Will Assad Survive in Syria? And Will the Conflict Widen Into a Regional War?
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Today on State of the World, will Assad survive in Syria and will the conflict widen into a regional war?

You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Friday, December 6th. I'm Greg Dixon.

In Syria, rebels continue their gains against government forces. They've taken Hama, a strategically important city on the highway to the capital, Damascus. In a few minutes, we go to Lebanon, where people are nervously watching the renewed conflict next door in Syria and wondering what it will mean for a ceasefire with Israel. First, what are the chances Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will survive this rebel advance?

He's been counted out before, but managed to cling to power. But as NPR's Jackie Northam reports, Assad again finds himself in a precarious position. For several years, Syria's long-running civil war between the Assad regime and opposition fighters was at a stalemate.

But late last week, the conflict dramatically reignited when a patchwork of rebel groups seized control of Syria's second largest city, Aleppo, and then days later, the central city of Hama. There was very little resistance from government troops. I think it is a story of the regime's structural weaknesses being quite brutally exposed. Julian Barnes-Dacey is director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The country has been crumbling and regime strength has been under severe pressure. Barnes-Stacy says for years, Syria could rely heavily on Iran and its proxies, such as Hezbollah, as well as Russia, to back up its military.

But he says they're now stretched thin, fighting conflicts of their own. And I think with the Russians and the Iranians distracted and under pressure elsewhere, the carpet was really quite dramatically pulled from beneath the regime's feet with this unexpected rebel offensive.

Nonetheless, Assad's instinct was to appeal to his closest allies, says Muaz Mustafa, who heads up the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which is pushing for democracy in Syria. Ben-Shad Assad left Damascus and went directly to Moscow and spent a few days there and only returned to Damascus on the day that the Iranian foreign minister was landing in Damascus. Russian fighter jets began pounding rebel targets in Aleppo and the rebel stronghold of Idlib in the north.

Iran sent in militias, mostly from Iraq. But it's unlikely Damascus or Moscow will provide large or any numbers of troops, says Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Middle East Studies.

He says this time Assad may have to rely more on pro-government forces to battle the rebels. They may not be able to prevail because they're exhausted. Landis says it'll be difficult to rebuild the regime's fighting force. Crippling international sanctions have decimated Syria's economy. There's a 90% poverty rate. There are chronic shortages of electricity and other state services. So the perspective of most Syrians is just very bleak.

And they don't want to die for this regime. Assad is tone deaf. He doesn't know how to speak to his own people. He's not inspiring. He's not charismatic. He's out of touch with Syrians completely. There were signs of jubilation after rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, swept into Aleppo and on through Hama.

The Islamist HTS had past links to al-Qaeda but has since cut ties with the group and has promised to be more inclusive of other religious groups in Syria, including those from Assad's own Alawite community. There have been many diplomatic efforts in the past and now to resolve the Syria quagmire among regional players, including Arab nations and Turkey, which is implicitly backing the HTS rebels.

But Barnstacey said Assad has never shown an inclination to compromise during his more than 20 years in power. He was in a far worse situation in the early days of the civil war and he hunkered down and he battled through. And frankly, he has far deeper and wider regional and international support today. So I think he will not see this as a moment to step down, to back down.

The question is how long will this support last as rebels continue their advance towards the capital, Damascus? It's NPR's Jackie Northam. As the Syrian rebels make gains against the Assad regime, they're getting closer to the border with Lebanon. A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah there is just a week old. NPR's Lauren Freyer takes us to Lebanon's border with Syria, where people are afraid fighting might spill over and even start a regional war.

Rafat Nasrallah gestures across the snow-capped hills at Syria, just five miles away. As a child, he'd cross the border to go to Boy Scouts. But after the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, Sunni Muslim rebels also crossed the other way. They occupied a village here, fought with Lebanese soldiers and set off suicide bombs.

In response, Nasrallah's Christian village teamed up with Shiite Muslim Hezbollah fighters to do armed patrols. I'd make a deal with the devil if it meant protecting my village, he says. But Hezbollah is not the devil. They're our neighbors, the kids we grew up going to school with, he says. His alliance with Hezbollah does come at a cost, though. The road up to here is lined with craters from Israeli airstrikes.

Hezbollah also uses this border to ferry weapons from Iran across Syria and into Lebanon. And those supply lines are what Israel has been targeting.

Fatima Salah chants the Quran's opening lines as she shuffles through rubble. Ten of her cousins were killed in an airstrike last month on their house near this border. I will show you the house how it was before. She shows me an old photo on her phone of a two-story house with flower beds.

That's a massive house. And that was right here. Yes. It's just like twisted metal and I can see just the back of it, just sort of one room standing. Yes.

Salah sees Syria and Israel as two fronts in the same war. On the same day Israel agreed to a ceasefire and a phased withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon, Syrian rebels started making advances on the other side of this border. It's obvious. The day it stopped over here, it started over there. It's not a coincidence. It's the same war. Against who? Against the resistance.

By the resistance, she means Hezbollah and its patron Iran. The idea is that Iran has been so preoccupied with the war in Lebanon, where its proxy Hezbollah has suffered huge losses, that it took its eye off or perhaps diverted resources from bolstering another of its allies, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government.

And so it's on this border that people like Fatima Salah worry Syrian Sunni Muslim groups fighting Assad could confront the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah, which she sees as her protector. They are next to us. They are on our borders. Well, next step, Aleppo, Hama, Damascus, and then us. Her fear is real. A decade ago, the same rebels who've taken cities in Syria this week crossed into Lebanon just behind her house.

But the timing of their assault inside Syria now has fueled speculation here that Israel and the U.S. might somehow be supporting these rebel advances as a way to weaken Assad, Hezbollah, and Iran. In the past, a former Israeli military commander did confirm that his country was arming some anti-Assad rebel factions. People here say they fear that may tip the scales toward a bigger regional war.

Ali Zghaib is an international law student who also herds sheep on the Lebanon-Syria border, just like his father and grandfather before him. My mother is Syrian, I can't even say a word. From Homs.

His mother is from the other side, the Syrian city of Homs, where rebels are now advancing. We're terrified, he says, by Israeli airstrikes on this side, which have continued even after a ceasefire went into effect.

and by rebels on the other side, where he crosses to sell his sheep on the Syrian market. If these two wars come together, it'll happen right here, he says, and there will be no ceasefire anymore. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, in Yunin, on the Lebanon-Syria border. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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