The new offensive in Syria began on Wednesday, when rebel groups claimed to have swiftly seized control of a military base and 15 villages held by government forces in north-western Aleppo province. On Thursday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rebels, led by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), cut off the main highway from Damascus to Aleppo and claimed to have seized about 100 sq km of territory, while Assad’s Russian allies launched airstrikes in response.
By Friday night, HTS fighters had progressed from their base in the north-western countryside to the outskirts of Aleppo, and yesterday they appeared to have complete control of the city.
In this piece, Ruth Michaelson reports on the mixture of optimism and uncertainty among residents, who were stunned by how quickly government forces withdrew: “We had lost hope of something like this ever happening,” one resident, Nasma, tells her – but now, “we felt completely lost”. The Syrian military was meanwhile rushing reinforcements into Hama province as the rebels advanced on the provincial capital.
The explanations for this rapid advance are grounded in HTS’s work in recent years to strengthen its forces and a moment of opportunity created by the broader Middle East crisis. But, said Jerome Drevon, a senior analyst at Crisis Group, the rebels’ success also rested on their appetite for the battle. “Most students of wars also insist that many battles are also settled by the willingness to fight,” he wrote on X. “The willingness of the opposition appears much stronger.”
What is the history of Syria’s civil war?
In 2011, pro-democracy demonstrations as part of the Arab spring were crushed by Assad’s forces. The resulting unrest led to an armed uprising that eventually morphed into a fractured civil war, with many rebel factions backed by regional players with competing agendas and the initial demands for a new, pluralistic settlement largely eclipsed by extremist jihadist organisations including an al-Qaida affiliate and Islamic State. Whatever the agenda of those rebel groups and however ruthless some of them may be, many more civilians flee government-held territory for opposition areas than the other way around.
The war has killed about half a million people, with almost 7m more fleeing the country as refugees; those who remain are enduring a lasting state of economic crisis. While the rebels once appeared to pose a serious threat to Assad’s rule, he has gradually regained control of about 70% of the country with crucial support from Russia and Iran.
The rebels have been confined to parts of the country’s north and north-west, where they hold on with the protection of bordering Turkey. The war has never completely stopped, but has largely been in stalemate since Vladimir Putin and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, brokered a ceasefire in the north-western Idlib region in 2020.
Why has the conflict restarted?
HTS appears to have been preparing for this operation for some time, with reports of major military exercises for several weeks in the autumn and predictions of a major offensive. Experts say that HTS’s forces are significantly more professional than they were at the time of the ceasefire, with a new military college established and full control of local governance in its strongholds. They have new technologies at their disposal including drones.
The other critical factor in the advance is the wider geopolitical situation, and a sense that Assad’s allies are distracted or weakened. Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy that has previously been a crucial element in Assad’s forces, has been decimated by Israel’s operations in Lebanon. While Russia remains a major player, and Vladimir Putin will not countenance defeat in the region, Moscow’s forces are undeniably bogged down in Ukraine. Dan Sabbagh has more on all that in this analysis piece.
Meanwhile, Israel has dramatically escalated airstrikes against Iranian forces on the ground in Syria and has also hit weapons depots in Aleppo. And Donald Trump, the US president-elect, launched airstrikes against Syrian military sites during his first term, alongside a broader policy of pressure on Iran. Dareen Khalifa, a Syria expert at Crisis Group, told the FT that all of this presented a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for the rebels: “When else are you going to ever get the world, the US, Israel and everyone else going after their rivals?”
The rebels may also have been motivated by recent Russian and Syrian airstrikes against rebel areas that could have been intended as a precursor to a wider military campaign. There was a limited window of opportunity for the operation, analyst Haid Haid told Ruth Michaelson: “If the rebel forces waited too long the regime would have been able to reinforce their frontlines as Hezbollah forces are no longer busy with the war in Lebanon.” Notably, the offensive began on the same day the truce in Lebanon came into effect.
Who are Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham?
The founder of HTS, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, was once a participant in the Iraqi insurgency against the US as a member of the group that eventually became Islamic State. In its former incarnation as Jabhat al-Nusra or the Al-Nusra front, HTS later declared allegiance to al-Qaida. It publicly broke those ties in 2016 and rebranded as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – or “Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant”. HTS is designated a terrorist group by the US, but it has abandoned its goal of establishing an Islamic state in Syria and is viewed as a less extreme organisation than Islamic State.
HTS has become the most powerful rebel faction in Syria and controls Idlib, where about 4 million people live, with command of an estimated 30,000 troops. Crucially, Jerome Drevon and Patrick Haenni wrote in this 2021 paper for the European University Institute, HTS has consolidated power in Idlib at the expense of more radical Islamic State and al-Qaida factions. And, they say: “HTS’s takeover does not incubate global jihad.”
While they are one of the groups who can be seen as having “confiscated the revolution” from the Syrian people, the patronage of Turkey has constrained their operations. There are nonetheless serious human rights concerns in the area they control, including executions for those accused of affiliation with rival groups and over allegations of blasphemy and adultery.
How will Assad respond?
While HTS’s advance has taken place at a remarkable speed, there are good reasons to think that the Assad regime and its allies will fight back – even given the constraints imposed in other military spheres. Ibrahim Al-Assil, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, warned: “The actual battle hasn’t started yet. Assad might be applying an old strategy that worked for him before: withdraw, regroup, fortify, and counterattack. A key test for the rebels’ evolution will be to know when to stop.”
With regime forces consolidating in Hama and Russian airstrikes likely to intensify, HTS’s strength will be severely tested in the days and weeks ahead – and negotiations between Turkey and Russia are likely to prove as important to the eventual outcome.
Many experts also fear that Assad will turn to chemical weapons, just as he did to devastating effect in the darkest days of the civil war. If so, whatever successes the rebels manage to consolidate could come at a horrifying cost.
