Front Burner - Who are the fighters reigniting Syria’s civil war?

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

In a sudden offensive, Turkish-backed rebel forces in Syria have managed to take several villages and towns, including the second largest city in the country, Aleppo, all with minimal resistance from government forces. Now as they continue to push further south, Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad is left with a diminished army and his main allies are embroiled in conflicts of their own. Kareem Shaheen is the Middle East editor at New Lines Magazine. He spoke to host Jayme Poisson about what the fall of Aleppo and renewed fighting in Syria means for the Syrian people and the region.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So for the last 13 years now, Syria has been embroiled in this complex, multi-sided civil war that exploded after an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Assad's repression of any challenge to his power was absolutely brutal. Over 300,000 civilians have been killed.

Over 22 million people have had to leave their homes. And while it never really ended, there had been a relatively quiet stalemate for the last few years as different groups controlled different parts of the country. That is until now. Over the last week, rebel forces managed to gain control of a northwestern military base, several villages, and eventually Aleppo, the second largest city in the country. They are continuing to move south towards the capital, Damascus, capturing new ground along the way. Meanwhile, Assad's allies, capturing new ground along the way.

Meanwhile, Assad's allies, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, have had their hands full with the war in Ukraine and conflict with Israel. So what does this siege look like on the ground in Syria? And what does it mean for a region that is already in turmoil? Today, I'm talking to Karim Shaheen, Middle East editor at New Lines magazine. He's been covering Syria for over a decade, and he's been in touch with family members there as well. Kareem, it's a pleasure to have you as always. Thanks for making the time. Thank you for having me.

Could you just start by taking me through what this offensive by rebel forces has actually looked like on the ground over the last week? fighters launched an offensive against government-controlled territory in Syria, particularly around the city of Aleppo. Aleppo is, of course, the second largest city in Syria and one of the most important cities culturally and historically, one of the oldest places in which human beings have lived continuously. And it's always been a vital, symbolic place for both the rebels and for the government. So the rebels initially launched this advance and conquered a number of villages and towns all around Aleppo. And then within a couple of days of launching the offensive, marched on the city itself. These fighters have reignited Syria's civil war. A loose coalition of jihadist and secular rebels,

whose lightning advance poses the biggest challenge to President Assad in many years. To everyone's shock and surprise, government forces completely crumbled, and they withdrew very quickly from the city. And within hours, the rebels were in full control of Syria's second most important city. As a symbol of its form, the statues of the governing Assad family are taken down by the rebels amid jubilation. The rebels also filmed themselves releasing jubilant prisoners from one of Aleppo's jails. In what is an astonishing revival of Syria's long-running revolution.

Why did they crumble so quickly? So to understand that, we'd have to go back a few years before this current advance. Aleppo, at the height of the civil war in Syria, was really divided into two. There was an eastern half that was under the control of rebels, and there was a western half that was under control by the government. And then Russia joined the war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. Their mission? Airstrikes on what Moscow calls terrorist targets. From the air, Russia has been providing vital support for President Assad's ground troops. Russia's bombing slowed Assad's military setbacks and allowed him to go on the offensive. The Syrian army and its allies are pushing for a military victory in Aleppo.

Rebel forces are fighting back, but their defenses are collapsing. And since then, the regime has really kind of taken over more and more territory throughout Syria with the backing of the Russians and the Iranians. It was considered to be a frozen conflict by the West. Naturally, there were dozens of Syrians dying every week to government airstrikes, but the lines were pretty static at that point. Enter geopolitics. Russia got embroiled in the war in Ukraine. It's been two years now that they've been fighting there. The Iranians have taken blow after blow across the region. Their main militia, Hezbollah, has had almost its entire top echelon assassinated by Israel

over the past few months in an ongoing conflict. They've had people like Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, assassinated in the middle of Tehran. Israel has continued to bomb Iranian facilities in Syria. So both Iran and Russia, the regime's two main backers, are under enormous pressure everywhere. And their eye has not been on Syria. They've been embroiled in conflicts that are closer to home. And as a result, we're not there to save the regime from collapsing. And really, the regime is extremely weak at this point. It's been weak for years, both militarily and politically. And this latest advance showcases just how weak it was and how it's continued to survive only

really because of Russian-Iran Iranian backing. This offensive that's now moving south towards Damascus, it's largely, my understanding, is being led by this group called the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. And can you tell me about them? Who are they? Who are they backed by? Yeah, so Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has a long and storied history. They formed back in 2012 as a sort of splinter group from the Islamic State. They sent this guy called Abu Muhammad al-Julani, who's the current leader of HTS.

