The sudden capture of Aleppo and Hama has surprised everyone and everyone to the point that many analysts consider that they could be the beginning of the end of the Assadist regime. The weakness of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, traditional allies of Bashar Al Assad, is one of the reasons that explains the drastic changes registered on the ground, but it is not the only one nor, probably, the most relevant.
After fourteen years of civil war, Syria is going through the worst crisis in its recent history with a country fractured politically, divided socially and sunk economically. President Bashar Al Assad is seen by an immense majority of the population as the main person responsible for this situation, since his intention to remain in power against all odds has caused the destruction of the country.
During the conflict, at least half a million Syrians have died and half of the population has been forced to leave their homes, becoming refugees in surrounding countries or displaced within their own country. Nine out of ten Syrians live below the poverty line and corruption permeates the entire Government like a cancer.
As if that were not enough, the country is divided into four different entities. Until recently, the Assad government controlled two thirds of the territory: the urban (Damascus-Homs-Hama-Aleppo) and coastal (Tartus-Latakia) corridors, as well as the strategic city of Deir Az Zor on the banks of the Euphrates.
In the last ten days, the situation has changed drastically, since the Islamist Organization for the Liberation of Syria (Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, HTS in its Arabic acronym), at the head of the National Salvation Government in Idlib, has launched an offensive in the course of which it has conquered a good part of the provinces of Aleppo and Hama and is now advancing towards Homs, a nerve center that connects Damascus with the Mediterranean coast.
For its part, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria led by the Syrian Democratic Forces, under Kurdish rule, controls the territories north of the Euphrates with the support of Washington. Finally, there is an Interim Government in the northern border areas under the authority of the Syrian National Army, of Turkish obedience, which has taken advantage of the situation to take control of the Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo and the city of Tel Rifaat, from where they have tens of thousands of Kurds fled.
For years, President Bashar Al Assad has managed to maintain his precarious power thanks to the unconditional support that his allies have given him. However, the distribution of forces has changed drastically in the last two years. On the one hand, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which forced Putin to withdraw a good part of his troops from Syria (including the Wagner Group) to concentrate them on the Ukrainian front. On the other hand, the “unity of the sands” strategy established by Iran after the attack on October 7, 2023, which forced the members of the Axis of Resistance to get involved in the fight against Israel to try to prevent the disappearance of Hamas. Since then, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Lebanese Hezbollah have suffered a series of unprecedented blows by Israel that have significantly undermined their operational capabilities and called into question their influence in the Middle East and Lebanon, respectively.
Today, neither Russia nor Iran have sufficient resources to stop the rebel advance and, probably, they have already written off Bashar Al Assad. In fact, Russia would barely have a dozen aircraft deployed at its Hmeimin air base in Latakia and has withdrawn its last three frigates from the port of Tartus, the only naval base the Russian fleet has in the Mediterranean.
At the same time, the Iranian regime is immersed in an unprecedented crisis, since its Axis of Resistance has been beheaded in the last year and its absolute priority is to guarantee its own survival in a hostile environment, especially given the upcoming arrival of Donald Trump to the White House. While it is true that in the past it bet all its cards on Al Assad, it currently lacks the capacity to come to the aid of its traditional ally in the face of the acute economic crisis it is going through.
His calls to mobilize the Iraqi Shiite militias included in the Hashad Shaabi (Popular Effort) have collided with the frontal opposition of the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr and with the lukewarmness of the Iraqi Government, which does not wish to be immersed in the swampy Syrian waters. .
The Syrian regime itself does not have the troops to stand up to the well-trained and armed units grouped in the HTS and the ENS. Putin’s military adventurism in Ukraine and the defeats suffered by the Axis of Resistance have placed Al Assad in an extremely vulnerable situation. All this in a context in which he was experiencing a sweet moment after his recent rehabilitation by the Arab League and the reestablishment of relations with the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries.
Today, Al Assad’s leadership is widely contested even within his ranks, where unrest is evident and desertions are massive due to the regime’s inability to even cope with the ridiculous salaries that officials and soldiers still receive. who are incapable of guaranteeing a minimum income in the face of rampant inflation and the plummeting fall of the Syrian pound.
In this context, Türkiye emerges as the main beneficiary of the regime’s setbacks and Russian and Iranian weakness. It should be remembered that Türkiye joined the Astana Process in 2017 when it realized that its bid to overthrow Al Assad had failed. Hence, it tried to coordinate with Russia and Iran to, at least, save the furniture and ensure that a series of basic demands were taken into account.
The most important was to expel the Kurdish Popular Defense Units from the border areas, as it considers them a threat to its own national security due to its close relationship with the PKK. Another of their demands was that, in the post-war phase and in coherence with Security Council resolution 2254, a government of national unity be constituted in which opposition groups would be integrated and legislative and presidential elections would be called to elect a new leadership. All of this, in Ankara’s opinion, would create the conditions for a gradual return of the three million Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey, a presence that has become a ticking time bomb for Erdogan himself in the latest electoral events.
Faced with the refusal of Russia and Iran to take Turkish interests into account, Erdogan ordered his army to intervene in Syrian territory. Operations Euphrates Shield, Olive Branch and Spring of Peace, between 2017 and 2019, resulted in the massive expulsion not only of the Kurdish militias, but also with the ethnic cleansing of said enclaves with the mass expulsion of the Kurdish population . Now, the progress made in the region in recent months places Turkey in an advantageous situation, as it has gone from a weak link in the chain to a strong part of the equation. The recent fall of Aleppo and Hama places it in a position of strength against Russia and Iran, since Turkey is the promoter of the ENS and maintains close relations with HTS.
While it is true that it is still too early to predict how events will evolve in the coming weeks and whether the collapse of the regime will result in the fall of Bashar Al Assad, what seems clear is that, once again, the fate of Syria It is not in the hands of the Syrians themselves, but of the regional and international powers that have been interfering in the Arab country since 2011. Many regional actors, including Israel, consider that it is still beneficial to their interests to maintain the Syrian conflict indefinitely. for that Syria does not rise from its ashes in the future.
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