Syrian rebels’ advance breaks war’s fragile stalemate

For the past few years, Syria has been locked in an uneasy stalemate, fragmented and devastated after more than a decade of civil war, but with the front lines frozen and the worst of the fighting seemingly over.

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad had claimed a Pyrrhic victory after brutally crushing a rebellion with the military backing of Russia, Iran and Iranian-backed militants. It had regained control of most of the war-ravaged country, while the remnants of the armed rebellion were pushed back to enclaves in the north and north-west, surviving under the patronage and protection of Turkey.

But this week, that fragile impasse was shattered as insurgents led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham advanced from its stronghold in Idlib province and launched a lightning raid across the north against regime forces, charging into Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. By Saturday, they were closing in on Hama, to the south.

The assault underlined the fragility and the vulnerability of President Bashar al-Assad’s hollowed-out regime and his dependence on foreign forces to prop it up, 13 years after a mass popular uprising morphed into a civil conflict.

It also pointed to the weakness of the Syrian army and the military capabilities of HTS. Its fighters launched their offensive on Wednesday and were posing for photos in front of Aleppo’s citadel in the heart of the city of some 2mn people on Friday, as regime soldiers appeared to melt away.

HTS is the most powerful of the remaining rebel factions, an offshoot of al-Nusra, a jihadist force that emerged in the chaos of Syria’s war as an affiliate of al-Qaeda. It is led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who once fought for Isis in Iraq. He was designated a terrorist by the US a decade ago and has a $10mn bounty on his head.

The group has controlled Idlib, which is home to between 3mn and 4mn people, for six years; most of the current population fled to the region to escape the Assad regime.

Jolani renounced his links to al-Qaeda in 2016 and has in recent years sought to rebrand HTS as a more moderate Islamist movement while consolidating the group’s hold on Idlib.

He has also been building up the group’s military capacity — it has reportedly used drones in this week’s offensive — while being clear about his ambitions, said Malik al-Abdeh, a Syrian analyst.

Abdeh said that in October, as Jolani planned the offensive, HTS was communicating with other rebel factions in the north that are part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, saying that he was positioning himself to be the “Conqueror of Aleppo”.

He estimated that HTS has up to 30,000 fighters. Its ranks are filled with veterans of the war and religiously motivated fighters who receive higher salaries than the Turkish-backed fighters.

Abdeh added that the Islamist group views itself as being the Syrian Sunni Muslim equivalent to Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement.

“Jolani wants to play the role of [former Hizbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah for the Sunnis,” Abdeh said. “With Jolani it has less to do with ideology and more to do with power. He wants to do whatever it takes to put himself in power in Syria and has never hidden the fact that he wants to conquer Damascus.”

The battering Hizbollah has taken during its 14-month conflict with Israel may have presented the opportunity for Jolani to make his move. Along with Russia and Iran, Hizbollah and other Iranian-backed Shia militants were vital to Assad’s ability to quash the rebellion.

But since Hamas’s attack on October 7 2023, Israel has dealt Hizbollah a series of devastating blows in Lebanon, including killing Nasrallah, and repeatedly struck Iranian and militant targets in Syria, while warning Assad he has to choose sides.

HTS launched its offensive hours after a US-brokered ceasefire to end the conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hizbollah came into force.

Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute said HTS had spent the past four years intensively training and developing a greater level of professionalism.

He added that they had “much better lines of command and control, dedicated drone units, night-time forces and other kinds of special forces”, and had developed their weapons manufacturing capability. 

Lister said the rebels could only advance “so far before they were overstretched” but had already succeeded in pushing back “the lines of control” to where they were six years ago.

Analysts say HTS is coordinating with the Turkish-backed rebels in the Syrian National Army, but the latter forces have not yet fully deployed to the battlefields.

The SNA is estimated to have about 40,000 fighters, but it is made up of disparate factions that are based in enclaves in northern Syria, in effect controlled by Turkey as the Arab state has fragmented into a patchwork of fiefdoms.

Ankara’s main goal in Syria has been to push back from the border region Kurdish militants whom it considers an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a separatist group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. This includes Kurdish-dominated forces which are supported by the US in the fight against Isis and control swaths of Syria’s north-east.

Turkey’s links to HTS, which it also designates as a terrorist organisation, are complex. It acts as Idlib’s ultimate protector from large-scale attacks by regime forces and their Russian backers, while Ankara also controls the border into the province, through which HTS depends on trade and taxes. Yet the Islamist group has also previously clashed with the Turkish-backed rebels.

While Turkey may not have endorsed the HTS offensive in advance, it could work to Ankara’s advantage if it seeks to exploit the chaos to push back Kurdish militants, analysts say.

“Turkey is the big protector of Idlib and a very important backer of Idlib which HTS cannot afford to ignore. But it’s an awkward relationship, there are ups and downs,” said Dareen Khalifa of Crisis Group. “But it doesn’t see it as an Islamist threat. On the contrary this is a useful interlocutor, useful in keeping [Syrian] refugees on the other side of the border and going after jihadis groups.”

Haid Haid, a Syrian analyst at Chatham House, said it was still unclear whether the group’s rebranding from its jihadist roots was genuine.

“If you look at their discourse, they are trying to show they have changed their ways. But there are many issues related to the way they govern the areas they control, it’s a centralised structure,” Haid said. “The real test will be when there’s negotiations to see if they mean what they say . . . They say they want to be political players, that they are ready to engage. But nobody has officially engaged with them to test if those claims are true or not.”

Idlib is governed by the civilian-led “Syrian Salvation Government”, under HTS’s control. The UN Syria Commission of Inquiry said in a September report that it had documented “torture and executions of detainees” held by HTS in the country’s north-west.

Natasha Hall, senior fellow on the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said HTS was “by far the most powerful, disciplined, and financially independent [opposition] group”.

“They have very firm control over various economic sectors within Idlib and they have ruled with quite an iron fist — trying to get rid of any kind of dissent,” she said.

After Assad began to turn the tide in the civil war with Russian and Iranian backing, including with the siege and bombing of Aleppo in 2016, many rebels and their supporters either fled to Idlib or were evacuated to the province by the regime as part of local ceasefire agreements.

Haid said it was difficult to gauge the extent of HTS’s support because most of the time Syrians “are choosing between bad and worse”.

“For many people, they might not be happy with HTS in those areas, but they will sort of be satisfied with them staying if that means the alternative is the Assad regime,” he said.