The fall of Aleppo to the combined might of Russia, Iran’s myriad of militias, and Bashar al-Assad’s regime at the end of 2016 was a catastrophic defeat for anti-Assad rebels. Aleppo’s “liberation” shattered a semi-coherent nationwide challenge to Assad’s rule into disparate, localized, unconnected rebellions whose ability to resist now hinged on their proximity to Syria’s northern and southern borders across which foreign states could smuggle money and weapons to keep the armed struggle alive. Rebels further from said borders in places like Waer (Homs), Wadi Bara (Damascus), and western Qalamoun were strangled and forced to sign “reconciliation” deals or displacement agreements with the regime.

With Aleppo — Syria’s second largest and wealthiest city — back under Assad’s iron heel in 2017, Russia, Iran, and Assad temporarily de-prioritized their war on the rebels for most of the year. Instead, they focused on taking territory from the rapidly collapsing Islamic State (ISIS) before U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) could seize it exclusively for themselves. The rebels barely gained ground at ISIS’s expense largely because they lacked the robust backing provided to the YPG by the U.S. So while the YPG marched on ISIS positions from the north, Assad and his allies raced across the Syrian desert to attack ISIS positions from the south and west. Assad’s forces re-captured the eastern city of Deir Ezzor in September and Raqqa city — the capital of ISIS’s so-called Caliphate — fell to the YPG in October after a bloody five-month battle.

The strategic pause in the rebel-regime war dictated by Russia, agreed to by Turkey, and acquiesced to by Assad came first in the form of a national ceasefire announced in December 2016 at talks in Astana, Kazakhstan which dampened fighting on most fronts in January and February 2017. Subsequently, this Russian-dictated strategic pause yielded an agreement in May 2017 creating four de-escalation zones — one in “greater Idlib” (meaning Idlib/Hama/Aleppo governates) in the north, one in the south encompassing Daraa and Quneitra governates, one in Ghouta near the capital of Damascus, and one in Rastan in the governote of Homs.

This de-escalation agreement stipulated that regime and rebel forces would not attack one another in these zones, humanitarian aid would move unhindered to civilians, monitors (meaning Russian and Turkish troops) would deploy into these areas to deter the warring parties from restarting hostilities and serve as guarantors by controlling their allied proxies, and finally that “terrorist groups” would be separated from “armed opposition groups.” The decline in Russian-regime violence was significant enough in zones nearest Syria’s northern and southern borders that tens of thousands left refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan and moved to Idlib, Daraa, and the Turkish-protected Euphrates Shield safe zone in northern Aleppo. Zones further from either border such as Ghouta continued to be bombed and shelled and starved of food and medicine.

The race to seize ISIS holdings in 2017 occasioned the de jure carve-up of Syria by foreign states and their respective proxies — a step beyond the de facto division of the country that began in 2016. The YPG zone north of the Euphrates River is now a U.S. protectorate; rebel-held northern Aleppo and Idlib is a Turkish protectorate; regime-held western, central, and eastern Syria is a Russian-Iranian protectorate; and rebel-held southern Syria is not any power’s protectorate since no states have boots on the ground there but it is nonetheless under the sway of Jordan and to a lesser extent Israel.

Unhappy with these new arrangements, the Assad regime staged a series of provocations throughout 2017 to push the boundaries of the emergent post-war political order and maximize its power. In February, the regime attacked Turkish and rebel forces fighting ISIS near al-Bab and Russia intervened behind the scenes to stop the clashes. In April, the regime unleashed sarin on civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, killing almost 100 and injuring hundreds more. This was newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump’s first foreign policy crisis and he decided to enforce his predecessor’s chemical weapons “red line” by firing dozens of cruise missiles at Shayrat airbase in response, temporarily hampering Assad’s ability to bomb his own people. After Trump’s strike, the regime’s use of sarin ceased although its chlorine attacks continued since there was no military action in response to them. In May and June, the regime and its foreign Shia militia allies entered a no-go zone near a joint U.S.-rebel base in al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border and were met with lethal U.S. airstrikes. Seeing that the U.S. would defend al-Tanf’s rebels, these forces encircled the U.S.-rebel position which effectively blocked U.S.-backed rebels from moving northward into ISIS-controlled Deir Ezzor. In June, Assad and his allies tried to advance on rebel positions in Daraa and were firmly rebuffed by a vigorous and united rebel defense. In July, Assad’s air force bombed near YPG troops and their U.S. advisers fighting ISIS in Raqqa governate and the U.S. shot down the offending jet to remove the threat and deter future regime attacks.

