How the Syria crisis could reshape the Middle East
It is generally a mistake to read one conflict through the prism of another, even though they might share the same actors.
The Syrian rebel offensive took almost everyone by surprise. Rebel groups that had for years been bitter rivals showed they were capable of acting in unison.
The speed with which Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other groups took Aleppo, Syria’s second city, its airport and several military bases, has dealt President Bashar al-Assad his largest setback in years.
Aleppo became an opposition stronghold after the Syrian Revolution in 2011. Its capture five years later by Assad’s forces spelt the end of the uprising. Its recapture now is a big blow to the integrity of the regime and the prestige of Assad, who has since been accepted back into the Arab League.
It was clearly timed to be launched after a ceasefire was secured between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon - and timing was key.
Assad’s forces have been degraded by constant Israeli attacks. Hezbollah is still fighting a brutal war against Israel, after its leadership was wiped out.
A persistent theory is that Israeli agents penetrated its ranks while Hezbollah was fighting in Syria.
At any rate, a large counterintelligence operation is still ongoing in Iran and Lebanon to find out how Israel could have pinpointed the exact location of Hezbollah’s political and military leadership in Beirut. The leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is also under scrutiny, and its leadership is in transition.
Building pressures
Iran is now bracing for a second and much stronger attack by Israel, backed by Donald Trump, the US president-elect. Israel is moving from one front to another - from Gaza, to Lebanon, and now Iran - unable to defeat its enemies in a way that would satisfy domestic opinion and appearing to have settled on a policy of permanent low-level war.
These combined elements have made the Syrian front line eminently vulnerable to a lightning strike in a frozen conflict that everyone had forgotten about.
But this offensive has been 18 months in the making. It would be wrong to discount the internal Syrian pressures that were building up after the Astana process, an attempt launched in January 2017 by Russia, Turkey and Iran to de-escalate the war.
It was meant to establish four zones to contain the conflict. But between 2018 and 2019, Syrian forces, supported by Russia and Iran, seized three zones and parts of a fourth, squeezing 4.5 million people, including hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, into a narrow corridor in the north and northwest, along the Turkish border.
After successive ceasefires, Astana stopped being a peace process and became instead a mechanism for normalising the military presence of its sponsors.
The result was that for four years, when the front lines were stable, more than five million people have lived in opposition-held northern Syria, many in dire poverty, with little or no access to international aid. Two million of those live in camps, having fled persecution or attacks from pro-Assad forces in other parts of Syria.
The roots of HTS
To judge the outcome of this conflict through the biographies of its leaders is also a mug’s game.
HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the youngest son of a Syrian government advisor born in the Golan Heights, was undoubtedly sent on his jihadist path by 9/11, an operation he admired.
In 2003, he joined Saraya al-Mujahideen, a small but infamous group active in Mosul, Iraq. This group swore allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after he established al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004, which became the Islamic State (IS) group.
Jolani was soon detained at Camp Bucca, an infamous US military holding centre, where he established close relationships with Iraqi jihadists.
Not long after Jolani’s release in 2011, the revolution broke out in Syria. The initially peaceful uprising turned into an armed conflict, largely as a result of Assad’s work to militarise it.
Syria provided an opportunity for Jolani to distinguish himself and for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to revive IS and expand outside the Iraqi desert.
Soon afterwards, the Nusra Front was born. It is worth recalling that these are the origins of HTS, a group that in 2016 renounced al-Qaeda and its global jihadist mission.
Are we to believe that Jolani has given up transnational jihad, transforming himself and his movement from an active part of al-Qaeda and IS into a Syrian nationalist group, almost overnight? Is this a real change of direction or merely rebranding?
This, again, is not a simple question to answer.
Kurdish fears
The residents of Idlib, which has been under HTS’s control, report that sharia is not rigidly enforced there. Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria who pushed to list HTS as a terrorist group in 2012, also says it is no longer the hardline movement it once was.
“What they are now is not what they were in 2011 or 2012,” Ford told The Wall Street Journal. “They’re allowing Christians to rebuild churches. That’s not what jihadis usually do.”
A commander from Ahrar al-Sham, another ultra-conservative rebel group, recently made a speech calling for Christians and Armenians to be protected. Videos and reports from Aleppo have also shown Christians preparing for Christmas celebrations and praying in churches.
But the rebels’ treatment of Christian minorities may not necessarily prove to be the best yardstick of its tolerance for all minorities in the highly complex, multi-confessional and ethnic space that is Syria.
