ASOR Syrian Heritage Initiative (SHI): Planning for Safeguarding Heritage Sites in Syria - Weekly Report 2 (August 18, 2014)

Weekly Report 2 encompasses August 10, 2014 to August 16, 2014. Also included are Incident Reports SHI 14-004, SHI 14-006, SHI 14-016, SHI 14-017, and SHI 14-018.

This report contains a Heritage Timeline describing events involving the destruction of heritage sites in Syria.

Generally, current military operations and terrorist activity revolves around control of border crossings with Turkey, Lebanon, and western Iraq and command of the Damascus-­‐Aleppo (M5) and Aleppo-­‐Raqqa (M15/M4) corridors. The regime (SARG), the opposition, and the al-­‐Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-­‐Nusra (JN) are increasingly in a reactionary mode, responding to the rapid actions of Islamic State (IS) forces, who hold the strategic initiative.

By the end of the reporting period, IS success in the eastern Aleppo theater reportedly motivated opposition forces — viz. Free Syrian Army, Islamic Front, and Syrian Revolutionary Front — to assume a higher degree of logistical and battlefield coordination in an attempt to maintain their tenuous grip on the northern and eastern areas of Aleppo city and vital supply lines to Turkey passing through the opposition stronghold of Marea to A’zaz.