Days after rebels routed the Syrian army from a major city in the north, a five-page report landed on the desk of military-intelligence officers in Damascus with an alarming diagnosis.

       Elite troops sent to bolster Aleppo’s defenses had been forced to retreat as the regime’s army withdrew “in a crazy and spontaneous way." Soldiers fled “in a hysterical manner," leaving weapons and military vehicles behind, read the postmortem from a senior military-intelligence officer in the city dated Dec. 2.

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