RESIDENTS FLEE FIGHTING

Refugees poured into Arsal, a Lebanese town in the Bekaa Valley near Syria, on Saturday amid reports that a battle was beginning along the mountainous border, a sign that the government was broadening its offensive against rebel strongholds. Heavy clashes were reported along the main highway from Damascus to Homs between the towns of Nabak and Qara, a corridor that is vital to both sides. It serves as a conduit for rebel fighters and arms from Lebanon and links Damascus to solidly government-held territory to the north along the Syrian coast.

— New York Times

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad have firmly seized the momentum in the country’s civil war in recent weeks, capturing one rebel stronghold after another and triumphantly planting the two-starred Syrian government flag amid shattered buildings and rubble-strewn streets.

Despite global outrage over the use of chemical weapons, Assad’s government is successfully exploiting divisions among the opposition, dwindling foreign help for the rebel cause and significant local support, all linked to the same thing: discomfort with the Islamic extremists who have become a major part of the rebellion.

The battlefield gains would strengthen the government’s hand in peace talks sought by the world community.

Both the Syrian government and the opposition have said they are ready to attend a proposed peace conference in Geneva that the U.S. and Russia are trying to convene, although it remains unclear whether the meeting will indeed take place. The Western-backed opposition in exile has set several conditions for its participation, chief among them that Assad must not be part of a transitional government — a notion Damascus has roundly rejected.

“President Bashar Assad will be heading any transitional stage in Syria, like it or not,” Omar Ossi, a member of Syria’s parliament, said in an interview.

The government’s recent gains on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, and in the north outside the country’s largest city, Aleppo, have reinforced Assad’s position. And the more the government advances, the easier it is to dismiss the weak and fractious opposition’s demands.

The government has made its biggest gains in the suburbs south of Damascus, where army troops backed by guerrillas from the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group and Shiite militants from Iraq have captured five towns since Oct. 11.

In northern Syria, Assad’s forces have captured two towns this month — Safira and Tel Aran, southeast of the battlefield city of Aleppo — and have retaken a military base near Aleppo’s international airport.

Aleppo, the country’s largest city and former commercial capital, is a major prize in the war. Assad’s military and the rebels have been battling over it since the summer of 2012, carving it up into rebel- and government-held areas and leaving much of the city in ruins.

In some ways, the recent run of government victories fit into the regular back-and-forth rhythm of the conflict over the past nearly three years, with the pendulum swinging in Assad’s favor at the moment.

But the government advances around Aleppo hold greater trouble for the opposition since they suggest the rebels’ grip on the north — much of which fell to anti-Assad fighters over the past year — is far more tenuous than once believed.

The rebels have been crippled by infighting since the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant aggressively pushed into rebel-held areas of the north this year. Fighters from the extremist group, most of them foreigners, have clashed repeatedly with more moderate rebel brigades, leaving scores dead on both sides.

Rebel groups, particularly the Islamic State but more mainstream factions as well, also have been engaged in a brutal side conflict with Syria’s Kurdish minority, which has a large presence in the northeast and parts of Aleppo province.

Combined, these two wars-within-a-war have sapped the opposition’s strength and undermined the effort to oust Assad.

“Fighting among ourselves has done a lot of damage,” Abu Thabet, the commander of the Aleppo Swords Battalion, said by telephone. “Six months ago, the regime was always on the defensive and we would attack first. Now, after we started infighting, the regime is always on the offensive. They attack, and we defend.”