In March 2011, Syria fell to the wave of revolutionary sentiment brought about by the Arab Spring. Dictator President Bashar al-Assad faced a massive pro-democracy movement which quickly radicalised and militarised following repression from the Syrian government. Armed militias formed in quick succession and Syria descended into a fully blown civil war. Yet, despite the wave of popular support for the pro-democracy movement, the Assad regime stands on the verge of victory ten years later. How did we exactly get here?
Revolt
In January 2011, Assad remarked in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he expected the Arab Spring to spare Syria due to his stance of anti-western resistance to the United States and Israel. His view was evidently wrong as anti-regime protests sprung up just a few weeks later. Widespread political and economic problems had pushed the country toward instability – liberalisation of the Syrian economy had created an oligarchic elite while ordinary citizens wallowed under inequality and authoritarianism. The uprising was also driven by the disastrous drought between 2006 and 2010 which pushed hundreds of thousands into poverty due to the loss of income which was not met by government support.
Sectarian divisions also exacerbated the situation. The pro-democratic movement was largely made up of Syria’s Sunni majority while the ruling Assad regime was largely made up of Syria’s Alawite minority. Alawites dominated the regime’s forces and army, a product of French Colonial era. As the civil war broke out, Assad portrayed the opposition as Sunni extremists akin to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.
The first protests occurred in the rural province of Dar’a, where a group of children had been arrested and tortured for writing anti regime graffiti. Regime forces responded with harsh repression, a move which just emboldened the protesters. As the protests increased in intensity, the Syrian Army was mobilised. By September 2011, the pro-democracy protests had coalesced into armed militias, while defectors from regime forces had formed the Free Syrian Army. Crucially, there was no recognised leader of the pro-democracy forces and the various militia groups tended to act on their own accord.
Numerous efforts by international organisations (such as the Arab League) attempted to bring the conflict to an end, but failed due to the intensifying conflict. A UN brokered ceasefire in April 2012 was short-lived due to non-compliance from the Assad regime. The Syrian government was also shielded by Russia and China in the Security Council who continually vetoed any resolution pertaining to the civil war.
Chaos
By the end of 2012, the rebel forces had won a string of victories. Regime forces, weakened by defections, found themselves incapable of holding the north and east of Syria, and by July, the rebels were fighting to seize control of Aleppo. The fighting for Aleppo (Syria’s largest city) was bloody and devastating, and a stalemate emerged by the start of 2013 due to deficiencies in rebel firepower.
With no decisive victory in sight, the conflict descended into a regional proxy war (a part of the larger Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia). Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would lend arms and funds to the rebels, while regime forces would receive support from Iran and Hezbollah. The US would end up giving limited support to a few rebel groups, (primarily Kurdish separatists in the north). Further, a suspected chemical weapons attack by the regime in Damascus (which would kill hundreds on August 21st 2013) would lead to an agreement between Russia, Syria, and the United States to place all of Syria’s chemical weapons under international jurisdiction.
All this chaos would end up causing the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. More than 5.6 million Syrians would flee the country, with another 6.2 million displaced within Syria.
By 2013 with no end in sight, the rebels would start to radicalise. Islamist militants would begin to take control of rebel forces. One of these groups, the al-Nusrah Front (an affiliate of al-Qaeda) was considered one of the most effective rebel groups in Syria. Further, in April 2013, the Islamic State would begin their blitzkrieg across northern Mesopotamia and seized a vast portion of mostly rebel controlled territory, prompting the United States to start airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria. Russia would also take this opportunity to intervene in the summer of 2015. Claiming that their air strikes were solely against ISIS, Russian forces would quickly begin targeting rebel forces instead, allowing the Assad regime to begin pushing back against them and recapturing vital territory.
Russia would end up directly intervening in the conflict, deploying troops and equipment to regime territory. Rebel forces would be driven from Aleppo in December 2016, while ISIS held territory would be slowly but surely retaken by three rival groups — Kurdish forces backed by US, Syrian forces backed by Iran and Russia, and rebel groups backed by Turkey. By October 2017, Al-Raqqah, ISIS’ de-facto capital in Syria, had been retaken by the Kurds.
Downfall
2018 marked an escalation in western intervention as regime forces increasingly gained ground. Following a chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun, the US launched an airstrike of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on a military base near the city of Homs. The following year would see more than a hundred air strikes on chemical weapons facilities by the US, UK and France. Israel would also intervene in 2018, destroying numerous Iranian military sites in Syria following an Iranian strike on the Israeli controlled Golan Heights.
As ISIS was increasingly driven underground in 2018, regime forces began a drive into rebel controlled territory in north-eastern Syria. Soon, the last remaining rebel controlled region in the country would be Idlib, and it seemed inevitable that it would also fall to Assad, ending the civil war. However, Turkey would bolster the rebel forces with Turkish troops and air support, and would begin mobilising its army along the border. A stalemate emerged once again.
However,the stalemate was partially broken in October 2019 when Turkey launched a direct offensive into Kurdish held territory in north-eastern Syria. The Trump administration had announced a withdrawal from Syria, allowing Turkey to ‘deal’ with the Kurdish forces allied to Kurdish separatists operating within Turkey. The Kurds quickly turned to Assad for assistance, allowing regime forces to re-enter north-eastern Syria for the first time since 2012.
In February 2020, confrontations between Turkish and Syrian forces threatened to explode into a full war. However, a general cease-fire would be negotiated by Turkey and Russia which continues to this day.
Despite initial large gains by pro-democratic forces, a lack of cohesion and intervention by Russia allowed the Assad regime to hang on, and then eventually counter-attack. As we reflect on the war during its tenth anniversary, the impacts of the civil war continue to reverberate both domestically and internationally. However, the implications of the conflict are vast and deserve its own article.
This piece is part of a two-part series on the Syrian Civil War. Read the second part here.
