Syria’s Western and Arab adversaries were hoping the Syrian army would split or mount a coup. Instead it has been spearheading the campaign against rebel strongholds.
The role of the Syrian army in the crisis besetting the Syrian regime that began last year seems simple enough to describe. It is the army that has prevented the regime from collapsing and its president from being toppled or forced to step down. Yet this role has raised some perplexing questions too.
The army did not get involved in the crisis until recently. In the first months, President Bashar Assad used the police to confront the mounting protest movement. But when the police fired at demonstrators this exacerbated the problem, inflaming public resentment at the killing of innocent people, and drawing negative Arab and international reactions.
Assad then withdrew the police and deployed security forces to maintain order, some units of which had quickly been given special training, with instructions not to fire except in self-defense.
In the months that followed, however, a section of the opposition – notably the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups – increasingly took up arms. They engaged in an armed conflict with the regime and succeeded in bringing villages, towns, and neighborhoods under their complete control.
This prompted Assad to resort to the army. Last month he ordered the army to take decisive military action and dislodge armed groups from the firm footholds they had established in Homs (especially the Baba Amr district), Idlib, Hama, and Zabadani. The first stage of this operation was completed some days ago, with the regime reclaiming control of the latter three cities. It estimated that there were 3,000 gunmen in Baba Amr and more than 5,000 in Idlib...
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/assad-and-his-army