Joseph Daher, a Swiss Syrian professor at the University of Lausanne, told Middle East Eye: “They want to set the objectives into a national framework. Does that mean they are not authoritarian, fundamentalists? No, they are,” he said, in reference to the treatment of Alawis, Druze and other groups in opposition-held areas.
Probably of more concern than HTS will be the behaviour of the Turkish-backed rebels belonging to the Syrian National Army (SNA). The biggest fear centres on how these groups treat the Kurds.
The takeover of Aleppo and its countryside by rebel factions has prompted tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee the area. More than 100,000 Kurds live in the Aleppo neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, along with the towns of Tel Rifaat, Tel Aran and Tel Hassel.
The mass displacement reverses what happened in 2016, when Tel Rifaat itself was captured by Kurdish fighters, prompting many Syrian Arabs in the area to flee to Turkish-controlled Azaz. But it makes the assurances of HTS, which on Monday called on Kurds to remain in their homes, sound hollow.
Turkey's guiding hand
The clearest guiding hand at work in all these events is Turkey’s. Undoubtedly, this offensive could not have happened had it not received a green light from Ankara. Turkey directly funds and arms the SNA, and its relationship with HTS is usefully ambiguous.
But it has been open about its demand that the situation on its border not be allowed to stagnate.
There are three million Syrian refugees in Turkey, of whom an estimated one-third come from Aleppo and the surrounding area. Having welcomed them with open arms after 2011, there are significant social tensions over their presence in Turkey today, with the political opposition taking an openly xenophobic and racist stance towards the presence of Arabs in Turkey.
At the first sign of stability, these refugees will go back to their homes, thus alleviating an increasingly unpopular burden on the Turkish state.
Much of northeastern Syria is controlled by an administration created by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an ideological offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group that has fought against Turkey for decades in support of Kurdish autonomy.
It has been Ankara’s longstanding demand that the border area be settled by groups that do not use it as a base for promoting the PKK’s campaign in Turkey.
Under pressure to minimise the refugee crisis at home, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan thus has more than one reason to press for a meeting with Assad to end the hostility between the two countries.
Assad’s refusal to meet him to discuss a political settlement was a clear frustration before the rebel offensive - not just for Turkey, but for Russia too.
There is a path to peace, or deescalation, that involves negotiations with the rebels; a constitutional settlement, which would incorporate all parts of Syria under the same laws and rights; agreement on a transitional timetable; agreement on the management of Kurdish areas; and a timetable for the withdrawal of Turkish forces.
Political strategy
But thus far, Assad has ignored the approaches of Erdogan. The two men did not meet, even though they attended the same summit in Riyadh in November. Putin has also tried to arrange a meeting, but Assad has refused.
After the Aleppo attack, Turkey expected a message from Assad to be conveyed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on his recent visit to Ankara, but none came. Instead, Araghchi accused Turkey of betrayal. Iran has already threatened to deploy its forces in Syria, if requested by Damascus.
A summit between Iran, Turkey and Russia is now expected to take place on the sidelines of the Doha Forum this weekend, where both Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, are scheduled to speak.
Turkey will no doubt expect not to be ignored in this forum. Now that a rebel force with its backing is moving towards Hama, Turkey’s role in northern Syria has been transformed from that of an ineffective bystander to a player.
But it would be wrong for Iran to assume that all the setbacks it and Hezbollah have endured in the past few months are coming from the same place. This war is reigniting in Syria in very different circumstances from 2016.
This time, the Gulf states are behind Assad - so much so that the crisis ended a moratorium on contact between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his former mentor and close associate, UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, who called Assad to offer total support.
Israel's biggest threat
Israel, for its part, would be equally wrong to assume that what weighs against Hezbollah and Assad’s regime in Syria works in its interests.
In the short term, these recent developments could well disrupt Hezbollah’s badly needed resupply of missiles and divert Iran’s troops. To what extent the Popular Mobilisation Units in Iraq will come to Assad’s rescue is also unclear.
But in the long term, Israel should think twice before assuming that the crumbling of Assad, who has kept his country’s border with Israel quiet throughout the Gaza offensive, is in its interests.
The Syrian rebel offensive shows how wrong Israel is to assume that if it deals what it thinks are decisive blows to one enemy, another will not step forward.
Just weeks ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar was toying with the idea of a formal alliance with stateless minorities in the region, such as the Kurds and Druze, to undermine Turkey and Iran. How foolish this policy looks now.
Any change of regime in Syria or Egypt could have profound implications for Israel’s plans to impose its peace on the region.
Until and unless Israel comes to terms with the Palestinian demand for an end to occupation, the region will always be teetering on the verge of crisis and war. An unstable region is not Israel’s plaything or in Israel’s control. It’s its biggest threat.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.