Who are the rebels in Syria that have taken over a city?

The Istanbul Task Force: Insights from Syria’s Transformed “Salvation Government” in the Era of the Syrian Civil War

It strives to retain but also set up proto governance in the city and surrounding areas so as to establish a monopoly over goods and services for taxation, similar to what we’ve seen in the northwest.

Ford says that it isn’t what it was. When we tried to get them on the terrorism list, it was not what I thought it would be. Back then they were ‘al Qaeda in Iraq, Syria branch.'”

HTS has transformed repeatedly over the years since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, with name changes, personnel splits and an expanded role in the country’s northwest province of Idlib, where it has largely governed undisturbed for several years.

“They have really restructured themselves over the past few years, they’ve become more professional,” Drevon says. “The issue is, if you try to expand further elsewhere, then you know they would spread thinner, and command and control might be a bit more difficult to maintain over these groups if they go to the south.”

The HTS has developed a diversified economy because of international assistance, proximity to the border, and other rebel groups in Northern Syria, says a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute. There is a model that Rose believes HTS may seek to replicate.

“One of Turkey’s main policy goals in Syria since 2016 is to prevent a further influx of refugees across the border into Turkey,” says McKeever, who is based in the Jordanian capital of Amman, and the Turks were convinced that a flood of fresh migration “would most likely be caused by a regime offensive that manages to take the entire Idlib pocket.”

Alex McKeever, a researcher with the organization Syrians for Truth & Justice, says Turkey’s support for the group has also been crucial – even though it was originally intended just to fend off government forces.

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.

At the moment, HTS leaders say they have no plans to apply Sharia law in areas they control and have even started working with Syria’s minority Christian communities, allowing them to rebuild churches and returning their dispossessed lands.

The Syria Program at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington D.C. reports that HTS has a moderate face in recent years, as it has publicly repudiated international terrorism.

“The group has completely turned away from having any kind of global agenda. “It has turned into a nation,” he says. 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 Battle of Difrascus, Syria: The U.S.-Solvected Frontline of the Liberation of Dilaton

Communication between the leadership and their troops was cut off after we hit their positions. That created big chaos 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.

HTS surprised many people when they took over the second largest city in the country, with minimal opposition from the government.

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.

“We succeeded in breaking the first line and then the second and third,” said Gen. Ahmed Homsi, the commander of a unit that’s been trying to coordinate the rebel offensive, during an interview with NPR.

The US military has around 900 troops in Syria, mostly in the northeastern part of the country, to protect the Kurds. The U.S. troops sometimes come under attack from militias back by Iran, though they aren’t directly involved in the current fighting. The Biden administration does not support the current fighting. The U.S. views the HTS group as a terrorist organisation and is very critical of Assad.

Russian air forces are hitting rebel-held areas. Iran is moving allied militia forces. I am not surprised to read that Hezbollah is moving fighters from Lebanon to Syria. But it’s not clear, he says, how much support these allies can provide.

Analysts say the rebel fighters may be stretched too thin if the Syrian military digs in and starts counterattacking. Syria’s allies are trying to assist.

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.

“Israel has dealt a staggering blow to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” said Salem. The Assad regime was saved from collapse as a result of Hezbollah’s actions. They aren’t available to do that anymore.

Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, Syria’s three main supporters have all been weakened because of other conflicts, according to Paul Salem.

In the past fifty years, the country Assad and his father, Hafez Assad, have ruled has been ravaged by war.

Amid all this turmoil, Syria’s Assad kept a low profile. The Syrian leader is accused of widespread abuses and atrocities during the country’s civil war. He refrained from launching new military offensives against opposition forces and generally avoided involvement in the wider conflicts over the past year.

The fighting in Yemen continued with the rebels firing on commercial ships and launching long-distance drones at Israel. Earlier this year, Israel and Iran exchanged long-range missile and drone fire.

Even if the country remained split, it appeared the worst of the war was over after several years of limited fighting. 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 allies of Syria, so the army is trying to regroup.

Yet events in Syria are linked to a series of upheavals in the Middle East over the past year, beginning with the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Collectively, they have destabilized the region and helped create the opening for HTS fighters to launch their offensive last week.

Now the question is whether the rebels can keep the pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad, or whether his army can hold the line and mount a counterattack.