Co-published with The Conversation:

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Moscow, November 2015

EA on Pat Kenny Show: Ukraine, Syria, and Biden

Rebels Consolidate Liberation of Syria’s Aleppo and Advance in Hama

The Axis of the Vulnerable is breaking.

In 2016 Russia and Iran, propping up the Assad regime, needed more than a year of bombing, ground assaults, and siege to break the opposition in eastern Aleppo city.

In 2024 anti-Assad rebels needed less than four days to liberate the city, Syria’s largest, and most of Aleppo Province. They also regained territory in neighboring Idlib Province and moved south into northern Hama before the Assad regime established defensive lines.

Russian forces remained in their bases on the Mediterranean. Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah were caught in their positions in northwest Syria. They abandoned them, but not before at least two commanders were slain.

Since 2020, after Russia and Iran helped his forces roll back opposition forces in much of Syria, Bashar al-Assad had presided in name over part of a fractured country. He and his allies held most of the largest cities, including Aleppo and the capital Damascus, while Turkish-backed opposition groups controlled most of northwest Syria and US-backed Kurdish factions had autonomy in the northeast.

Now Assad does not even preside over his share of the partition. And his Russian and Iranian enablers, overstretched and isolated by much of the world, are not in a position to restore his paper rule.

Propping Up Assad

From the start of Syria’s uprising in March 2011, Russia and Iran provided political, logistical, intelligence, and propaganda assistance to the Assad regime. Iran effectively took over the Assad military from September 2012, training tens of thousands of militiamen to fill depleted forces. Hezbollah sent in its fighters from 2013 to save the Assad regime near Lebanon’s border. Russia intervened with special forces and airpower from September 2015, not just for the battlefield but to obliterate civilian sites such as hospitals and energy facilities.

Their success lay in their ability to wear down the international community as much as their conquest of a diverse Syrian opposition. The Kremlin spread disruptive disinformation to cover for the Assad regime’s deadly chemical attacks and to denigrate opposition activists and the White Helmets civil defense. The Obama Administration, rather than holding the regime to account, was led by the nose into fruitless discussions of a ceasefire. The European Union was sidelined, the UN rendered impotent, and Arab governments eventually sat on their hands.

Perhaps their greatest triumph was the portrayal of the irresistible downfall of the anti-Assad movement. East Aleppo was reclaimed in December 2016. The original site of the protests, Daraa Province, and the rest of southern Syria succumbed in 2018. An 11-month offensive reoccupied Hama Province and parts of Idlib before a ceasefire, brokered by Russia and Turkey, in March 2020.

“Illusion Covering Up Weakness”

But that portrayal was also an illusion covering up weakness. Russia’s bombing and sieges had levelled and choked much of the country, but Moscow, Iran, and Hezbollah still did not have the forces to help the regime claim the rest of northwest Syria or to remove the Kurds in the northeast.

“Reconstruction” was a deceptive label in areas retaken by the regime. Long burdened by the kleptocracy of the Assad elite, the Syrian economy lost more than half of its GDP. The Syrian pound, which was 47:1 v. the US dollar in 2011, is now officially 15,000:1 and unofficially far weaker. International sanctions, imposed because of the regime’s mass killing and repression, are still in place.

While the regime could count on outside assistance, it could maintain the illusion of power. It subsisted on control of State assets and black market revenues, including from illegal drugs. Assad posed for “normalization”, as Arab states like the UAE restored relations and considered investments in Syria.

But then Vladimir Putin gambled on his invasion quickly conquering Ukraine. Almost three years later, he has poured most of Russia’s resources into operations with no end in sight, and put the country under international economic pressure.

Iran’s leadership has been beset by mass protests over social issues including women’s rights. The economy is still staggering between inefficiency and sanctions. Targeted assassinations and covert operations by Israel and the US have weakened the military.

Hezbollah has been decimated by Israel’s attacks in the past three months, from exploding pagers and walkie-talkies to the killing of commanders including overall leader Hassan Nasrallah. A shaky ceasefire has not freed fighters from the threat of Israeli airstrikes and ground assaults.

So when the rebels attacked last week, they were not facing a vaunted Axis of Resistance. They saw only the disappearing shadow of Assad’s supposed authority.

Turkey’s Pivotal Role

So where next for Assad and his backers?

The answer could now lie with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Erdoğan may not have launched the rebel offensive —- sources say Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, made the decision —- but the President is the beneficiary of the outcome. Turkey’s political and economic reach in northwest Syria, established since 2016, has expanded to include the country’s largest city.

Ankara has leverage over the terms of negotiations. It can encourage and even equip the rebels to press on, or it can call for a halt and consolidation in preparation for a sit-down with the Russians and Iranians. Already the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has hosted his Iranian counterpart in a show of diplomacy.

But that raises further questions. For Erdoğan’s primary foe in Syria is not Assad but the Kurdish authorities, whom he views as part of the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK.

So far the Turkish-backed rebels have not had serious clashes with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF and Kurdish officials have reportedly pulled out of areas in Aleppo Province, retrenching in northeast Syria.

But will Turkey accept this or —- as in 2019 —- will it pursue an attack on the northeast? Ankara has reportedly initiated talks with the Assad regime about a Turkish-controlled “buffer zone” well inside the border.

That brings in the US, which has been the essential backer of the Kurds and the SDF. For now, Washington is likely to maintain that commitment. But from January, all bets are off because of Donald Trump in the White House.

After a phone call with Erdogan in late 2018, Trump tried to withdraw all US troops from Syria. He was out-maneuvered by the Pentagon, but another call with Erdogan in October 2019 green-lit a Turkish cross-border invasion.

The Axis of the Vulnerable is breaking, but Syria’s era of uncertainty continues. One can only hope that now it is not so deadly or destructive.