Foreign Shiite fighters closing in on Aleppo

The forces laying siege to the war-torn country’s one-time commercial hub are loyal to Tehran and Hezbollah, not the Assad regime

By Avi Issacharoff, TOI

The torrent of refugees fleeing Aleppo to the Turkish border may herald the pending fall of Syria’s financial capital to Shiite hands – Iran, Hezbollah, plus what is left of President Bashar Assad’s army and the Russians.

Conquering Aleppo would establish the Assad regime’s control over the entire northwestern part of Syria, the Latakia area that came to be known as “Alawistan,” after the Alawite sect from which Assad hails.

But Aleppo, once the country’s largest city, is far from being the commercial hub it was before the civil war. The city has become a battlefield, mostly deserted. It is now but a shadow of its past glory and a prize only in the eyes of the forces fighting to overtake it.

The battle over Aleppo may be a critical point in the war on Syria from a different perspective: it may be a tipping point in the fight between Saudi Arabia, which supported the anti-Assad rebels, and Tehran, which helped prop the regime up.

Russia and its allies, however are still far from defeating Islamic State, based in the east, in Raqqa near the border with Iraq, even if Aleppo falls into their hands.

Over the weekend, Aniseh Makhlouf, the mother of Bashar Assad and wife of former president Hafez Assad, the “Lion of Damascus,” passed away.

Hafez died in 2000, but would have died all over again if he had lived to see the condition to which Syria has fallen and the way in which foreigners are taking over his land. It is not the foreign Sunni militias that would have troubled him but the Shiite militias, from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iraq and Lebanon, all acting under the command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and with Russian air cover.

The issue of Shiite involvement in Syria did not start in the current civil war but immediately when Bashar came to power in 2000.

Unlike Hafez, who fought Hezbollah in the late 1980s and never let the Shiite organization become too strong, the younger Assad allowed Hezbollah to do as they pleased in Syria and make the country a second motherland of sorts.

The Lebanese Shiite organization’s involvement in Syria in the military aspect grew over the years and the dependence became mutual. When the civil war broke out in 2011, it became one-sided, with the great Syria, a country that used to meddle in Lebanon at will, now allowing Hezbollah and Iran to take over, slowly but surely.

The “Shiite Axis” is now close to laying siege to Aleppo. The US, after the failure of recent talks in Geneva, may say that it does not support Russia and its allies but de facto, prefers the Russians and the Iranians to the prospect of an emboldened Islamic State.

And without Washington’s interference, Moscow continues its incessant bombing of Aleppo, killing hundreds of innocent civilians. Iran is taking over large parts of Syria and in the future may establish strongholds that will threaten Israel, whether in northwestern Syria or in its next target, the Deraa area close to the border with Israel and Jordan.

The only country that can tip the scales back toward the rebels is Saudi Arabia.