Syria: Proxy War or Local Uprising?

When Syrian anti-regime forces swept across the countryside surrounding government-held Aleppo to capture the city in just three days, the speed and success of their advance took even some of the rebels by surprise. 

“When we saw the regime forces were so weak and we could defeat them within a few hours, we decided to seize the opportunity,” Nour Al-Hariri, a 30-year-old Idlib resident who took up arms against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, told The Dispatch. “Each city is fighting its own battle. It’s not a civil war, it’s a revolution.” 

Now in its eighth day, the surprise offensive has seen anti-regime militants take over more than 230 cities, villages, and military bases previously under government control. On Thursday, anti-regime militants closed in on Hama after battles with Assad’s forces, capturing the strategic city on the road south to Homs and the capital city of Damascus. In Aleppo, an economic hub that Assad and his allies wrested from rebel hands in 2016 after a deadly siege, militant leaders now walk freely through the ancient city streets and declare their civil rule.

Government forces have attempted to push back the advancing opposition fighters, including through airstrikes on rebel-held areas. But the rapid collapse of Assad’s defensive lines has underscored the fragility of the regime at a time when various regional actors are trying to exert influence over the besieged country, which for more than a decade has been embroiled in a destructive civil war.

The conflict first began in 2011 after Assad’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests inspired a wave of unrest. But what began as a popular uprising to free Syria from its dictatorial leadership quickly became co-opted by jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which seized territory and declared caliphates. Assad retook some 70 percent of the country’s territory with Russian and Iranian support, bringing the Syrian war to an uneasy—and continuously deadly—stalemate in recent years. 

The latest surge in violence broke that dynamic, with both sides accusing the other of bringing about the clashes that have already killed an estimated 570 people, according to the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights. But for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the insurgents spearheading the attack, this battle may have been years in the making. Under the leadership of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the group has built out a professionalized fighting force of some 30,000 soldiers and sought to establish alliances with other rebel factions. 

But the jihadist ties of HTS haven’t won it friends in Syria or abroad. The faction is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and al-Qaeda offshoot, though it has attempted to distance itself from its extremist roots in recent years. After seizing control of Aleppo and Hama, the Islamist group issued a series of statements stating that the rights of religious and ethnic minorities—such as Kurds, Alawites, and Christians—would be protected under their occupation. As the militants strengthen their grip over the diverse cities, whether they will uphold their promise to protect pluralism remains to be seen.

Also part of the fight is the Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish-backed coalition that holds territory in northern Syria. In addition to fighting government forces, the SNA has also clashed with U.S.-aligned Kurdish fighters, whom Ankara has long sought to push away from its shared border with Syria. Turkish officials now hope to seize on the rebels’ momentum to pressure the Assad regime to engage in talks, which it has previously refused to do until Turkey ends its backing for anti-regime militias and pulls its own troops out of northern Syria. 

But Ankara is far from the only outside power with designs on Syria. Ever since Iran came to the Assad regime’s aid at the height of the civil war, Damascus has acted as one of the key players in Tehran’s Axis of Resistance. The country is a major conduit for Iranian weapons shipments to Islamic Republic-backed terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah, in Lebanon and elsewhere, though ongoing Israeli airstrikes over Syrian territory to stop the arms transfers have weakened Assad’s government. 

Likewise, Israel’s victory over Hezbollah exacerbated Assad’s existing vulnerabilities. The Iranian-backed group helped the regime retake and control Syrian territory, but the Israeli military’s incursion into southern Lebanon drew the terror group’s attention elsewhere and left it severely weakened. The rebels launched their attack on the day a Lebanon ceasefire took effect, likely fearing that their window of opportunity could close. A rebel commander recently said as much to Israel’s Channel 12: “We looked at the agreement with Hezbollah and understood that this is the time to liberate our lands.”

Together with Israel’s direct strikes against Iran, the weakening of Tehran’s network of regional proxies created an ideal moment for Assad’s opponents to strike. “The decline of Iran’s Axis of Resistance was certainly consequential in Syria,” Ibrahim Al-Assil, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told The Dispatch. “The degrading of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Israeli airstrikes—on Iranian militia sites inside Syria, on sites controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards inside Syria—all made the regime’s alliance very weak.”

Russia’s focus on its costly war in Ukraine “created another opening” for the rebels, he added. Russian air support had allowed Assad to gain an edge in the ongoing conflict, but the regime’s overreliance on the international partner is now proving potentially ruinous. Moscow has reportedly moved at least some military assets out of Syria amid its fight with Ukraine. Perhaps more importantly, however, it has also failed to adequately train Assad’s forces to defend themselves under an organized and sustained rebel offensive. 

So what comes next? As the HTS-led assault continues in northwest Syria, there’s a risk of Assad opponents elsewhere in the country taking advantage of the regime’s moment of weakness. In the eastern Deir ez-Zor province, Kurdish forces have begun attacking government positions. And while it’s still unlikely that rebel groups from the north pose an imminent threat to the well-defended capital city of Damascus, located in the country’s southwest corner, factions within the regime could view the offensive as an opportunity to turn on Assad.

“There is an increasing risk that the regime might again implode itself, that there might be divisions within the regime,” Al-Assil said. But the toppling of Assad likely wouldn’t come as a welcome development for many foreign actors, even for his adversaries, given concerns that growing instability in Syria could give way to another surge in jihadism: “I don’t see a regional player pushing for Assad to fall in Damascus, because if Assad falls in Damascus, there might be chaos and there might be unintended consequences.”

The rebel attack came as the U.S. contemplated whether to pursue improved ties with the Syrian government in an effort to pull it out of the Iranian orbit, with the Biden administration reportedly considering relaxing sanctions on the regime. But the offensive underscored Assad’s reliance on Iranian manpower, making such a deal unlikely for now, and put the U.S. in the uncomfortable position of waiting to see who prevails—the regime or a coalition of rebel groups with jihadist links. 

“We have two adversaries to the United States, legally and otherwise, that are fighting each other for the balance of power in a country in which we don’t want to further intervene,” Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Dispatch. 

But the renewed fighting could also afford the U.S. an opportunity to push for a more lasting diplomatic solution to the conflict—something Assad has long avoided.

“Because of the Assad regime’s foot-dragging and negotiating in bad faith, we’re still frozen here 13-plus years after the beginning of the war,” said Tabler, also the former Syria director for the National Security Council and Syria envoy at the State Department. “Today was an indication that the Assad regime has far fewer cards to play than we thought.”