Hama offensive: An indication of the Syrian opposition’s decline

Terrorists from a range of terrorist groups, including the newly-formed Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group, and the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) launched a wide-scale offensive on the 21st of March in the Hama countryside. Although the offensive did initially yield significant territorial gains, pro-government have managed to retake ground throughout the offensive, and maintain composure.

For example, forces from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) successfully liberated the village of Kawkab. Since the deployment of units from the 5th Corps and Tiger Forces to Hama, opposition militants have struggled to advance, and their offensive has lost much of its momentum.

It seems that they aimed to capture areas lost to the Syrian Army in 2016, and potentially seize the provincial capital, Hama city. According to a senior official in the Russian military, more than 10,000 terrorists have been involved in the recent offensive.

Although fighting in the province is ongoing, with neither side possessing a definitive edge, it is abundantly clear that terrorists have lost their ability to launch large-scale, successful offensives against areas under the sanctuary of the Syrian government, as they did in the 2015 Idlib offensive.