How new fighting in Syria could change the Middle East again

Renewed fighting in the dormant Syrian civil war has seen the situation deteriorate rapidly, with another long and bloody battle approaching.

Syria’s civil war has reignited, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Despite the initial rapid advances of rebel forces, what is likely to be a protracted and bloody battle could rewrite the Middle East’s political map.

The rebels, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group formerly allied with al Qaeda, have already dealt President Bashar al-Assad and his backers, Iran and Russia, a body blow with the capture of Aleppo, Syria’s economic capital and second-largest city.

Why does it matter?

The capture has both strategic and symbolic value. It reverses Assad’s most significant victory in the country’s 13-year-long civil war, the retaking of Aleppo in 2016 after more than four years of fighting for control of the city.

The war has killed some 600,000 people and forced nearly 7 million to flee the country.

With the rebel offensive months in the making, the question was never if, but when. Timing may have been everything.

The rebels struck at a moment when Iranian, Lebanese and Russian support for Assad was at its weakest.

It’s still early days, but Iran’s reliance on Syria and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite militia, as cornerstones of its forward defence strategy would all but collapse if the Assad regime fell.

Assad’s distracted allies 

This is in contrast to past years in which Hezbollah played a crucial role in support of the Syrian military. Today, Hezbollah is militarily and politically in no position to come to Assad’s aid.

Badly battered by Israel’s targeted assassinations and ferocious bombing campaign, Hezbollah is fending off accusations that its support for Hamas dragged Lebanon into a war it could ill afford, for a cause that was not its concern.

Moreover, Hezbollah risks Israel attacking the armed group once again, despite the week-old Lebanese ceasefire, if it were to join Assad in confronting the rebels.

Yet, losing Assad’s Syrian regime would mean losing the main channel for the flow of Iranian weapons that support Hezbollah.

It would also mean that Iran, which reportedly invested billions of dollars in bolstering Assad’s rule, would lose a strategic pillar of its forward defence strategy and lose the positioning of pro-Iranian forces on Israel’s borders.

Even so, Iran, despite declaring its support for Assad, appears reluctant to send more troops to Syria after Israel repeatedly targeted its commanders and assets in the country.

Esmail Kowsari, a hardline member of the Iranian parliament and former officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was quick to assert that Iran did “not have many” advisors in Syria.

In addition, Iran may not want direct involvement in a conflagration as it braces for incoming US President-elect Donald Trump’s Iran hawk-heavy administration.

How it hurts Russia

Russia, tied up in Ukraine and relying on North Korea to contribute manpower, is in no less of a predicament. If the rebels take over the Syrian cities of Hama and Homs, let alone Damascus, they would be in a position to threaten Russian military bases on the Mediterranean coast near Latakia and Tartus.

In the absence of Russian and Iranian troops and Hezbollah fighters, Iranian-backed Iraqi militants are joining the fray.

Even so, capturing Aleppo may have been the rebels’ easy bit. From here on, the going is likely to get tougher. As rebel forces push southwards towards Hama and Homs, Syrian government forces and Russia have stepped up their bombing campaign from the air.

The Syrian military appears focused on preventing the rebels from advancing further, rather than attempting to retake Aleppo.

Syrian reinforcements sent to defend Hama appear to be putting up more of a fight than the military did in Aleppo, where the government’s troops melted away. The military claims to have recaptured villages north of Hama that were overrun by the rebels.

In contrast to Aleppo, where the rebels were greeted as liberators, many of the inhabitants in areas south of the city and north of Hama are Alawites, the Shi’ite sect to which Assad and much of the Syrian elite belong, or Syrian Christians who fear persecution by the predominantly Islamist rebels.

Turkey plays the long game

Turkey wasted no time in capitalising on the Syrian government’s preoccupation with stopping the Islamists in their tracks. Turkey has long wanted to drive Kurdish forces that form the backbone of the US-backed opposition Syrian Democratic Forces further from the Turkish border.

Syria’s largest minority, the Kurds, fear they may be even more exposed if Trump withdraws some 900 troops stationed in oil-rich parts of northern Syria. Trump was dissuaded from doing so in his first term but may be less willing to compromise this time around.

As the Islamist rebels pushed south, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) forced SDF forces to leave the town of Tel Rifat, 40 kilometres north of Aleppo, and took over military facilities, including the Menagh and Kuweires military airports.

It remains unclear whether and to what degree the Islamists, who at times have enjoyed tacit Turkish support, and the SNA coordinated their assaults to tighten their control of Aleppo.

Whatever the case, it’s too soon to write off Assad, who retains a modicum of support among some Syrians who, faced with Islamists as an alternative, see the president as the best of several bad options. Only time will tell whether the Islamists have lit a fire that cannot be put out.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.