For the previous few years, Syria has been locked in an uneasy stalemate, fragmented and devastated after greater than a decade of civil warfare, however with the entrance traces frozen and the worst of the preventing seemingly over.
The regime of President Bashar al-Assad had claimed a Pyrrhic victory after brutally crushing a riot with the army backing of Russia, Iran and Iranian-backed militants. It had regained management of a lot of the war-ravaged nation, whereas the remnants of the armed riot had been pushed again to enclaves within the north and north-west, surviving below the patronage and safety of Turkey.
However this week, that fragile deadlock was shattered as insurgents led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham superior from its stronghold in Idlib province and launched a lightning raid throughout the north in opposition to regime forces, charging into Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest metropolis. By Saturday, they had been closing in on Hama, to the south.
The assault underlined the fragility and the vulnerability of President Bashar al-Assad’s hollowed-out regime and his dependence on overseas forces to prop it up, 13 years after a mass fashionable rebellion morphed right into a civil battle.
It additionally pointed to the weak point of the Syrian military and the army capabilities of HTS. Its fighters launched their offensive on Wednesday and had been posing for pictures in entrance of Aleppo’s citadel within the coronary heart of the town of some 2mn individuals on Friday, as regime troopers appeared to soften away.
HTS is probably the most highly effective of the remaining insurgent factions, an offshoot of al-Nusra, a jihadist drive that emerged within the chaos of Syria’s warfare as an affiliate of al-Qaeda. It’s led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who as soon as fought for Isis in Iraq. He was designated a terrorist by the US a decade in the past and has a $10mn bounty on his head.
The group has managed Idlib, which is residence to between 3mn and 4mn individuals, for six years; a lot of the present inhabitants fled to the area to flee the Assad regime.
Jolani renounced his hyperlinks to al-Qaeda in 2016 and has lately sought to rebrand HTS as a extra average Islamist motion whereas consolidating the group’s maintain on Idlib.
He has additionally been increase the group’s army capability — it has reportedly used drones on this week’s offensive — whereas being clear about his ambitions, stated Malik al-Abdeh, a Syrian analyst.
Abdeh stated that in October, as Jolani deliberate the offensive, HTS was speaking with different insurgent factions within the north which might be a part of the Turkish-backed Syrian Nationwide Military, saying that he was positioning himself to be the “Conqueror of Aleppo”.
He estimated that HTS has as much as 30,000 fighters. Its ranks are full of veterans of the warfare and religiously motivated fighters who obtain larger salaries than the Turkish-backed fighters.
Abdeh added that the Islamist group views itself as being the Syrian Sunni Muslim equal to Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia motion.
“Jolani needs to play the position of [former Hizbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah for the Sunnis,” Abdeh stated. “With Jolani it has much less to do with ideology and extra to do with energy. He needs to do no matter it takes to place himself in energy in Syria and has by no means hidden the truth that he needs to overcome Damascus.”
The battering Hizbollah has taken throughout its 14-month battle with Israel might have offered the chance for Jolani to make his transfer. Together with Russia and Iran, Hizbollah and different Iranian-backed Shia militants had been important to Assad’s capacity to quash the riot.
However since Hamas’s assault on October 7 2023, Israel has dealt Hizbollah a collection of devastating blows in Lebanon, together with killing Nasrallah, and repeatedly struck Iranian and militant targets in Syria, whereas warning Assad he has to decide on sides.
HTS launched its offensive hours after a US-brokered ceasefire to finish the battle in Lebanon between Israel and Hizbollah got here into drive.
Charles Lister of the Center East Institute stated HTS had spent the previous 4 years intensively coaching and creating a higher stage of professionalism.
He added that they had “significantly better traces of command and management, devoted drone models, night-time forces and other forms of particular forces”, and had developed their weapons manufacturing functionality.
Lister stated the rebels may solely advance “up to now earlier than they had been overstretched” however had already succeeded in pushing again “the traces of management” to the place they had been six years in the past.
Analysts say HTS is coordinating with the Turkish-backed rebels within the Syrian Nationwide Military, however the latter forces haven’t but totally deployed to the battlefields.
The SNA is estimated to have about 40,000 fighters, however it’s made up of disparate factions which might be based mostly in enclaves in northern Syria, in impact managed by Turkey because the Arab state has fragmented right into a patchwork of fiefdoms.
Ankara’s foremost aim in Syria has been to push again from the border area Kurdish militants whom it considers an extension of the Kurdistan Employees’ get together (PKK), a separatist group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in opposition to the Turkish state. This consists of Kurdish-dominated forces that are supported by the US within the struggle in opposition to Isis and management swaths of Syria’s north-east.
Turkey’s hyperlinks to HTS, which it additionally designates as a terrorist organisation, are complicated. It acts as Idlib’s final protector from large-scale assaults by regime forces and their Russian backers, whereas Ankara additionally controls the border into the province, via which HTS will depend on commerce and taxes. But the Islamist group has additionally beforehand clashed with the Turkish-backed rebels.
Whereas Turkey might not have endorsed the HTS offensive prematurely, it may work to Ankara’s benefit if it seeks to use the chaos to push again Kurdish militants, analysts say.
“Turkey is the large protector of Idlib and an important backer of Idlib which HTS can’t afford to disregard. However it’s an ungainly relationship, there are ups and downs,” stated Dareen Khalifa of Disaster Group. “However it doesn’t see it as an Islamist risk. Quite the opposite this can be a helpful interlocutor, helpful in maintaining [Syrian] refugees on the opposite facet of the border and going after jihadis teams.”
Haid Haid, a Syrian analyst at Chatham Home, stated it was nonetheless unclear whether or not the group’s rebranding from its jihadist roots was real.
“When you take a look at their discourse, they’re making an attempt to indicate they’ve modified their methods. However there are a lot of points associated to the best way they govern the areas they management, it’s a centralised construction,” Haid stated. “The actual take a look at can be when there’s negotiations to see in the event that they imply what they are saying . . . They are saying they wish to be political gamers, that they’re prepared to interact. However no one has formally engaged with them to check if these claims are true or not.”
Idlib is ruled by the civilian-led “Syrian Salvation Authorities”, below HTS’s management. The UN Syria Fee of Inquiry stated in a September report that it had documented “torture and executions of detainees” held by HTS within the nation’s north-west.
Natasha Corridor, senior fellow on the Center East Program on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research, stated HTS was “by far probably the most highly effective, disciplined, and financially impartial [opposition] group”.
“They’ve very agency management over varied financial sectors inside Idlib and so they have dominated with fairly an iron fist — making an attempt to do away with any sort of dissent,” she stated.
After Assad started to show the tide within the civil warfare with Russian and Iranian backing, together with with the siege and bombing of Aleppo in 2016, many rebels and their supporters both fled to Idlib or had been evacuated to the province by the regime as a part of native ceasefire agreements.
Haid stated it was tough to gauge the extent of HTS’s assist as a result of more often than not Syrians “are selecting between unhealthy and worse”.
“For many individuals, they may not be proud of HTS in these areas, however they are going to form of be glad with them staying if meaning the choice is the Assad regime,” he stated.
