Syrian rebels sweep into Aleppo in an embarrassing rout for Bashar al-Assad

FOUR YEARSSDFHTSSDFHTS SDF HTSHTS is how long it took Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, to retake Aleppo after part of the city fell to insurgents in 2012. Less than four days is how long it took him to lose it. On November 27th rebels launched a surprise offensive in north-west Syria. By the night of November 29th they were posting photos of themselves at the ancient citadel in the heart of Aleppo. Most of Syria’s second city is now under their control. It was a rout: Mr Assad’s army seems to have simply turned tail.The front lines in Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011 with Mr Assad’s brutal suppression of protests against his regime and has since killed more than half a million people and displaced some 13m, had been largely frozen since 2020. The (), a mainly Kurdish militia backed by America, ran the north-east, while factions aligned with Turkey governed a slice of the north-west. The rest of the country was Mr Assad’s rump state, which he controlled with help from Russia and Iran. A fragile agreement between Russia and Turkey kept those lines fixed.No longer. The offensive on Aleppo is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (), a former al-Qaeda affiliate that broke with the jihadist group in 2017. The Syrian National Army—which, despite its name, is a Turkish proxy—has also joined the fray. Along with their push into Aleppo, the rebels have seized Saraqib, a strategic town that sits astride the main north-south motorway from Damascus. That will make it hard for Mr Assad to deliver reinforcements. On the eastern side of Aleppo, meanwhile, the is trying to expand its own territory.Though the start of the offensive was a surprise, has spent years preparing for it. The group has worked to professionalise its forces, even setting up a military college in rebel-held territory to train officers. During the current offensive it seems to have made good use of drones, both for surveillance and combat, and deployed special-forces units ahead of its main thrust. It is a far cry from the ragtag bands of gunmen who fought Mr Assad a decade ago.The timing was no coincidence. When Mr Assad retook Aleppo in 2016, he needed lots of help. Russia provided air power. Thousands of ground troops came from Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia militia, and a constellation of other groups backed by Iran. He cannot count on such help this time. Hizbullah has been mauled by a year of war with Israel: it has lost most of its leadership and an estimated 4,000 fighters. Iran has lost many of its top commanders in Syria to Israeli air strikes.As for Russia, it withdrew thousands of troops from Syria after it invaded Ukraine in 2022. It is also frustrated with Mr Assad’s refusal to reconcile with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president. Its official statements sounded almost nonchalant as rebels closed in on Aleppo. “We are in favour of the Syrian authorities bringing order to the area and restoring constitutional order as soon as possible,” said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman.Mr Assad’s allies will probably not abandon him completely. Russia, for example, still has warplanes at Khmeimim, an air base near Syria’s Mediterranean coast, though their number has dwindled. Over the past couple of days Russian jets have joined Syrian ones in bombing the rebel-held north-west of the country. On Sunday they intensified their bombing of Idlib, the largest city near the Turkish border. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, was expected to travel to Syria on Sunday in a show of support. Still, the embattled allies won’t be able to provide the same assistance they did a decade ago.The Syrian army has been hollowed out by years of war, corruption and economic collapse. Many of its conscripts have little motivation to defend the regime—hence the swift collapse in Aleppo. Still, it has a few semi-competent units stocked with loyalists who will defend Damascus, the capital, and the heartland of Mr Assad’s Alawite sect along the coast. At least for now, the regime will probably concentrate on trying to hold on to those territories rather than on taking back what it has lost.What will happen next? One question is what other powers in the north will do. Turkey seems to have encouraged its Syrian partners to launch this offensive. Will it go further, and offer to help them hold the areas they have seized? Meanwhile, there have already been reports of clashes between the Turkish-backed rebel groups and the, which Turkey regards as a terrorist organisation.Another is how will behave in the areas it now controls. In recent years its leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, has tried to smooth the group’s rough edges. He ran a reasonably professional government and sought to reassure Christians and other minorities that they had nothing to fear. As his fighters swept into Aleppo he ordered them to protect civilians and treat prisoners humanely. But enforcing those orders may be difficult: there are plenty of radicals in ’s ranks (some of whom grumble that ). Discipline has never been the Syrian rebels’ strong suit.That points to a third question: whether other parts of Syria will now revolt. Some activists fantasise about opening a second front in the restive south. But a serious rebel operation there would need help from neighbouring Jordan, which will be wary about conflict on its border.Whatever comes next, the fall of Aleppo is a humiliation for Mr Assad and his allies. It is also a remarkable example of the law of unintended consequences. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th 2023, it hoped to have the support of Iran and its allied militias. Instead it started a sequence of events that left those militias too battered to defend Mr Assad, who now finds himself at his most vulnerable for many years.