President Bashar al-Assad fled the country as rebels claimed the capital, Damascus.
Syrian opposition fighters celebrating the fall of the government in Damascus on Sunday. Omar Sanadiki/Associated Press
By The New York Times Dec. 8, 2024, 3:28 p.m. ET Leer en español
Syrian rebel forces have taken Damascus in a lightning offensive and President Bashar al-Assad has fled the country, in a stunning turn of events after 13 years of civil war.
The rebels swept through the country in less than 10 days, after more than decade in which various factions had tried to unseat Mr. al-Assad.
The Syrian civil war began during the Arab Spring and escalated into a bloody, multifaceted conflict involving domestic opposition groups, extremist factions and international powers, including the United States, Iran and Russia. More than 500,000 Syrians have died, and millions more have fled their homes.
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Who are the rebels?
The main rebel group behind Assad’s ouster is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/world/middleeast/syria-rebels-hts-who-what.html , whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant. It began to come together at the beginning of Syria’s civil war, when jihadists formed the Nusra Front to fight pro-Assad forces with hundreds of insurgent and suicide attacks.
The group had early links to the Islamic State, and then to Al Qaeda. But by mid-2016,the Nusra Front was trying to shed its extremist roots, banding together with several other factions to establish Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The United States and other Western countries still consider it a terrorist group.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters at a frontline position in rebel-controlled Idlib in 2021. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The group’s leader, Mr. al-Jolani, told The New York Times his primary goal was to “liberate Syria from this oppressive regime.” He has tried to gain legitimacy by providing services to residents in his stronghold of Idlib.
Who is the rebel leader?
Mr. al-Jolani, 42, was born Ahmed Hussein al-Shara in Saudi Arabia, the child of Syrian exiles, according to Arab media reports. In the late 1980s, his family moved back to Syria, and in 2003, he went to neighboring Iraq to join Al Qaeda and fight the U.S. occupation.
He spent several years in an American prison in Iraq, according to the Arab media reports and U.S. officials. He later emerged in Syria around the start of the civil war and formed the Nusra Front, which eventually evolved into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. At some point, he took on the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.
People posing for a picture with the rebel who led the offensive, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, second from left in the center, before his address at the Umayyad Mosque on Sunday. Aref Tammawiaref Tammawi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Questions have emerged about what kind of government Mr. al-Jolani would support and whether Syrians would accept it. In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has espoused a government guided by a conservative and at times hard-line Sunni Islamist ideology.
Since the rebel offensive began, Mr. al-Jolani has sought to reassure minority communities from other sects and religions. Some analysts say he now faces the test of his life: whether he can unite Syrians.
Who else is fighting in Syria?
Kurdish forces
Forces from Syria’s Kurdish ethnic minority became the United States’ main local partner in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces. After the extremist group was largely defeated, the Kurdish-led forces consolidated control over towns in the northeast, expanding an autonomous region they had built there. But Kurdish fighters still had to contend with their longtime enemy, Turkey, which regards them as linked to a Kurdish separatist insurgency.
Turkey
Since the beginning of the civil war, the Turkish military has launched several military interventions across the border into Syria, mostly against the Syrian Kurdish-led forces. Turkey now effectively controls a zone along Syria’s northern border.
Turkey also supports factions such as the Syrian National Army, a coalition of armed Syrian opposition groups. Analysts say it probably gave tacit approval to the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey expressed support for the rebel advance as it rolled through Syria.
Demonstrators at the Turkish Embassy in Tehran on Monday protesting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
On Saturday, he said, according to Reuters: “There is now a new reality in Syria, politically and diplomatically. And Syria belongs to Syrians with all its ethnic, sectarian and religious elements. The people of Syria are the ones who will decide the future of their own country.”
Russia
Throughout Syria’s civil war, Russia was one of Mr. Assad’s most loyal foreign backers, sending troops to support his forces and jets to bomb his enemies. It maintained a strategic military presence in Syria with air and naval bases, which it uses to support military operations in the region.
Because of the war of attrition in Ukraine, analysts say, Russia was unable to support Syria’s government as forcefully as it had in the past, suffering one of its biggest geopolitical setbacks in the quarter-century rule of President Vladimir V. Putin.
The future of Russia’s military presence in Syria is now in doubt.
Iran smuggled weapons to Hezbollah across Iraq and Syria — a supply route that has now been destroyed. Iran and Hezbollah repaid the favor by sending thousands of militants to fight on Mr. al-Assad’s side during the civil war.
On Friday, Iran began to evacuate its military commanders and personnel from Syria, according to regional officials and three Iranian officials.
United States
The United States maintains a force of about 900 troops in Syria, centered in Kurdish-controlled oil drilling areas in the northeast and a garrison in the southeast.
The U.S. role in the Syrian civil war has shifted several times. The Obama administration initially supported opposition groups in their uprising against the government, providing weapons and training, with limited effect.
U.S. soldiers in northern Syria in 2018. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
After the rise of the Islamic State in 2014, U.S. forces fought the terrorist group with airstrikes and assistance to Kurdish forces, and then stayed in northeastern Syria to prevent a resurgence. President Donald J. Trump withdrew many of those forces in 2019.
Israel
The Israeli military said on Sunday its troops had entered an internationally monitored buffer zone in the Golan Heights and ordered a curfew on Syrian villages there. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said Israel was deploying there temporarily for defensive purposes.
Israel’s military activities in Syria have been mostly focused on airstrikes against Hezbollah and Iranian targets, especially senior military personnel, weapons production facilities and the transport corridor that Iran uses to send weapons to Hezbollah.
What’s next for Syria?
There are many more questions than answers after the government’s rapid demise, starting with an uncertain future for the nation’s governance, security and economy.
Rebels will try secure the capital and prevent a chaotic power vacuum. But it is unclear how far and how fast the coalition will extend its control over the whole country, and whether rebels can unite after ousting the Syrian leader.
Syrian Islamist-led rebel fighters pray in a mosque in the central city of Homs early on Sunday, after entering Syria’s third city overnight. Aref Tammawi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In an interview last week, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the group’s leader, said that even before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched its offensive, the group was thinking about its next steps. There are some hints of what’s to come in Aleppo, where the group won a pivotal victory just over a week ago.
Across Syria, the rebel group sought to reassure residents that it would safeguard public property and institutions. After taking much of Aleppo, its fighters moved on to the next front line, leaving the city to technocrats who came to preserve government institutions, Mr. al-Jolani said. His group said that public institutions would remain under the oversight of the country’s prime minister until there was a transition.
An enduring conflict
The Syrian war began in 2011 with a peaceful uprising against the government and spiraled into a complex conflict involving armed rebels, extremists and others.
The origins: The conflict started when Syrians rose up peacefully against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The protests were met with a violent crackdown, while communities took up arms to defend themselves. Civil war ensued.
Other groups became involved. Amid the chaos, Syria’s ethnic Kurdish minority took up arms and gradually took territory it saw as its own. The Islamic State seized parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and declared that territory its “caliphate,” further destabilizing the region.
Foreign interventions. Al-Assad has received vital support from Iran and Russia, as well as the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The rebels were backed by the United States and oil-rich Arab states like Saudi Arabia. Turkey also intervened to stop the advance of Kurdish militias.
The toll.The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Forces loyal to al-Assad have committed by far the most atrocities. The regime has turned to chemical weapons, barrel bombs and starvation to force Syrians into submission.
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