After the victory in the strategic city of Qusayr, Syrian army began an important operation, dubbed Operation Northern Storm, to liberate Aleppo.
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This operation is carried out in the northern and southern fronts of Aleppo to achieve two objectives, the southern front operation to secure the ways for aiding government forces in Aleppo and in northern Syria while the northern front operation aims at blocking the ways through which insurgents receive aids.
However it has to be maintained that the military operations in these two areas are different in a way that it can affect the final result of the operation.
Firstly, the northern storm operation is quite extended, in other words Qusayr was a small town with 30’000 population while Aleppo, based on official survey of 2012, was home to about three million people reaching a number of 3’700’000 people with the population in the suburbs, comprising more than one fifth of Syrian population.
In fact if Damascus is counted the political capital of Syria, Aleppo, with regards to its economic and business potentialities, is called its economic capital, besides the art and archeological works that highlights the city as the cultural hub of the country.
Now it is quite apparent that the operations in Qusayr and Aleppo are not comparable at all.
The other difference is in the quality and combination of armed opposition forces against Syrian army. In Qusayr, opposition forces have a Qaeda-like nature working under Al Nusra front. Members of this front are partly Syrian and partly foreign forces recruited from different Arab or western countries or Muslim areas in former Soviet Union independent countries that have come to help the opposite forces in Syria. These people are mainly backed by Saudi Arabia. Quite different from them, armed opposition forces in Aleppo are from Free Syrian Army, including those who have escaped Syrian army and Syrian homeless who are backed by Qatar, Turkey and western countries.
Therefore, if western countries had any problems with the international laws to back the opposition forces at war with Syrian army (since they are counted terrorists) they do not face any limitation to support Free Syrian Army and western authorities, particularly French officials, apparently stress the necessity of military support from the opposition forces in Aleppo.
Frensh Foreign Minsiter Laurent Fabius said, "We need to re-balance things because over the past few weeks the troops of Bashar al-Assad (Syrian leader) and especially Hezbollah and the Iranians, along with Russian arms, have gained considerable ground.”
French Foreign Ministry spokesman has also said the first conclusion for his country was to keep their tight relations with coalition of opposition forces in Syria promising to take further steps in sending arms to the war-torn country.
It is also said that postponement of US Secretary of States visit to the Middle East and the Occupied Palestine is to resume peace talks and also negotiating with France and the UK for sending weaponry support to the opposition forces in Aleppo and all these moves prove that Aleppo war is far more difficult than Qusayr, a war that will define the final winner of Syria war.
