A major offensive has seen rebel groups in Syria retake the country’s second city, Aleppo – and demonstrated the growing prominence of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the 13-year-long civil war.

The surprise advance was led by members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, fighting alongside Turkish-backed groups opposing the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

While the offensive – the most significant fighting in recent years – may be the first time that many outside of Syria have heard of the Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has been growing in reputation and capabilities over a number of years. As an expert on the behavior of Islamist militant groups in the region, I have watched Hayat Tahrir al-Sham evolve from an offshoot of al-Qaida in Syria into a formidable player in the ongoing conflict. It followed a significant shift in the group’s strategic operations that has seen it become less concerned with global jihad and more focused on attaining power in Syria.

Origins and ideology

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has its roots in the early stages of the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 as a popular uprising against the autocratic government of Assad.

The group originated as an offshoot of the Nusra Front, the official al-Qaida affiliate in Syria. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was initially recognized for its combat effectiveness and its commitment to global jihadist ideology, or the establishment of strict Islamic rule across the Muslim world.

In a pivotal shift in 2016 under the leadership of Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, the Nusra Front publicly cut ties with al-Qaida and adopted the new name Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which means “Front for the Conquest of the Levant.”

The following year, it merged with several other factions in the Syrian war to become Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or the “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.”

Idlib, Syria. Photo by Ahmed Akacha via Pexels.

This rebranding aimed to move away from al-Qaida’s global jihadist agenda, which had limited the group’s appeal within Syria. It allowed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to focus on issues specific to Syrians, such as local governance, economic issues and humanitarian aid.

Despite these changes, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s core ideology continues to be rooted in jihadism, with the primary objective of overthrowing the Assad government and establishing Islamic rule in Syria.

This strategic shift was partly born of pragmatism. To keep power over the territories it controlled, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leaders concluded the group needed to minimize international opposition and effectively integrate into the broader Syrian revolutionary movement.

In other words, it needed to balance its radical Islamist origins with the demands of local governance and political engagement.

Strategic shifts and recent activities

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has been the prevailing force in Idlib, the final significant rebel stronghold in Syria.

Over the years, the group has solidified its control in the region by functioning as a quasi-governmental entity, providing civil services and overseeing local affairs, despite reports of human rights abuses.

In recent years, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s propaganda has emphasized protecting Syrian territory and its people from the Assad government.

This has helped the group enhance its position among local communities and other rebel groups.

In an effort to further burnish its image, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has ramped up its public relations efforts, both at home and abroad. For example, it has engaged with international media and humanitarian organizations to negotiate – and film – aid deliveries to the areas it governs.

These initiatives showcase a commitment to civilian welfare and distance the group from the violence typically associated with jihadist movements.

On the offensive again

The recent military offensive, during which Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led rebels swiftly captured significant parts of Aleppo and pushed toward the city of Hama, marks another significant strategic pivot. It signals a revitalization of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s military objectives and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s thinking in launching an advance now has likely been influenced by a blend of regional and local dynamics. The Assad government’s increasing vulnerability has become evident of late, marked by economic deterioration and corruption.

Many areas in Syria remain only nominally under state control, and the central government is heavily reliant on support from allies such as Russia and Iran.

These allies, however, have been preoccupied by their respective conflicts against Ukraine and Israel, potentially diluting their support for Syria.

Compounding Assad’s weakness are the diminishing capacities of Hezbollah and Iranian forces. Both have been crucial in propping up Assad throughout the civil war. But Israeli strikes in Lebanon, Syria and Iran have potentially weakened Hezbollah and Iran’s ability to support Syria. And this reduction in support may have tipped the military balance in the civil war toward opposition groups.

Moreover, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other rebel groups are facing a Syrian military hit by low morale, high desertion rates and inadequate military equipment. Disarray among government forces has made it difficult for Assad to respond effectively to the renewed assault by opposition forces.

In contrast, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has bolstered its military capabilities. Having survived various military campaigns, the group has consolidated power and professionalized its forces. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has established a military academy, reorganized its units into a more conventional military structure, and created specialized forces adept at executing coordinated and strategic attacks – as evidenced by the recent advance in Aleppo.

Moreover, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has managed to gain some local support by positioning itself as a defender of Sunni Muslim interests. The inability to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis has only fueled local resentment to the Assad government, creating a supportive base for any force that actively opposes the regime.

With growing support on the ground, a more professional military and a political wing focused on governance, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has evolved from a jihadist offshoot into a major player in Syria – a development that has huge implications for the internal dynamics of the war-torn country.

Sara Harmouch, Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ayman al-Zawahiri was from a prominent, elite Egyptian family. His relatives were Arab nationalists in that most nationalist of eras, the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt 1954-1970 after a young officers coup in 1952. Some teenagers act out by becoming delinquents. Al-Zawahiri defied the rest of his relatively secular family by becoming a devotee of Sayyid Qutb, a Muslim Brotherhood theorist of Islamic revolution. Qutb and the Brotherhood had been involved in a failed attempt to assassinate Col. Abdel Nasser in Alexandria in 1954. A thousand or so members were rounded up and tried, some of them tortured. Qutb was jailed as a conspirator. Qutb argued that the secular, nationalist Egyptian government was full of people who only looked and spoke like Muslims but that they had actually gone over to the evil Pharaoh. They were no longer really Muslims, but godless tyrants, apostates. And, he implied, apostates deserve to be killed. Qutb was accused of conspiring again to assassinate Abdul Nasser from prison in 1965 and was executed in 1966. Al-Zawahiri, age 15, was crushed.

In 1967 when Abdel Nasser lost the 6-Day War with Israel, al-Zawahiri rejoiced. He was maybe the only Egyptian not in mourning. He was glad to see Pharaoh taken down a notch.

Al-Zawahiri yielded to his family demands that he go to medical school. By the late 1970s he had a fancy practice in the shishy Ma’adi district of Cairo. I was at the American University in Cairo then, and some of my professors lived in Ma’adi, and invited us over for pot luck. We were around the corner from al-Zawahiri’s clinic. Who knows, maybe I saw him on the street. He had taken the Hippocratic Oath to protect human life, but would become one of history’s most notorious mass murderers.

