(THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)- The front line that divides Aleppo is marked by sandbags and overturned vehicles and zigzags through the cobblestone streets of the Old City’s historic souk. Despite years of bombardment by the Syrian regime and rebel counterattacks, the line has barely moved.
The warring sides are now hunkered down and massing on either side of the five-mile-long frontier, girding for intensified battles for control of the city, a goal that has eluded both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels since Aleppo was split in 2012.
The rebels are outmatched by the air power and military might of Syria and Russia. But regime ground forces haven’t proven adept at the urban warfare required to battle street-by-street and recapture the entire city.
“Our battle is street warfare. This is our city. These are our buildings. We know where to go in and out,” said Yasser al-Youssef, a political representative for the rebel group Nour al-Dine al-Zinki, which has hundreds of fighters in the city. “A tank in the city is not worth much. It cannot turn quickly, it cannot pivot. It becomes a stationary target we can hit easily.”
On Sunday, the regime sent mass text messages directed at rebels in eastern Aleppo giving them 24 hours to lay down their arms and leave before the start of a “planned strategic attack” using high-precision weapons. Intense airstrikes on eastern Aleppo resumed Tuesday, residents reported, with attacks targeting numerous neighborhoods and killing several civilians.
A flotilla of Russian warships, including an aircraft carrier, recently arrived off the coast of Syria. Russia didn’t comment on whether they would be used to attack Aleppo. But on Tuesday, the Russian military said it resumed large-scale airstrikes in the provinces of Idlib and Homs, which the U.S. and allies worry could lead to an assault on Aleppo.
The election in the U.S. of Donald Trump, who has expressed interest in cooperating with Russia in Syria and elsewhere, adds further uncertainty to the conflict.
Rebels are confident they can fend off incursions in a ground battle. But the importance of controlling Aleppo, and the military power of the regime and its allies, make it likely the city will face even more death and destruction, regardless of the outcome.
Days after a cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia collapsed in September, the Assad regime announced plans to retake the entire city. But after weeks of intense airstrikes and bombardment, which killed hundreds of civilians, the regime failed to capture any new territory inside the city, rebels and residents said.
The regime has made significant territorial gains around the city in recent months, taking control of the rebel’s sole supply road and imposing the siege in July.
Rebels meanwhile have launched their own offensive aimed at breaking the siege and opening a road to allow food, fuel and medicine to reach an estimated 300,000 people living in neighborhoods they control.
The urgency of breaking the siege was underscored as the United Nations warned Thursday that the last of the food rations it has sent to eastern Aleppo were being distributed.
In August, when the rebels managed to briefly break through the siege and open a small road into eastern Aleppo, supplies, ammunition and additional fighters were brought into the city.
The regime has also been buttressing its ranks. Pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias have sent between 4,000 and 5,000 fighters to Aleppo to aid the regime’s fight, which could be a boon to the Syrian government given the Iraqi fighters’ experience with urban warfare.
“We are the sons of the city and we know the geography better than anyone that they are bringing,” said Ibrahim Hamo, military commander with the Aleppo-based rebel faction, Ahrar Syria. “Better than the Iranian or Iraqi or Russian.”
The frontier between the government-held west and opposition-held east of Aleppo has transformed ancient landmarks into military bases: Regime forces are holed up in the 13th-century citadel, the highest point in the city, while rebels operate from the nearby 12th-century Umayyad mosque.
The two sides are sometimes close enough to yell at one another across the line and regularly exchange gun and mortar fire.
The regime hasn’t been able to use its air power to push the front line in the city because weapons such as its highly destructive barrel bombs are too imprecise to be dropped so close to regime forces.
The majority of those killed by these weapons are civilians, medical officials in opposition-held neighborhoods said. The regime and Russia contend they only target “terrorists”—a term the regime uses for all its opponents. They both deny killing civilians.
The regime’s most notable gains in urban neighborhoods and towns elsewhere in Syria have come when besieged rebels were forced to surrender, Malham Akidi, a commander with the Fastaqim Kama Umirt rebel faction, said in a speech in Aleppo last month.
“The only reason behind its dominance are the warplanes. But in urban warfare, the planes don’t benefit it,” he said.
Lacking the air power of the regime, the rebels have adopted tunnel warfare, spending weeks and months digging underneath regime military outposts and then blowing them up.
Rebels said some of these attacks have killed dozens of regime forces in a single strike. They have also contributed to the destruction of Aleppo, especially inside the Unesco World Heritage site of the Old City.
It is the siege that could prove fatal for the rebels and their control of half of Aleppo. Early on in the siege, regime and Russian air attacks were concentrated on hospitals and other civilian infrastructure far from the front lines in what residents said was a strategy to force rapid capitulation.
The Assad regime “doesn’t have the manpower to fight street by street,” said Firas Abi Ali, an analyst with IHS Country Risk. “He is trying to bomb the city until the people leave or until they submit. This is why he is trying to starve them.”
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