President Bashar al-Assad has resigned and left Syria, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, a stunning fall for the longtime dictator who had kept rebel forces at bay for years with the help of Moscow and Tehran.
Rebels opposed to his rule swept through the country in a lightning offensive, in a dramatic breakthrough for factions that have been trying to unseat Mr. Assad for more than a decade.
The Syrian civil war started 13 years ago, beginning during the Arab Spring and escalating 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.
Here’s a guide to understanding the conflict.
What is the situation on the ground?
In just over a week, Syrian rebel forces seized much of Syria’s northwest from the government in a fast-moving attack. First, the rebels seized Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, then days later blazed through Hama and the strategic city of Homs. On Sunday, they entered Syria’s capital, Damascus, taking the city without a fight as government forces fled.
Who was fighting?
The Syrian government
The Syrian government, led by Mr. al-Assad, was central to the protracted and devastating civil war that began in 2011. Mr. al-Assad, who took power in 2000, is part of the family that has run Syria since a 1970 coup. They are Alawites, a minority sect that is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Mr. al-Assad initially portrayed himself as a modern reformist, but he responded to peaceful protests during the Arab Spring with brutal crackdowns, sparking a nationwide uprising.
After several years of war, the Assad government clawed back much of the territory it lost to rebels with the help of Iran, Russia, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. But those allies have recently been decimated or distracted by other conflicts.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, began to form at the beginning of Syria’s civil war, when jihadists formed the Al 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 tried 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.
The group’s leader, Abu Mohammad 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.
Publicly, American officials have been cautious about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. But inside the U.S. government, some officials believe the group’s turn toward pragmatism is genuine, and that its leaders know they cannot realize aspirations to join or lead the Syrian government if the group is seen as a jihadist organization.
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.
There are also many other Syrian militias fighting with their own agendas and allegiances.
What about foreign powers?
Turkey
Since the beginning of the civil war, the Turkish military has launched several military interventions across the border into Syria, mostly against 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 on Friday issued a qualified approval of the rebel advance. “Idlib, Hama, Homs, and the target, of course, is Damascus,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters following Friday prayers in Istanbul, according to Turkish state media. “The opposition’s march continues. Our wish is that this march in Syria continues without incident.”
Russia
Throughout Syria’s civil war, Russia has been one of Mr. Assad’s most loyal foreign backers, sending Russian troops to support his forces and jets to bomb his enemies. It has 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 grinding war of attrition in Ukraine, analysts say Russia has been unable to support Syria’s government as forcefully as it has in the past. Russian airstrikes that attempted to slow the rebel advance have been relatively sparse.
Iran and Hezbollah
Syria is a core part of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a network of countries and groups that includes Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen that hopes to destroy Israel and reduce American influence in the Middle East.
Iran smuggles weapons to Hezbollah across Iraq and Syria. Iran and Hezbollah have 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, in a sign of Iran’s inability to help keep President Bashar al-Assad in power.
United States
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.
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, but the United States still maintains a force of about 900 troops, centered in Kurdish-controlled oil drilling areas in the northeast and a garrison in the southeast near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan.
Israel
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.
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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