The Syrian/Iraq Smorgasbord

"If Aleppo falls, the Syrian revolution falls." 
"You look to the right, and there's the regime. You look to the left, it's the Islamic State (group). We are caught in a pincer."  Baraa Halabisaid, Syrian activist, Aleppo

This photo provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Aleppo Media Center (AMC), which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a Syrian street vendor selling bags of bread on a street that was damaged by government forces airstrikes in the Halwaniya neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, Monday, July 7, 2014. (AP / Aleppo Media Center, AMC)

Aleppo is now under siege from Syrian troops. Those portions of the city in the hands of rebels have seen the arrival of elite Republican Guards and Hezbollah fighters, alongside the Syrian military.
Rebels were rushing to bring in convoys of fighters, according to Halabi and another activist, who uses the name Abdullah Ghannam. "Rebels in the area aren't enough to fill all the fronts -- we have four or five active fronts now."

Rebel-held areas of Aleppo were badly battered by crude barrel bomb bombardments for months on end. Regime forces took to battering the city's industrial area. After a year of one victory after another, Syrian government forces feel they're finally on the road to resolving the civil conflict. Rebel supply lines into Lebanon and the blockades of rebel-held areas saw the surrender of insurgents in humiliating defeat

The central city of Homs fell from rebel hands back to the Syrian government. Fighting between the Sunni Syrian rebels who deplore the vicious agenda of the Islamic State extremists, which began last December killing thousands of people, weakened the cause and diverted the fight from one against the regime to remove Bashar al Assad to one of conflict with the Islamists in fear of their turning Syria into an Islamist state.

Certainly part of that fear has now been realized, since the border between Iraq and Syria has been obliterated and the announcement of that caliphate was announced, and the Islamists have gone from strength to strength, terrorizing even the Iraqi Shiite military in their relentless march to take as many towns and cities from the government of Iraq as they can manage. With the help of Iraqi Sunnis who soon may have to turn against the Islamists themselves to save their nation from the fate awaiting it.

Aleppo is the last large urban area the rebels hold in their loss of territory to govvernment forces of the past year, from a  triumphant high of once having taken a good part of the country under their wing. The very Islamist fighting forces they once welcomed they now battle. The vital supply route close to the Turkish border will soon be closed off to the rebels. Further east, Raqqa, also once theirs is now in the hands of the Sunni Islamic State group.

A Syrian army officer affirmed to state TV that his troops are now in control of a main highway north of Alepo, having "closed a belt of up to 80%" from the north. "It is going to be a very difficult battle", commented Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain. The government appears to be planning a counter move against the Islamic militants pushing into the northern countryside surrounding Aleppo.

Good luck on that one. May they all succeed in destroying one another; the Shiite Hezbollah, the Al Quds Republican Guard militia, the Syrian regime military versus the Sunni Islamic State. Should they manage to destroy one another those who are left may manage to finally find a common purpose in getting along together.