BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian rebels, led by jihadist battalions, said Friday that they seized the largest helicopter base in the north of the country, a potentially significant blow against the government’s escalating air war that also highlighted lingering questions about the prominent role of Islamic extremist in the uprising.
Edlib News Network via Associated Press
This image provided by Edlib News Network purported to show a rebel carrying food supplies past a damaged helicopter at Taftanaz air base in northern Syria.
Denis Balibouse/Reuters
American deputy secretary of state William Burns arrived for a meeting with the international envoy on the Syria crisis, Lakhdar Brahimi, in Geneva on Friday.
Fighters from several battalions, including the jihadist groups Al Nusra Front and the Ahrar al-Sham battalion, said they had overrun the Taftanaz air base, which rebels had been trying to take for months, as soldiers fled and were captured, according to antigovernment activists and videos identified as having been shot at the scene.
The Taftanaz base — if not regained by the government — would be a significant prize for the rebels. The victory would show that the rebels can take even strong points the military has stoutly defended and disrupt the airborne reach that has helped the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, retain some control over the province, which separates pro-rebel Turkey from government strongholds along the coast.
Yet the victory — an emotional one for government opponents who have viewed the Taftanaz air base as the source of fearsome attacks by helicopters dropping so-called barrel bombs — would also underscore challenges for the United States and others that are concerned about the rising influence of jihadists among the rebel ranks.
“Importantly, since this battle was won by Islamist elements, they will benefit from the weapons and ammunition” seized at the base, said Jeffrey White, a military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They will also get the credit for the win.”
The victory was claimed by a collection of Islamist-led rebel battalions, some of which belong to or coordinate with the unified military council, recently formed by rebels, that the United States and its allies seek to support. Fighting alongside them were other groups that reject that support, including some that the United States views as dangerously sectarian, like Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda offshoot that the United States recently blacklisted as a terrorist organization.
The rebel claims that they had captured the base came as the international envoy on the Syria crisis, Lakhdar Brahimi, met with senior Russian and American officials in Geneva in hopes of reviving efforts to find a political solution to the conflict.
Mr. Brahimi made clear afterward that no agreement was close, and reiterated the need for a political solution to the conflict, which began as a movement demanding democratic reform and transformed into civil war.
The increasingly sectarian rhetoric of Al Nusra Front and other jihadist groups — along with a defiant speech on Sunday by Mr. Assad in which he refused to negotiate with most of his opponents — has made a political settlement seem more remote.
Video posted by a rebel group showed fighters shouting “God is great,” milling around armored vehicles and damaged buildings on what they said was the base’s territory. Another video showed about a dozen men who identified themselves as government soldiers who had been captured at the airport.
“The officers’ morale is down,” one of the men said on camera. The soldiers said that before the base fell, senior officers took a plane and left.
Syrian Rebels Say They Seized Key Base in North
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Syrian Rebels Say They Seized Key Base in North
