ADRIAN MA, HOST:
We begin tonight's program with developing news out of Syria. Earlier today, Rebels there captured parts of Aleppo, the largest city in the country. Thousands of fighters who oppose the government of President Bashar al-Assad pushed into the city, capturing key areas with little opposition. In response, government forces have launched airstrikes and are preparing a counterattack.
It's a stunning development in a civil war that's engulfed the country for more than a decade but that had been actually relatively quiet in recent years. To help us understand this unfolding situation, we've reached out to Lina Khatib. She's an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, which is a U.K.-based foreign policy think tank. Lina, welcome.
LINA KHATIB: Thanks for having me.
MA: This is a really fast developing story, but it's taking place in the context of a decadelong civil war. So why is this development so significant?
KHATIB: This development is monumental because many outside observers, as well as the Syrian regime itself, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, had regarded the situation in Syria as being a stalemate. I think very few were looking at how actually different rebel groups in Syria had been learning from their own previous mistakes and also taking advantage of opportunities in terms of regional geopolitics in the Middle East in order to prepare for this offensive. So this is not something that had been on the radar of many outside observers but definitely had been a plan for a very long time inside Syria.
MA: Can you talk about how the Syrian government has responded to the rebels?
KHATIB: The Syrian regime forces has basically retreated, probably surprising even the rebels themselves, who I don't think expected regime forces to withdraw so quickly. So yes, the Assad regime is in charge of more than 60% of Syrian territory. However, it has been very dependent on Iranian forces as well as on Russia for survival, and with Iran having been weakened regionally as a result of the fight between its proxies and Israel over the last year, it is now revealed how much of a thin ground the Assad regime and its military are on.
MA: You know, the conflict between the Syrian regime and opposition forces - it doesn't grab headlines that much these days. So just to catch us up, what has been the state of the conflict in recent months and years leading up to this?
KHATIB: The front in northwest Syria had been relatively quiet in terms of active fighting between rebel groups and regime forces since 2020. However, throughout this time, the Assad regime as well as Russia have been bombing northwest Syria and, in fact, intensified this bombing in the last three months, which is one of the reasons why this offensive was eventually launched by the rebel groups.
More broadly, Syria had been kind of under a low-level conflict status quo, in which the Assad regime controlled around 60% of territory. But obviously, this perception has now proven to be quite incorrect because on the ground, things were actually moving, but the, you know, outside world was not paying attention.
MA: With this conflict, there's more than just two sides in play here, right? Could you say a little more about who else has a stake in this conflict?
KHATIB: The main stakeholders in the conflict in Syria are Russia, Turkey, Iran and also the United States, but we have to also remember Israel as an indirect stakeholder. For the longest time, Israel had, in a way, seen in the presence of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad a convenient situation that Israel could live with.
However, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel began to change its calculations because of Iran's involvement in supporting Hamas and other proxies in the region. And, of course, Syria has been a key area in which Hezbollah in particular had been operating, and Hezbollah obviously has become a serious threat for Israel. So Israel began to change its calculations about the presence of Iran proxies all around it.
MA: You know, just days before this move into Aleppo by rebels, we saw Israel and Hezbollah reach a ceasefire agreement. Do you see any connection between what happened with that ceasefire and this flare-up in Syria?
KHATIB: There is no doubt that the Syrian rebel groups who had been planning this attack for a very long time saw in the ceasefire in Lebanon an added opportunity going in their favor because it showed how weak Hezbollah is because the ceasefire terms say that, basically, Hezbollah cannot transfer weapons and cannot move its troops inside Lebanon. And this in turn means that the ability of Hezbollah to deploy troops into Syria is gone. And this makes it easier for the rebel groups to go for Iranian-backed targets inside Syria, including Hezbollah sites, knowing that the chances of them getting outside support from Lebanon are practically nil.
MA: We've been speaking with Lina Khatib. She's an associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank. Thank you, Lina, again for joining us.
KHATIB: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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