AP Explains: Why Syria's M5 is Assad's highway to victory

ABC News ^ | 14 Fab 2020 | ZEINA KARAM Associated Press

[BeauBo]

Syrian President Bashar Assad has gained what's perhaps his most significant strategic victory in the nearly nine-year-old Syrian civil war: the recapture of the all-important M5 highway.

It is arguably one of the most coveted prizes in Syria’s civil war, and after eight years of fighting, Syrian President Bashar Assad has got it back.

The Damascus-Aleppo highway, or the M5, is known to Syrians simply as the “International Road.” Cutting through Syria's major cities, the motorway is key to who controls the country.

Assad gradually lost control over the M5 from 2012, when various rebel groups fighting to topple him began seizing parts of the country...

For the Turkey-backed rebels fighting Assad, the highway was a cornerstone in holding together their territory and keeping government forces at bay. Its loss marks a mortal blow for opposition fighters whose hold on their last patches of ground in northwestern Syria is looking more and more precarious...

Under a September 2018 agreement between Russia and Turkey, the M5 and M4 highways were supposed to be open for traffic, linking the government's stronghold on the coast with Aleppo before the end of that year. That never happened, as insurgents refused to move away and allow joint Russian-Turkish patrols to protect the traffic there.

That eventually led to the latest government offensive in Idlib, the last rebel-held bastion in the country.

Government troops backed by Russia carried out several major advances in Idlib, retaking towns and villages on both sides of the motorway...

This week, Syrian troops recaptured the last rebel-controlled section of the highway around Khan al-Assal. That brought the road under the full control of Assad’s forces for the first time since 2012.

[Cronos]

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