On the evening of Friday 29th November, Facebook’s live feed function went wild. Filmed on shaky internet, video after video sprung across the timeline, all showing one thing: Aleppo.
In fewer than three days, rebels opposed to the Assad government in Damascus had seized control of the northern Syrian city, the country’s most important trade centre. Syrian journalists, humanitarian workers and activists ran around the 13th-century Aleppo citadel, screaming with joy.
Rebels fired celebratory gunshots. For them, it was a victory: retaking a city that President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies had besieged for months, and then seized in late 2016. For Assad, it represented the near complete collapse, when challenged, of his armed forces and their Iran-backed militant allies. For many of Aleppo’s residents, alongside joy it also meant fear: what was coming next? Some fled, fearful of rebel retribution. Others stayed to wait and see.
The current offensive by opposition fighters, from various factions ranging from Salafi Islamists to relative moderates, is the biggest challenge to Syria’s president in a decade. Assad has not faced such opposition since the anti-government protests that broke out during the Arab Spring in 2011, which his security services brutally suppressed. The apparently sudden re-emergence of Syria’s rebels came as a shock not only to Syrians, but also to western governments who had long deprioritised Syria. They appeared to think, perhaps even to wish, that the stagnant conflict would remain stagnant.
Why now? According to senior opposition officials, rebels, including the former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), launched the operation in response to intransigence from Assad in talks to restart a long-frozen political transition process. Assad refused to meet Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who directly backs some of Syria’s opposition forces, to agreement some sort of normalisation of relations between the two countries. All the while, pro-Assad forces had resumed bombing campaigns on civilians in an attempt to increase pressure on rebel-held areas. In October this year, for example, at least 12 civilians were killed and an estimated 1,951 families displaced by attacks in northwestern Syria in just three days.
With Iran-backed forces in the country—including Lebanese Hezbollah, which is severely weakened after more than a year of conflict with Israel—the rebels saw an opportunity. “There was no other choice but to go the path that the Iranians and the regime understand,” Aymen al-Asmi, a spokesperson for the Syrian opposition delegation to negotiations between key players Russia, Iran and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana, told me over the phone on Tuesday.
It is not just Aleppo that the rebels have taken. On Thursday opposition forces entered the city of Hama, the site of mass killings ordered by Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, in the 1980s. Their advances there were slower than in Aleppo, in part because of Syrian army reinforcements sent to the area. Rebels have also seized control of the whole of Idlib province in the northwest, and units directly backed by Turkey have advanced northeast into territory held by US-backed Kurdish militants.
Eventually, the rebels want to get to Damascus. Along the way, they have seized army bases and weapons. “Our battle with the brutal regime and Iranian militias is continuing until Syria is liberated and the occupied cities and towns are returned to their owners,” says Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Abdul Ghani, a rebel commander.
Whether opposition forces wrest further control from Assad is, of course, a separate question. Key issues now include whether pro-Assad forces will escalate bombing campaigns to dampen rebel advances and target civilians living under their control. More than 100 civilians have already been killed in the past week in such attacks in Idlib province and in Aleppo. An estimated 115,000 have fled their homes, with many seeking refuge with host families and in collective shelters, the United Nations says.
“We must always be careful of the reaction of the Syrian regime,” says Aamer, an Idlib-based member of the Syrian civil defence force, which receives funding from the UK government. “It is bombing vital areas, medical centres and hospitals”. One serious worry among humanitarian workers in rebel-held locations is that Assad could deploy chemical weapons against them, as he has done on multiple previous occasions. In an address to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Syrian civil defence force leader Raed al-Saleh said he was “gravely concerned” because of this “real threat” to “the lives of every Syrian”.
Having lost both Hama and Aleppo, pro-Assad forces may rally to protect the key urban centres remaining under their control, including Homs and Damascus. “While HTS and [its leader, Abu Mohammed] al-Jolani have always sought to capture Damascus and all of Syria, they are still far from the capital and will face more organised opponents in the coming days,” Broderick McDonald, an associate fellow at Kings’ College London, tells me over email.
Opposition forces also now have the task of proving that they can hold and manage territory without collapsing into infighting. For years, they have operated local administration networks in areas under their control, suggesting an ability to govern. But different rebel factions have also fallen out with each other, and if they are to set up the democratic and inclusive Syria that they promise, then these groups will have to show that they can agree on who controls what.
Given their limited resources, opposition forces will also have to find a way to extend service provision to the swathes of territory now under their control. This is all the more challenging given the devastation of Syria’s infrastructure over nearly 14 years of conflict. Rebels have sent messages via social media to civilians, warning them not to return to their homes in areas newly under opposition control, because of mines.
Access to foreign funding will likely be hindered by the US’s terrorist designation of HTS. In recent days, to calm fears over whether the rebels will rule with an iron fist or persecute non-Sunni Muslim Syrians, HTS’s leader Jolani has tried to extend his appeal to the country’s ethnic and religious groups, including Christians, Alawites, Druze and Kurds. Rebels have turned on the messaging machine: we welcome everyone in Syria—except those who work with Assad.
“I think they are fully clear-eyed, specifically HTS, that they need to be able to demonstrate that they can actually govern these areas in a way that is not draconian and is not marginalising, or going after minority groups,” explains Dareen Khalifa, a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group thinktank.
Opposition forces are urging western powers to restore the sort of financial, military and political support that they once provided to allow them to govern effectively. But with an “America First” Donald Trump soon back in the White House, and Europe distracted by conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, it is not yet clear this will be forthcoming.
Turkey and opposition groups now hope that the huge loss of territory can push Assad back to the negotiating table. Ankara does not want such levels of violence erupting in Syria that more refugees pour over its borders, and the Erdogan government also holds the upper hand in any negotiations now that forces partially under its direction have advanced so far.
Yet Assad has held on for 14 years. Unless Russia and Iran really do abandon him, he may well stay put for even longer.
