Published on December 2, 2024 at 6:17 p.m. / Modified on December 3, 2024 at 10:19.
3 mins. reading
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A coalition of rebel groups dominated by HTS Islamists took Aleppo, the country’s second city, from the hands of the regime on Sunday.
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According to observers, the attack was not improvised and the rebels took advantage of a unique opportunity: foreign military support for Bashar al-Assad is weakened or taken up by other conflicts.
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In Idlib, HTS, born from the merger of several Islamist and opposition groups to the Syrian regime, has broken with Al-Qaeda and is trying to transform itself into a political alternative.
Almost 8 years ago to the day, thanks to Russian support in the air and pro-Iranian militias on the ground, Bashar al-Assad took back the city of Aleppo, which had become a symbol, from the rebels. A Pyrrhic victory of relentless violence which partially destroyed the city. Eight years later, it took only days for the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied rebel factions to completely move Aleppo out of regime control, except for some pockets dominated by the Kurdish forces.
The offensive by HTS and its allies, however, is not a surprise. “The organization had already communicated its intention to consolidate its territorial gains, but also to counter the repeated attacks of the Syrian regime and Russian strikes on its territories,” explains Hasni Abidi, political scientist, specialist in the Arab world and lecturer at Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva. The speed of progress, however, is astonishing. “The country is going through a multifaceted economic crisis which is strangling the regime itself. The army must first concentrate on the center of power in Damascus or certain cities such as Homs and those located on the Mediterranean coast close to Russian military bases. There is also a certain exhaustion of the troops,” continues the expert. And above all, as in Aleppo in 2016, the regime owes many of its victories to its foreign military support.
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