BEIRUT — Two significant defeats at the hands of Syrian government troops have exposed the limitations of the country’s rebel forces: They are low on cash, running out of weapons and facing a fiercely loyal military that will fight to the death.

Insisting that their drive to oust President Bashar Assad by force remains strong, the Free Syrian Army says the arms shortage is the main obstacle.

“Send us money, we’re desperate. Send us weapons,” Ahmad Kassem, who coordinates military operations for the FSA, told The Associated Press in an interview. “We don’t need fighters. We have excess men who can fight, but we need weapons to protect our land and honor.”

In the past year, the rebels briefly seized small amounts of territory, most recently in the Baba Amr district of Homs and the city of Idlib in northern Syria.

After nearly four weeks of relentless shelling, the government reclaimed Baba Amr on March 1 following an assault that killed hundreds of people and transformed the neighborhood into a symbol of the uprising. The humanitarian situation in Baba Amr, part of the third-largest city in Syria, remains catastrophic for civilians.

Government forces next turned their guns on Idlib, another bastion of opposition support. On Tuesday, government forces took control of the city in a three-day operation – significantly shorter but still bloody.

The Free Syrian Army has emerged as the most potent armed force fighting Assad. It is highly decentralized, with its leaders in the relative safety of neighboring countries. The rebels have not come close to carving out a zone akin to Benghazi in eastern Libya, the center of the successful uprising against Moammar Gadhafi last year.

“If we had a safe haven to operate out of inside Syria, we would’ve won the battle against Bashar a long time ago,” said Muneef Al-Zaeem, an FSA spokesman based in Jordan.

The defeats have sapped some of the rebels’ momentum, but the fighters say they are using the opportunity to regroup.

“We absolutely do not feel defeated, not at all,” said Fayez Amru, a FSA member who defected from the military about a month ago and is now based in Turkey.