Northern Syria’s Coalition against the Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Syria Branch, a System of Governance and a Diverse Economy As It Has Been Done

It’s aim is to retain but also set up a system of governance in the area which will allow it to establish a monopoly over goods and services, similar to what’s happening in the northwest.

“It’s not what it was,” Ford says. “It’s not what I had imagined when we pushed to get them on the terrorism list in 2012. Back then they were ‘al Qaeda in Iraq, Syria branch.'”

“After years of battles and competition with other rebel groups, HTS has now built an alliance of convenience with those groups,” says Khatib. This alliance is against the Iranian militias and against the forces of the Syrian regime.

“They have restructured themselves in the past few years, they are now more professional,” Drevon says. If you expand further, you will likely see them spread thinner and the command and control might be difficult to maintain over those groups in the south.

All that international assistance, proximity to the border and cooperation with other rebel groups elsewhere in Northern Syria has allowed HTS to develop a diversified economy, says Caroline Rose, a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute think tank. Rose says HTS may try to replicate it elsewhere.

Turkey’s main goal with Syria since 2016 is to prevent a further influx of refugees across the border into Turkey and this was the reason why they believed that a flood of new migrants would likely happen.

Even though the group was meant to fend off government forces, Turkey’s support has been crucial.

In Idlib province, along the border with Turkey, the group’s largely technocratic administrators, known as the ‘Salvation Government,’ have cooperated with United Nations aid agencies and other international organizations seeking to support the millions of Syrians living there, many of them displaced from other parts of the conflict-ridden country.

HTS has started working with minority Christians in Syria to rebuild churches and allow them to return to their homes, even though they do not have plans to apply Sharia law in areas they control.

Charles Lister, director of the Syria Program at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington D.C., says HTS has been very public in its condemnation of international terrorism in recent years.

The group has stopped having any global agenda. It’s turned national, according to Lister. The group has very conservative religious foundations.

An Islamist group that the US and several other nations long ago designated a terrorist organization, it was known as Jabhat al-Nusra when it formed a formal alliance with Al-Qaida more than a decade ago.

Source: Who are the rebels who have seized control of Aleppo, Syria?

The United States and the Organization for the Liberation of Greater Syria (HTS) are Fighting in a Damascus-Salt Regime

“We hit positions of the leadership and succeeded in cutting off communications between them and their troops. That created a big mess for them. It was a big psychological defeat.”

LONDON — The rapid military advance of a Syrian rebel group this past week has dramatically shifted the frontlines and upended long-held assumptions about a Middle East conflict that appeared stuck in a stalemate.

With its roots in the early days of Syria’s 2011 uprising, the Organization for the Liberation of Greater Syria swept down this week from its strongholds in the northwest countryside to take control of a vast swath of a country that had long been under the grip of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

The group HTS surprised a lot of people, including themselves, when they took control of the second largest city in the country.

They have subsequently pushed farther south in the past two days, heading toward the capital Damascus as fighting has broken out in a number of towns and cities across the country.

The commander of a unit that was trying to coordinate the rebels offensive said in an interview with NPR that they had broke the first line.

The military still has over 900 troops in Syria, mostly in the northeast, to protect the Kurds. The U.S. troops aren’t directly involved in the current fighting, though they periodically come under attack by militias back by Iran. The Biden administration has not taken sides in the latest fighting. The US views HTS as a terrorist organization and is very critical of Assad.

“The Russian air force is already pounding rebel-held areas. Iran is moving militia forces. Salem said that he wouldn’t be surprised to read reports that Hezbollah fighters are going to Syria. But it’s not clear, he says, how much support these allies can provide.

HTS has not been advancing this week as it was last week, and analysts say the rebel fighters may find themselves stretched too thin if the Syrian military regroup and counterattack. Syria’s allies are trying to help.

Iran, meanwhile, has suffered a series of setbacks as its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have fared poorly in their wars with Israel. Iran has also been weakened by Israeli strikes that targeted the country’s limited air defenses, leaving it vulnerable to any future Israeli strikes.

Against this backdrop, the attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on southern Israel on Oct. 7 of last year set in motion multiple conflicts that are still playing out. The day after that Hamas incursion, Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah joined the fray, firing rockets into northern Israel as a show of support for Hamas.

Syria’s main supporters, including Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, have all been weakened as a result of other conflicts.

But in recent days, war has returned with a vengenance to Syria, the country Assad and his late father, Hafez Assad, have ruled for more than a half-century.

Amid all this turmoil, Syria’s Assad kept a low profile. During the country’s civil war, there are allegations of abuses and atrocities against the Syrian leader. Over the past year, he has refrained from new military operations against the opposition forces, and sought to avoid involvement in the wider regional conflicts.

The fighting continued, with the rebels in Yemen shooting on commercial ships in the Red Sea, as well as launching missiles at Israel. Israel and Iran exchanged missiles and drones earlier this year.

Even though there was limited fighting in Syria it appeared that the worst of the war was over if the country was still divided between multiple groups. The Syrian government holds the capital Damascus along with most of the south and west, while various opposition factions control much of the north and the east.

Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are helping Syria’s government army regroup after it lost control of the city of Homs.

The turmoil in Syria is linked to other events in the Middle East over the past year, notably the war in Gaza. Collectively, they have destabilized the region and helped create the opening for HTS fighters to launch their offensive last week.

The question now is not whether the rebels can keep the pressure on Assad but whether his army can hold the line.