One nation has been left out of the spotlight in the chaotic patchwork of crises erupting throughout the Middle East: Syria.
A coalition of Syrian rebels launched a lightning onslaught last week, taking Aleppo, the nation’s second-largest city, from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, reigniting a civil war that had dominated international headlines for almost ten years.
The area that Assad’s army had spent years regaining was retaken by the rebels in a matter of hours. According to a major monitoring group, Syrian and Russian fighter jets started hitting the region, killing hundreds of rebels as well as civilians.
According to H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, this is a very fragile scenario with a lot of change.
While some anti-Assad activists fear the harshness of the Russia-Syrian response and the hard-line ideology of the Islamist rebels themselves, others hope it could signal the end of a weakened regime.
Additionally, it’s unclear how this will impact the roughly 900 American troops who are still in the area or the remaining members of the Islamic State terrorist organization, which the Pentagon has warned may be reorganizing.
What we do know is as follows:
What happened?
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group, a coalition of Syrian rebels launched a swift attack last Wednesday with little notice, quickly taking control of Aleppo and cities in the neighboring provinces of Idlib and Hama.
The militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is leading the rebels. It was founded by a former Qaeda offshoot known as Jabhat al-Nusra and has been classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, and other organizations. For information regarding its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the State Department is offering a $10 million reward.
However, as Robin Yassin-Kassab, author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, noted last week, some observers claim the group has significantly softened its stances. He claimed that although it is still a totalitarian Islamist militia, its stance toward sectarian and ethnic minorities is far more tolerant than that of ISIS.
The group offers these anti-Assad observers a chance to overthrow the violence of his government and its Iranian and Russian backers.
However, in response to the rebels’ advance, Syrian and Russian fighter jets launched airstrikes on the areas controlled by the rebels; Assad’s regime claims to have killed over 400 of the terrorists.
In five days of battle, 244 rebels were killed, including 141 government personnel and 61 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, stated that Russia will follow suit after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi gave Assad his full backing. Additionally, the Observatory said that militias supported by Iran that were located in Iraq crossed the border into Syria on Monday in order to aid the Syrian government.
Why is this happening now?
According to some observers, Syria has burst back into prominence in part because of its period of neglect in the international spotlight.
After the 2011 Arab Spring, a diverse coalition of rebels came up against Assad, giving the impression that he might be overthrown. The intervention of Iran, Russia, and Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, was a major factor in his survival.
In particular, Russia’s indiscriminate bombing changed the tide against the rebels. Additionally, it turned cities like Aleppo and Homs, which were then under rebel control, into moonscapes made of rubble and rebar. The U.N. claims that although it has recorded over 350,000 deaths overall, this number is undoubtedly understated.
However, Russia, Iran, and Lebanon are now exhausted and preoccupied.
The war in Ukraine, where it is engaged in an attritional conflict with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Washington-backed administration in Kyiv, is Russia’s top priority. According to experts, Moscow’s recent asset withdrawals from Syria may have weakened Assad’s hold on power.
Iran has also suffered since Israel has attacked Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, destroyed its leadership, and engaged in combat with Hamas in Gaza.
According to Hellyer, the Russia analyst speaking from Cairo, Iranians have also demonstrated that their forces are overworked and possibly not as strong as people believe. Assad’s position is considerably weakened by all of this.
However, he continued, the Syrian regime will use all of its resources to strike them, working with the Russians and, to a lesser extent, the Iranians.
Washington and ISIS
What part, if any, the United States may play is less certain.
In addition to the American forces stationed in Syria, there are an additional 2,500 troops in neighboring Iraq who are a member of an 80-country coalition that aims to stop ISIS from reorganizing.
These pressures are unlikely to stay in place until President-elect Donald Trump assumes office in January, though. During his first tenure, he made two threats to withdraw these troops.
Even though ISIS was driven out of the large areas of Syria and Iraq it had controlled in 2017, the threat it posed has not diminished.
The Pentagon issued a warning in July that ISIS attacks were expected to quadruple annually.
According to some observers, ISIS may have more freedom to spread its influence throughout the east of the nation if HTS were to capture the city of Deir el-Zour, a former ISIS stronghold.
In a post on X, Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think organization, stated that ISIS will benefit from the resources that Assad’s army is shifting to the northwest in an attempt to repel the rebels, filling gaps elsewhere.
According to a briefing by the Washington-based think group Council on Foreign Relations, Iran might no longer be able to use Syria as a conduit for weapons and other supplies to Hezbollah if Assad were to collapse completely.
However, the question of who or what might succeed Assad should temper any hopes for his overthrow.
As much as I detest the crimes and injustices committed by the Assad administration, what is occurring in Aleppo at the moment is horrifying. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said on X that “many will die.” I would be ecstatic if there was an opportunity for a beautiful, peaceful conclusion that would benefit Syrians. This is not likely.
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