On the surface, the Syrian Electronic Army won a cyber-victory for the Assad regime on Wednesday when it hacked the website of the International Business Times, defacing sections and removing a story to which it objected.

But all it takes is a glance at the headline of the deleted story — “The Syrian Army Is Shrinking, And Assad Is Running Out Of Soldiers” — to realize that the Army’s victory from Pyrrhic: far from vanquishing the enemy on the Internet, it only drew attention to a growing fear of the Assad regime in the 45-month conflict.

The episode started on Monday, when the Institute for the Study of War posted a brief study, “The Assad Regime Under Stress: Conscription and Protest among Alawite and Minority Populations in Syria”.

After three years of grueling warfare against armed opposition fighters, the Syrian regime faces a dire internal crisis not witnessed since the initial months of the conflict. Defections, desertions, and over 44,000 combat fatalities have reduced the Syrian Arab Army from a pre-war high of 325,000 soldiers to an estimated 150,000 battle-tested yet war-weary troops. Despite reinforcement from tens of thousands of foreign volunteers, Lebanese Hezbollah militants, and pro-government militias, regime forces have proven unable to decisively overcome rebel brigades on the battlefield. These pressures were only exacerbated by the withdrawal of thousands of Iraqi Shi’a militiamen from Syria in June 2014 redeployed to counter the ongoing ISIS [Islamic State] offensive in Iraq. At the same time, key demographics within the President Bashar al-Assad’s support base – including the Alawite population – have exhibited growing signs of dissatisfaction with the Syrian regime. Pre-existing grievances related to repression and social inequities have merged with high casualty counts and rising economic stress to fuel a sense of exhaustion among regime supporters. Faced with both a war-weary populace and a burgeoning manpower deficit that threatens its survival, the Syrian regime has resorted to a nation-wide forced conscription campaign – threatening to further split the regime from its base.

The report highlighted a series of recent regime measures to find men for the war. There was an “unprecedented” activation in October of army reservists, including all reservists born in or after 1984 in Hama. Checkpoints and raids detained men accused of avoiding military service, with reports of arrests of more than 1,500 in Hama and about 1,200 in Homs, although the regime refrained from large-scale reserve mobilization among its core support in Damascus and the Alawite coast.

As the list of 70,000 names of “reservists to be mobilized” was circulated, regime forces reportedly extended raids to buses, cafes, and other venues frequented by young men. House-by-house searches were conducted in entire neighborhoods. Decrees restricted the ability of military-aged males to leave the country, with authorized travellers paying a deposit of more than $250, returnable upon re-entry to Syria. Government employees face five-year prison sentences, fines, and immediate dismissal if they refuse to enroll in compulsory military service, and proof of enrollment is needed to collect salaries.

Despite the significance of the study, it was missed by mainstream media except for the International Business Times. Alexandra Masi summarized the key points and quoted the author, Christopher Kozak:

The war has reached a sort of dynamic stalemate where it is unlikely it will be ended by any short-term outlook. The regime cannot defeat the rebels and the rebels have not been able to decisively defeat the regime…. at some point the population will reach a tipping point where the cost of war has been too great to bear for the community.

That’s when the Syrian Electronic Army took notice of the damaging claims. Within hours, the International Business Times had been hacked, with the story replaced with the message:

This time we only deleted the article that contained false information about Syria and the Syrian army. Next time we will delete all your website.

The Army announced on Twitter:

However, the outcome of the operation may not be what the Assad regime wanted. The International Business Times has restored its article, with the link to the original study from the Institute for the Study of War.

So far more people now are likely to know about the extent of the manpower crisis in the Syrian military, and — amid recent victories by insurgents and challenges by the Islamic State — hints of desperation from the Assad regime.

As the ISW study concludes, despite the regime’s measures, “sustaining combat operations in the context of a war-weary populace is a mission doomed to failure”.