BEIRUT (AP) — The last time Syrian President Bashar Assad was in serious trouble was a decade ago, at the height of the country's civil war, when his forces lost control of parts of the largest city, Aleppo, and his opponents came closer. about the capital Damascus.
At the time, he was bailed out by his main international backer, Russia, and his old regional ally Iran, who, along with Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah militia, helped Assad's forces retake Aleppo, turning the war decisively in his favor.
As rebels wage a shock offensive that quickly captured not only Aleppo, but also the main city of Hama and a string of other towns in the country's northwest, the Syrian leader appears to be largely alone.
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Russia has been preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, and Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of its fighters to bolster Assad's forces, has been weakened by years of conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its allies across the region deteriorated by Israeli airstrikes.
Moreover, Syrian forces are exhausted and depleted by thirteen years of war and economic crises, and there is little willpower left to fight.
Will Assad's rule collapse in the near future?
“The coming days and weeks will be critical in determining whether the rebel offensive poses an existential threat to the Assad regime, or whether the regime succeeds in regaining its footing and rolling back the rebels' recent gains,” it said. Mona Yacoubian, analyst at the United Nations. State Institute for Peace.
“Although weakened and distracted, Assad's allies are unlikely to simply give in to the rebels' offensive,” she wrote in an analysis.
Not from the woods
Until recently, it seemed that the Syrian president was almost out of the woods. He never really won the long civil war, and large parts of the country were still outside his control.
But after thirteen years of conflict, it seemed that the worst was over and the world was ready to forget. Once seen as a regional pariah, Assad saw Arab countries warm up to him again, renewing ties and restoring Syria's membership in the Arab League. Earlier this year, Italy also decided to reopen its embassy in Damascus after a decade of tense relations.
In the aftermath of one of the world's largest humanitarian crises, aid groups and international donors in Syria began spending more money on the country's recovery than on emergency aid, giving Syrians a lifeline and restoring basic services.
But then the sudden offensive of the insurgents on November 27 reignited the war, surprising everyone with its scale and speed.
It also left Syria's neighbors concerned and wary that violence and refugees could flow across its borders, and worried about the growing influence of Islamist groups, a major concern for most Arab neighboring countries of Syria.
Geopolitical shifts
Analysts say a confluence of geopolitical developments, starting with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, followed by the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that began on October 7, 2023, has helped create the opportunity for Assad's opponents to to hit.
As the rebels advanced over the past week, Syrian forces appeared to melt away without resistance, with several reports of defections. Russian forces occasionally carried out air strikes. Lebanon's Hezbollah leader said the group will continue to support Syria, but made no mention of sending fighters again.
“The rebel attack underlines the precarious nature of regime control in Syria,” Yacoubian wrote.
“The sudden outburst and the speed with which rebel groups managed to overtake Aleppo… expose the complex dynamics that lie just beneath the surface in Syria and can turn superficial calm into major conflict.”
Aron Lund, a Syria expert at Century International, a New York-based think tank and researcher at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said developments in Syria are a geopolitical disaster for Russia and Iran.
“They too were certainly surprised by what happened, and they have all kinds of resource constraints,” including Russia's war in Ukraine and Hezbollah's losses in Lebanon and Syria.
Exhausted and broken
While the country's conflict lines have been largely at a stalemate since 2020, Syria's economic problems have only increased in recent years.
The imposition of US sanctions, a banking crisis in neighboring Lebanon and an earthquake last year have contributed to almost all Syrians facing extreme financial problems.
This has led to state institutions and salaries collapsing.
“If you can't pay your soldiers a living wage, you may not be able to expect them to stay and fight when thousands of Islamists storm their cities,” Lund said. “It's just an exhausted, broken and dysfunctional regime” to begin with.
Part of the insurgents' attempt to reassert their grip on Aleppo, the city from which they were driven out in 2016 after a grueling military campaign, involved calling on government soldiers and security forces to defect and issuing them so-called “protection cards” to give. ', which offer a kind of amnesty and the guarantee that they will not be hunted.
Rebel spokesman Hassan Abdul-Ghani said more than 1,600 soldiers applied for the cards over two days in the city of Aleppo.
Hundreds of defectors lined up outside the city's police stations on Thursday to register their details with the insurgents.
Hossam al-Bakr, 33, originally from Hama, who served in Damascus and defected to Aleppo four years earlier, said he came to “sort out his position” and get a new ID.
The laminated card distributed to each defector was called the 'defector card'. It contained the name, ID number and place of duty of each defector. It is published by “The General Command: Military Operations Room.”
On Thursday, Major Mohamed Ghoneim, who was responsible for registering the defectors, said more than 1,000 soldiers or police officers came to register. Some who were in possession of their official weapons handed them over, he added.
“There are thousands who want to sign up,” he said.
Charles Lister, a veteran Syria expert, said that while most of the international community has dismissed the conflict as frozen or over, the armed opposition has never given up and has been training for such a scenario for years.
A group of militias, plagued by infighting and rivalry, have been preparing and organizing for years, driven by a dream to regain control of Assad's territory.
“The regime has been more vulnerable in the last two years than it has perhaps been throughout the entire conflict,” Lister said. “And it has become accustomed to the idea that if it can wait things out, it will ultimately emerge victorious.”
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Karam contributed to reporting from London.
