S. in fighting Islamic State are now using
the Russian airstrikes to make their own territorial gains at the
expense of the weakened rebels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the Turkish capital Ankara
to discuss the refugee situation, sharply criticized the bombing in
Syria, which she said was "mainly from the Russian side."
"Over the past days, we have been not only appalled, but also
horrified by the human suffering created for tens of thousands of
people by airstrikes," she said.
World leaders have called on Turkey to open its border to the
newly displaced wave. Turkish officials are reluctant to do so as
the country is already hosting some 2.5 million Syrian
refugees.
Rebels, cut off from their main northern supply route last week,
said they feared the campaign would next expand westward to close
their last line into Aleppo, which runs from the western Bab
al-Hawa crossing at Turkey's border.
"The military scales have entirely flipped," said Mustafa Amin,
a political leader with the Levant Front, one of the biggest
non-jihadist rebel alliances in Aleppo.
Mr. Amin, whose group has received American TOW antitank
missiles, said the rebels' focus was no longer on controlling
territory but "to continue the battle as we much as we can, and to
chip away at the regime's allies."
"There is no regime advance," he added. "In the air, it is
Russian planes. And on the ground, there are Afghan, Hezbollah, and
Iranian fighters. And in the operations room, there are
Iranians."
Iran has recruited thousands of Afghans, many of them refugees
living in Iran, to fight on the government's side in Syria. A Human
Rights Watch report in January said the Afghan fighters are
organized and commanded by Iranian military officials and have
fought at every major battlefield in Syria, including around
Damascus and Aleppo.
In addition, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Russian state
television late Sunday that special forces from his mostly Muslim
region are on the ground in Syria to assist the Kremlin's air
campaign.
A Western diplomat tracking the war said the Russian
intervention has "absolutely created a new reality on the ground
that will be difficult to reverse."
Moscow began bombing Syria in late September, vowing to target
Islamic State. U.S. and other Western officials say the strikes
have focused on anti-Assad rebels, including civilians in
rebel-held areas. Russia denies targeting civilians.
The battle for Aleppo, which had a prewar population of more
than two million, once focused on the rebel potential to topple a
major urban center. But now, much like the broader battlefield in
Syria, it is no longer a viable fight between anti-Assad forces and
the regime, rebels and analysts said.
As Russia aids the regime, the U.S.-led coalition in Syria has
been focused on fighting Islamic State and sealing its access to
the Turkish border, rather than bolstering rebels, they said.
In addition to the Russian bombing, the regime's recent gains
were enabled by a new flood of Shiite pro-government fighters from
Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, rebels said.
Further squeezing them are opportunistic moves by U.S.-backed
Syrian Kurdish militias, who are seeking to consolidate their own
territory in northern Syria at the expense of other rebel
groups.
The Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, have benefited from
Russian airstrikes and in some cases have received direct Russian
military aid, Kurdish fighters said, showing how messy alliances in
the area have become.
Advances in recent weeks by the Kurdish-controlled Syrian
Democratic Forces—an alliance that also includes non-Kurdish
rebels—northwest of Aleppo had already weakened rebels and cut off
some of their supply lines when pro-regime forces escalated their
offensive there last week, Kurdish fighters and rebels said.
Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Talal Silo said in an
interview at his headquarters in Hasakah, in northern Syria, that
rebels were given a choice to join his alliance. "They will be
finished by the regime," he predicted.
Kurds have to take territory from both Islamic State and the
rebels fighting Islamic State to link up their territory in
northern Syria.
On Monday, the YPG took control of two villages from rebels
north of Aleppo, activists said, after seizing over the weekend
another village on the outskirts of the Minnigh air base, a
rebel-held air base now surrounded from the north and south by
Kurdish fighters.
A United Nations report on Monday accused the Syrian government
of "extermination as a crime against humanity" in jails across the
country. The U.N. commission of inquiry, which based its finding on
621 interviews, said thousands of detainees have been killed while
held by different sides in Syria's conflict. But it went on to say
it was apparent that government authorities administering prisons
and detention centers were aware that deaths on a massive scale
were occurring.
Damascus has previously denied it systematically tortures or
kills people in detention.
Felicia Schwartz in Washington and Dana Ballout contributed to
this article.
Write to Nour Malas at nour.malas@wsj.com and Raja Abdulrahim at
raja.abdulrahim@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 09, 2016 01:45 ET (06:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.