Behind the scenes, al-Zawahiri formed one of the two branches of the youth terrorist organization, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). They had no use for the Muslim Brotherhood, the leadership of which made a pact with President Anwar El Sadat to give up political violence if he would let them organize. Sadat was a rightwinger who took over Abdel Nasser’s leftwing government, and he thought he needed a counterweight to the leftists, so he did a deal with the right wing Muslim Brotherhood. They disapproved of land reform and nationalization of industries, so they were perfect for Sadat’s purposes even if they were a little nutty about religion. Sadat encouraged the young Muslim Brotherhood types on college campuses to organize into “Islamic Groupings” to offset the Nasserists and Communists. The Islamic Grouping formed a national organization, advised by Sheikh Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh.

I remember in 1978 when a gaggle of Egyptian Islamic Jihad members were arrested by the Egyptian police, having been caught with bomb-making materials and bombs. It was the headline of the government-owned newspaper, al-Ahram [The Pyramids] . Al-Zawahiri still had the cover of practicing medicine in Ma’adi, but the Egyptian secret police were beginning to realize that he was dangerous.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran gave hope to religious radicals in Egypt that they could overthrow Sadat and make a Sunni version of that revolution in Egypt.

The EIJ found ways of getting in touch with cadets at the most prominent Egyptian military academy, and some secretly joined them, including one Lt. Khalid al-Islambouli. In 1981, both branches of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad made a 12-man council with the Islamic Grouping, and the ensemble decided to take out Sadat. It was decided that al-Islambouli and other recruits in the military would jump out of their troop transport vehicle during a military parade while Sadat was in the reviewing stand.

They pulled it off, and in 1981 Sadat was assassinated. However, the Egyptian masses weren’t interested in being ruled by religious zealots, and Sadat’s vice president, Hosni Mubarak, an air force officer who planned out Egypt’s campaign in the 1973 war, became president-for-life.

Egyptian religious radicals were at that point rounded up, including al-Zawahiri. In the meantime, Ronald Reagan had come to power in the US, and he and some congressional Cold Warriors wanted to respond to the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by backing Afghan jihadis. Some of the seven main such groups were tribal and relatively secular. Several were religious extremists, such as the Hizb-i Islami of Gulbaddin Hikmatyar. Hikmatyar became the CIA favorite and got the lion’s share of the billions the US sent in via the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The Egyptian government wanted to get the radicals off its hands. Instead of executing those implicated in Sadat’s killing or keeping them in prison, both steps sure to make further trouble, they offered them a deal. Leave Egypt and go do your jihad against the Soviets, or else. Most of them took the deal, including al-Zawahiri. It may be that the Reagan administration pressured Mubarak to send them off. We may never know. Al-Zawahiri set up a clinic on the Pakistan side, in Peshawar, to treat the jihadis wounded in firefights with the Red Army.

Meantime, I went off to Pakistan for my Ph.D. research and studied Urdu in Lahore. It was in late 1981 that I went up with a friend to Peshawar. Al-Zawahiri wasn’t there yet– he didn’t get out of prison until 1984– but the place was like Berlin in the Cold War, a hotbed of plotting, with many Afghan refugees around. I spoke Dari Persian with them and heard about their ordeals. My time in South Asia in the 80s and early 90s gave me insights into religious politics in Pakistan and Afghanistan that would later help me interpret al-Qaeda.

In 1989, the Soviets completely withdrew from Afghanistan. Usama Bin Laden, who had been a fundraiser for the Mojahedin, based in Peshawar and Saudi Arabia, went back to Jedda. He immediately gave a sermon in Jedda about the need to take down the other superpower, the US, (with which he had been implicitly allied only a few months before). He complained bitterly about US backing for Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians during the first Intifada.

By 1996, Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had gathered again in Afghanistan, as the Taliban were taking over the country. They merged their two organizations, EIJ and al-Qaeda, and became Qaedat al-Jihad. They declared holy war on the US and al-Zawahiri developed a new approach. He came to believe that he hadn’t been successful in overthrowing Arab governments because the US propped them up. So, first, he’d have to find a way to get them out of the Middle East and make it clear that dominating it came with a high price. After the US withdrew, then its puppets in the region (as he thought of them) would be easily overthrown.

Hence the attacks on the East Africa US embassies, the attack on the USS Cole, and the 9/11 attacks.

Those attacks failed, despite their gut-wrenching death toll and all the noise they made. They did encourage copy-cat attacks on a much smaller scale– Madrid in 2004, London in 2005, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2003-2006. Because I knew that terrain, I got called to Washington by think tanks a lot in the first decade of the last century, giving talks and presentations to the US government personnel who got time off to come to the panels, on what al-Qaeda was and how it operated and how I thought it could be defeated. I hope I helped.

The Bush administration took cynical advantage of 9/11 to launch a war of conquest in Iraq and to begin a 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan. Neither of the latter were useful for counter-terrorism, and indeed, were always likely to proliferate terrorism. The US was not dissuaded from playing its superpower role in the region and propping up governments it found useful. Indeed, Washington doubled down on that role, most unwisely. The Bush administration made an opening for al-Qaeda and its offshoot, ISIL in Iraq, and the US government over two decades failed to convince rural Afghans, whom they bombed assiduously all that time, to choose it over the Taliban.

The US squandered 20 years of sole superpower status and some $7 trillion on its fruitless “war on terror,” which had no benefit at all for the United States. If counter-terrorism were desirable, it could have been done with a light, rapid-response force, not with massive land campaigns in Central and West Asia.

Al-Zawahiri gradually lost any relevance. He was viewed as a joke in Egypt, and he opposed the 2011 youth revolts because they were primarily secular in character. He was backed for a while by some of the Syrian Jihadis who from 2011 tried to overthrow the Syrian government with a guerrilla war. But they faced pressure from Gulf patrons to dissociate themselves from al-Zawahiri. A section of them split off into ISIL, who thought that al-Zawahiri was old hat.

Ironically, during the Syrian civil war, until Russian and Iranian intervention ended it, the US CIA was supporting religious radical groups trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad who at least were battlefield allies of al-Qaeda. We were back to the 1980s in some ways.

