Adalb-
used to
residents of the
province of
Idleb (northwest Syria) to watch the
Turkish military convoys moving back and forth on the
road to
Bab Al-
Hawa to enter Turkey and
then to return to their bases additional reinforcements deployed in the
south corner mount.
The Turkish military reinforcements coincide with the military escalation that Idlib has been witnessing for more than two months, and its intensity is escalating ahead of the Russian-Turkish summit in Moscow, which Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi is expected to join at the end of this month.
In recent weeks, the Syrian regime forces have resorted to artillery bombardment targeting Jabal al-Zawiya, and the areas adjacent to their control area in the western countryside of Aleppo.
The Russian strikes have also intensively targeted sites of the opposition forces, with warplanes, in Jabal al-Zawiya as well, and in the depths of Idlib governorate.
Pictures showing the effects of the destruction caused by the bombing of the Jabal al-Zawiya area, south of Idlib (Al-Jazeera)
gnawing policy
This escalation opened the door to questions about the intention of the regime forces - backed by Russia - to take a new area of Idlib, as has been the case since 2018. The regime forces are launching military operations after intense Russian raids that finally lead to the control of large areas of Idlib and related areas. From the countryside of Hama and Aleppo governorates.
But this policy of nibbling has reached a "extremely dangerous" stage for the opposition.
According to a leader in it - who preferred not to reveal his name - it will not, in any way, accept the loss of Jabal al-Zawiya and the summit of Jabal al-Arba'een, which is geographically connected with it, as he put it, because of its strategic importance that threatens the existence of the opposition and the Syrian revolution as a whole in the city of Idlib, and large areas of northern western Syria.
The leader added that the Turkish side informed them that Ankara responded to Moscow's request to open the international road between Latakia and Aleppo, known as the M4 road, by asking Russia to return to the Sochi Agreement of 2018, which guarantees the return of the displaced to the areas lost by the opposition around The international road between Damascus and Aleppo, known as the M5 road.
Preference for a new agreement
As for the facts on the ground, they do not indicate any major military operation to come, according to Kamal Abdo, Dean of the Faculty of Political Science at the University of the North in Idlib.
Abdo says - in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net - that the situation on the ground in Idlib reveals that the understandings between Ankara and Moscow have reached a dead end, and it is likely that the two parties will reach a new agreement, and that Moscow will try to pressure through bombing to obtain greater gains during this agreement.
In the opinion of the political expert, if the next battle takes place in Idlib, no one will be able to anticipate its results and consequences that may not stop within the Syrian borders, given that the Turkish side has sent huge fighting forces south of Idlib.
Great destruction in a house left by the bombing of the Syrian regime forces on villages in Idlib countryside last July (French)
Movement and political arrangements
Regarding the upcoming Russian-Turkish summit, academic researcher Obada Al-Tamer said that this summit "will be very important for the military and political situation in Syria, and it cannot be separated from the diplomatic movement on Syria, which began with the visit of Jordanian King Abdullah II to Russia and the Russian-American meetings."
Al-Tamer expected that the outcomes of the summit would stabilize the field situation in Idlib, in exchange for political arrangements in Syria, or in the rest of the files between the two sides, or that the military escalation would continue, which would turn into a semi-direct confrontation, which would mean entering into a narrow tunnel of Russian and Turkish relations. , as he put it.
Al-Tamir estimates that reaching a comprehensive understanding between the actors in Syria will be slow and take a long time, due to the overlapping and complexity of the files and the lack of trust between the conflicting parties.