BEIRUT (AP) – The last time Syrian President Bashar Assad was in serious trouble was a decade ago, at the height of the country’s civil war, when his forces lost control of parts of the capital, Aleppo, and his opponents. in the capital of Damascus.
Back then, he was rescued by his main international ally, Russia, and regional ally Iran, which along with the powerful Lebanese army of Hezbollah helped Assad’s forces take Aleppo, strongly supporting the war.
Now, as the rebels are pursuing a surprise offensive that quickly captured not only Aleppo, but the capital Hama and a string of other cities in the northwest of the country, the Syrian president appears to be alone.
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Russia is preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, and Hezbollah, which once sent thousands of its fighters against Assad’s forces, has been exhausted by the year-long conflict with Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has seen its proxies across the region decimated by Israeli airstrikes.
Moreover, the Syrian army is exhausted and drained by 13 years of war and economic problems, with no will left to fight.
So will the Assad regime fall soon?
“The coming days and weeks will be crucial in determining whether the rebel uprising is a threat to the Assad regime or whether the government is able to reverse its stance and roll back what the rebels have achieved,” said Mona Yacoubian, a United Nations analyst. States Institute for Peace.
“Despite being weakened and distracted, Assad’s allies are unlikely to provoke the rebels,” he wrote in the analysis.
Not out of wood
Until recently, it seemed that the Syrian president was on the way out of the woods. He never really won the long civil war, and large parts of the country were still out of his control.
But after thirteen years of conflict, it seemed that the worst was over, and that the world was ready to forget. Once seen as a regionalist, Assad has seen the Arab world warm to him again, improving relations and restoring Syria’s membership in the Arab League. Earlier this year, Italy also decided to open its embassy in Damascus after a decade of strained relations.
In the aftermath of one of the world’s worst crises, aid groups and international donors in Syria began to seek to spend more money on the recovery of the country than on emergency aid, providing livelihoods for Syrians and restoring services.
But then a sudden attack by the rebels on Nov. 27 controlled the war and caught everyone off guard with its size and speed.
It has also left Syria’s neighbors worried, worried that violence and refugees could spill across borders and worried about the rise of Islamist groups, which is a concern for many of Syria’s neighbors.
Geopolitical shifts
Analysts say that the confluence of political events starting with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, followed by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza that began on October 7, 2023, helped create an opportunity for Assad’s opposition to withdraw.
As the rebels advanced last week, the Syrian army appeared to be melting away, not resisting, with several reports of defections. The Russian army carried out occasional airstrikes. The leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon said the group would continue to support Syria, but did not mention sending fighters again.
“The rebel attack strengthens the regime’s control in Syria,” Yacoubian wrote.
“Its sudden explosion and the speed with which the rebel groups conquered Aleppo … expose the forces under Syria and could turn the superficial calm into a major conflict.”
Aron Lund, a Syria expert with Century International, a New York-based think tank and a researcher with the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said what is happening in Syria is a political risk for Russia and Iran.
“They too were surprised by what happened, and they have all kinds of gifts,” including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the loss of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria.
Ending and breaking
While the country’s conflict lines have been at a standstill since 2020, Syria’s economic problems have only increased in the past few years.
The imposition of US sanctions, the banking crisis in neighboring Lebanon and last year’s earthquake have left almost all Syrians facing severe financial hardship.
This has caused the government organizations and salaries to end.
“If you can’t pay your soldiers a living wage, you probably can’t expect them to keep fighting when thousands of Islamists attack” their cities, Lund said. “It’s just a tired, broken and dysfunctional government” to begin with.
One of the rebels’ efforts to regain control of Aleppo, the city they were driven out of in 2016 after a fierce military battle, was to call on government soldiers and security agencies to withdraw, giving them what they call “protection cards,” which offer some kind of amnesty and guarantees that they will not be arrested.
The spokesman for the rebels, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, said that more than 1,600 soldiers have applied for cards for two days in the city of Aleppo.
Hundreds of rebels stood outside the city’s police stations on Thursday to register their information for the rebels.
Hossam al-Bakr, 33, from Hama who worked in Damascus and defected four years ago to Aleppo, said he came “to correct his position” by obtaining a new identity card.
A decorated card given to each card was called a “refiction card.” It showed the name, ID number and place of work of each offender. Issued by “The general command: Military Operations room.”
On Thursday, Maj. Mohamed Ghoneim, who was in charge of registration, said that more than 1,000 soldiers or policemen came to register. Some who were holding their legal guns gave them away, he added.
“There are thousands who want to apply,” he said.
Charles Lister, a longtime Syria expert, said that while most of the world has dismissed the conflict as dry or over, the armed opposition has never given up and has been training for such a scenario for years.
A rag tag group of fighters, plagued by conflict and rivalry, spent years preparing and planning, fueled by a dream to wrest control of the region from Assad.
“The government has been more vulnerable in the last year or two than it has been during the entire conflict,” Lister said. “And it’s used to the idea that if it can wait things out, it will prove to be a winner.”
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Karam also gave a statement from London.