Syrian Army Launches New Offensive Against ISIS in Hama Province

ISIS Now Facing Pressure on Three Fronts in Northern Syria

In addition to facing multiple attacks inside Iraq, ISIS is also under growing pressure on a number of fronts in Syria, with its troops already fighting the Kurds in northern Raqqa and other rebels around the Aleppo Province town of Azaz.

With ISIS having to spread its troops in so many different directions, the Syrian Army has now attempted to open yet another front, launching an offensive against ISIS territory in the Hama Province, which would push them into the southern part of the Raqqa Province.

While a lot of the territory in Syria’s multi-faction civil war has been relatively stable under the control of one faction or another, the losses that have happened recently have tended to happen when one of these factions faces a sudden push from multiple directions by different rivals.

ISIS has played this strategy to great effect in the past, piggybacking on other fighting to gain territory, or ceding relatively unimportant villages to try to widen the front an enemy has to defend. In this case, however, it looks like ISIS is the one that’s going to lose ground.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.