As al-Zawahiri died, the Egyptian military was still ruling Egypt and the Saudi, Jordanian and other royal families al-Qaeda saw as Quislings were all still in power and benefiting from high oil prices. The US was still the predominant superpower, and a rising China likes Muslim radicalism even less than Washington does.

Al-Zawahiri goes down in the forgotten annals of failed, minor revolutionaries, distinctive only for the number of innocent civilians he murdered. His was a dead end for the Muslim world, and the vast majority of Muslims saw al-Qaeda for what it was.

An unprecedented 18% of Arab youth now are “not religious,” and many youth and others in the Arab world give as a reason for their cooling to religion the long decades of religious radicalism that have roiled the region. Al-Zawahiri dreamed of an Islamic state — though the rigidity and harshness of his vision was more a nightmare — but his crude, Nazi-like methods undermined the very basis for any such thing.

As for the US, almost no one will care that al-Zawahiri was finally brought to justice. People younger than 33 probably mostly don’t know who he was. Americans had moved on, turning inward. This generation faces the climate emergency, economic challenges, a rising American far right that threatens the foundations of democracy in a way al-Zawahiri never did, and renewed Washington-Moscow tensions. Most Americans regret that they allowed Washington to spend trillions on its murky and self-contradictory “war on terror.” Al-Qaeda can now be seen for what it was — a small, opportunistic and destructive terrorist organization that leaves virtually no legacy, and certainly no positive one.

Although the threat assessment aims at highlighting potential threats to the US and US interests, I am struck by how little their analysis of flashpoints in the Middle East throws up any real threats to America, as opposed to US troops abroad.

The report, at least what was made available publicly, has some gaps. I think the Israeli crushing of the 5 million militarily occupied Palestinians is a continuing security threat to the United States, since the rest of the world knows that Washington is complicit in it, and it fuels anti-Americanism. The Israeli occupation of Jerusalem was cited by Usama Bin Laden as one of three reasons he launched the 9/11 attacks.

I also think the Egyptian government’s extreme authoritarianism and disallowal of all dissent is dangerous and could eventually produce problems for the US, given how identified the US is with Cairo.

Since President Biden just announced a US departure from Afghanistan, let us begin there.

“We assess that prospects for a peace deal will remain low during the next year. The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.
• Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.
• Afghan forces continue to secure major cities and other government strongholds, but they remain tied down in defensive missions and have struggled to hold recaptured territory or reestablish a presence in areas abandoned in 2020.”

I think we may conclude that the US intelligence analysts don’t have high hopes for the long term survival of of the Kabul government of Ashraf Ghani and his military.

Afghanistan is a country of about 36 million. The Afghan National Army (ANA) has 175,000 men under arms. It appears to be an almost completely infantry army. Globalfire says they don’t have a single tank. Admittedly, tanks are not all that useful in Afghanistan because they cannot navigate the rugged terrain, a lesson the Soviets learned to their dismay in the 1980s.

The ANA does have 1,065 armored vehicles, which doesn’t sound like many for an army of 125,000. They only have 120 towed artillery pieces.

The essential equipment for fighting the Taliban effectively are helicopter gunships and drones, which are light and mobile and can follow them when they withdraw into the hills and mountains. The ANA does have 193 helicopters, the bulk of its air force, but no helicopter gunships according to Globalfire. It only has 23 attack aircraft of any sort.

Obviously, the ANA has been depending on the U.S. Air Force and has not developed its own. The likelihood is that even after the remaining US special forces troops are pulled out, the US will continue to supply at least drone support against the Taliban.

But it looks to me as though the US ought to have trained an air force and not just an infantry, and ought to have equipped the ANA better. President Biden is still going to sell the UAE $128 billion in sophisticated weaponry, but Washington seems not to be as interested in bolstering a key ally like Kabul.

The ANA costs about $5-$6 billion a year, most of it paid for by international donors (the U.S. pitches in almost $2 billion). If the donations fall off after the US and NATO are completely out, no one can imagine how Afghanistan could keep its military going at that scale. Afghanistan itself appropriates about around $250 million a year for the military. The whole annual government budget is only $5.55 billion, so about 5% of it is going to the military. In a desperately poor country, that is huge, but you’d have to shut down most of the military if that was its entire budget.

The Taliban have about 85,000 fighters and have control of about 20% of the country, though they have a presence in half the provinces. They are funded in part by narco-terrorism. They also export earth minerals and other valuable mined resources from the areas they hold, and they tax the people they de facto rule. Some money may come from Pakistan, since some rightwing generals in Islamabad see Muslim fundamentalism as a kind of Pakistani soft power that may offset Indian influence in Kabul. US intelligence is also now suggesting that Russia may have wanted the US out and paid the Taliban to increase US casualties. Then, Muslim fanatics in the oil-rich Gulf send an estimated $240 million a year in donations.

So the Taliban have a budget about a third that of the Kabul government.

As the US analysts point out, even though the Kabul government has a bigger military force that is better equipped and funded, they don’t win many battles. The Taliban have better esprit de corps, better morale, and are more committed on the whole to the cause. There are high rates of desertion from the Afghan National Army, and its troops are alleged to have high levels of drug use.

Let us turn briefly to some other issues raised by the security report.

The analysts freely admit that Iraqi Shiite militias continue to attack US targets and will go on doing so until they get an agreement from Washington to withdraw US troops from that country. This determination on the part of these militias to get the US was turbocharged when Trump assassinated Gen. Qasem Soleimani of Iran and Gen. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis of Iraq in early January of 2020. The Iraqi government announced last week that the US military mission in Iraq is ending, and remaining troops will leave by next January after finishing up their training of the Iraqi army. These assertions have not been confirmed by the Biden administration.

The Biden administration should listen to the analysts and just get out of Iraq as well. The other members of NATO seem to be ready to send 4,000 troops as trainers and support staff for the Iraqi army as it mops up ISIL.

Note that while ISIL is a continuing threat to the US mainland, the Iraqi Shiite militias just want US troops out of their country.

The analysts think Libya’s new national unity government will be fragile and that some fighting among the various factions will continue. Those factions are divided between pro-Turkey and pro-Russia, and some of the fate of Libya will depend on whether Moscow and Ankara stand by their cease fire agreement. The analysts do not say what the US national interest in all this is. Libya is an oil producer, but the contracts are held by Italy and Spain, etc. The recent civil war has prevented Libya from exporting much oil. Since President Biden wants to move America to electric cars, the US does not have an interest in foreign petroleum in the medium to long run.

