By Ben Chacko
LONDON: The resurgence of civil war in Syria is primarily driven by destabilizing repercussions from Israel’s aggressive military actions in the Middle East, alongside the questionable role of NATO powers that support jihadist factions in Idlib, which now threaten Aleppo.
One cannot overlook the intricate alliances that influence this conflict. Syria maintains an alliance with Iran, which has been a repeated target of Israeli attacks, including the bombing of an Iranian consulate in Syria. Both nations are also allied with Hezbollah, which has fought to support the Assad regime during the civil war and which Israel aims to defeat by conducting operations in Lebanon.
While not every outbreak of violence in the region can be linked to a grand strategy, the perception that Hezbollah and Iran have been weakened by Israeli assaults may have emboldened the jihadist faction in Idlib to escalate conflicts.
It is indeed a jihadist entity, and yet, Western media has often hesitated to characterize Syria’s opposition clearly since the onset of the civil war 13 years ago.
The Syrian Salvation Government, based in Idlib, is principally controlled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which emerged from a collation of various al-Qaida-affiliated Islamist groups, including Jaysh al-Sunna—known for its recruitment of child soldiers in 2016—and Nour al-din al-Zinki, infamous for filming the execution of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy the same year.
Ahrar al-Sham, the largest faction, has been labeled the Syrian Taliban, known for implementing equally repressive governance. A briefing from an EU asylum agency in 2020 indicated that “the jihadist coalition HTS has enforced harsh social norms and policies that violate the rights of female residents… leading to further abuses, including executions, corporal punishments, and restrictions on freedom of movement, dress, work, education, and access to healthcare.”
The overt terrorist dictatorship of the most extreme factions in Syria has persistently governed the north-western part of the country, aided by the illegal presence of NATO forces.
The Turkish military’s presence has obstructed the Syrian army’s efforts to eradicate the remaining stronghold of jihadist control, similar to how the American military’s presence in the northeast has blocked the reintegration of Kurdish territories.
The stated justification for the foreign troop presence in Syria is to thwart a resurgence of the Islamic State terror group. However, former president Donald Trump candidly remarked that the US was in Syria “only for the oil,” much of which has been illicitly siphoned off via Iraqi Kurdistan, with Damascus estimating its losses in hundreds of billions of dollars.
This illustrates the hypocrisy of US officials who now criticize Assad for not participating in a “political process” to conclude the war. Such a process has been hindered by the foreign occupying forces.
Assad also has foreign supporters, as Russian bombers are once again conducting airstrikes over rebel-controlled areas. If HTS believed that Russia is too stretched by the Ukraine conflict to intervene—a belief seemingly validated by Azerbaijan’s actions last year in Nagorno-Karabakh—it might have misjudged the situation.
This underscores the potential for Syria’s war to engulf great powers, which are now considerably closer to direct confrontation than in the earlier phases of the conflict. The ongoing expansion of warfare across the Middle East is exacting an immense toll in human life and heightening the risks for a wider global conflict.
The imperative must be to intensify our efforts for peace. These conflicts cannot be viewed in isolation.
Ending Israel’s violence in Gaza and its assaults on Lebanon, prioritizing a ceasefire and negotiation to resolve the great power dispute in Ukraine, and pressing the UK government to exert influence on our NATO ally Turkey to rein in its jihadist affiliates operating in Syria are interconnected objectives for the peace movement. (IPA Service)
