Syrian rebels led by Islamist militants have entered the central city of Homs as they close in on Damascus while the country’s main allies — Russia and Iran — scrambled to protect the regime of authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad and their own assets in the country.
Abu Mohammad al-Golani, a leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group, said late on December 7 that the insurgent fighters were “in the final moments of liberating” Homs, a city of 775,000 people.
HTS is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Britain, Canada, and the European Union.
Experts said the future of the Assad regime was hanging in the balance — and that, if it fell, it would also represent a major geopolitical setback for the Kremlin which, along with Tehran, has supported the Syrian government through many years of civil war.
Media reports said many residents of Damascus were stocking up on supplies as thousands were attempting to leave the country through the border with Lebanon — itself a war-torn nation in the increasingly chaotic Middle East.
As fighting on the ground and rebel gains intensified, the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran, and Turkey held emergency talks in Doha, Qatar, on December 7 calling for an end to hostilities in the most serious challenge to Assad’s rule in years.
The U.S. State Department told RFE/RL that Washington was closely monitoring the situation on the ground in Syria.
A spokesperson said the United States and its partners and allies urged that civilians, including members of minority groups, be protected.
The spokesperson said it was time to negotiate an end to the Syrian conflict consistent with principals established in UN Security Council Resolution 2254. The spokesperson added that the refusal of the Assad regime to engage in the process has directly led to the current situation.
The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that “Assad regime forces have collapsed and Assad’s backers do not appear willing to bolster the Syrian Arab Army by rapidly deploying additional forces.”
Russia has multiple military sites in Syria, including an air base at Hmeimim and strategic naval facilities at Tartus, which are also used to support the Kremlin’s actions in Africa.
The ISW said that Moscow had not yet begun to evacuate the base, “but it remains unclear whether Russia will keep its vessels at the port as Syrian rebels continue to advance swiftly across regime-held territory.”
The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats blog said the Assad regime “faces an existential threat given the widespread collapse of regime forces and lack of sufficient external backing to bolster these forces.”
It added that “Russia will face logistic challenges that will undermine its Africa operations if it loses its footprint in Syria.”
Mark Katz, a professor emeritus at George Mason University who focuses on Russia and the Middle East, told RFE/RL that the Kremlin risks losing its air assets in Syria if it can’t agree with Turkey on the use of its airspace.
“In one sense, the Turkish government might be happy to grant permission as the more the Russian Air Force is out of Syria, the happier Ankara will be,” he said.
“Russia would also face difficulties relocating its warships because they would need Turkey’s permission to get into the Black Sea. They would have to go through NATO waters,” he added.
Meanwhile, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said the United States “should have nothing to do” with the war in Syria, where a small contingent of U.S. forces remain deployed in some areas.
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT,” he wrote on the Truth Social platform.
“THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”
Fast-moving developments on the ground were difficult to confirm, but media outlets quoted witnesses as well as rebel and Syrian army sources as saying militant fighters were continuing to make large gains on December 7 in their effort to topple Assad.
Some reported signs of panic in Damascus, with shortages of critical supplies, although the government said Assad was at work as usual in the capital.
Government forces and their Russian allies appear to have failed in their attempt to halt the rebel push toward Homs, which stands at an important intersection between the capital, Damascus, and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus. Homs is 140 kilometers from the capital.
Witnesses and army sources told Reuters and other news agencies that rebels had entered Homs amid reports that government forces had pulled out. Celebrations were reported in some areas of the city.
Homs Province is Syria’s largest in size and borders Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan. The city is also home to one of Syria’s two state-run oil refineries.
The AFP news agency quoted security sources as saying hundreds of Syrian government troops, some injured, had fled across the border into Iraq.
The surprising offensive was launched last week by a coalition of rebel groups led by the Islamist HTS faction.
Besides HTS, the fighters include forces of an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. Turkey has denied backing the offensive, though experts say insurgents would not have launched it without the country’s consent.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said civilians were fleeing from Homs toward the Mediterranean coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus, strongholds of the government and the site of the Russian air and naval bases.
Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declined to comment on the fate of the Russian bases, saying he “wasn’t in the business of guessing.”
The United Nations said on December 6 that almost 300,000 people in Syria had already been displaced since late November by the fighting, and that up to 1.5 million could be forced to flee as the rebels advance and inflict losses on Assad, as well as his Russian and Iranian allies.
Assad has relied on Iran and Russia to remain in power since the conflict erupted in 2011.
Following the foreign ministers’ meeting in Doha, Lavrov said — referring to HTS rebels — that it was “inadmissible to allow terrorist groups” to take control of Syrian territory and that Russia would oppose them with all means possible.
Since the rebels seized control of Aleppo a week ago, they have moved on to capture other major cities with Assad’s forces providing little resistance.
Besides capturing Aleppo in the north, Hama in the center, and Deir al-Zor in the east, rebels rose up in southern Suweida and Deraa, saying on December 6 they had taken control of the two cities and posting videos showing insurgent celebrations there.
Taking Deraa and Suweida in the south could allow a concerted assault on the capital, Damascus, the seat of Assad’s power, military sources said.
Video posted online showed protesters in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana chanting and tearing down a statue of Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000, when his son took power.
Golani, the HTS leader, told CNN in an exclusive interview on December 5 from Syria that Assad’s government was bound to fall, propped up only by Russia and Iran.
“The seeds of the regime’s defeat have always been within it,” he said. “But the truth remains, this regime is dead.”
With reporting by AFP and Reuters