US intelligence believes that Syria will experience economic decline and humanitarian crises. The analysts admit that President Bashar al-Assad controls most of the country, but say he faces a residual insurgency that includes Muslim extremists, and he faces Turkish troops on Syrian soil.

It is only with regard to Syria that the analysts say that “Terrorists will try to launch attacks on the West from their safe havens in the country.”

While ISIL has not disappeared, its capacity to launch attacks has been substantially degraded. I don’t think the extremists in Idlib want to attack the United States. Even the al-Qaeda affiliate is mostly interested in holding territory inside Syria and is now locally oriented. You’d think if they wanted to attack anyone it would be the Russians, who defeated them and bottled them up in Idlib.

So here is one place I disagree with the analysts. While Syria’s terrorist groups are dangerous, I would assess the likelihood of attacks on the US mainland by them as low. The small contingent of US troops in southeast Syria is, of course, vulnerable. Therefore, they should be withdrawn.

Syria is another place where the US has no national interest whatsoever. It is poor, ramshackle, and lacks natural resources. The US should get out militarily but remain available to play a diplomatic role. Rather than interfere with Syrian reconstruction via heavy sanctions, the US should use aid as a carrot to move the needle in directions it favors.

—–

Bonus Video:

PBS NewsHour: “Will the withdrawal of U.S. troops enable the Taliban? Three Afghanistan experts weigh in”

Syrian and Russian Strikes on Civilian Infrastructure

The 167-page report, “‘Targeting Life in Idlib’: Syrian and Russian Strikes on Civilian Infrastructure,” details abuses by Syrian and Russian armed forces during the 11-month military campaign to retake Idlib governorate and surrounding areas, among the last held by anti-government armed groups. The report examines the abusive military strategy in which the Syrian-Russian alliance repeatedly violated the laws of war against the 3 million civilians there, many displaced by fighting elsewhere in the country. It names 10 senior Syrian and Russian civilian and military officials who may be implicated in war crimes as a matter of command responsibility: they knew or should have known about the abuses and took no effective steps to stop them or punish those responsible.

Human Rights Watch: “Targeting Life in Idlib: Apparent War Crimes by Syrian–Russian Alliance”

“The Syrian-Russian alliance strikes on Idlib’s hospitals, schools, and markets showed callous disregard for civilian life,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The repeated unlawful attacks appear part of a deliberate military strategy to destroy civilian infrastructure and force out the population, making it easier for the Syrian government to retake control.”

Human Rights Watch documented 46 air and ground attacks, including the use of cluster munitions, that directly hit or damaged civilian objects and infrastructure in Idlib in violation of the laws of war. The strikes killed at least 224 civilians and wounded 561. These were only a fraction of the total attacks during that time in Idlib and surrounding areas. The offensive displaced 1.4 million people, most in the final months of the operation.

How five researchers exposed the abusive military strategy behind repeated attacks on civilians in northern Syria — without ever visiting the sites. Explore a new interactive feature and learn how we reached the truth.

Human Rights Watch interviewed over 100 victims and witnesses of the 46 attacks, as well as healthcare and rescue workers, teachers, local authorities, and experts on the Syrian and Russian militaries. Human Rights Watch also examined dozens of satellite images and over 550 photographs and videos taken at the attack sites, as well as logs of flight spotters. Human Rights Watch provided a summary of its findings and questions to the Syrian and Russian governments but has not received a response.

The documented strikes, most in and around four urban areas – Ariha, Idlib City, Jisr al-Shughour, and Maarat al-Nu’man – damaged 12 healthcare facilities and 10 schools, forcing them to shut down, in some cases permanently. The attacks also damaged at least 5 markets, 4 displaced people’s camps, 4 residential neighborhoods, 2 commercial areas, and a prison, church, stadium, and nongovernmental organization office.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence of military objectives, including personnel or materiel, in the vicinity at the time of any of the attacks, and no residents interviewed knew of any advance warning. The overwhelming majority of attacks were far from active fighting between Syrian government forces and anti-government armed groups.

The repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure in populated areas in which there was no apparent military objective suggests that these unlawful attacks were deliberate. The attacks appear intended to deprive civilians of the means to sustain themselves and to force them to flee, or to instill terror in the population, Human Rights Watch said.

A resident of Idlib City, Ayman Assad, described the impact of the airstrikes: “We are terrified. I don’t feel safe at my place of work, and at the same time I am constantly worried about my family, especially my two children who are going to school every day. Schools, markets, homes, hospitals, everything is a target. They are targeting life in Idlib.”

Most of the attacks documented appeared to involve explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas. The use of such weapons in populated areas can indiscriminately kill and wound large numbers of civilians, and damage and destroy civilian objects and infrastructure. They also have reverberating effects – disrupting essential services, such as health care, education, and access to food and shelter. Long-term impacts include serious psychological harm to the people affected. Warring parties should avoid the use of these weapons in populated areas, Human Rights Watch said.

Prior to a ceasefire in March, government forces regained control of nearly half the territory in and around Idlib, including hundreds of depopulated towns and villages. Since then, some people have returned to areas still controlled by anti-government armed groups, where they found a decimated infrastructure and limited access to food, water, shelter, health care, and education. The Covid-19 pandemic has placed the area’s destroyed healthcare system under immense strain, further imperiling civilians.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron played a key role in getting Turkey, Russia, and Syria to agree to a ceasefire.

Any resumption of fighting would expose civilians to renewed attacks from explosive weapons and the added risk of Covid-19, possibly triggering mass displacement with catastrophic humanitarian consequences. Displaced people could seek to cross Syria’s northern border, where Turkish forces have previously pushed back, shot, and forcibly returned asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said.

International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, requires all warring parties to direct attacks on military objectives, avoid harming civilians or civilian objects, and not carry out attacks that cause indiscriminate or disproportionate civilian harm. Populations also remain protected by international human rights law, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which protects the rights to health, education, and an adequate standard of living.

