The renewed fighting in Syria’s civil war, which has killed more than 300,000 people and sent nearly 6 million refugees out of the country since 2011, will have wide ramifications across the Middle East and beyond.
Here’s what you need to know if you’re catching up on the conflict:
What happened in Syria’s civil war? At the height of the Arab Spring in 2011, pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets in Syria calling for the ouster of its authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad. The protesters were met with deadly force. As Assad’s forces crushed the pro-democracy movement, an armed opposition began to form, made up of small organic militias and some defectors from the Syrian military.
Support for the opposition forces: The opposition forces — which are decentralized and made up of different ideologies, but with a common goal of toppling Assad — were supported in various ways by foreign powers including neighboring Turkey, regional giants Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.
Assad’s allies: As the anti-government forces grew, Syria’s allies Iran and Russia stepped up their support. On the ground, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — as well as its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah — helped fight the armed rebel groups. In the skies, the Syrian Air Force was bolstered by Russian warplanes.
ISIS enters the mix: By 2014, extremist groups outweighed moderates within the opposition coalition, and ISIS began sweeping across the country. Fearing Syria would become a permanent terror hotbed, an international coalition led by the US stepped in with a focus on eliminating the group, but without confronting the Syrian regime. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — a US partner made up of Kurdish fighters — fought against ISIS, effectively ending the group’s territorial existence.
The last major development: In 2020, Russia and Turkey agreed to a ceasefire in their proxy battle over the last remaining opposition-held province, Idlib. There have been no major flare-ups since, but Syria’s government never regained all of its territory. And as events in Aleppo show, armed resistance never completely went away.
Why has the conflict reignited now?: The offensive began after rebels formed a new coalition called the “Military Operations Command.” They quickly swept through villages outside Aleppo, and residents have now said they control much of the city, meeting little resistance on the way. The fighters say they are seeking to liberate occupied territory and were responding to stepped up attacks from government forces and pro-Iranian militia groups.
