For years, the world forgot about Syria. Many believed it was lost in an unsolvable abyss following the collapse of the 2011 revolution into a bloody civil war – made increasingly complex by the intervention of a mess of international actors.
Most assumed that the immovable regime of Bashar al-Assad had won, and that nothing would ever change. Few could even tell you if the war was still ongoing, let alone what stage it was at.
That changed just a few days ago, when the success of a shock offensive by a hodgepodge of anti-Assad forces took everyone – including the insurgents themselves – by surprise.
Regime forces appeared to dissolve as tens of thousands of fighters stormed Syria’s second city, Aleppo, and then continued their advance southward towards Hama. This appears to have triggered uprisings and offensives from multiple factions across the country, with clashes reported in the north, south, east and west.
Assad hurried back to Damascus from Moscow and spent hours frantically calling Middle Eastern governments that had normalised relations with him last year, according to Charles Lister, director of the Syria programme at the Middle East Institute (MEI).
The embattled autocrat reportedly demanded their support in “countering terrorism”, the analyst wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Whether anyone will come to Assad’s rescue remains to be seen. But for the first time in years, the paper tiger that is his regime – corrupt, broken, and deeply indebted to its backers, Russia and Iran – was exposed.
The offensive was launched by a coalition of over a dozen factions based in the Turkish-controlled northwestern province of Idlib. It was spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist group once aligned with al-Qaeda, that over the years has worked hard to distance itself from its shadowy jihadi past.
Syrian journalists on the ground told me this coalition has regained control of Aleppo, the military and civilian airport, and the once-revolutionary towns along the road to Hama, another major city south of Aleppo.
Internally displaced people who were forced to flee this area during the regime’s takeover five years ago have returned for the first time.
Further east, there were reports that Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (led by their Arab factions), which nominally control the northeast of the country, were looking to exploit the situation, prepping an offensive against regime forces in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor.
In the south, inspired by the opposition’s swift gains in the north, former opposition figures who had “reconciled” with the regime are also rising up.
Lister said that these former rebels have taken towns in rural Homs from the regime, and are now threatening to march on the provincial capital. Similar clashes have erupted around Syria’s capital, Damascus, and in the southern province of Daraa – once the cradle of the revolution.
There, former opposition factions were also reportedly fighting regime forces in six towns, with regime soldiers abandoning their positions.
