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Tale of One Dead Soldier: How Syrian Army Defends Its Positions in Daraa

© Sputnik / Mikhail Voskresenskiy / Go to the mediabankSyrian Army soldiers
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Ongoing clashes between the Syrian Army and the al-Nusra Front in the Daraa province are among the most violent in all of Syria right now, RIA Novosti correspondent Mikhail Alaeddin reported from the village of Sheikh Miskin.

The Syrian Army managed to push terrorists away from the highway between Damascus and Daraa, which is the key supply line for government troops. Although the situation along the highway is calm, the smell of war and death fill the air as one approaches the village of Sheikh Miskin.

Soldiers of the Syrian Army defend their positions against al-Nusra terrorists every day. The entire line of defense consists of a high wall, built from stones, sand, and fortified bunkers. Syrian Army soldiers are on duty 24 hours a day with the enemy forces approaching as close as 70 meters at times.

"The main task here is not to miss the sudden appearance of the enemy. The calm is worse than the storm. It means that the enemy is scheming something and hell could break loose at any moment," said Lieutenant Colonel Bashir [name changed due to security reasons], the commander of the military unit that the journalist visited.

A few hours after the talk, al-Nusra terrorists attacked the positions of the Syrian Army. Colonel Bashir's unit successfully defended their positions and managed to kill a group of more than 10 jihadists during the attack. However one of the Syrian Army soldiers, a young man who just a few hours ago was taking pictures and chatting with the Lieutenant Colonel and journalists, was killed by an enemy sniper.

"The soldier was killed, the enemy sniper hit him in the head. Urgently send a military vehicle and prepare the ambulance to take the body," a voice on the other side of a radio said.

Near Sheikh Miskin, the Syrian Army is fighting not only against the al-Nusra Front, but a bunch of other jihadist groups who all came together to create a large coalition force known as the Southern Front. Some of the terrorist groups among the Southern Front coalition are supported by Jordan, the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Despite a large number of terrorists fighting against the government troops, recently the tide began to turn in favor of the Syrian Army which is now pushing ISIL and other jihadist groups away from a few key areas in Syria.

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Much of the Syrian Army's success is due to the help of Russian airstrikes in the country. Iran has also played a role in strengthening the Syrian Army by sending its military advisers to the frontline.

For several years since the start of the Syrian conflict the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad fought alone against all sorts of Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists, backed by foreign powers, such as the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which provided limitless funds and weapons seeking to overthrow the government of Assad.

"Right now, all the advanced weapons that these groups, such as al-Qaeda, have are basically American weapons," Dr. Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian political expert on American Studies from the University of Tehran, told Radio Sputnik.

The United States and the European Union (EU) tried to portray the Syrian conflict as a sectarian conflict; however, it isn't the case at all. The real situation on the ground shows that the overwhelming majority of Syrians support President Assad and prefer his regime over any other alternatives that the West offered.

And most importantly, Assad's own wife is a Sunni, so how could the current president be against Sunnis? That simply makes no sense.

Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, with the Syrian Army fighting a number of opposition factions and radical Islamist groups, including Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

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