Special to WorldTribune.com

By Brian M. Downing

For over two weeks, 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 pummeled 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 Syria 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. Gadhafi 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 percent 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 Gadhafi 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 Gadhafi’s army. As Gadhafi’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.

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.

  Bashar Assad, Battle of Homs: The closely-watched test for both Assad’s military and Syrian rebel forces, Free Syrian Army, helicopter gunships, mobile rocket launchers, Muslim Brotherhood, Shi’ites, Sunni, Syrian Army defections