Syria’s battlefield has always been so diverse it would put any DEI initiative to shame. Long before the American-led coalition against the Islamic State terror group, regional powers such as Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran were funding and arming local militias and military divisions with the hope of extending their influence and leverage.
After advances abetted and led by the Russian air force in the sky and Hezbollah on the ground between 2016 and 2021, and the sequestration of rebels in pockets in Syria’s north-east, Western policymakers concluded that the war had been won by President Bashar al-Assad, and turned their gaze elsewhere.
But this “frozen” conflict (it wasn’t quite frozen for the dozens of Syrians who died on a weekly basis to regime and Russian bombardment) remained the most important unimportant story in the region.
Damascus remained a crucial piece of the Middle Eastern puzzle as a conduit for Hezbollah’s arms and a point of confluence for the struggle against Iranian power in the region.
Western powers weighed normalisation with Assad and sanctions relief. And so naturally they were caught flat-footed by the four-day lightning offensive that saw the rebels erupt into Assad regime strongholds and reclaim Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city and former commercial capital.
Syria’s battlefield has always been so diverse it would put any DEI initiative to shame. Long before the American-led coalition against the Islamic State terror group, regional powers such as Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran were funding and arming local militias and military divisions with the hope of extending their influence and leverage.
After advances abetted and led by the Russian air force in the sky and Hezbollah on the ground between 2016 and 2021, and the sequestration of rebels in pockets in Syria’s north-east, Western policymakers concluded that the war had been won by President Bashar al-Assad, and turned their gaze elsewhere.
But this “frozen” conflict (it wasn’t quite frozen for the dozens of Syrians who died on a weekly basis to regime and Russian bombardment) remained the most important unimportant story in the region.
Damascus remained a crucial piece of the Middle Eastern puzzle as a conduit for Hezbollah’s arms and a point of confluence for the struggle against Iranian power in the region.
Western powers weighed normalisation with Assad and sanctions relief. And so naturally they were caught flat-footed by the four-day lightning offensive that saw the rebels erupt into Assad regime strongholds and reclaim Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city and former commercial capital.