In the aftermath of the setbacks at the battles of the Defile, Marj Ardabil, and other similar disasters, the Umayyad government was forced to take urgent measures to reinforce the buckling frontiers of the empire. As the defeats also increased the bitterness and reluctance of the local frontier armies to campaign, the caliphs were left with little choice but send out detachments of the trusted Syrian army to the threatened fronts. This move proved doubly destabilizing for the Umayyad regime: the introduction of the Syrians in the frontier provinces further alienated the local troops, who saw their hitherto privileged position being threatened by the regime's favourites; while the parcelling out of the Syrian army to distant areas, and the losses it suffered, weakened the dynasty's main power base.