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Syrian president says army lacking in manpower

Iraqi security forces celebrated Sunday in Anbar province after clashes with Islamic State militants.Reuters

BEIRUT — In a striking admission, President Bashar Assad of Syria said Sunday that the country's army faced a personnel shortage and had ceded some areas to insurgents in order to hold on to other regions deemed more important.

Assad also acknowledged in a speech televised from Damascus, the Syrian capital, that many Syrians could not watch the address because of the lack of electricity in many areas and noted the economic hardships that people are facing after more than four years of an increasingly complex civil war.

What was unusual was not the fact of the struggles that Assad mentioned, which have been obvious for some time, but his mentioning them at all. It was his most substantive public nod yet to the magnitude of the challenges to his government and of the struggles confronting ordinary Syrians.

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In previous public speeches and interviews, he has sometimes seemed at odds with reality, glossing over setbacks and denying that the government is dropping barrel bombs in the northern city of Aleppo, a well-documented and regular occurrence.

The remarks came within an address that, overall, retained Assad's usual confident, defiant tone — promising victory, praising the army, blaming foreign meddling for the war.

But they also came amid other indications of strain on the army and at a time when even Assad's loyalists are increasingly expressing frustration that their leaders have not eased or even acknowledged their plight.

Some also grumble about the growing military role of Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias, complaining that they are encroaching on Syrian sovereignty without producing victory.

In Iraq on Sunday, government forces recaptured Anbar University from the Islamic State after hours of fierce clashes, as part of its push to reclaim territory across the embattled province, the Associated Press reported, citing provincial officials.

The university, 3 miles south of the militant-held city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was under the full control of government forces, which had entered the complex early Sunday amid intense combat with the militant group.

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Athal al-Fahdawi, a provincial councilor said a number of buildings in and around the university complex have been badly damaged or destroyed, but that the militants retreated, the Associated Press reported. Another Anbar councilor, Faleh al-Issawi, said about two dozen Islamic State fighters were killed in the clashes.

The Iraqi military launched a large-scale operation this month to retake Anbar province, in which most of the biggest cities are held by the Islamic State. Government-backed forces, which include the Iraqi military, Shi'ite militias and Sunni tribes, are also assembling around the militant-held city of Fallujah, which was the first major city in Iraq to fall to the group in early 2014.

Sunday's speech by Assad came as Hezbollah and Syrian troops are struggling to subdue the insurgent-held city of Zabadani. Their assault, which had been billed as quick and easy, has gone on for weeks, with many casualties on both sides and the opposition accusing the government of dropping hundreds of barrel bombs indiscriminately.

There has also been an intensifying campaign of Syrian army recruitment advertising in government-held areas, as even loyalist families grow more reluctant to send sons to the army rather than keep them home to defend their areas.

Assad's acknowledgment of difficulties came amid a flurry of other developments that, taken together, have raised speculation about whether a new round of long-stalled peace talks, or at least the laying of groundwork for possible talks, could be taking place.

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There have been whispers of a grand bargain being proposed that would unite Assad's backers and opponents to fight against the Islamic State, which has fed on the Syrian conflict and has come to be seen as a global threat. Blocking the way to any such deal is the deep divide over whether Assad will stay or go.

Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy on the Syria crisis, has been shuttling among the war's myriad parties and is expected to make a report and recommendations in the coming days to the Security Council.

Another factor is that the nuclear deal between global powers and Iran, Assad's closest ally, has been signed. There have been high-level meetings between senior figures in Russia, Assad's most powerful backer, and top officials from the United States and Saudi Arabia, two of his most powerful opponents.

The conflict in Syria began with peaceful protests against Assad and turned into a civil war after a crackdown on demonstrators. But it has since become a three-way war, at least, involving the government, insurgents and the extremist Islamic State .