What’s going on in Syria, and how is it linked to Ukraine and Gaza?
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Rebel forces in Syria have made huge advances against the troops of dictator Bashar al-Assad, as military support from states such as Russia and Iran is focused on wars elsewhere.
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In brief…
- Rebel coalition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) recently took control of Aleppo by force, in a move made possible by diversion of troops to conflict elsewhere in the world.
- Emily Maitlis says we “took our eyes off Syria” and887 this is what happens when journalists are pulled out of a country at war, and the cameras stop rolling.
- But expert Tim Marshall says these events were inevitable, and just needed the “stars to align” for rebels to seize their moment.
What’s the story?
Rebel forces in Syria recently claimed a huge victory in its ongoing civil war against the country’s dictatorship government, where Bashar al-Assad is president.
Attention in Western media over recent years has been on the conflict in Ukraine and more recently in Israel and Gaza, meaning that the capture of major Syria city Aleppo has come as a surprise to many whose eyes were elsewhere.
“We'd all stopped looking at Syria,” says Emily Maitlis.
“It just reminds you that when the cameras go off, or when the journalists aren't allowed in, we assume there's nothing to see.
“The civil war in Syria is alive and well and flourishing in a way that President Assad thought had gone away, that he had won.”
But this wasn’t a surprise to author and foreign affairs journalist Tim Marshall, who says the recent rebel victory was on the cards to people who’d been closely following events in the country.
“It looks to me that three different ducks aligned in a row, and that gave the green light to the rebel Islamist groups who said; 'Now is the time',” he tells The News Agents.
And those ducks, he adds, include wars elsewhere in the world, without which this recent escalation may not have been possible.
What to know about the civil war in Syria
Conflict in Syria has been taking place since 2011, when protests and rallies began, due to widespread anger at the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad, who first came to power in 2000, and remains there now.
Conflict escalated, and by 2012 had become a civil war, with NATO among the organisations giving military support to rebel groups, while Hezbollah, Iran and Russia backed Syria's government.
But, with those groups now involved in conflicts elsewhere, rebel coalition HTS has taken the opportunity to strike back against government forces and take control of large parts of Aleppo, a city with a population of more than two million people.
Marshall says there is “not really” any clearly defined “good or bad” in the conflict, who adds that since an apparent win for al-Assad in 2016, there have only been "skirmishes" in the region.
What do the groups involved want in Syria?
Marshall says the end goal for HTS is total control of Syria - which he doubts is a reality, due to the interests of the other players in the region.
Turkey's goal is to weaken Assad and the Kurds, establish its border buffer zone and push Syrian refugees back which, while it aligns with HTS to an extent, is unlikely to concede the total control it's looking for.
Russia wants to keep Assad in power in order to hold onto what Marshall describes as its "puppet" in the Middle East.
Iran, meanwhile, also wants Assad to remain in charge in order to keep its corridor to the Mediterranean open.
He says HTS, which have begun to advance south toward the cities of Hama, Homs and Damascus, are more likely to consolidate their gains and attempt to secure Aleppo, rather than continue its current advance.
This, Marshall adds, is because losing a hold in Syria is not an option for either Russia or Iran, both of which he believes would find the resources to up military action if HTS appears to be nearing its goal of total dominance.
How is this linked to other wars?
The end of relative peace in Syria has only been made possible by conflict in Gaza and Ukraine.
That’s because Russia and Iran, who had troops and military arsenal stationed in Syria, have diverted resources to focus on wars closer to home.
“The Russians took a lot of their planes and went back to fight the Ukraine war, with a lot of their troops,” Marshall adds.
“Hezbollah had the best part of 5,000 combat troops fighting to support Assad against the rebels in Syria. Well, they went home.”
Israel invaded Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, in October, in retaliation to shelling over its border..
Meanwhile diplomatic talks between Turkey and Syria, to establish a buffer zone along the northern border with Turkey, collapsed in November.
“Assad is so fragile because of the Ukraine war and the Israel / Lebanon / Hezbollah war and the subsequent weakening of Iran,” Marshall says.
“At any point in the last eight years, had these stars all aligned, this would have happened.”
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