The Assad regime was not the only actor in 2017 to resist being boxed in by foreign states and their backroom deals at Astana — al-Qaeda veteran Abu Mohammad al-Jolani moved to destroy every potential competitor for dominance of rebel-held Idlib and ensure that his group would survive regardless of what was decided at Astana.

In late January, Jolani’s group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS; formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) attacked Jaysh al-Mujahideen, Alwiyat Suqour al-Sham, Kataib Thawar al-Sham, Tajamo Fastaqim Kama Umirat, Jaysh al-Islam’s Idlib branch, and al-Jabhat al-Shamiya. All of them reacted by joining the much larger Ahrar al-Sham in the hopes that this would stop further attacks. A few days later on January 28, JFS merged with Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki, Jabhat Ansar al-Din, Liwa al-Haqq, and Jaysh al-Sunna to form a new coalition, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). When the vast majority of Ahrar al-Sham declined to submit to Jolani’s control by joining HTS, HTS went to war not only against Ahrar al-Sham but against peaceful civilian protests as well as the internationally recognized democratic councils associated with the Syrian Interim Government governing free Idlib. HTS even set up a puppet government of its own — the misnamed “Salvation Government” — to co-opt, displace, and replace Idlib’s existing council structure with a thinly disguised hardline salafist autocracy.

HTS’s war on Idlib’s rebels reached a crescendo in mid-July when it defeated Ahrar al-Sham for control of the lucrative Bab al-Hawa Turkish border crossing as well as a whole series of towns and villages throughout the governate. A number of Ahrar al-Sham brigades defected to HTS in the middle of the fighting to avoid combat. HTS’s military victory was complete but came at a steep political cost — its credibility and legitimacy as a unifying force was utterly destroyed. Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki split from HTS and even Abdullah al-Muheiseni (an infamous jihadist cleric who joined HTS foolishly believing in its message of unity) condemned HTS’s power-grab as unacceptable.

Having become the dominant power in rebel-held Idlib during the summer of 2017, Jolani’s HTS began negotiating with Turkey over Idlib’s ultimate fate. Meanwhile, the sixth round of Astana talks in September produced an agreement for a Turkish-protected safe zone in Idlib. A leaked map (below) indicated that rebels would lose a large chunk of greater Idlib to Assad’s forces (purple) and that Turkish troops would deploy into a buffer zone (blue) between regime- and rebel-held areas to suppress clashes between them just as they do in northern Aleppo’s Euphrates Shield zone.

In October, Turkish troops entered Idlib and established de-escalation observation posts south of YPG-held Afrin with the support of HTS whose fighters escorted Turkish troops to their destinations.

So Jolani’s HTS destroyed rebel groups for the sin of making deals with Turkey to implement the Astana agreement only to do the exact same thing — make deals with Turkey to implement the Astana agreement.

At the same time Ahrar al-Sham was being defeated by HTS in Idlib, the Trump administration cancelled the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s covert arms program providing salaries and anti-tank missiles to moderate rebels effective December 1, 2017. Ending the main form of U.S., Turkish, and Gulf state support for the rebels was a devastating blow to their ability to resist regime offensives — hundreds of strikes per year during 2014-2017 on regime armor and entrenched positions would not have occurred without these weapons. The Assad regime took advantage of the Trump administration’s decision by waiting until December when the flow of arms dried up to launch a major offensive on greater Idlib, forcing rebels to retreat and displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process.

The end of the war in Syria is coming sooner rather than later, but not before it grinds to a final, bloody climax. In 2017, it was the Assad regime that was “remaining and expanding,” not ISIS. Yet Assad’s triumph on the battlefield will not usher in an era of peace but an era of new wars — proxy wars — mainly between his principle ally Iran and Iran’s principle enemy, Israel. Iran is building military installations all over Syria to prepare future wars against Israel and to stop them, Israel’s air force launched thousands of missions attacking these Iranian assets all throughout the year.

Assad’s decision to cling to power at any price will continue to cost Syrian lives long after his war against the rebels has ended.

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