Regime elements overran the city of as-Safira
on Friday, November 1st, after a siege and bombing campaign that lasted
more than three weeks and drove more than
100,000 civilians from the city. As-Safira, located only 15 km southeast of Nayrab
Air Base (co-located with Aleppo Int’l Airport), is a key point along the
regime’s only usable ground supply line from Hama and also houses some of the
largest chemical weapons production facilities in the country. After taking the
city, regime forces continued to push northwest
toward Aleppo, and appear poised to open a supply line to the embattled Nayrab
Air Base. In addition, the regime may attempt to alleviate the siege on nearby
Kuweiris Air Base, located almost 30km east of Nayrab Air Base, which has been
ongoing for months.
One of the principal factors that
contributed to the rebel defeat in as-Safira was a lack of coordination. This
is evidenced by the recent resignation of Colonel Abdul Jabar Akidi, the
Supreme Military Council’s top leader in Aleppo and the head of the
FSA-affiliated Safira Operations Room. After the city fell, Col. Akidi issued a
scathing video statement in which he
accused the National Coalition of failing to support his command adequately and
blamed a number of rebel groups for seeking to hold captured territory rather
than coming to defend as-Safira itself.
The Safira Operations Room echoed
Col. Akidi’s sentiments, saying rebel groups
failed to deploy enough fighters into as-Safira and singling out the Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in particular as not having a single fighter
inside the city. Jihadist sources pushed back
against this allegation and instead blamed other groups
for surrendering as-Safira, highlighting further the disunity present among the
rebels.
The fall of as-Safira, which had
served as a rallying point for a number of rebel groups in the region,
including powerful Salafi group Ahrar al-Sham and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat
al-Nusra, is a major blow to the rebel campaign in southern Aleppo province. By
controlling as-Safira and accompanying villages along the road to Hama, rebels
had made regime resupply from its southern strongholds nearly impossible, and
if the regime is able to hold onto its recent gains it could threaten rebel
positions in Aleppo province as a whole.