The war in Syria, which has remained insoluble since 2011, is starting again with vigor. The factions are taking up arms again, in a conflict marked by the support of regional actors and external powers, which is making the chessboard more complex. Explanations.
While the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon hangs by a thread, a recent and unexpected rebel offensive has shaken Syria since last week, putting an end to a relative truce that lasted for nearly five years.
President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army is losing ground against Turkey’s auxiliary forces.
And the fragmented country’s precarious balance could reignite widespread conflict between factions, militias and the foreign powers that support and clash with them in the region.
What are the causes of this endless conflict which is tearing Syria apart, and who are the main actors?
The main belligerents in the conflict
The military backbone of the current insurgency is the Sunni Islamist fundamentalist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (or HTS), previously linked to Jabhat Al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda branch that operated during the Syrian conflict of 2011 and until the last three major ceasefires negotiated between 2017 and 2020 by the United States, Russia, Turkey, Jordan and Iran.
The HTS group benefits, in part, from the support of Turkey, facing the Syrian army supported by Russia and Iran.
The Syrian state began to collapse during the Arab Spring in 2011. A fierce civil war then ravaged the country, causing more than 300,000 deaths, or nearly 1.5 percent of the pre-2011 population.
Since the start of this bloody conflict, the main belligerents have been the Damascus government of Bashar al-Assad, an autocratic system ideologically anchored in the Arab nationalism of Ba’athism, inspired by socialism in its sense of secularism, and allowing the coexistence of minorities, which is why many Alawites supported this movement.
Syria was characterized by a multi-ethnic component and a confessional plurality, which have persisted since the 1970s, when Hafez al-Assad, then a high-ranking officer and father of Bashar al-Assad, took power following of a military coup.
The el-Assad dynasty then governs with an iron fist. The ruling family and its inner circle established a regime that stood out for its stability, thanks to strict control of the country’s security forces, and a solid partnership with the Soviet Union, then, later, with Russia.
The Arab Spring of 2011, marker of an endless conflict
The first popular demonstrations of 2011, harshly repressed by the regime, quickly took the form of a violent civil war and an indirect confrontation between foreign powers, a classic pattern on the Middle East chessboard.
The democratic opposition was immediately challenged by Islamist groups supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, while Iran, Russia and Lebanese Hezbollah came to lend a hand to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. .
The United States, France and Israel were quickly drawn into the conflict.
Ankara took advantage of the flaws in Bashar al-Assad’s regime to extend its political influence in the region, and intervene directly against the Kurds of the YPG – rebel group and cornerstone of the Syrian Democratic Forces – who had their sanctuaries in northern Syria .
In 2013, the army of Bashar al-Assad, once powerful, suffered a series of routs, and lost ground in the face of the advance of what would become the Islamic State (IS), the fundamentalist armed group which would take control of large parts of Syrian and Iraqi territories.
A group with exacerbated violence which will have distinguished itself by a Salafist interpretation of religious beliefs, and will have conquered large swathes of the territory, threatening the very existence of the Syrian state.
Russia and Iran, fearing losing a crucial partner in such a strategic area, intervened directly in the conflict to save the government of Bashar al-Assad and their own military outposts.
Moscow has two important bases in the Eastern Mediterranean on the Syrian coast: a naval base in Tartous, and another military base in Kheimim.
Iran, for its part, is counting on access to Syrian territory to maintain its trade and circulate weapons and other illicit goods with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In 2015, the combined operations of the Russian Air Force and private militias linked to Moscow, such as Wagner, with those of the special units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, made it possible to recover a large part of the territory at the expense of Islamist militias and IS.
Aleppo, which was under the control of Jabhat-Al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army, was recovered in 2016 after four years of intense fighting – and sieges – by Syrian forces, with logistical support and strategic of Russia, particularly in terms of armaments.
According to military analysts, the Russians would have applied the same operational tactics to take Mariupol, during the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
And the United States intervened in the Syrian war in 2014, stating the objective of eliminating the Islamic State and protecting the Kurds and democratic forces.
A precarious balance of power: Who controls what?
When the factions concluded three major ceasefire agreements between 2017 and 2020, which allowed a fragile cessation of hostilities, Bashar al-Assad’s forces had already regained control of almost 80% of the territory.
Since then, other parts of Syrian territories have been held by the Syrian Salvation Governmentbased in Idlib, and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, consisting of the western Kurdish regions and other Syrian provinces.
This entity constitutes a democratic federation – rich in oil – supported by the West and which also represents a refuge for some of the Kurdish militant groups which fought the Islamic State group, the Turkish special forces and their proxies.
Other minor areas of Syria remain under the control of the Islamic State group.
Ankara’s occupation zone extends over large areas of northern Syria, along Turkey’s borders. Ankara shares administration of these regions with the Syrian Interim Government (SIG), myriad Syrian opposition groups, religious and non-fundamentalist political factions.
The United States has a military base at Al-Tanf. It is located on the strategic border with Iraq, not far from Jordan. From this base, the US military has carried out strikes against Iranian targets in the region.
The US military shares this territory with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an armed group whose cornerstone is the Authenticity and Development Front, which brings together Islamists and defectors from the Syrian National Army, among others.