They sent him across the border with the aim of establishing an IS affiliate in Syria. He ended up splintering off from them and established sort of his own fiefdom, if you will. And when push came to shove, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of ISIS, the terrorist group, tried to forcibly integrate Jilani's group into his own. Jilani splintered off and pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, the global terrorist network. After a few years, the group rebranded. They severed ties officially with Al-Qaeda. They renamed themselves to Jabhat Fath al-Sham and then lately to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Now, people are naturally skeptical of this idea

that a group that has these credentials is genuinely no longer tied to Al-Qaeda. But there are a lot of indications that they did, in fact, sever ties. They've tried to evolve their messaging. They've tried to evolve their work in the areas that were under their control. They're definitely the most powerful rebel group currently in the country. They've led a key component of the advance on Aleppo and they, along with the rebels that are working under them, are now in full control of the city and most of the province, as well as most of the province of Idlib in the northwest, where they surged from when this offensive started. Their leader is widely designated as a terrorist, but to many living

in these battlegrounds, he's no worse an option than President Assad. We enter Aleppo as liberators, God willing, to end the oppression of the people. Advise all our brothers not to enter people's homes. It is essential that there are no violations. And they've sought to reassure, you know, Christians and other minorities. Of course, Aleppo is home to the largest Christian community in Syria. It's much diminished now. I think when the war started, there were around 200,000 Christians in Aleppo. And as the war has gone on, the number has declined now to about 20,000, if I remember correctly. But they've sought to reassure all of these minority groups and Christians that they will not interfere with their rights and with their rights to attend church and to celebrate Christmas.

In fact, there was a mass on Sunday, you know, as usual. And they've tried to reassure all the other minority groups in the area that they consider them all to be part of the Syrian social fabric and that they would not violate their rights. Now, whether this pledge holds is an open question and only really time will tell whether they succeed in upholding it. But the other aspect of what they've been doing is that they've also been trying to act like a state. Yeah, and just do we know what life is like for Syrians that have been under their control in those areas? Yeah, so, I mean, you know, prior to their latest rebranding, you know,

they are essentially acting like a religious-oriented national liberation movement. So, you know, there have been harsh laws in a lot of the parts of the country that they had controlled. You know, they imposed a version of religious Sharia law in a lot of places. You know, in parallel with, you know, acting like a state by restoring, you know, electricity and power services, you know, and water and trying to essentially carry out all the functions of a state in those areas that they controlled. But over the past year, they've also attempted to moderate some of their, you know, communications, some of their outreach. They reached out to,

you know, members of the Christian community, members of the Druze minority in Syria as well. They've reopened churches in the part that they had controlled. And in Aleppo itself, you know, from conversations with people there, both family and friends, people now have more hours of electricity than they did under the government. They're restoring water supply. They shut down power supplies to a couple of factories in order to ensure that people have more hours of electricity. They're distributing bread for free. They hired local municipal workers to do garbage collection to keep the streets clean. And they're essentially operating the city. They've designated a number of people who are

in charge of all the different aspects of life in the city, whether that's judicial and police or electricity or trade or all the various functions of a state. they came in with a plan and they're executing that plan. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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Karim, what could this all mean for this region that is already in so much turmoil? Well, you know, the reality is that it's really difficult to, you know, predict anything in the region, right? You know, nobody could have expected, you know, the October 7th attacks in Israel. Nobody could have predicted that, you know, there would be this, you know, war essentially on Lebanon over the past few months, or that Hezbollah would be so thoroughly decimated. Nobody expected various escalations that occurred with Iran. And certainly nobody expected this rebel advance. I think the lesson we should all take, whether that's people in the region or Western policymakers that are invested in helping people in the region. The key lesson here is that whatever frozen conflicts we believe

we can ignore or pretend they're not happening or pretend they don't exist and that the suffering of people there is just going to go away on its own without some sort of justice or judicial process going on is really a fool's errand. It's impossible for us to ignore these conflicts, whether that's the conflict in Gaza, you know, and the suffering of the Palestinians there in the run-up to the October 7th attacks, or the, you know, the frozen static lines in the war in Syria. Ultimately, it's all going to come back to bite us, you know, because these conflicts are not going to stay frozen for long. And, you know, obviously, people in the region are going to have to live with the consequences of this violence flaring up. But, you know, these conflicts have shown a tendency not to stay within the confinement

of those borders. You know, there were a lot of really interesting photos of people in Aleppo who back in 2016, and I was covering the siege of Aleppo in 2016 at the time, there were photos of young boys getting exiled on these very famous green buses that the government used to dispatch to exile people whenever they took control of the territory. And they would have these labels, you know, saying we will come back. Right. And now eight years later, some of these young boys are now grown up and they came back with the rebels to take back their home city. I am back in Aleppo for the first time in eight years, says this fighter. Eight years of the Assad family and their criminal machine.