Given the deadlock within the United Nations Security Council, the General Assembly should adopt a resolution or statement calling on its member states to impose targeted sanctions on those civilian and military commanders credibly implicated in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or other serious violations committed. Concerned governments should pursue criminal cases under the principle of universal jurisdiction and impose unilateral targeted sanctions against commanders and officials implicated in war crimes, including as a matter of command responsibility.

To address the humanitarian situation, particularly in light of the pandemic, the Security Council should reauthorize cross-border aid deliveries across all three previously authorized border crossings in the northwest and northeast. If the Security Council proves unable to reauthorize cross-border deliveries due to the threat of veto by Russia, the General Assembly should pass a resolution to support the UN continuing cross-border deliveries to areas not under the Syrian government’s control.

“Concerted international efforts are needed to demonstrate that there are consequences for unlawful attacks, to deter future atrocities, and to show that no one can elude accountability for grave crimes because of their rank or position,” Roth said. “As long as impunity reigns, so too will the specter of renewed unlawful attacks and their devastating human toll.”

Via Human Rights Watch

While there are parts of the report I agree with, some of the argument seems to me flawed. Let me explain why that is, below.

First of all, lead author David Vine and his colleagues are speaking of US “Post-9/11 Wars,” which is not exactly the same as the “War on Terror.”

The War on Terror is a stupid phrase that I have much criticized. I’m not alone– a Marine general once made fun of it to me when we were taking a walk in the woods together. But surely if it has any meaning at all, it means the fight against al-Qaeda and allied movements. The Congressional Authorization for the Use of military Force of 2002 specifically speaks of movements that planned out the September 11 attacks.

So even if the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have invoked the AUMF in their various police actions, analytically speaking it does not apply to anti-al-Qaeda movements such as the Houthis in Yemen or the Baathist government in Syria (which in 2002-2003 tortured al-Qaeda operatives for the United States).

So the “War on Terror” would comprise US military actions mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am all on board with Vine and his colleagues in criticizing the Bush administration war on Iraq. Iraq was not involved in 9/11, and there was no al-Qaeda to speak of in Iraq in 2002. What little there was was being hunted by the Baath secret police. Iraq was not making weapons of mass destruction and delivered to the UN documentation of its destruction of such programs in the late 1990s.

There was no reason for the United States to launch an aggressive war on Iraq, occupy it for 8.5 years, and destroy its main institutions, including the army. These actions led to the rise of ISIL and yet another US intervention.

The study estimates 9.2 million displaced in Iraq by these wars. OK, I can live with that estimate. And I agree that the proximate cause was the US war of aggression on Iraq. That is, many of those displaced were not displaced by the US military, but by Sunni or Shiite militias or the reconstituted Iraqi Army. But, if Bush hadn’t invaded in the first place, none of that would have happened.

So blaming the US for the 9.2 million Iraqi displaced is fair.

Likewise, the US involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen is shameful, and the US bears a large share of blame for the 4.4 million displaced there. Although the US is not fighting there, it has refueled Saudi and other bombers, it sold sophisticated military equipment to the belligerents, it has provided strategic advice, and anything anyone says bad about Washington in this regard is richly deserved. Even the Congress has denounced US support for this war, which is like bank robbers denouncing greed, and tells you how awful and fruitless this war is.

Afghanistan is more complicated. The Soviet occupation from very late 1978 to 1988 killed about one million, wounded 3 million, displaced 2 million internally, displaced 2 million to Iran, and displaced 3 million to Pakistan. This is out of a population of some 16 million at the time!

As for the US and NATO after 2001, they in my view made an error in trying to stay in Afghanistan after they helped the Northern Alliance overthrow the Taliban in 2001-2002. But that initial campaign does not appear to have resulted in high levels of casualties or displacement. The attempt of Donald Rumsfeld and his successors to stay in Afghanistan helped alienate some of the population and led to a resurgence of the Taliban, which now hold 5-10% of the country and have a presence in half of provinces. This renewed war between the Kabul government and the Taliban has produced thousands of casualties a year, and has displaced millions.

The Brown report estimates “2.1 million Afghans fled the country with another 3.2 million” displaced internally.

I have no reason to doubt these figures. But it is also true that after the fall of the Taliban and the return of relative peace in some provinces, about half of the 3 million Afghans in Pakistan have been repatriated. So you’d have to say that the US and NATO partially reversed that emigration flow that had been caused by the Soviets. That is, the US permitted 1.5 million Afghans to return home, so if 2.1 million left during the past 19 years, the net outflow is more like 600,000.

Very little US war-fighting in Afghanistan was in Persian-speaking provinces, which were relatively calm. It was mostly in the Pushtun regions where the Taliban were strong. So I just am not convinced that enormous numbers of Tajiks and Hazaras went to Iran because of the ongoing fighting with the Taliban. In fact, many Shiite Hazaras were able to come back home because the Taliban were overthrown (the Taliban had massacred them).

We must remember that Iran is an oil state, which means it has a need for foreign guest workers, and there are now 3 million Afghans in Iran. They are largely Persian-speaking and from provinces that were relatively secure after the Tajik-Hazara-Uzbek alliance came to dominate the country. Many are therefore economic migrants like the Pakistanis who go to the Gulf. There may be advantages to claiming to be refugees as opposed to economic migrants. There is also a tendency toward refugee inflation on the part of governments seeking UN help.

So I’m not sure you could nail down a net foreign displacement at all.

Internally displaced persons of 3.2 million is plausible. But remember that the Taliban and more recently ISIL are responsible for some proportion of them. Unlike in Iraq, where there was nothing much going on before Bush invaded it, the Taliban controlled Afghanistan and were already widely displacing people, so you can’t blame the US for their continuing to do so. Taliban ideology is hard line Deobandi and they hate Shiites, Sufis, Sunni mainstream traditionalists, and Uzbek secularists, and have not scrupled to shoot them or blow them up at will.

I just think that the picture in Afghanistan is much more mixed, both with regard to responsibility and with regard to movements on the ground, than is true of Iraq.

I can’t understand the report’s allegations about Libya. They are reporting 1.2 million displacements. Are they counting everyone who was displaced since the Libyan Revolution of 2011, including those who then went home?

