Moscow is looking ahead to the post-Assad era and planning to set up permanent military enclaves at Damascus and Aleppo airports.

Syrian rebels were stretched too thin and short of arms for winning Aleppo or for using Syrian army withdrawals from the rest of the country to establish safe havens. The opted for winning Aleppo – and have mostly likely lost.

Day by day, new Syrian militias spring up to fight the Assad regime – five in the last 48 hours. They fall into three main categories: a Syrian ethnic minority or another – Kurdish, Turkmen and Muslim Brothers; Islamists streaming in from Libya, the Gaza Strip and Sinai; or rebels groups armed and backed by Arab and Muslim intelligence bodies. US intelligence predicts their number will rise to 100 in weeks. Saturday, MiG fighter jets went into action against rebel positions in Aleppo to break the tie in fighting.

Assad hastened to redeploy his tank forces to block rebel control of the strategic highway and smash through the Aleppo districts harboring rebel forces.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commented Monday, July 30 on his way to the Middle East that the assault on Aleppo, “will ultimately be another nail in Assad’s coffin.” He spoke after the Free Syrian Army’s Saudi and Qatari intelligence backers based in Apaydin, Turkey, admitted that the ferocious Syrian government onslaught had derailed for now their safe haven scheme for the Aleppo region which was to have housed the FSA forward command and a Benghazi-style transitional government. Rebel-held Salaheddin has fallen.

The Syrian ruler has ordered his military chiefs to get set to launch their biggest operation to destroy the protest movement bedeviling his regime for nearly six months, debkafile's military sources report exclusively. All units are deployed on full preparedness around the protest centers for coordinated strikes in the coming days and all leaves cancelled.The five divisions posted on the Israeli border have been pulled back. Aleppo has staged its first major anti-Assad rally.

The big drug transit center in the Syrian town of Aleppo run jointly by the Assad regime and Hizballah keeps the city from joining the popular uprising for fear of extreme punishment that stops at nothing. The protesters struck at Assad's thriving drug trade only once by derailing a ...