So these frozen conflicts never stay frozen for long. And it's important for us to get to the root causes of them. We haven't heard much yet from the United States, but Donald Trump is set to take office soon. He has said that he plans to pull American troops out of Syria. You know, what impact will that have? And I'm just curious to get your take here on how you think the West is thinking about rebel groups like HTS, right? Yeah. So in the short term, I think America still maintains quite a few bases in Syria, particularly, you know, near the border with Iraq. You know, that's where they fought alongside the Kurdish militias over there to dislodge ISIS, the Islamic State group,

and destroy its caliphate. And a big part of their presence was to ensure that ISIS does not, you know, experience a resurgence. So, you know, the immediate result of their presence was to ensure that ISIS does not, you know, experience a resurgence. So, you know, the immediate result of their withdrawal is likely to be a further empowerment of Turkey, the country that borders Syria to the north, where 3 million Syrians have taken refuge over the course of the war there, and which, you know, backs some of the rebel groups and really finds itself in a very strong negotiating position right now with the rebel advances in Aleppo. Turkey's foreign minister met his Iranian counterpart Monday, saying Damascus must reconcile with its people

and what he called the legitimate opposition. So those Kurds are going to have to deal with a confident Turkey that is keen to assert its regional influence and power in the immediate aftermath. In Syria's northeast, there were huge demonstrations in Rojava, the de facto autonomous region run by the Kurds, who accused the rebel opposition groups of now also attacking Kurdish fighters near Aleppo. But I think the bigger picture question that we in the West are going to have to grapple with is, as you said, you know, how to deal with a group like HDS. HDS is really an evolution of the type of jihadist groups that existed during the war on

terror. The war on terror did succeed in preventing another September 11th style attack on U.S. soil, right? But it did not eradicate jihadism. Instead, jihadist groups evolved into what HDS is trying to become, which is a jihadist group or religious group that is focused on national liberation on the local level and trying to gain a foothold there, trying to become a government, trying to become a state, government trying to become a state while holding on to these religious struggle and conservative principles as part of its ideology and eschewing the concept of transnational jihadism where they're fighting enemies of Islam all over the world. And right now, HDS, as well as the Kurdish militias, between them, they control over half of Syria. So in order to find some sort of political solution to the conflict in Syria, some sort of lasting resolution to it, how are you going to do that without talking to what you consider to be terrorist

groups? The Turks consider the Kurds terrorist groups. The West considers HDS a terrorist group due to its former alignment with Al-Qaeda, even though it played a crucial role in eradicating ISIS jihadists from a lot of parts of Syria, and has pledged not to be involved in any kind of transnational jihad that would affect American interests. So a key question for the Trump administration, for US policymakers, for Western policymakers in general, is going to be how do we now revise our understanding of jihadism to deal with this new emergent form of jihadism that is completely different from what we set out to destroy when we started the war on terror. Just to end today, I'd like to go back to the Syrian people. I mean, this is a country that has been through this unfathomable civil war 13 years, 300,000 civilians dead.

I think I said in the intro, it's 22 million people displaced. And I just wonder if we could end today, if you have some parting thoughts or some more anecdotes from what you've been hearing from people on the ground know, terrible conflict. I've been, you know, for most of my journalism career, I've been covering the war in Syria. And, you know, my wife is Syrian, I have in-laws still there, many friends who, you know, either are still in Syria or have been scarred by their experience of being there and living through the trauma of the, of the uprising. You know, I think it's one important thing is to remember what this regime is capable of. You know, the numbers are really interesting, of course, you know, and they can kind of numb us because of their scale, right? 22 million people displaced is half the country. I can't even picture it. Exactly, right? It's the numbers are so huge. And many of these people were displaced internally. And of course, many of them, you know, went across the border, went to places like Turkey

and Lebanon, and onwards to Europe. And that migration crisis and refugee crisis back in 2015, you know, reshaped global politics. But it also raises questions as to, you know, what we truly believe in. You know, the reason that this conflict endured was because we refused to act as the West when Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own people. Medics and volunteers in this rebel-controlled part of Syria rushed the injured to local clinics. They claim Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime fired the banned chemical nerve agent, Sarin.

The gas attacks are continuing every day, and no one is doing anything to stop these gas attacks. I myself reported on the ground in 2017 on a chemical attack in a town in Idlib called Khan Sheikhoun that the rebels reclaimed incidentally over the weekend. You know, it was such an insidious attack and it wasn't even the worst attack. There was an attack in 2013, you know,

that led to the deaths of about 1,300 civilians. You know, and at the time, President Barack Obama had said, a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation. And then nothing happened. Exactly.

And this emboldened all of these terrible actors that, you know, whose interests were primarily, you know, exacerbating the suffering of Syrian civilians in order to keep Bashar al-Assad in power. This government has invented 70 different ways to torture people in prison. They've disappeared tens of thousands of Syrian civilians. in prison. They've disappeared tens of thousands of Syrian civilians. So this is an absolutely terrible civil war. And, you know, people on the ground, you know, talked to a lot of Christian family and friends. And, you know, and they were saying that their primary concern is that they want to make sure that they don't live as second class citizens inside Syria. They want to be able to, you know, live as ordinary civilians, to have rights, to have, you know, the same responsibilities and rights as their fellow Sunni Muslim citizens. And it's an open question whether the rebels uphold that, but it's a certainty that the regime did not and that the regime continued to brutalize its own citizens for so long that, you know, something

like what just happened in Aleppo was simply an inevitability. It was always going to happen, even if we did not expect it to happen in the immediate future. Kareem, I want to thank you so much for this, for putting this all in perspective and context. It's always really such a pleasure to listen to you. Thank you. Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here with you guys. Thank you so much for this, for putting this all in perspective and context. It's always really such a pleasure to listen to you. Thank you. Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here with you guys. Thank you so much for having me. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.