Robin Yassin-Kassab writes:

The rebels advanced out of the narrow strip of Idlib in which they and millions of Syrians from around the country had been crammed for over four years. ‘The rebels’ here means a military alliance under the umbrella of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – the greatly moderated and better organised reincarnation of Jabhat al-Nusra. It’s still an authoritarian Islamist militia, but it’s not at all ‘like ISIS’ as the uninformed are saying. It broke definitively from the ISIS stream in 2014. It has a much more positive policy towards sectarian and ethnic minorities than ISIS. It allows far greater space for pluralism, disagreement and consultation than ISIS did (though it still arrests and detains some political opponents, and tortures them). Unlike ISIS, it doesn’t field a Hisba Diwan (or morality police) to interfere in people’s daily lives. Its focus is Syrian rather than transnational. It doesn’t threaten the west.

Its ‘Fath al-Mubeen’ military alliance also incorporates lots of members of other less authoritarian groups that were displaced to Idlib and then gobbled up by HTS. HTS has not been popular among people in Idlib – they’ve been demonstrating against it for months – but its offensive is wildly popular, because the people want to be rid of Assad and his foreign backers, and to return to their homes.

I didn’t expect the offensive, at least not on this scale. Nobody did. At first it looked to me like a controlled operation to restore the agreed Astana lines – that is, the division of north west Syria agreed upon at Astana by Russia, Iran and Turkey. Russia had pushed Turkey to normalise and negotiate with Assad, and Turkey had tried hard to do so. Assad had refused to budge from his maximalist positions, the Russians don’t want to alienate Turkey (given their difficult position attacking Ukraine), and Turkey needs more Syrian territory to which to send Syrian refugees. So perhaps the Turks and Russians were scaring Assad into negotiating by taking a few towns in the Aleppo countryside.

But the offensive went much further than that, far beyond the Astana lines. News came, meanwhile, that the Turks had prevented the Syrian National Army – comprised of former Free Army militias now under Turkish control – from moving towards eastern Aleppo. This allowed the PKK-dominated SDF to take areas in Aleppo abandoned by collapsing Assad forces – surely the opposite of what Turkey wanted. Turkey was not, therefore, in control of events. Turkey clearly didn’t know what was going on.

What this offensive shows, therefore, is Syrians organizing themselves, and Assad’s gangster regime crumbling as soon as Russian and Iranian imperialists are unable to protect it. [Continue reading…]

Zvi Bar’el writes:

It appears to be no coincidence that the attack commenced close to the onset of the cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, which drove the organization’s leadership to the conclusion that a window of opportunity had opened, limiting Hezbollah’s ability to move freely between Lebanon and Syria and providing the Syrian regime a protective envelope and assistance in rebuffing the attack.

To this is added the awareness that Iran’s presence in Syria has weakened, with the frequent attacks by Israel causing the Revolutionary Guards to reduce the number of bases in central and western Syria, as well as reducing the number of commanders and Syrian and Afghani soldiers who have been recruited into pro-Iranian militias. These militias have consolidated their bases in eastern Syria, in the area of Deir al-Zor and along the border with Iraq, but in these areas they need to contend on an almost daily basis with Sunni tribes that oppose Iran’s presence.

Russia – which in 2015 mobilized in full force to assist Assad to suppress the insurrection, helping him turn the tables and move from the brink of defeat to controlling 70 percent of the country – has undergone a change in status in Syria. In the wake of the war in Ukraine, it has significantly reduced its presence in Syria, even sucking into the Ukrainian front Syrian combatants and “volunteers,” thereby eroding the scope of forces available to Assad. [Continue reading…]