So the United Nations High Commission on Refugees says as of 2020 of Libya: “217,002 people displaced inside the country (IDPs) and 278,559 people who have returned home (returnees).”

There are also some 40,000 refugees in Libya from other countries, many of them trying to make their way by sea to Europe.

Anyway, I just think this part of the report is deeply flawed. The no-fly zone in Libya was not part of any war on terror, it was ordered by the United Nations Security Council. The International Criminal Court found the Gaddafis guilty of massive crimes against humanity. If there had been no no-fly zone, Gaddafi’s armor would have crush Misrata, Benghazi, Bayda and other cities, and would have also produced hundreds of thousands of displaced. We saw in Syria what an entrenched one-party state did to a rebelling population. The same thing would have happened in Libya.

The US role in 2011 was mainly to take out Gaddafi’s anti-aircraft batteries. The sorties flown to stop Gaddafi’s armor from advancing on revolutionaries were by various NATO states. I was in Libya in 2012 and it was fragile but not anything like Syria. Bad things happened from 2014, when militias started controlling politics, but I can’t for the life of me see what the US had to do with that.

As for Syria, that is a really complex situation that I can’t go into here at the length it deserves. But, again, if the US had not intervened against ISIL, then a lot more people would have been displaced by ISIL, and, indeed, ISIL did chase 600,000 Syrian Kurds into Turkey.

Millions were displaced in western Syria by the civil war. It isn’t clear to me that the US was a major player in all that. In fact, people complained about Obama’s reluctance to get involved.

Surely with regard to Syria, the millions displaced must be blamed on the al-Assad regime, on extremist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, on Hizbullah and Iraqi militias, and most of all on Russia, the fighter jets of which have bombed the bejesus out of Syria. Nobody has done a report on all the people displaced by Russia.

In the end, I think the numbers arrived at and attributed to the US in this report are exaggerated. But even if the actual number of displaced caused by the US is probably closer to 13 million, that is more than the population of my state, Michigan, and is pretty damning in itself.

—

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Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs: “Costs and Consequences of US Post-9/11 Wars: Focus on Climate Change”

Erdogan has not in fact averted a humanitarian calamity in Idlib, though he has rattled a lot of sabers and claims to have killed some Syrian troops (Syria disputes the latter claims). Erdogan backs the Sunni Arab militias (one of them linked to al-Qaeda) based in Idlib, but is also concerned about the fate of three million Sunni Arab civilians in the province, many of them refugees.

On Sunday, some reports alleged that the Syrian Arab Army of Baathist strongman Bashar al-Assad completely reclaimed Aleppo province for the first time in eight years and continued its push into Idlib. The government also gained control of the major M5 highway linking Aleppo and Damascus, the country’s two largest cities, and completely sweeping away the rebel forces that had cut the highway at some points.

Battle of #Aleppo city officially over after 7+ years. Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city is free for the first time since mid-2012. The Syrian Army liberated the entire western suburbs. pic.twitter.com/i0RLWAffVO

— Military Advisor (@miladvisor) February 16, 2020

Syrian forces, aided by Shiite militias from Lebanon and Iraq, some Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps fighters and the Russian Aerospace Forces, have taken about a third of Idlib province in the past two and a half months.

Using the borders of territorial control from today's @lummideast map, we estimate that rebels have lost roughly 36% territory in North West Idlib.

If the Regime's current offensive continues, rebels will have lost more than 2000 KM^2 of territory.

Comparison by: @NoorNahas1 pic.twitter.com/cP4bONpQQi

— OffbeatResearch (@OffbeatResearch) February 13, 2020

Erdogan has insisted that the Syrian government withdraw from Idlib province back to the cease fire lines agreed upon at Sochi last year, and has threatened a Turkish attack on the Syrian Arab Army in Idlib if it does not retreat by the end of February.

This ultimatum is inevitably also directed at Russia, which is backing the Syrian Army, and which could use its air force to protect Syrian tanks from Turkish attacks.

BBC Monitoring reports for Feb. 15 that Danila Moiseyev wrote in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta that Erdogan is testing Russia’s patience by deploying more military forces in Idlib. The author says that Erdogan is looking for a win after suffering defeats in Libya (where he sent Syrian mercenaries) and is concerned about the Syrian refugee problem in Turkey.

Artemy Sharapov and Sergei Valchenko warned in Moskovsky Komsomolets that the conflict in Syria could mushroom into an international conflict (apparently meaning a Russo-Turkish war). They charge that Turkish troops have attempted to protect “militants” from the Syrian army advance.

The US State Department and the Pentagon have signaled to Turkey their support against Russia and Syria, hoping to repair some of the rift between Washington and Ankara.

Trump in the past has favored both Putin and Erdogan, and it is not yet clear whether he will back Erdogan over Putin if push comes to shove. When Erdogan asked Trump to abandon his Syrian Kurdish allies against ISIL last fall, Trump abruptly pulled troops out of northwest Syria, though he has maintained a military position at Deir al-Zor in central eastern Syria. Turkey then invaded northwest Syria in an attempt to weaken the YPG, the Syria Kurdish militia that had allied with the US.

The Syrian government began a push in December to take back west Aleppo province and the province of Idlib from Turkey-backed rebels.

The campaign actually began last spring, but was halted when Turkey objected strongly and threatened military intervention, and negotiations led to a an uneasy ceasefire after negotiations in Sochi. Turkey set up observation posts around Idlib (some of which are now behind Syrian lines).

Syria and Russia say that Turkey pledged to rein in the radical groups based in Idlib, which continued to attack the Syrian army and to attempt to take territory, and to separate them from moderate Free Syrian Army forces. Idlib has some 3 million people, triple its population before the civil war that began in 2011, and most of them are Sunni Arab families fleeing authoritarian secular one-party Baath rule and the violent repression of the Baath security forces. Some Sunni Arab former rebels have been enticed back to Baath territory with pledges of reconciliation, or went back out of desperation at being starving refugees, and were promptly arrested, tortured and killed.

Since last fall, about a third of the population in Idlib has been further displaced to the north of the province nearer the Turkish border, as the Syrian Arab Army has taken towns such as Saraqeb and Ma’arat al-Nu’man, long under rebel control.

