Within the messy patchwork of conflicts raging throughout the Center East, one nation has been absent from the highlight: Syria.

A civil struggle that dominated worldwide headlines for greater than a decade has now been reignited after a coalition of Syrian rebels launched a lightning offensive final week, seizing Aleppo, the nation’s second-largest metropolis, from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The rebels took solely hours to recapture territory that Assad’s forces had spent years reclaiming. Fighter jets from Syria and its ally Russia quickly started bombing the world — killing tons of of the rebels however civilians, too, in keeping with a number one monitoring group.

“It is a very unstable state of affairs with an enormous quantity of flux,” mentioned H.A. Hellyer, a senior affiliate fellow on the Royal United Providers Institute, a London-based suppose tank.

Some anti-Assad activists hope it might herald the crumbling of a depleted regime; others worry the brutality of the Russia-Syrian response — in addition to the hard-line ideology of the Islamist rebels themselves.

It’s additionally unclear how this will have an effect on the 900 or so American troops nonetheless within the area, or the remnants of the Islamic State terror group that they’re there to battle and that the Pentagon has warned could also be regrouping.

Right here’s what we do know:

What occurred?

With little warning final Wednesday, a coalition of Syrian rebels launched a speedy assault that quickly seized Aleppo in addition to cities within the close by Idlib and Hama provinces, in keeping with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.Ok.-based monitoring group.

The rebels are being led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which grew out of a former al Qaeda affiliate referred to as Jabhat al-Nusra and is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., the United Nations and others. The State Division has a $10 million bounty for details about its chief, Abu Mohammed al-Golani. 

Nonetheless, some analysts say the group has “vastly moderated” its positions, as Robin Yassin-Kassab, writer of “Burning Nation: Syrians in Revolution and Battle,” wrote this week. “It’s nonetheless an authoritarian Islamist militia” however “has a way more constructive coverage in the direction of sectarian and ethnic minorities than ISIS,” he mentioned.

For these anti-Assad observers, the group presents a possibility to topple the brutality of his regime and its Russian and Iranian benefactors.

However after the rebels’ offensive, Syrian and Russian fighter jets responded by launching airstrikes on the rebel-held areas, with Assad’s authorities claiming to have killed greater than 400 of the “terrorists.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights places the variety of rebels killed in 5 days of combating at 244, with 61 civilians killed alongside 141 authorities troops.

In the meantime, Iranian International Minister Abbas Araghchi supplied his full assist to Assad and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov mentioned Russia would do likewise. And on Monday, Iran-backed militias based mostly in Iraq crossed the border into Syria to assist the federal government there, in keeping with the Observatory.

Why is that this occurring now?

Syria’s time on the again burner of worldwide consideration can be one motive it has roared again into prominence, some specialists say.

Assad as soon as seemed like he is likely to be toppled by the varied group of rebels that rose up in opposition to him after the Arab Spring of 2011. That he has survived was largely due to the intervention of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanon-based proxy.

Russia’s indiscriminate bombing, specifically, turned the tide in opposition to the rebels. It additionally remodeled then rebel-held cities resembling Aleppo and Homs into moonscapes of rubble and rebar. In all, the U.N. has documented greater than 350,000 deaths however says that is “actually an undercount.”

At this time, nevertheless, Russia, Iran and Lebanon are distracted and depleted.

Russia’s major focus is on the struggle in Ukraine, the place it’s locked in an attritional battle of trenches, tanks and dust with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Washington-backed authorities in Kyiv. In recent times Moscow has withdrawn property from Syria, doubtlessly weakening Assad’s grip on energy, specialists say.

Likewise, Iran has taken successful by the hands of Israel, which has gutted Hezbollah’s management and focused its missile arsenal, whereas additionally combating Hamas in Gaza.

“Iranians have additionally proven that their forces are stretched and maybe not as highly effective as folks get them credit score for,” mentioned Hellyer, the Russia analyst who was talking from Cairo. All of this “places Assad in a a lot weaker place.”

However “the Syrian regime, in coordination with the Russians and fewer so the Iranians, will hit them with all the pieces they’ve received,” he added.

Washington and ISIS

Much less clear is what function, if any, the U.S. could play.

In addition to the American troops based mostly in Syria, there are one other 2,500 in neighboring Iraq which might be a part of a residual 80-country coalition to forestall ISIS from regrouping.

Nonetheless, it’s removed from sure these forces will stay there after President-elect Donald Trump takes workplace in January. He twice threatened to withdraw these troops throughout his first time period.

However the ISIS risk has not gone away, regardless of the group being purged in 2017 from the huge swaths of Syria and Iraq over which it had ruled.

In July, the Pentagon warned ISIS assaults have been on observe to double year-on-year.

If HTS have been to grab the town of Deir el-Zour — a former ISIS stronghold — then ISIS might be freer to increase its affect throughout the east of the nation, some analysts consider.

“As Assad’s regime strikes sources to the northwest” to attempt to battle off the rebels, “ISIS will reap the rewards, filling vacuums” elsewhere, Charles Lister, director of the Syria program on the Center East Institute, a Washington-based suppose tank, mentioned in a submit on X.

If Assad have been to fall altogether, Iran could not have the ability to use Syria as a pipeline of weapons and different provides to Hezbollah, the Council on International Relations, a Washington-based suppose tank, mentioned in a briefing.

Nonetheless, any hopes for Assad’s ouster needs to be tempered by who or what would possibly change him.

“A lot as I oppose the Assad regime, its atrocities and abuses, what is going on in Aleppo proper now’s terrifying. Many will die,” Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, posted on X. “If there was an opportunity of a stunning peaceable end result to the advantage of Syrians, I shall be thrilled. That is unlikely.”

Alexander Smith

Alexander Smith is a senior reporter for NBC Information Digital based mostly in London.