The Syrian Regime and the Status of the International Crisis Group in the Light of the Iraq-Sisyri War and Syria’s Unification with Turkey
It strives to retain but also set up governance in the areas around it that eventually will lead to a monopoly over goods and services for taxation, like what has occurred in the northwest.
Ford says, “It’s not what it was.” “It’s not what I had imagined when we pushed to get them on the terrorism list in 2012. They used to be “al Qaeda in Iraq, Syria branch.”
But as HTS celebrates its relatively easy advance, the Syrian army and its Russian- and Iranian-backed allies are preparing to fight back. A senior analyst at the International Crisis Group says that the group and other armed groups fighting with them will be more difficult to control once they hold even more new territory.
“They have really restructured themselves over the past few years, they’ve become more professional,” Drevon says. Command and control may be a bit more difficult to maintain if these groups are spread further to the south, as you know they would spread thinner.
The proximity of the border and cooperation with other rebel groups has allowed HTS to develop a diversified economy according to a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute. Rose believes HTS may try to duplicate this model elsewhere.
Turkey is trying to prevent a new influx of refugees across the border into Turkey, as well as keeping fresh migrants out, says McKeever who is based in the Jordanian capital of Amman.
Turkey’s support for the group has been crucial, even though it was originally intended to help them fend off government forces.
Many Syrians who have fled other parts of the war are being helped by the Salvation Government along the border with Turkey.
HTS leaders do not intend to apply Sharia law in areas they control and have started working with Syria’s Christian communities so they can rebuild churches and return their lands.
But in recent years HTS has publicly disavowed international terrorism and tries to present a more moderate face, according to Charles Lister, the director of the Syria Program at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington D.C.
“The group has completely turned away from having any kind of global agenda. It has turned national,” Lister says. “But unquestionably, the group retains very conservative religious foundations.”
An Islamist group that the US and several other nations long ago designated a terrorist organization, it was known as Jabhat al-Nusra when it formed a formal alliance with Al-Qaida more than a decade ago.
Source: Who are the rebels who have seized control of Aleppo, Syria?
The Syrian Regime in the Civil War in the Early 21st Century: A Keystone for the Coalition against the Islamic State in the Middle East
“We hit positions of the leadership and succeeded in cutting off communications between them and their troops. That created big chaos for them. It was a big psychological defeat.”
The military advancement of a Syrian rebel group over the past week has changed the battlefield and upended assumptions about the conflict in the Middle East.
The OLF took control of a huge swath of the country this week that had been under the control of Assad since the start of the uprising.
In a matter of days, Syrian rebels captured the major city of Aleppo, seized additional territory in the surrounding countryside, and refocused international attention on what was the mostly dormant Syrian civil war.
They moved further south in the past two days as fighting broke out in many towns and cities across the country.
During an interview with NPR, Gen. Homsi said that the rebels succeeded in breaking the first line and then the second and third.
The U.S. military still has hundreds of troops in Syria who are in the northeast to protect the Kurds. Sometimes militias from Iran attack the U.S. troops, though they aren’t directly involved in the current fighting. The administration of Biden did not take sides in the fighting. The U.S. classifies HTS as a terrorist group and is also highly critical of Assad.
“The Russian air force is already pounding rebel-held areas. Iran is moving allied militia forces. I wouldn’t be surprised to read reports that Hezbollah is moving fighters from Lebanon to Syria as well,” said Salem. But it’s not clear, he says, how much support these allies can provide.
Analysts say that HTS may not be advanced this week if the Syrian military regroups and retaliates. Syria’s allies are trying to assist.
Iran, meanwhile, has suffered a series of setbacks as its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have fared poorly in their wars with Israel. Iran has been weakened by Israeli strikes that targeted the country’s limited air defenses and is vulnerable to future Israeli strikes.
The Hamas attack on southern Israel last October set in motion multiple conflicts that are still playing out. The day after that Hamas incursion, Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah joined the fray, firing rockets into northern Israel as a show of support for Hamas.
Iran, Russia and Hezbollah have been weakened and distracted by other conflicts according to Paul Salem, who’s with the Middle East Institute.
War has returned to Syria, a country where the Assad family has ruled for more than 50 years.
Amid all this turmoil, Syria’s Assad kept a low profile. The leader of Syria is accused of serious abuses during the country’s civil war. But over the past year, he’s said very little, refrained from new military offensives against opposition forces, and generally sought to avoid direct involvement in the wider regional conflicts.
The fighting kept spreading, with Houthi rebels in Yemen firing on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea, and occasionally launching long-distance drones and missiles at Israel. Iran and Israel exchanged fire earlier this year.
Even if the country remained divided among multiple groups, the worst of the war was over after a number of years. Most of the south and west is held by the Syrian government, while opposition groups control parts of the north and east.
Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are among the traditional ally that is trying to help the Syria’s government army.
The events occurring in Syria are connected to the events taking place in the Middle East over the past year. They have helped create the opening for the HTS fighters to begin their offensive last week.
The question is whether the rebels can keep up the pressure on the regime in Damascus or if the army can mount a counter attack.