The Syrian civil war has returned. On 27 November 2024, Syria’s “Military Opposition Command” launched a fresh offensive against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. Following fighting in the Idlib, Aleppo, and Hama governorates, the rebels seized the country’s second largest city of Aleppo. As Middle Eastern leaders engaged in a flurry of diplomacy, Assad’s allies Iran and Russia pledged support to his regime, and Syrian and Russian war jets have begun striking targets in rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria.

For all practical purposes though, the Syrian civil war had never ended.

In 2020, almost five years ago, following the last major counter-offensive of the Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the rebel groups were pushed to the far north of the country, and a negotiated ceasefire came into force. An acceptable stalemate had prevailed ever since — even though frequent clashes continued among the actors in the war.

So, who are the rebels who have now taken Aleppo and are advancing beyond?

• The mix of actors in Syria is so diverse that the term “rebels” is often used for analytical convenience. Among the actors leading the current offensive, three are most important.
• First is the Hayat Tahrir al-Shaam (HTS), a group that occupies the liminal space between jihadist terrorism and separatist militancy. The HTS, which is led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, was founded as Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, but which broke from the parent organisation in 2016 to form the Jabhat Fateh al-Shaam (JFS). The change in name was both symbolic and substantial, as it now stood for liberation of Shaam, or the Levant. Jolani at the time sought to reduce the distance from the separatist Syrian opposition groups.
• By 2017, after merging with a number of other groups, the JFS became the HTS, which had a localized operational focus distinct from al-Qaeda’s global jihadist outlook. Illustrative of the evolving position of the HTS is the fact that while the United States State Department designated it as a terror group in 2018, the US stopped targeting Jolani himself by August that year, as the former American Ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, noted in 2021.
• Second are the Kurdish militias organised as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the most powerful armed force in Syria after the SAA.
• The SDF is the military arm of the Kurdish coalition that has autonomously governed a large part of northeastern Syria (across the Euphrates river) in Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, and Aleppo since 2012 when the SAA withdrew. The SDF’s uneasy coexistence with Assad’s forces has often resulted in armed skirmishes, but its principal enemy over the last decade has been ISIS and its affiliated jihadist groups.
• In the ongoing war, the Kurds, while fending off the Syrian Army, also have to guard against the Turkey-backed militias and the HTS, despite the latter’s assurances on not attacking the Kurdish forces. The SDF enjoyed significant US backing during the civil war, until Washington abruptly withdrew most of its material and personnel support under the first Trump administration.
• Third is the Syrian National Army (SNA), which grew out of the Free Syrian Army formed by defecting Syrian soldiers in 2011, a Turkish-backed force that is fiercely opposed to both Assadist Syria as well as the Kurdish SDF.
• The SNA has long been Ankara’s preferred ally for its own operations in Syria. The HTS and SNA are jointly carrying out the current offensive against the Syrian Army through their semi-unified “Military Operations Command” that was formed in 2019.

And who are the external actors backing the rebels?

• The external actors in Syria are hardly ‘external’. For instance, Turkey is not merely a third state fighting in Syria through its proxies — over the last five years, the Turkish occupation of northern Syria has been quasi-normalised, which makes Turkey a uniquely resident power that governs territory in Damascus’s stead.
• Turkey’s encouragement of the rebels is a function in equal parts of its interests against the (US backed) Kurds, and the regime in Damascus. In 2016 (and then in 2018, 2019), as Assad’s forces pushed back against ISIS with help from Russia and the Lebanese Hezbollah, Turkey exploited the opportunity to militarily force a buffer between itself and Kurdish controlled northern Syria. Ankara perceives a powerful threat from Kurdish militias, and considers most of them terror groups.
• Turkey’s enabling of the resurgence of the civil war has been helped by the fact that the US has (largely) stood by. Washington has limited incentive to check a Turkish-backed offensive against Assad, who is backed by Moscow and Tehran. The common anti-ISIS objective that had resulted in peculiar instances of American, Russian, Syrian, and Iranian forces fighting the same enemy in the past, has now withered away.

