Syrian Civil War Redux

You turn your head for one moment to focus on turkey and stuffing, and all of the sudden the Syrian Civil War restarts.

The conflict which erupted during the 2011 Arab Spring, and which over the course of a decade killed over half a million people, has been static since early 2020. 

By then, secular dictator Bashar al-Assad regained control over a majority of the country and its major cities, and had even begun the process of normalizing relations with his neighbors and reintroducing himself into the international community. The remnants of the Islamist opposition were isolated in the northwest Idlib province, protected by Turkey, their most significant benefactor.

And of course, there’s still close to 1,000 American soldiers occupying the northeast of Syria, monitoring oil fields and giving cover to local Kurds who still dream of an independent state.

Last week as the United States was tucking into dinner, the rebels suddenly broke out of Idlib and went on a rampage, restarting active fighting. They even captured the city of Aleppo with relative ease; this major city had been in their possession for several years at the start of the civil war, and it took immense bloodshed for the Assad regime to recapture it by December 2016, what had originally been seen as the turning point in the war.

The spearhead of this new assault is a group called Tahrir al-Sham, founded in 2017 by Abu Mohammad al-Julani. Julani is the previous leader of the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s now defunct Al Qaeda affiliate; he had sworn an oath of loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butcher of New York City and Osama bin Laden’s successor (until he was assassinated by the U.S. in 2022).