Why was the Syrian army not motivated to fight the terrorists?

According to Webangah News quoted by Mehr News, Al Jazeera news channel in a report investigated the reasons for the lack of motivation among the Syrian armed forces to defend the country against terrorist groups and wrote that “Farhan Al Khouli” Young The 22-year-old Syrian soldier, who receives very little salary, was not in a good mental condition at his military base near the city of Idlib in northern Syria. Before the recent movements, this city was the only city that was under the control of armed opposition groups.

9 more soldiers were supposed to be sent to this military position, but only three soldiers showed up at their workplace and some officers and commanders tried to escape from the post. They had received bribes and the remaining people were not able to carry weapons and fight armed elements.

On November 27, Al-Khouli received a phone call from his officer in charge that He informed him that the years of peace are over and armed elements are approaching their positions from Idlib, and he should remain at his post and continue fighting.

Al Khouli put his cell phone on flight mode and wore civilian clothes and his weapon He left and went home. On the way to escape, he saw a number of other soldiers fleeing from their positions.

Reuters news agency has discussed this phenomenon with several sources. The information from these sources, along with intelligence documents obtained by Reuters from an abandoned military office in the capital, show how the once-feared army has become eroded, demoralized, and increasingly reliant on foreign allies. has done Meanwhile, the existing corruption has increased the anger of the military. Al-Jazeera has investigated the causes of the collapse of the army’s morale in the following cases:

Dependence on foreign allies

Since 2011, Syrian military forces have relied on Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi forces so that they can create the best fighting units in Syria.

An informed source said that Lebanese Hezbollah forces and their commanders left Syria in October 2023 to focus on the war against the Zionist regime. The Iranians also withdrew a large number of their military advisors from Syria after the air strikes on Damascus.

In this situation, the command and control center of the Syrian army did not function as before after the departure of the Iranian and Hezbollah officers, and they had lost their defense strategy.

Unplanned and chaos

After the beginning of the attack of terrorist-Takfiri groups on Aleppo in the past weeks, no specific campaign plan was presented to the Syrian army units and they were asked to manage the situation themselves. Or retreat to the city of Homs to refocus. The control of Aleppo by the opposition armed forces, without significant struggle, created shock among the army forces and caused its elements to lose their solidarity.

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2020 the Syrian army had 130,000 troops. which was greatly weakened due to the long war and became an irregular organization that was solely focused on establishing internal security.

Very low salary

In the shadow of the severe economic sanctions of the United States and the West against Syria at the same time as the terrorism crisis in this country, the officers and soldiers of the Syrian army during the past decade and even after the military victories On the terrorist-takfiri groups, they had very low salaries and were disappointed, and many of them were forced to stay in the army after the end of their service period.

According to a document published by the Reuters news agency, the intelligence department of the Syrian Air Force had warned its people about the punishment if they did not participate in the war, but with this The number of fugitive soldiers continued to increase.

The residents of Syrian cities showed in many clips that they had published that the soldiers of the Syrian army left their centers and walked in the streets in civilian clothes.

A senior military intelligence officer of the Syrian army stated in the same context that the anger of army officers and soldiers had increased over the years due to the bad living conditions and the salaries of a A soldier in Syria was forced to pay 40 dollars and even the supporters of Bashar al-Assad were angry about this situation.

One ​​of the commanders of a combat unit of the Iraqi army told the Reuters news agency that we often invited the soldiers of the Syrian army to eat with us, because they had food rations. They didn’t have enough and our hearts burned for them.

One ​​of the Iraqi military advisers who was in Syria said: We have been defeated in the battle in Syria since the first day; Because the army forces of this country had no will to fight.

Four days before the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, he had issued a decree to increase the salaries of army soldiers by 50%, but the soldiers continued to flee from the army.