It was truly a blitzkrieg. Syrian rebels shocked the government and the region with a lightning-quick attack that finally ended with the breach of Damascus early Sunday morning. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has fled the country and an army commander says the government has fallen.
which may be referred to as The greatest progress in recent times, The offensive, which began on November 27, saw the rebels capture the cities of Aleppo and Hama, as well as large parts of the south.
The coalition, led by former al-Qaida affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group considered the most extremist faction of the rebellion, has not returned to haunt the Assad government.
Who are the rebels?
According to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Group (HTS). bbc, Founded in 2011 under the name Jabhat al-Nusra as a “direct affiliate of al-Qaeda”. The name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.
With jihadist ideology as its driving force, this group was considered the most effective and deadly group against President Assad.
In 2016, HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani sought to rebuild the group’s image after severing ties with al-Qaeda, shedding hardline officials and pledging to embrace pluralism and religious tolerance, according to AP News.
The group controls much of northwest Syria, and established a “liberation government” in 2017 to run day-to-day operations in the region. Its goal now is to establish a radical Islamic regime in Syria, rather than a broad caliphate, as the Islamic State (IS) attempted but failed to do. BBC told
A Syrian rebel fighter sits in the cockpit of a Syrian Air Force plane. (Photo: AP)
How did the group manage to capture the territory?
In the early days, the group mimicked the state by getting village council leaders to voluntarily accept its rule and issuing identity cards to residents, according to a UN report cited by The New York Times.
It remained unpopular among residents, who protested its arbitrary arrests, taxation, and intolerance of dissent.
Turkish artillery on the Turkish side of the Turkish border in Syria and Turkish artillery in Idlib buffered the group’s territory from Syrian government forces, former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said, citing former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford.
However, after a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey in 2020 created an uneasy peace in northwestern Syria, the group took the opportunity to restructure its forces to become more professional with better training and weapons. Gradually, other rebel organizations merged with them, making them the largest force in northwestern Syria.