• Pro-Assad forces redeploy outside city ‘to preserve lives’
• City lies midway between Aleppo and Damascus

AMMAN: Anti-government fighters captured the key city of Hama on Thursday, bringing them a major victory after a lightning advance across northern Syria — dealing a fresh blow to President Bashar Al Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.

The Syrian army said it was redeploying outside the city “to preserve civilian lives and prevent urban combat after intense clashes”.

Abu Mohammed Al Golani, the leader of the group spearheading the advance, said “we are preparing to keep marching south towards Homs”, Syria’s great crossroads city that links the capital Damascus to the north and the coast.

“Your time has come,” said a spokesman for Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), the outfit led by Golani, in an online post, calling on city residents to “rise up in revolution”.

Al Jazeera television broadcast images of “HTS fighters inside Hama”, some of them greeting civilians near a roundabout while others drove in military vehicles and on mopeds.

The HTS took the main northern city of Aleppo last week and has since pushed south from its enclave in north-west Syria. Fighting has raged around villages outside Hama for two days.

The fall of Hama, which was in government hands throughout the civil war triggered by a 2011 uprising against President Assad, will send shockwaves through Damascus and fears of a continued march south by anti-government fighters.

The collapse of pro-government forces in northern Syria over the past week underlines the problems that alliance has faced since.

Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022. Hezbollah, which had been the most potent pro-Assad force in Syria, has suffered heavy losses in Lebanon.

As his forces swept into Hama, Abu Mohammed Al Golani issued a video statement warning against any involvement by Iraq’s Hashd Al Shaabi militias, the other main regional force that is aligned with Iran.

“We urge him (Iraq’s prime minister) again to keep Iraq away from entering the flames of a new war tied to what is happening in Syria,” Golani said in his statement.

Pivotal city

Hama lies more than a third of the way from Aleppo to Damascus and its capture would prevent any quick attempt by Bashar Al Assad and his allies to launch a counter-offensive.

An advance by anti-Assad forces on Homs, 40 kilometres south of Hama, could cut Damascus off from the southern coastal region that is a stronghold of the Alawite sect and where Russia has naval and air bases. The president himself belongs to the Alawite sect.

“Assad now cannot afford to lose anything else. The big battle is the one coming against Homs. If Homs falls, we are talking of a potential change of regime,” said Jihad Yazigi, editor of the Syria Report news letter.

Although Hama had not previously been taken by anti-government forces, it was historically a centre of opposition to rule by Damascus.

In 1982, Muslim Brotherhood activists rose up in revolt there and the military launched a devastating three-week assault that killed more than 10,000 people.

Golani, the HTS head, referred to that episode in his statement, saying “the revolutionaries have begun entering the city of Hama to cleanse a wound that has persisted in Syria for 40 years”.

However, he added that “our fighters taking Hama will not exact revenge for the events of 1982”.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2024