A Primer on Syria

What happened, and what comes next.

Syria’s stunning rebel offensive took most observers by surprise, myself included. It likely took the rebels by surprise, too. It was intended, by all accounts, to push back government forces who’d been shelling Idlib, and I doubt the rebels even expected to take Aleppo. But here we are in a new Middle East.

How We Got Here

After the Islamic State’s stunning conquests in 2014, and American and Russian interventions—against ISIS and other rebel groups, respectively—the Syrian Civil War gradually trended in favor of Bashar al-Assad’s government. The U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized most of the Islamic State’s former territory, while the Syrian Army (SAA) pushed back rebels throughout the country’s west. By late 2019, an uneasy stalemate divided the nation into four zones of control. A coalition of rebel groups called HayyatTahrir al-Sham (HTS) held Idlib province in the northwest, with Turkish support. Other rebels, direct Turkish proxy groups called the Syrian National Army (SNA), held various regions along the Turkish border, and mainly served to prevent further Kurdish expansion. The Syrian Army and the SDF held the rest of the country.

HTS spent those five years of (relative) peace preparing. They created a functional government for Idlib, and improved their military training and command-and-control. They had Turkish support and also, as it turns out, a little Ukrainian help—Ukrainian intelligence provided some suicide attack drones and relevant technical assistance. Bashar al-Assad, on the other hand, failed to conduct any useful military or economic reforms, apparently confident that the rebel threat had been managed.

Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine tied up aerial assets that might previously have supported Syrian operations, while the fighting between Israel and Iranian proxies culminated in a shocking defeat for Hezbollah, one of Assad’s other key allies. HTS seized the opportunity. Some Syrian Army units tried to fight, but were overwhelmed by now-superior opposition forces. Stunning Twitter videos included Ukraine-style drone strikes on Syrian tanks, and also one clip in which rebel armored vehicles run down mostly-dismounted government infantry. One of the armored vehicles simply drives over a Syrian Army pickup truck. In short, HTS looked like the professional army.

Al-Qaeda? Maybe Not

HTS has an unfortunate past: it used to be al-Qaeda. It started as Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, and quickly gained a reputation as the most effective rebel group as early as 2012. It wasn’t tied to foreign terrorism, but it did commit various war crimes and other atrocities. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (whose real name is Ahmed al-Shera’a), was a veteran jihadi who fought the US in Iraq and was imprisoned in Camp Bucca with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the future head of the Islamic State. In 2013, though, Baghdadi and Jolani had a falling out. Baghdadi’s Islamic State in Iraq tried to absorb al-Nusra, but ultimately failed. The two groups came to blows, and for a while ISIS had the better of the conflict: it established a caliphate while al-Nusra continued as an ordinary rebel group. The feud with ISIS, though, allowed al-Nusra to survive: by eliminating ISIS, the US and the SDF also eliminated al-Nusra’s biggest rival.

Al-Nusra improved its chances by officially leaving al-Qaeda and rebranding, first as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and then as HTS, in a coalition with other rebels. And it moderated. Idlib ended up with a kind of semi-Islamist, semi-authoritarian system. Women didn’t participate in government, but otherwise had a fair amount of personal freedom, and dress codes were not strictly enforced. HTS controlled everything, but also built an efficient bureaucracy. You could think of it as Erdogan on steroids, or maybe Mohamed Morsi with 10 years’ time to shape Egypt as he pleased.

Even as HTS poured out of Idlib, Jolani adopted a conciliatory tone. He stopped using his nom de guerre—he’s now Ahmed al-Shera’a in all official pronouncements. He called for tolerance of Alawites and Christians. He ordered his fighters to refrain from touching government buildings, and to enforce no female dress codes. One official pronouncement even ended, “diversity is a strength.” (“Abu Woke al-Jolani” memes ensued.) Twitter is now full of photos of young women clad in Western clothing posing with HTS fighters, and Jolani himself ditched his Arab garb, first for a military uniform and now for a suit. But Jolani is carefully playing all sides. In one video, for example, he’s surrounded by several young women without headscarves. He doesn’t mention it—until one of them asks to take a selfie with him, which he allows, but only with covered hair.

