In late August and early September, a group of Islamist rebels led by Jund al-Aqsa gained a substantial amount of territory in the northern part of the Hama Province, even nearing the capital city of Hama. The gains included substantial numbers of both Christian and Alawite villages, with concerns they would face purges by the Islamists.
Over the weekend, however, the Syrian military seems to be reversing those gains almost entirely, overrunning a number of towns and villages which had previously been held by the rebels, and pushing them back toward the Idlib Province, which is dominated by the Nusra Front.
Fighting in Hama has been very intermittent over the past year, with both sides tending to amass big gains in relatively short periods of time, only to see all the fighting there stall for weeks or sometimes months on end with both sides look elsewhere for easier opportunities.
The Jund al-Aqsa-led forces are seen getting closer with the Nusra Front in recent days, as the fighting in Aleppo has given Nusra major amounts of publicity, and sympathy amongst rival rebels. This likely made the forces in Hama another target, to try to limit the number of directions from which reinforcements could come into Aleppo.
Very disappointing “analysis”. The whole point of the jihadi Hama offensive, which was primarily carried out by Ahrar al Sham (a Syrian Wahhabi jihadi group) and Jund al Aqsa (an ISIS offshoot) with limited help from al Nusra (al Qaeda) was to take the heat off Aleppo. But the Syrians didn’t withdraw forces from the Aleppo front, and Ahrar al Sham and Jund al Aqsa began a vicious internecine battle among themselves which ended with the defeated al Aqsa merging itself with al Nusra for protection. What this in turn meant was that when the Syrian army – which, despite Thomas Knapp’s fantasies, is part of the legitimate Syrian government – counterattacked, the weakened jihadi front imploded. Overall the attack was a disaster for the headchoppping cannibals – they lost badly and failed in their primary purpose of diverting Syrian forces from Aleppo.
Thank you for this clarification. This is really, really helpful in understanding exactly what happened. I do wish our politicians know a fraction what one can learn just by paying attention to news (not MSM narratives), and information sharing that this and similar sites provide. Thanks again.
No problem. I’d recommend you try sites like Al Masdar News.
The only fantasy here is that there’s any such thing as a “legitimate” government.