IN the end, it was sheer weight of numbers and the preponderance of Russian-supplied firepower that caused the Free Syrian Army to mount a tactical withdrawal from the town of Qusayr, close to the Lebanese border.

The Assad regime is of course hailing it as a great strategic victory. Some analysts are saying that since Damascus troops control much of the surrounding countryside, the battle for Qusayr was more symbolic than real. Taken on those terms, the two weeks that the regime took to retake the town from the opposition fighters, would seem to suggest its fundamental weakness against a determined and brave enemy.

Assad’s publicists are claiming that many fighters died in the fighting and that a large number was captured along with the town. What they did not say was how many of their own troops were slain. It is a given of warfare that an attacking force will almost inevitably take higher casualties than the defenders. That would seem to be the case in Qusayr, where for the first time Hezbollah fighters have incurred heavy losses. The flow of coffins back to Hezbollah’s fastness is southern Lebanon will have demonstrated better than anything, the folly of the course on which its leader Hassan Nasrallah is leading his movement.

The price paid by Hezbollah fighters may also be encountered by the rest of the Lebanon, if FSA fighters carry out their threat to take the war to Hezbollah’s own territory. Hopefully wiser heads will prevail. The FSA needs a stable Lebanon behind it. If the Syrian conflict overflows into its neighbor and reignites the 30-year civil war that disfigured and destroyed the country, the new Syria will face an extra challenge as it seeks to rebuild itself physically and socially from the butchery and repression of the Assad’s dictatorship.

Meanwhile the regime’s crowing about its “victory” at Qusayr bears closer examination. Armchair strategists in media around the world are saying how the town holds the key to supplies needed by the FSA from Lebanon. If that were true, how come the uprising was able to flourish and grow when Qusayr was still in government hands? And is it not clear that Lebanon is far from the only source of weapons and logistics being channeled to the FSA?

Moreover, the military pattern throughout the Syrian revolution has not really changed. Assad’s troops and ruthless militiamen can generally deploy sufficient power to take most objectives, forcing fighter units to withdraw. But what they do not have is the manpower to hold the territory that they have reoccupied. For Assad’s military planners, the revolution is like a widely spread forest fire. No sooner have resources been poured into one hot spot and the crisis stemmed, than a blaze flares up elsewhere. Troops are moved to deal with the new outbreak and hardly have they withdrawn than the embers of rebellion break out where the regime thought they had been well and truly stamped out.

Assad’s forces are weary and despite fresh supplies from Moscow, their equipment is degraded. Not only this, but the flow of battlefield casualties is producing ever-widening gaps in government units. The supply of raw recruits is dwindling and those who are dragooned into the ranks, are poorly trained and increasingly poorly motivated. Faced with the determined fighters of the FSA, their low morale causes them either to flee the battlefield, surrender or defect to the opposition side.

The will be further unease among Assad supporters as it becomes increasingly clear that the regime has used poison gas against both opposition fighters and civilian population. The French authorities now believe that they have clear evidence that the deadly nerve agent Sarin has been deployed by the regime. This is likely to boost outside military, logistical and intelligence support for the opposition fighters. Since Russia will not respect an arms embargo against the regime, European states led by France and Britain take the view that the opposition should also be armed.

Gone is all the talk of limiting military supplies to “non-lethal defense equipment.” The West may still be refusing to intervene decisively against Assad, but at least by giving guns and ammunition to the opposition fighters, it can convince itself it is at least standing up for justice in the face of tyranny. With these new supplies flowing to the FSA through virtually all of Syria’s borders, the FSA’s loss of Qusayr actually seems of very limited importance.