HTS is pragmatic in other ways. It handed over an American after finding him in a regime prison, and is trying to obtain Western support or recognition. It seems to have been willing to entertain a continued Russian presence in Tartous, though Russia now looks set to withdraw, as discussed below. It has refrained from any aggressive comments or actions toward Israel, even as Israeli troops push beyond the Golan to create an expanded buffer zone. Most importantly, HTS is trying to retain and reform existing Assad-era institutions. It has captured the old Syrian state—which makes it the default provider of services, and restrains any other rebel faction from rising up against it.

Foreign Powers

Assad was a Russian and Iranian proxy. Iran is gravely weakened, and will have little influence over whatever governing structure HTS creates. Russia, on the other hand, retains port facilities in Tartous and an airbase near Latakia. HTS has (pragmatically) signaled openness to an agreement that lets Russia retain the Tartous port. But Russia seems to be withdrawing anyway, and for good reasons: it’s not clear how any remaining military facilities would be secured. HTS might not attack them, but the country is crawling with other Russia-hating armed groups (and certainly a few Ukrainian intelligence officers who feel the same way). Anybody could approach a Russian base and fire off some mortar shells or suicide drones from close range. It would be a security nightmare. Perhaps Russia will take the risk and stay, but for now a lot of troops and equipment, including an S-400 missile defense system, are being packed up and moved out.

Israel generally tolerated Assad and Russia throughout the war: Israel was mostly worried about weapons supplies to Hezbollah, and Russian air defenses never tried to stop Israeli strikes against those shipments. Nor was a weakened Assad dangerous: if anything, Israel seemed more worried about a rebel victory.

With Assad gone, Israel has taken the chance to strike all remaining Syrian government weapons stockpiles, destroying what remained of his air force, navy, ballistic missiles, and so on. Those strikes prevent HTS (or rogue factions, to say nothing of ISIS) from acquiring his strategic stockpiles. That’s probably a good thing. Less prudent, though, is Israel’s opportunistic incursion beyond the Golan, into Quneitra governorate. The advance provides an additional buffer zone against attack, but it’s hard to see why a buffer zone needs its own buffer zone. Nor will HTS threaten Israel for the foreseeable future: Jolani has made very clear his absolute disinterest in conflict, and HTS officials basically refuse to even talk about the Israeli incursion. It will just make an eventual agreement about the Golan harder, and Israel’s newly-announced plans to increase settlement there do not help.

Turkey has been an especially vocal opponent of the Israeli advance. But that opposition is ridiculous, since Turkish proxies occupy comparatively enormous swathes of Syrian territory. Turkey did help HTS, as noted earlier, but Turkey’s direct proxy, the SNA, was utterly useless in fighting Assad. It was always created for the primary purpose of the fighting the Kurds, and preventing the creation of a Kurdish autonomous region on the Turkish border. It has done so with considerable savagery. Last week the SNA, with heavy direct support from the Turkish military, advanced on the city of Manbij, the SDF’s westernmost outpost. (Remember, the SDF is the confederation of US-backed militias that includes Kurdish forces.)

Now Turkish forces are massing across the border from the town of Kobani, the site of the Islamic State’s first major defeat. Besieged and badly outnumbered, Kurdish and Arab militias held out for months in 2014 and 2015 before finally pushing back the ISIS advance, and the town today holds immense symbolic importance. The US has tried desperately over the course of the past week to broker a fragile ceasefire, and has moved some US troops back into the town after the Russians withdrew. (US troops were stationed there until Trump pulled them out in 2019.) As long as the American presence remains, Turkey will not attack, but Erdogan likely hopes to cow Biden into retreat. He must not be permitted to succeed: an offensive would result in a bloodbath followed by large-scale ethnic cleansing.

Seizing a Fragile Moment

Syria’s future depends on a quick consolidation of power by HTS, an orderly transition to civilian rule, disarmament of other factions, some kind of autonomy for the Kurds, and no Turkish meddling. It’s a tall order. Much will depend on HTS itself, and its continued efforts to accommodate all interests in an extremely diverse country that is, in many places, no bastion of Islamism. But the West can help. A British delegation met Jolani on Monday, and the US needs to engage, too, at least indirectly (Jolani still has a $10 million bounty on his head, which we’ll need to lift at some point). A Syria that relies on the West is a Syria less likely to devolve into a neo-Ottoman satrapy or a permanent threat to Israel, and perhaps a less Islamist Syria, too. It’s a risk worth taking.