Who’s fighting and why in the revived Syrian war

The rekindling of fighting in Syria comes after a four-year lull in a civil war that first broke out in 2011.

The uneasy stalemate among the country’s various hostile factions was broken when

rebel fighters captured the city of Aleppo

from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and another rebel group took a smaller city north of there from Syrian Kurdish forces.

Here’s your guide to the origins of the Syrian war, the domestic players, and the external parties who have their own agendas in the conflict.  

What are the origins of Syria’s civil war?

Once a French-run mandate, Syria became independent after World War II.

In 1966, military officers belonging to the Alawite minority took power. That assured the domination of the group, whose faith is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, in a country where about 74 per cent of the people are Sunni Muslim.

Syria’s population includes sizeable Christian, Druze and Kurdish communities as well.

Long-time president Hafez al-Assad brutally suppressed dissent, and was succeeded by his son Bashar in 2000. 

As part of the wave of pro-democracy unrest known as the Arab Spring, protests erupted in Syria in March 2011.

Using his father’s playbook, Mr Bashar al-Assad crushed them. He unleashed attack aircraft, helicopter gunships, artillery and tanks against the lightly armed rebels who began to organise.

The conflict broke largely along sectarian lines, with Syria’s Alawites supporting Mr Assad and Sunnis backing the opposition. 

Foreign powers – including Russia, Iran, the US and Turkey – saw the war as an opportunity to extend their influence in a country that straddles the region’s geopolitical fault lines.

Foreign intervention increased after the Al-Qaeda spin-off ISIS, which aims to create a puritanical Islamic society, used the turmoil to conquer territory in Syria and in Iraq.

The final ISIS stronghold fell in 2019.

Who are the main domestic players today?

Assad’s regime

Forces loyal to Mr Assad – with the help of Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah – had managed by 2020 to confine the territory held by militant groups to about a third of the country.

All-out war was replaced by sporadic fighting. Mr Assad, who insists all rebels are “terrorists”, defied international pressure and made no concessions to them. 

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)

The capture of Aleppo in late November was led by HTS, or the Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant. It is the successor to the Nusra Front, which was an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the Sept 11 attacks on the US.

HTS is believed to have 15,000 fighters, and has experience in local governance in parts of north-west Syria that have stayed outside Mr Assad’s control. Joining HTS are fighters from the Turkey-backed umbrella group known as the National Liberation Front. 

Syrian National Army (SNA)

This is the Turkey-backed rebel group that captured Tal Rifaat, to the north of Aleppo, from the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a Syrian militia made up mostly of fighters representing the Kurdish community.

Turkey has supported the SNA, established in 2017, as part of its efforts to combat ISIS and the YPG. 

People’s Protection Units

The YPG is the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party of Syria, which seeks autonomy for Syria’s Kurds and has shown a willingness to work with any power capable of advancing that goal.

YPG members formed the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces, created in 2015 under US auspices to fight ISIS. After the group’s defeat, the Syrian Kurds and Arabs allied with them formed an autonomous zone in the north-east of the country that is not aligned with either Mr Assad’s government or its opposition.

Who are the foreign powers involved in Syria’s war?

The US

The US for years provided covert support to Syrian rebels fighting the Syrian regime with the aim of pressuring Mr Assad into a political settlement, but it ditched that programme in mid-2017.

The US played a major role fighting ISIS. It began an air campaign against the group in 2014 and sent in ground troops the next year to assist the Kurdish forces fighting the jihadists.

After ISIS lost the territory it had controlled in Syria, the US reduced its presence, but it still maintains a small force there for the purpose of combating remnants of the radical group.

Turkey

Turkey has played a complex role in the war. A supporter of the Syrian rebels, Turkey has been a part of the US-led coalition against ISIS, but it has repeatedly attacked the bloc’s most effective ground force, the US-armed YPG.

Turkey considers the YPG an enemy because it has roots in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has battled for an autonomous region inside Turkey on and off since 1984. 

Iran

Iran deployed its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Syria to achieve its objective of ensuring the survival of the Assad regime, its main ally in the Middle East.

The alliance gives Iran a land corridor stretching through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon through which it can more easily transport arms and equipment to its client Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese group. Hezbollah played a major role in the Assad regime’s triumphs and still maintains a significant presence in Syria, but it has been greatly weakened by more than a year of conflict with Israel. 

Russia

Russia turned the war in favour of the Assad regime with a bombing campaign starting in 2015. Russia had long maintained its only military base outside the former Soviet Union in the Syrian port of Tartus, and in 2017 made a deal preserving access to an air base near Latakia.

While Russia retains significant air power in Syria, its attention these days is focused on its war in Ukraine. BLOOMBERG