As Axis of Fatima advances, Russian moderation will be key to victory

The dramatic turn of the Syrian civil war in the regime's favor with the near-encirclement of Aleppo has increased the long-term prospects for peace, despite the standard stream of Western media propaganda continuing to portray Assad's army and Putin's air force as the bad guys.

Turkey's miscalculated adventure in northern Syria is drawing down to an ignominious close: as its remaining supply lines to the rebels in Aleppo and Idlib provinces are severed in the coming weeks by what's now a de facto tactical alliance between pro-government forces and the Kurdish YPG militia, it can only observe as the once-mighty militants it sponsored are slowly ground to pieces. It remains in no position to challenge ever-growing Russian air power, whose effectiveness has apparently increased both qualitatively and quantitatively in recent weeks to enable the unprecedented resurgence of the Syrian army and allied Iranian-led Shiite forces.

Aleppo's eventual fall, to be augmented by the likely fall of Idlib in the neighboring rebel hotbed province, will mark a decisive defeat for the entire non-ISIS anti-Assad insurgency. It will reduce the rebels to a motley collection of guerrilla bandits outside large population centers whose sole reason for attending future negotiations will be to cut the best amnesty deals they can as the only alternative to complete annihilation.

Perhaps even more significantly, the liberation of these urban areas will also conclusively shatter the fiction that any of them were anything other than petty fiefdoms run by jihadist thugs, as this report reveals even the Free Syrian Army (FSA) effectively administered its territory like a bunch of Taliban. As survivors of rebel occupation tell the world their tales of living under the yoke of takfiri executioners and express gratitude for the government's determination to rescue them, the regional Sunni powers whose dwindling stash of petrodollars has perpetuated this most insidious of distortions in the West will look like self-interested liars and hypocrites.

The Axis of Fatima is on its way to a historic victory that effectively ends nearly 14 centuries of Sunni domination of the heart of the Islamic world. Alas, human weakness and fallacy are likely to get the better of much of the Fatima coalition if things continue to go so well: both the Syrian regime and Iran will find it hard to resist arrogant score-settling as they expand and consolidate their control of rebel areas, thereby compromising the long-term stability and reintegration of these areas. Neither Damascus nor Tehran is likely to desire the degree of concessions to the Sunni majority that's prudent to maximize the chances of a peaceful reconstruction of the multi-sectarian society. Russia's moderating influence promises to be the key to securing the hard-fought gains; let's hope and pray that Mr. Putin and co. quickly translate military advantage to determined but pragmatic diplomatic initiative when the time is right - not only to restore Syria's integrity, but to lay the foundation of a whole new framework of regional stability and equilibrium.