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Bonus Video:

CGTN America (China): “Turkey and Russian Foreign Ministers meet over Syria’s Idlib crisis”

Paris (AFP) – The jihadist group now controlling Idlib province in northwest Syria claims to have broken with Al-Qaeda, but analysts say that despite several rebrandings there’s no sign it has changed its stripes.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) sealed its hold on Idlib last week after signing a ceasefire with what was left of rival factions in the region.

Over time, HTS has changed both names and leaders, and statements posted on the internet suggest it had severed ties with Al-Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist terror group founded by Osama bin Laden.

But many experts dismiss such claims as smoke and mirrors, saying the organisation is simply attempting to muddy the waters and confuse intelligence agencies.

Jabhat al-Nusra, the rebel faction which gave birth to HTS, announced in July 2016 it had broken with Al-Qaeda.

But this was just “rebranding while maintaining a secret pledge of allegiance,” said Hassan Hassan, who specialises in jihadist movements at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

“Throughout its numerous iterations, HTS has not altered its ideology and is still widely thought to maintain links with Al-Qaeda,” Hassan told AFP.

“HTS maintained links with Al-Qaeda’s loyalists in northern Syria and even allocated areas and resources for its supposed rivals,” he added.

A number of jihadist groups in Idlib still officially pay allegiance to Al-Qaeda, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, since Bin Laden’s death.

These include Hurras al-Deen, a faction comprising a few thousand jihadists including Syrians and foreign veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The group also includes members of the Turkestan Islamic Party, a jihadist group dominated by Uighur fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor.

Hurras al-Deen fought alongside HTS when it took control of Idlib from other rebel groups backed by Turkey.

– ‘Staged’ separation –

HTS claims more than 25,000 fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

For Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor at the Sciences Po university in Paris, “Al-Qaeda remains a centralised organisation, with a strong top-to-bottom line of command.”

“There are a number of indications suggesting that HTS has only staged its ‘break’ from Al-Qaeda,” Filiu said.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) claims more than 25,000 fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and they have sealed their hold on Idlib
“That’s one of the main reasons Turkey failed in Idlib, as it had hoped the so-called ‘Syrian’ faction of HTS would help neutralise the jihadist elements,” he added.

Jabhat Al-Nusra might have sought to distance itself from Al-Qaeda since an association would put its fighters in the cross-hairs for US airstrikes.

“While HTS proclaims that it is an independent entity not affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the organisation grew out of Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, following a series of strategic rebrandings,” the US-based Soufan think tank said Monday.

“Throughout its numerous iterations, HTS has not altered its ideology and is still widely thought to maintain links with Al-Qaeda,” said the research and advisory group, set up by former FBI anti-jihadist agent Ali Soufan.

HTS has extended its administrative hold on Idlib under its so-called “Salvation Government” after years of cultivating grass-roots ties with local residents.

On Monday, Syria’s National Coalition, the leading exiled opposition group, branded the HTS a “terrorist organisation,” a designation applied by the [twitter account of the closed] US embassy in Damascus since May 2017.

“The core of HTS is Nusra, a designated terrorist organisation. This designation applies regardless of what name it uses or what groups merge into it,” the embassy said in a tweet at the time.

© Agence France-Presse

Featured Photo: “Analysts doubt that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)fighters have severed ties with Al-Qaeda and the group is considered a “terrorist organisation” by the [Twitter feed of the closed] US embassy in Damascus (AFP Photo/OMAR HAJ KADOUR).”

Rescuers in Syria’s eastern Ghouta said the bombing would not let up long enough for them to count the bodies, in one of the bloodiest air assaults of the seven-year war.

Warplanes pounded the rebel enclave on Saturday, the seventh day in a row of a fierce escalation by Damascus and its allies, an emergency service, a witness and a monitoring group said.

Residents holed up in basements and medical charities decried attacks on a dozen hospitals, as the United Nations pleaded for a truce in Ghouta, the only big rebel bastion near the capital.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military.

The Damascus government and Russia, its ally, say they only target militants. They have said they seek to stop rebel mortar attacks on the capital and accused insurgents in Ghouta of holding people as human shields.

A surge of rocket fire, shelling and air strikes has killed nearly 500 people since Sunday night, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The dead included more than 120 children.

The Britain-based monitor said raids hit Douma, Hammouriyeh and other towns there on Saturday, killing 24 people.

First responders rushed to search for survivors after strikes on Kafr Batna, Douma and Harasta, the Civil Defence in eastern Ghouta said. The rescue service, which operates in rebel territory, said it had documented at least 350 deaths in four days earlier this week.

“Maybe there are many more,” said Siraj Mahmoud, a civil defence spokesman in the suburbs.

We weren’t able to count the martyrs yesterday or the day before because the warplanes are touring the skies.

As the bombs rain down, some hitting emergency centers and vehicles, the rescuers have struggled to pull people from the rubble, Mahmoud said. “But if we have to go out running on our legs and dig with our hands to rescue the people, we will still be here.”

A witness in Douma said he woke up in the early hours on Saturday to the sound of jets bombing nearby. The streets have mostly remained empty.

The United Nations says nearly 400,000 people live in eastern Ghouta, a pocket of satellite towns and farms under government siege since 2013, without enough food or medicine.

The UN Security Council on Friday delayed voting on a draft resolution that demands a 30-day ceasefire across Syria to allow aid access and medical evacuations.

The 15-member council is to vote on the resolution, which Sweden and Kuwait drafted, on Saturday. The delay followed a flurry of last-minute talks on the text after Russia, a veto-holding ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, had proposed new amendments.

Syrian state media said Ghouta factions fired mortars at the Old City of Damascus on Saturday. Insurgent shelling killed one person and injured 60 more a day earlier, it said, and the army pounded militant targets in the suburbs in response.

Several previous ceasefire attempts have quickly unraveled during the multi-sided conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands and forced 11 million people out of their homes.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

——

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Syrian civilians take shelter as east Ghouta bombing continues | ITV News

The US has struck the Syrian airbase used to launch a suspected sarin gas attack against Khan Sheikhun that killed more than 80 civilians. US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cited the chemical attack as the reason for their country’s first direct involvement in Syria’s six-year war.

