No one should have been surprised by the clash of rival ethno-sectarian forces, supported by powerful states, because that is how power is wielded across the region
December 5, 2024 10:49
The sudden offensive in Syria by the Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al Sham group caught the world by surprise. It shouldn’t have.
To understand why the offensive took place, and why no one should have been surprised by it, it’s worth taking a look at the current unstable and untenable state of Syria. Syria is a significant place from both a strategic and a humanitarian point of view, of course. But the Syrian situation and the renewed crisis there also offer lessons of relevance beyond their own specific context.
The Syrian civil war, which started as an unarmed uprising in 2011, was never resolved. By 2020 or so, it had settled into more or less stable lines of control, with the country de facto partitioned into three entities. None of these entities is homogenous from an ethnic or religious point of view, but all of them are dominated by a particular sectarian or ethnic group. In turn, each of these de facto statelets has its continued existence underwritten by a powerful state or coalition of states. What is currently taking place is a fight between these de facto areas of governance.
The area controlled by the thing that refers to itself as the Syrian government, which should more properly be termed the regime of Bashar Assad, remains the largest of the three zones of control in partitioned Syria. This structure controls around 60 per cent of the territory of the country.
The Assads run their fiefdom as a family dictatorship. One young Syrian evocatively described the country to me under the Assadsas a “family run farm, and we’re the animals.” This statement sums up the brutally repressive nature of the regime. But the Assads rule by more than terror. They are members of the Alawi sect, a split-off from Shia Islam. They have privileged their own community and implicated it in their excesses. The loyalty, partly coerced, of Syria’s Alawis is the foundation on which Assad’s continued rule of his area rests.
East of the Euphrates, in an area comprising roughly 30 per cent of Syria’s territory, a governing structure dominated by Syria’s Kurdish minority holds sway. The self-styled Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES) is recognised by no state in the world. It has nevertheless created the most stable and functioning area of Syria. Its fighters formed the key ground ally of the US-led coalition in the war against the Islamic State, concluded victoriously in 2019. Once the toast of all those opposed to the murderous excesses of ISIS, the Syrian Kurds and their beleaguered enclave are now largely forgotten by the world. They are nevertheless determined to maintain and defend their zone of control against ongoing attempts by both Assad and the Sunni Islamists supported by Turkey to encroach upon it.
Lastly, and most relevantly to the events of recent days, in the north west of Syria there is an enclave maintained with the support of Turkey, comprising around 10 per cent of Syria’s territory (though now considerably more, as a result of recent events), and further subdivided between two Sunni Islamist governing entities, the so-called Syrian Interim Government to the north, and the Syrian Salvation Government in the southern part of this area.
It may well be that any reader who has lasted this far now feels they understand less about Syria than they did when they began the article. Syria can have that effect. Nevertheless, the background matters. What has happened in recent days is that the Syrian Salvation Government, an entity maintained by a Sunni jihadi group called Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), has launched an offensive against the Assad regime, and has achieved remarkable success. Its allies in the Syrian Interim Government, meanwhile, have embarked on their own offensive against the Syrian Kurds.
HTS have rapidly covered ground. In a remarkable achievement, they have taken Syria’s second city, Aleppo. They are now menacing the city of Hama, 100 km or so further south. As a result of the gains of recent days, the Sunni Islamist enclave in Syria now has a population of around 7 million people.
The Assad regime is not yet in serious danger. The Sunni jihadis’ lines of advance are still far north of Damascus, and east of the Assad’s heartland in Latakia Province on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. As of now, at least, HTS’s remarkable offensive has simply re-set the balance between the areas of control in Syria.
So why should no-one have been surprised by the offensive?
First, because frozen conflicts rarely stay frozen forever. The causes that originally animated them tend to make themselves manifest at a time when one or another of the sides finds it opportune.
Secondly, because all serious observers of Syria have known for a while that behind its rhetoric, the Assad regime is a depleted and rotting structure, dependent on its powerful Iranian and Russian allies for survival. These allies are currently distracted in wars with Israel and Ukraine respectively. HTS, whose leader Abu Mohammed al Jolani is as tactically flexible as he is strategically rigid, spotted the opening and chose to strike.
And lastly, no one should be surprised at rival ethno-sectarian forces, supported by powerful regional and global states clashing in the Middle East across the landscape of collapsed states, because that is the very essence of the way that power is wielded across the region at the present moment. From this point of view, current events in Syria offer a kind of microcosm of the dynamics of the region as a whole. Hopefully, both western governments and publics are watching carefully, and may even emerge better informed about the nature and dynamics of the Middle East.
