By GILBERT ACHCAR*
The main concern of the Zionist state is to prevent Iran from strengthening its presence on Syrian territory and finding new ways to supply weapons to Hezbollah.
In just a few days, Syria has once again become a mobile war zone, in what appears to be a resumption of the last major shift in frontlines that took place in 2016, when Bashar al-Assad's regime regained control of Aleppo with Iranian and Russian support and Turkish complicity.
In just a few days, after having remained relatively static for several years, Syria has once again become a theatre of war on the move, in what appears to be a resumption of the last major shift in frontlines that took place in 2016, when the Assad regime regained control of Aleppo with Iranian and Russian support and Turkish complicity. Now we are faced with a surprise attack accompanied by a sudden expansion of forces from Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (Organisation for the Liberation of al-Sham, commonly known by its Arabic acronym HTS), the Salafi jihadist group that has controlled the Idlib region in northwestern Syria since 2017.
As is well known, the group's origins go back to Jabhat al-Nusra, founded in 2012 as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in Syria, which then announced its defection from the organization under the name Jabhat Fath al-Sham in 2016, before absorbing other groups and becoming Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) the following year. HTS's invasion of Aleppo in recent days was carried out at the expense of the Syrian regime army, supported by Iranian and Russian forces. As for Turkey's role, it was once again one of complicity, but this time in the opposite direction, since HTS has become dependent on Türkiye, which is its only way out.
Let us take a closer look at this chaos, starting with Turkey’s role. At the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria in 2011, Ankara sought to impose its tutelage over the Syrian opposition and, through it, over the country if it won. It then quickly began to cooperate with some Gulf Arab states in supporting armed groups that raised Islamic banners, when the situation became militarized and transformed from a popular uprising against a sectarian and despotic family regime into a confrontation between two reactionary camps, exploited by a third camp formed by the Kurdish movement.
These developments paved the way for Syrian territories to be subject to four occupations, in addition to the Zionist occupation of the Golan Heights that began in 1967: the Iranian occupation (accompanied by regional forces affiliated with Tehran, notably the Lebanese Hezbollah) and the Russian occupation in support of the Assad regime; the Turkish occupation of two areas on Syria's northern border; and the American deployment in the northeast in support of Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State or its remnants.
So what happened in the last few days? The first thing to note is the speed with which the Assad regime forces collapsed in the face of the attack, reminiscent of the collapse of regular Iraqi forces in the face of the Islamic State when it crossed the border from Syria in the summer of 2014. The reason for both collapses lies primarily in the sectarian factor, with the common feature being that the Alawite majority in the Syrian forces and the Shiite majority in the Iraqi forces had no incentive to risk their lives in defending the Sunni-majority areas under their control that were targeted.
Added to this is the resentment created by the current regime's failure to create encouraging living conditions, especially in Syria, which has been suffering from economic collapse and a sharp increase in poverty for several years. Last Saturday, the newspaper Financial Times quoted an Alawite as saying: “We are prepared to protect our villages and cities, but I do not know whether the Alawites will fight for the city of Aleppo… The regime has stopped giving us reasons to continue supporting it.”
What is clear is that HTS, along with other factions under Turkish tutelage, decided to seize the opportunity created by the weakening of Iranian support for the Assad regime, which resulted from the heavy losses suffered by Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran’s main armed wing in Syria, due to Israel’s incursion into Lebanon. This weakening, combined with the weakening of Russian support due to the involvement of the Russian military in the invasion of Ukraine, created an exceptional opportunity that HTS seized.
It is also clear that Turkey blessed this attack. Since 2015, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s shift towards playing to a Turkish nationalist chord, coupled with his alliance with the Turkish nationalist far right, has meant that his main concern has become the fight against the Kurdish movement. In 2016, Ankara stabbed Syrian opposition forces in the back by allowing the Syrian regime to retake Aleppo with Iranian and Russian support, in exchange for Russia’s permission to launch Operation Euphrates Shield and seize the Jarabulus area and surrounding area in northern Aleppo province from the Kurdish forces that held it.
This time, Ankara also used the HTS attack on Aleppo to launch its Syrian support forces against Kurdish forces. Erdogan had previously attempted to reconcile with Bashar al-Assad, offering him support to extend his regime’s control over the vast area where the Kurdish movement is dominant in the northeast. However, the latter’s insistence that Turkey hand over the areas it controls on the northern border thwarted this effort. Erdogan then turned against the Assads and gave the green light to the HTS attack, infuriating supporters of the Syrian regime.
The “difference in views” that Iran’s foreign minister alluded to during his visit to Ankara after the attack began is that Tehran sees HTS as the biggest threat, while Ankara sees it as the Kurdish forces. Despite their shared hostility towards the Kurdish movement, Tehran, Moscow and Damascus had concluded a long-term truce with it, hoping that circumstances would change so that they could resume their offensive to control all of Syria, while Ankara’s relations with this movement have remained extremely hostile, in contrast to its cooperation with HTS, which controls the Idlib region.
As for Israel and the United States, they are cautiously monitoring what is happening on the ground, since both sides – the Assad regime and HTS – are almost equally evil in their eyes (despite the UAE’s efforts to whitewash the regime and Ankara’s efforts to whitewash HTS). The Zionist state’s main concern is to prevent Iran from using the opportunity of this new battle to strengthen its military presence on Syrian territory and find new ways to supply Hezbollah with weapons through it.
Finally, by stoking sectarian animosities, these developments are dispelling the only glimmer of hope that has emerged in recent years in Syria, which is the massive popular protests against the deteriorating living conditions that have been taking place in the country since 2020. These protests began in the Suwayda region (inhabited by a Druze majority), in the territories controlled by the regime, and quickly turned into demands for the departure of Bashar al-Assad and the fall of the regime, thus reviving the spirit of the popular, democratic and non-sectarian uprising that Syria witnessed during the Arab Spring thirteen years ago. Let us hope that the unity of popular interests in subsistence and emancipation will lead, in the not too distant future, to the renewal of the original Syrian revolution and allow the reunification of the country on the democratic basis that the pioneers of the 2011 uprising dreamed of.
*Gilbert Achcar is professor of international relations at the University of London. Author, among other books, of Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising (Saqi Books).
Translation: left.net
Originally published on the author's blog.
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