A Pentagon spokesman said Russia was informed ahead of the attack on the al-Shayrat airbase. According to the Associated Press, opposition group the Syrian Coalition, has welcomed the intervention. The rebel commander whose district was hit by the suspected chemical weapon attack has said he hopes the strike will be a “turning point” in the war.

But the long-running conflict has had many such apparently pivotal moments.

The fall of Aleppo

By the end of 2016, for instance, opposition forces in the Syrian city of Aleppo had been overwhelmingly defeated, raising doubts about their ability to endure the fight against the Assad regime. Especially as the latter receives active support from the Russian government and Shi’a militias.

The battle of Aleppo, much like the Battle of Stalingrad in the second world war, was characterised by close-quarters combat, massive displacement, great destruction and recurring air raids on civilian populations and infrastructure.

Scholars and researchers were largely divided after the Aleppo assault. Some viewed the outcome as the beginning of the end for the losing party – the Stalingrad moment of the Syrian war. Others recognised the importance of the events without considering them decisive.

And, like the US missile strike, the suspected chemical attack on April 5 was perceived as another watershed moment. But, on the ground, the question is how these critical moments will shape the immediate options of warring factions.

Recent military developments in Hama and Damascus might indicate the direction the war is taking, with the rebels trying to recover from the battle of Aleppo and launching new offensives.

Aftermath the fall

After their defeat in Aleppo, many opposition groups reconsidered their inter-factional alliances. In the Idlib governorate and the countryside around Aleppo, for instance, a number of factions merged with what used to be known as the Nusra Front, or Jabhat Fath el-Sham, to form the new Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.

Simultaneously, Ahrar al-Sham, one of the most powerful opposition groups in Syria, was absorbing other factions in the northwest.

Tensions heightened between these two prominent opposition groups as a number of Ahrar al-Sham combatants defected to the recently formed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. The outcome so far has been a delicate balance of power between these two large groups, which represent the most powerful opposition forces in Idlib and its vicinity.

Together they govern the last opposition stronghold, and Assad’s ultimate victory in Syria depends on the divisions and tensions between them. If these groups are not able to unite when and if pro-Assad forces rally again, Idlib, which is the only area under comprehensive rebel control, might go the way of Aleppo. Its fall would leave the opposition controlling only small isolated patches of territory.

Idlib and beyond

Given that Ahrar al-Sham and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham have maintained their cooperation thus far, Idlib promises to be a much bigger challenge for the Assad regime than landlocked Aleppo. A siege on Idlib is practically impossible as long as its border with Turkey stays under opposition control.

The weakest point for the opposition in Idlib is the main passage between the governorate and Turkey, the Bab al-Hawa Crossing. If pro-government forces were to capture this strategic spot in an all-out siege of Idlib, it could enable another battle of attrition.

To disrupt the regime’s momentum and prevent it from regrouping its forces, this time around Idlib, both Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham have launched an offensive on the Hama front. Since March 21 2017, opposition forces have taken dozens of government-held villages, coming within a few kilometres of the city of Hama.

Though the southward expansion from Idlib has thus far not reached isolated territories in Homs, a city bombarded by the government in 2012, the territorial gains provide a number of advantages. The Hama offensive creates a buffer zone for Idlib, and mobilises and positions opposition forces in threatening strategic locations. This compels pro-regime forces to either engage on insufficiently fortified fronts or withdraw to other defensive positions.

In light of these conditions, opposition forces near southern Aleppo may also attempt an offensive on the town of Khanasir, cutting off the government’s supply route to its forces in Aleppo and forcing pro-regime troops to disperse in different directions.

From that perspective, the suspected chemical attack could be seen as an attempt by Assad to distract the opposition from its advance southwards.

The Hama offensive

The Hama offensive opens new possibilities for the opposition. But to succeed on this front government forces must be kept occupied elsewhere. So, while opposition forces were mobilising in Hama, other rebel factions such as Faylaq al-Sham reopened the Damascus front in the areas of Qabun and Jobar, less than six kilometres from the heart of Syria’s capital.

Opposition forces have not made any significant gains yet. But the proximity of these new clashes to Damascus is sufficient to keep the regime’s forces in the area occupied and committed.

Another condition favouring opposition forces is the current vacuum in Syria’s sparsely populated Badiya desert region, resulting from the ongoing battle for Raqqa.

As the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces gathered north in the past few weeks, Islamic State forfeited southern areas to reinforce its positions in Raqqa and Tabqa. Meanwhile, Ahrar al-Sham and Western-backed Free Syrian Army forces expanded in eastern Qalamoun and reinforced their presence on the Jordanian and Iraqi borders in the southwest.

Islamic State has antagonised all armed factions in Syria, but the geographic proximity of the Syrian Democratic Forces to Raqqa makes them the likely inheritors of its abandoned territories in the north.

If the Syrian Democratic Forces were to expand towards Raqqa, it might lead Islamic State to redirect its forces southward to find safe havens in the Syrian desert. This would create an undesired distraction for opposition forces that recently captured territories in the southeast.

While battles are raging in Damascus in the areas around the districts of Jobar and Qaboun, different factions in the north and south are rallying against Islamic State to capitalise on its defeats.

What next?

These developments show that, following the battle of Aleppo, whatever advantage the Assad regime enjoyed heading into the latest round of Geneva talks in February may not last. And the proactive foreign support that pushed the Assad regime forwards on the ground could dissipate in light of recent events.

The key to Assad’s future may well lie with the Russian reaction to the US move. As the country woke to the news of the overnight attack, the head of the defence and security committee of the Russian upper house of parliament said his country would call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council.

Meanwhile, on the ground, government forces and opposition groups continue to mobilise, and territorial control keeps shifting. The irregular methods of warfare employed by armed rebels reinforce their resilience, flexibility and longevity in a war now entering its sixth bloody year.

Opposition groups may also find further air support from Turkey to expand their presence in Islamic State territories. While opposition groups will not be able to oust the regime, the regime will not be able to eliminate the opposition either.

A shift of US foreign policy on Syria could have been the game-changer. But the US airstrike is more likely to reinforce the balance of power between the combating factions rather than lead to a turning point.

Harout Akdedian, Postdoctoral research fellow, Central European University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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