Three months after the fall of Idlib, the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be about to lose another provincial capital. The Syrian army has been ona losing streak that began in late March 2015. Since then, Idlib, Jisr al-Shughur, and Ariha have been lost to an Islamist-led coalition of rebels in the northwest. Meanwhile in the east, the extremist group known as the Islamic State recently captured the strategic city of Palmyra, along with some of Syria’s critical energy infrastructure.
In the south of Syria, the situation looks equally dire for Assad. Since 2014, and in recent months especially, a long line of local defeats have taken their toll on the army south of Damascus, leaving the remaining government forces in a highly precarious position.
This winter, rebels fought their way into the city of Sheikh Miskin and captured nearby military installations, thereby threatening Assad’s supply routes into the Daraa Governorate. In late March, they seized the long-contested city of Bosra further to the east. They quickly went on to take the Nasib border crossing, Assad’s last point of access to Jordan, thereby choking off the overland trade between the Syrian capital and consumer markets in the Gulf Arab states and Iran. (Attempts to reroute cargo by air or sea do not seem to have made up for the losses.) Meanwhile, the grinding battle for control over Syrian-held portions of the Golan Heights goes on, with rebels now in control of most of the area. More recently, in early June, rebels on the opposite end of the region overtook the Brigade 52 base, an important stronghold for the army.