What is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham?

• The HTS, which Abu Mohammad al-Jolani leads, was founded in 2011 as Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. In 2016, it broke away to form the Jabhat Fateh al-Shaam (JFS), standing for the liberation of Shaam or the Levant (the sub-region of the Middle East lying near the Mediterranean Sea, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine).
• Bashir Ali Abbas, a Research Associate at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi, wrote in The Indian Express, “By 2017, after merging with a number of other groups, the JFS became the HTS, which had a localized operational focus.”

Who is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani?

• Jolani, 42, is seen as being instrumental in HTS meeting its objectives in recent days. According to a recent profile in Financial Times, “Jolani capitalised on the recent outreach he’d conducted with tribes, former opponents and minority groups, brokering surrenders and ordering the protection of minorities.”
• He was born in Saudi Arabia and later moved to Damascus. Before coming to Syria, Jolani’s grandfather lived in Golan Heights, a region lying between Israel and Syria and part of Syria until the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Since then, Israel has controlled around 70% of this area.
• At an early age, Jolani began engaging with the geopolitics of the region. Around the Second Intifada in 2000, or the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, he said, “I was 17 or 18 years old at the time, and I started thinking about how I could fulfil my duties, defending a people who are oppressed by occupiers and invaders.”
• As the United States sent its forces to Iraq in 2003, Jolani also left to go to Baghdad to join the insurgency and subsequently climbed up its ranks. In 2013, the U.S. Department of State designated him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

But why has the civil war restarted at this moment?

• The renewed war in Syria amidst the raging conflict in the Middle East is more than just a broken windows effect. An unusual confluence of global conflicts has helped create room for the armed insurgency to mount its offensive against Assad. Two new wars in Europe and Lebanon/ Gaza have helped resurrect the older one in Syria.
• Over the last three years, the invasion of Ukraine has strained Russia’s military positions and resources in Syria. As it was Moscow’s entry in 2016 that helped Assad turn the tables in the war, so a strain on Russia has come as an opportunity for the Syrian armed opposition.
• On the other hand, the Iran-backed ground proxies that have fought alongside Assad’s forces in Syria — especially Hezbollah — have been significantly weakened due to Israel’s air and ground campaign in Lebanon, and the decimation of Hezbollah’s senior leadership. Hezbollah is perhaps the most conspicuous absence in the renewed war in Syria, vindicating, at least for now, the rebels’ timing of the offensive.
• Note that Hezbollah’s involvement in the earlier phase of Syria’s civil war helped Damascus substantially against both ISIS as well as the rebels, especially in Aleppo (which they have now re-seized).

And what does this new phase of the war mean for Assad himself?

• By mid-2012, with 100,000 killed in the war and the armed opposition closing in on Damascus, the former UN observer mission chief in Syria had declared that Assad’s days were numbered. Eleven years later, Assad was welcomed back with some pomp into the Arab League as the decisive winner of the war.
• But while this spotlights the risks of writing Assad’s political obituary, it is to be noted that his victory was never complete — northern Syria remained under Turkish control, and the SNA/HTS continued to be a threat to him. This is one of the major reasons why Assad himself has remained restrained in his anti-Israel commitment during the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
• Despite Assad’s inextricable relationship with Tehran, Syria’s Arab neighbours Saudi Arabia and the UAE have an interest in checking renewed instability in Syria. This is not least due to their unease with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. While capitals like Riyadh and Abu Dhabi look for regional stability as they seek to diversify economically, Ankara — which has been kept out of cross-regional grand projects like the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) — has enough reason to assert its regional heft as a geopolitical maverick.
• India has long stood by Assad in Syria, and has historically supported Russia’s military involvement. The 6th Round of India-Syria Foreign Office Consultations took place in New Delhi on 29 November 2024, two days after the civil war resurged. While several factors influence India’s position, it principally stems from New Delhi’s preference for stable political actors in the region.