In Syria, a brutal dictator is under siege. Will anyone step up to save him?
Across northern and central Syria this week, families separated by more than a decade of civil war held a joyous reunion.
“I couldn’t believe it, it was very emotional,” said Ismail Alabullah, a volunteer with the Syrian NGO White Helmets, as he described returning to the city of Aleppo for the first time since 2013 and being reunited with his sister.
“I couldn’t believe I saw him again,” he told CBC News from northern Syria. “I lost my brother, mother and father two years ago – I couldn’t say goodbye to any of them. Now, it’s just me and my sister.”
The White Helmets, a group of first responders best known for rescuing and evacuating civilians from war zones, are considered the main enemy of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Since 2016, Assad’s forces have taken control of Aleppo. But with his army now retreating from an area where a few days ago it seemed to be firmly in control, families trapped on opposite sides are able to reunite.
A powerful situation
After years of tension, Syria’s control map is being redrawn in about an hour.
First, Aleppo – a city of more than 2.3 million people and the second largest in the country – fell to the opposition forces on November 27. In the following days, so did many cities in the south.
On Thursday, Assad’s forces left the center of Hama as the rebels entered.
Most observers expect an attack on Assad’s key power base – the city of Homs, 40 kilometers south of Hama – just hours away.
If the opposition forces succeed, the move will cut off Assad’s strongholds along the Syrian coast in the capital, Damascus.
“It is clear that the regime itself cannot protect these areas,” said Haid Haid, a Syria analyst with Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
Colin P. Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, explains what is happening in Syria and why the long-running conflict is flaring up again.
This conclusion leads to the inevitable speculation that Assad’s government may have died sooner than anyone expected, after surviving years of civil war.
“No one can give complete answers,” Haid told CBC News from Istanbul. “I think it’s safe to say that Assad is not 100 percent immune, but no one knows if and when the regime will fall.”
Political lineage
Assad and his family have ruled Syria with an iron fist for over 50 years. Since he took over as president in 2000 after the death of his father, the UN says Assad’s forces have killed more than 350,000 of his opponents, arrested and tortured countless thousands and used sealed gas in opposition towns to suppress any opposition to his regime.
In 2011, Syria was rocked by anti-Assad protests, fueled by anti-regime protests in the wider region, called the Arab Spring.
Assad responded with violence that turned into a full-scale civil war. By 2015, opposition groups – along with Islamic State (IS) forces – had taken over much of the country. But Russia’s intervention changed the situation.
A vicious aerial bombardment campaign by Vladimir Putin’s forces has secured Assad’s position, but at a terrible cost. Aid groups have accused Russia and Syria of war crimes for indiscriminately bombing civilians using combined arms.
After a concerted effort led by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the east – and with help from Russia – IS was finally pushed back to a few pockets in the desert.
As of 2016, the battle lines of the conflict have remained deeply entrenched, as Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) controls most of the country’s major cities.
A great success
In Idlib province, close to Turkey, militants belonging to the al-Qaeda spinoff, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), control most of the area. And the team has led to many battlefield successes in the past 10 days.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has been listed as a terrorist organization by Canada since 2013. But recently, its 42-year-old leader, Abu Muhammed al-Jolani, has denied any connection to the group or its radical views.
In a social media post on Thursday, HTS called his unusual name – Ahmad al-Shara – instead of al-Jolani, which it uses in the military. This seemed to show him as a politician or the leader of a banned army.
Al-Jolani also gave a rare interview to a Western news agency, telling CNN that his goal is to overthrow the Assad regime and replace it with a new government for all Syrians.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank that studies the world’s conflict zones, noted that the main reason HTS gained ground so quickly was its willingness to negotiate with local communities to avoid fighting.
ISW said two Christian-majority cities and a major Shia city had all reached an accord with HTS, allowing the group’s fighters to avoid costly battles in rural areas.
Longtime Syria observer Charles Lister, who publishes a weekly newspaper on the Syrian conflict, wrote that HTS has built a formidable diplomatic presence outside of its base in Idlib province, engaging with local Syrian tribes and other civil society organizations to improve the group’s reach.
Lister says that as a result, there have been fewer clashes with other Syrian opposition groups – particularly the powerful Kurds – as HTS fighters have moved quickly into the countryside.
Ultimately, Lister says al-Jolani tried to “replicate an independent government” in Idlib province, with HTS issuing identity cards, controlling the banking system and performing many of the functions normally performed by municipalities.
However, the listing of HTS as a terrorist organization has put NGOs and Western governments in a challenging position, many of which are unwilling to directly assist the group, resulting in a dire humanitarian situation in areas such as Aleppo.
Ismail Alabduallah, a White Helmet worker, told CBC News that the city is already experiencing food shortages.
“The situation is very difficult. Some of the private organizations we associate with have this work, and now no one distributes bread every day in Aleppo,” he said. “They are working to get the bakeries back up and running.”
Foreign actors
Since the city of Homs, another important power base for Assad, is only an hour away from HTS military advances, the key question is whether any of the regime’s supporters will intervene militarily to stop the latest crackdown on the opposition.
The Iranian government has reportedly ordered some troops it controls in neighboring Iraq to cross the border to help its ally Assad. But their presence on the battlefield has not been heard.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Thursday his group would help Assad, and there were reports that what the group called “vigilante forces” had arrived in Syria overnight.
Until recently, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah was arguably the most powerful force in the Middle East. But Israel’s assassination of its top leadership and its massive military campaign in southern Lebanon have greatly weakened the group.
One neighbor Assad cannot count on is Turkey. Its government has been a major supplier of arms and money to several opposition groups, and on Friday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped the Syrian opposition forces would continue to benefit.
That leaves Vladimir Putin, who most observers believe saved Assad the last time the opposition forces entered in 2016.
“It’s not clear where Moscow is headed or what is most important in this,” said Haid Haid of Chatham House.
Russian bombing of the Aleppo area and key approaches to Homs has resumed in recent days, but as Putin’s war in Ukraine draws its combat resources, Russia’s options for intervention may be limited.
Russia has operated a naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus since the 1970s. It also has a large airbase outside of Latakia, to the north.
Both could be vulnerable to opposition forces if Assad’s lines continue to collapse.
Haid Haid says that even if Assad has been able to stop the progress of the opposition, Russia is already one of the countries that lost the most in the renewed wars.
“Russia’s past victories have now been forgotten because of the recent defeat of the imperialist forces,” he said. “It means that Russia could not support its allies.”
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