Syrian Army Takes Control of Aleppo Road as Fighting Continues

The Syrian Army has taken major strides towards cutting off the roads in and out of rebel-held Aleppo. The Castello Road is the only road out of the Eastern part of Aleppo, which is currently controlled by Saudi-backed Jaysh al-Islam, an Islamist militia aligned with the Al Qaeda linked Ahrar al Sham and Jabhat Al Nusra. While Assad regime forces did not take control of the road itself, they gained significant territory near it and are now within 1 Kilometer of the road, well within range of light range weapons enabling the Syrian Army to fire on passing convoys. it is estimated that up to 300,000 civilians live in rebel-held areas of Aleppo. Additionally, rebels would be unable to obtain supplies from their counterparts in the northern part of the state of Aleppo.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, has been a prominent battleground in the Syrian Civil War since 2012, when rebels took the eastern part of the city, forcing the Syrian Army to retreat to the west. In late 2013, government forces stepped up their aerial bombardment of the city. Russian involvement in 2015, including bombing campaigns targeting Syrian rebels have proved helpful to the Syrian Army, as they took a series of towns north west of the northern city.

Jaysh al-Islam, a group of approximately 20,000 fighters, seeks to “make Syria a country ruled by sharia law”. In November 2013, the group joined six other Islamist juntas around the country to form the Islamic Front. The Islamic Front contained a number of organizations ranging from the Kurdish Islamist Party, a small faction of Islamist Kurds, to Ahrar al-Sham, a group that was affiliated with the Islamic State until 2014 (when IS Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi killed a member of Ahrar al-Sham for suggesting that IS attempt to unite all Sunni rebel groups). Jaysh al-Islam also has ties to the Al-Nusra front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.

The seizure came after the Assad regime declared a three-day ceasefire for Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Nevertheless, it seems that near Aleppo the fighting has continued, with the Syrian Army ironically having taken control of strategic territory.

Assad’s relative success in Aleppo would not have been possible without the help of Russia, who has conducted a series of air raids on the Areas north of Aleppo, areas which Assad’s forces now secure. Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and an economic hub, is geographically strategic, and taking it would cut off rebels south of the city. Additionally, it would allow it to cut off supply lines to rebels in Idlib and Hama, given that they receive most of their supplies from Turkish border crossings at Bab al-Salama and Bab al-Hawa.

The battle between Saudi-backed Jaysh al-Islam and the Iranian-backed Assad regime is a microcosm of the Syrian Civil War, and the larger sectarian tensions in the Middle East more generally. It is an example of one of the many proxy wars that the two nations have been fighting over who will be the dominant power in the region; specifically, both of them are supporting insurgencies within the other’s sphere of influence. But the conflict is also indicative of tensions between secularists and islamists. The Islamic Front, along with various other Syrian Rebel groups, seek to overthrow the secular Assad government and institute Sharia law. Saudi Arabia, whose own laws are also based on Sharia, supports Jaysh Al-Islam, while simultaneously facing a threat from Islamic State and Al Qaeda, both of whom seek to topple the monarchy they view as illegitimate, even while Jaysh al-Islam allied with Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra. And of course Al Qaeda and IS, while both share a jihadist ideology focused on establishing the worldwide caliphate and imposing Sharia law, disagree on which one of them is the legitimate leader of this effort.