People celebrate while stuck in traffic leading up to the Lebanon Syria Maasna border crossing in Bar Elias, Lebanon. Photo /Daniel Berehulak, the New York Times
Lightning offensive by rebels marks a stunning turn in the 13-year civil war, with more than 500,000 dead.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has resigned and left Syria, Russia’s Foreign Ministry confirmed today, a stunning fall for the long-time dictator who had kept rebel forces at bay for years with the help of Russia and Iran.
Rebels opposed to his rule swept through the country in a lightning offensive, in a dramatic breakthrough for factions that have been trying to unseat Assad for more than a decade.
The Syrian civil war started 13 years ago, beginning during the Arab Spring and escalating into a bloody, multifaceted conflict involving domestic opposition groups, extremist factions and international powers, including the United States, Iran, and Russia. More than 500,000 Syrians have died, and millions more have fled their homes.
Here’s a guide to understanding the conflict.
In just over a week, Syrian rebel forces seized much of Syria’s northwest from the Government in a fast-moving attack. First, the rebels seized Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, then days later blazed through Hama and the strategic city of Homs. On Sunday, they entered Syria’s capital, Damascus, taking the city without a fight as regime forces fled.
The Syrian Government
The Syrian Government, led by Assad, was central to the protracted and devastating civil war that began in 2011. Assad, who took power in 2000, is part of the family that has run Syria since a 1970 coup. They are Alawites, a minority sect that is an offshoot of Shiite (or Shia) Islam.
Assad initially portrayed himself as a modern reformist, but he responded to peaceful protests during the Arab Spring with brutal crackdowns, sparking a nationwide uprising.
After several years of war, the Assad Government clawed back much of the territory it lost to rebels with the help of Iran, Russia, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. But those allies have recently been decimated or distracted by other conflicts.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose name means Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, began to form at the beginning of Syria’s civil war, when jihadis formed the Nusra Front to fight pro-Assad forces with hundreds of insurgent and suicide attacks.
The group had early links to Isis (Islamic State), and then to al-Qaeda. But by mid-2016, the Nusra Front tried to shed its extremist roots, banding together with several other factions to establish Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The US and other Western countries still consider it a terrorist group.
The group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, told the New York Times his primary goal was to “liberate Syria from this oppressive regime”. He has tried to gain legitimacy by providing services to residents in his stronghold of Idlib.
Publicly, US officials have been cautious about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. But inside the US Government, some officials believe the group’s turn towards pragmatism is genuine, and that its leaders know they cannot realise aspirations to join or lead the Syrian Government if the group is seen as a jihadi organisation.
Kurdish Forces
Forces from Syria’s Kurdish ethnic minority became Washington’s main local partner in the fight against Isis in Syria, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
After the extremist group was largely defeated, Kurdish-led forces consolidated control over towns in the northeast, expanding an autonomous region they had built there. But Kurdish fighters still had to contend with their longtime enemy, Turkey, which regards them as linked to a Kurdish separatist insurgency.
There are also many other Syrian militias fighting with their own agendas and allegiances.
Turkey
Since the beginning of the civil war, the Turkish military has launched several military interventions across the border into Syria, mostly against Syrian Kurdish-led forces. Turkey now effectively controls a zone along Syria’s northern border.
Turkey also supports factions such as the Syrian National Army, a coalition of armed Syrian opposition groups. Analysts say it probably gave tacit approval to the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey last week issued a qualified approval of the rebel advance. “Idlib, Hama, Homs, and the target, of course, is Damascus,” Erdogan told reporters following Friday prayers (local time) in Istanbul, according to Turkish state media. “The opposition’s march continues. Our wish is that this march in Syria continues without incident.”
Russia
Throughout Syria’s civil war, Russia has been one of Assad’s most loyal foreign backers, sending Russian troops to support his forces and jets to bomb his enemies.
It maintained a strategic military presence in Syria with air and naval bases, which it used to support military operations in the region.
Because of the grinding war of attrition in Ukraine, analysts say Russia has been unable to support Syria’s Government as forcefully as it has in the past. Russian airstrikes that attempted to slow the rebel advance have been relatively sparse.
Iran and Hezbollah
Syria is a core part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, a network of countries and groups that includes Hezbollah, Palestinian militant group Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen that hopes to destroy Israel and reduce American influence in the Middle East.
Iran smuggles weapons to Hezbollah across Iraq and Syria. Iran and Hezbollah repaid the favour by sending thousands of militants to fight on Assad’s side during the civil war.
At the weekend, Iran began to evacuate its military commanders and personnel from Syria, according to regional officials and three Iranian officials, in a sign of Iran’s inability to help keep Assad in power.
United States
The US role in the Syrian civil war has shifted several times. The Obama Administration initially supported opposition groups in their uprising against the Government, providing weapons and training, with limited effect.
After the rise of Isis in 2014, US forces fought the terrorist group with airstrikes and assistance to Kurdish forces, and then stayed in northeastern Syria to prevent a resurgence.
In 2019, then-President Donald Trump withdrew many of those forces, but the US still maintains a force of about 900 troops, centred in Kurdish-controlled oil-drilling areas in the northeast and a garrison in the southeast near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan.
Israel
Israel’s military activities in Syria have been mostly focused on airstrikes against Hezbollah and Iranian targets, especially senior military personnel, weapons production facilities and the transport corridor that Iran uses to send weapons to Hezbollah.
The Syrian war began in 2011 with a peaceful uprising against the Government and spiralled into a complex conflict involving armed rebels, extremists and others.
The origins: The conflict began when Syrians rose up peacefully against the Government of Assad. The protests were met with a violent crackdown, while communities took up arms to defend themselves. Civil war ensued.
Other groups became involved. Amid the chaos, Syria’s ethnic Kurdish minority took up arms and gradually took territory it saw as its own. Isis seized parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and declared that territory its “caliphate”, further destabilising the region.
Foreign interventions. Assad has received vital support from Iran and Russia, as well as Hezbollah. The rebels were backed by the US and oil-rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. Turkey also intervened to stop the advance of Kurdish militias.
The toll. The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Forces loyal to Assad have committed by far the most atrocities. The regime has turned to chemical weapons, barrel bombs, incarceration, and starvation to force Syrians into submission.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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