'They won't win': Damascenes poised for next move in Syria conflict

Fighter jets have returned to the skies of northern Syria and ground troops in Damascus are once again on the move.

A nervous night watching the horizon had given way to a business-as-usual feel on Thursday in the Syrian capital. Whether Donald Trump will carry out his threats to bomb Syria, or give way to a realpolitik that sees some other sort of compromise thrashed out is a prime debating point ahead of sunset when, according to locals, a countdown to a US barrage could begin.

Even if Trump unleashes the formidable US arsenal on targets across the country in retaliation for the suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma, there is a feeling in Damascus that the regime will prevail.

Russian news agencies on Thursday reported that Syrian government forces had raised their flag over the central mosque in Douma, at the heart of the formerly rebel-held eastern Ghouta region on the edge of Damascus.

The Syrian capital is a strikingly different place to the city it was when Barack Obama was making his own decisions about whether to bomb. Then, Damascus was wobbling under the weight of insurgency. Its allies had not arrived in the numbers in which they are now deployed. The defence of the country looked threadbare.

“Iran is here, so is Hezbollah, and the Russians have their air defence missiles,” said Haithem Chams, a resident of the outer Damascus suburbs, who spoke by phone. “The Russians might shoot the American missiles down. Then who’s the strongest?”

Two residents who spoke to the Guardian said military convoys have moved through western Damascus past the Sayeda Zainab shrine and towards the Lebanese border on Thursday morning. Reports elsewhere said Hezbollah, which has been at the arrowhead of the Assad regime’s ground defence, had regrouped to the west of the capital, away from air force targets that are expected to bear the brunt of any US strike.

Much of what remains of the Syrian air force has been moved to Russian bases in the country. Iraqi and Iranian media speculated that some Syrian jets had been flown to Iran to avoid any attacks, but this could not be independently confirmed. The working assumption inside Syria is that Trump’s generals would advise him to target Syrian air bases, from where suspected chemical attacks have been launched.

Any strike this time would likely be more comprehensive than the attack that hit the al-Shayrat airbase near Homs in April 2017, three days after the sarin strike on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Helicopters that have dropped barrel-bombs on Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus have mostly taken off from the Dumayr airbase north of the city. The Russian air force also maintains a presence there, as it does in many other Syrian military facilities. But its main presence is in the north-west of the country, where its S-400 air defence system, which has never been tested in battle, is poised to be used against any US missiles.

“The Americans wouldn’t dare fly planes against us,” said Mohammed al-Rai, a supporter of the Syrian government from Homs. “Look what happened to the Israeli plane. Worse will happen to them.

“Things were difficult a few years ago, but they’re better now. If the Americans blow up some runways to aid the jihadists, so what? They won’t win.”

What Trump has in mind after any strike is confounding Syrians on both sides of the conflict. “We hope he will take this awful president out,” said Maher Sergie, an opponent of Bashar al-Assad, who was exiled from Aleppo to Idlib. “May an American missile chase him to his basement.”

“He hasn’t got a clue what to do,” said a regime supporter who refused to be named. “He doesn’t even want to stay here. The regime knows this, so do the Russians and Iran. If he was smart he would try to back out of this.”