Assad forces rally against fractured opposition Spirit: Interior Minister Mohammad al-Shaar rallies troops. The posters of President Bashar al-Assad hang over the streets of Damascus a little prouder these days. A few weeks ago, rebel mortars landed on Umayyad Square, the capital's symbolic centre, and the noise of shelling was close and ever-present. The state television building was attacked. Rebels set up a chain of control from the north of the city around its eastern side to the fringes of the airport to the south-west. Analysts who thought Assad would be hard to beat were talking of a last stand on nearby Mount Qasioun. Now Assad is fighting back, to despairing rebel admission. Those same analysts suggest he could be in a position to deal an ultimately fatal blow. Assad has brought to a halt the sweeping rebel gains in the north. The regime may not have regained much territory, but it has taken supply lines, allowing it to hit back at will. Predictions of an Assad victory may be premature, but the political and military opposition are badly divided between Islamists, militants and secular forces. This is likely to be exacerbated if they do not resume the charge. The first rebel gains last year were relatively easy: the countryside and poor neighbourhoods in big cities such as Aleppo, Damascus and Homs are conservative, their Sunni inhabitants long opposed to the Alawite Assads and their wealthy, metropolitan allies. It is the bits in between that are difficult. At military bases, rebels and regime fight face to face, with the rebels' greater determination pitted against the regime's better weapons, air support and tactical ruthlessness. Then there are the large towns, where rebel lines can become stretched in the face of overwhelming power, as at Sheikh Saeed and now Qusair. Here, the regime not only has support from Iranian advisers and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, but seems to be matching the rebels' willingness to fight. The number of defections has declined, and both sides talk of a new spirit in Assad's men. Morale on the opposition side has slumped. In August, Abdulaziz al-Salameh, the head of Aleppo's biggest brigade, the Tawhid, said he would turn the city into Assad's Stalingrad before moving on Homs and Damascus. But Aleppo's front lines are now remarkably close to where they were then. A brief tour of the Great Mosque, seized a month ago, is a sorrowful reminder of the effects of war, its 11th-century minaret rubble, its arches burnt and smashed. What somehow makes it worse is the mosque is the only territory that has changed hands in six months. "If we had more ammunition we could take Aleppo in 20 days," Mr Salameh said. Support from the rebels' Gulf allies is patchy and unco-ordinated, while the West refuses to give weapons. Even with Iranian and Hezbollah support, it is hard to see Assad retaking the large swath of the north he has lost. At best, he would face a running jihadist insurgency. The question is, what remains? A likely scenario has him consolidating the centre and his north-western Alawite heartlands, with large rebel areas maintaining an impoverished, violent, separate authority. The country would divide - or, as British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday, disintegrate. It is this outcome that supporters of the opposition such as Britain and the US hope to ward off, fearing it would breed a regional sectarian war. For Assad, that is a victory of sorts - an acceptance he is still in place, a realisation that by not losing he is winning. And that is one thing the rebels do not accept. "If the revolution continues for 100 years, and everything is destroyed, we will never leave him in power," Mr Salameh said. Disintegration it is.