The Area of Alawite Control in Syria Continues to Shrink – Uber Sunnis Continue Gains

September 9, 2015

BEIRUT—After a two-year siege, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and other insurgents on Wednesday captured the one remaining Syrian army air base in Idlib, a development that activists said effectively expelled the last of President Bashar al-Assad’s military from the northwestern province.

It was the latest in a series of setbacks for Assad in Syria’s bitter civil war, now in its fifth year. Syria’s embattled president has acknowledged the losses, saying the army has had to relinquish some areas in the north to better defend core areas seen as more critical to the government.

A state television report said the army pulled out of the Abu Zuhour air base and that the troops “evacuated their positions and moved to another [location].”

This makes Idlib the second of Syria’s 14 provinces to slip completely from Syrian army control. Earlier this year, militant groups captured the provincial capital, also called Idlib, as well as other towns and villages.

The province of Raqqa fell to Islamic State extremists last year, after IS militants captured its provincial capital, also called Raqqa, in January 2014. Islamic State group has since declared the city as the seat of its caliphate, which spans a third of both Syria and Iraq.

Al Qaeda’s Syria branch—known as the Nusra Front and a key rival of Islamic State—and other Islamic insurgents now control nearly all of Idlib province, except for the predominantly Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya, which pro-government militiamen hold.

Syrian state TV quoted an unnamed military official as saying that troops pulled out of the Idlib base with weapons, and that none of the equipment and warplanes left behind “were usable.”

The military official said the attack on the base was carried out by “terrorist groups receiving support from Erdogan’s government,” referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is a strong supporter of Syrian opposition groups. The Syrian government refers to all groups fighting against Assad’s forces as terrorists.