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The beginning of the war in Syria dates back to March 15, 2011, exactly ten years ago, even if the war, the one that would come later and that would have turned into many wars, did not really start on that day. On March 15, 2011, the first major protests against the regime of President Bashar al Assad were organized: peaceful, carried out by young Syrians tired of the authoritarianism of their government, and inspired by the so-called “Arab Spring”, the demonstrations that in the previous weeks had brought the end of the ten-year regimes in North Africa. On March 15, 2011, Syria was a “complete” country: it was not occupied by foreign soldiers, it had no pieces of territory controlled by jihadist groups, and no one spoke of ISIS, a group that had not yet been born at that time. . It did not have half its population displaced and it did not have a completely broken economy.
After 10 years of war, there is very little left of that country: the reasons that started the protests of March 15, 2011, remained in power, and the Assad regime, which has long been referred to as the winner of the war, remained. in power, but which today is in the hands of a country that in fact no longer exists.
A good starting point for understanding what Syria has become today, after ten years of wars, is a map of the country. Practically each color is a world in itself, each one with a foreign state that protects it: that is why for some time there has been talk of a “balkanization” of Syria, where each area has its own militias, its own economy and many times your favors. a certain ethnic or religious group over others.
A map of the current situation in Syria: in red the territories controlled by Assad and his allies; in yellow by the Kurds; in dark green by the rebels with a predominance of jihadist groups; in light green (to the north) by the Turks and their allied Syrian groups; in light green (south) by factions backed by the West; in black from ISIS; the strip of blue territory on the western border indicates the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel (Liveuamap)
The Assad regime, indicated in red, controls about two-thirds of the country: much more than at the end of 2015, when on the verge of being defeated by the rebels, it was saved by Russian military intervention; but much less than what it controlled at the beginning of the war. For Assad, however, the problem is not only that of having lost large chunks of territory, which have ended up under the control of rival forces.
First of all, to say that Assad “controls” the territories indicated on the map in red is to overestimate the strength of his regime.
The government’s ability to exercise power in many areas depends on the presence of Russian soldiers and Iranian-backed Shiite militias, who fought alongside Assad during the war and today mainly garrison the external borders of the regime’s territories. It’s not just allies that make the weather good and bad in Assad-controlled areas: in recent years Israel has carried out several bombings in Syria against Iranian targets or those linked to the radical Lebanese group Hezbollah, supported by Iran and considered by the The Israeli government is a great threat to your national security. In late February, the United States carried out an airstrike on Syrian territory, near the Iraqi border, to target the two pro-Iranian Shiite militias Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada in response to an earlier direct attack on a Erbil military base in Iraqi Kurdistan, which houses US troops.
In addition, within the territories controlled by Assad, sectarian policies and tensions between various groups and ethnic groups have become enormous, wrote, among others, theEconomist: “The Druze tribes in the south, the Arabs in the east and even the Alawite sect of Assad on the coast are increasingly defending themselves. Clashes between groups are frequent. “If an Alawite is disarmed here and alone, he will be killed,” said an elder from the Deir Ezzor Arab community in eastern Syria.
Bashar al Assad, April 13, 2016 (Syrian Presidency via AP, file)
The weakness of the regime is enormous and depends largely on a terrible economic crisis that, among other things, has caused a rapid rise in the prices of essential goods and a collapse in the value of the currency. “Syrians who were once considered middle class have now become poor,” he said recently. New York Times.
The Syrian state runs out of money due to war, corruption, US sanctions, the collapse of the Lebanese banks where many wealthy Syrians kept their savings, the equally numerous economic difficulties of Russia and Iran, and certainly the consequences of the pandemic. of the coronavirus. The pandemic has put pressure on an already war-torn healthcare system – only half of the country’s hospitals function regularly – and has prompted Syrian power centers to negotiate separately for the purchase of vaccine doses.
However, as mentioned, Assad’s Syria is not the only Syria that exists today. The northeast of the country is controlled by the Kurds, who have long established a fairly efficient system of self-government, which in many respects seems to work better than Assad’s, even if it cannot be considered completely free and democratic. The Kurds gained great international legitimacy for having waged the war against ISIS alongside the United States, through a coalition of forces that also included Arab groups. Today in these areas of Syria the Kurdish language is preferred to Arabic and the population is a little better than in other places, thanks mainly to US protection and the presence of oil to exploit.
During the Syrian war, the Kurds had to be especially wary of attacks by Turkey, which accused them of being the same as the PKK (Workers’ Party), a Turkish Kurdish group that for decades fought against the Ankara government to get the ‘independence.
In 2016, Turkey launched a series of anti-Kurdish raids in Syria, also thanks to the help of some Sunni Arab rebel groups that stopped fighting Assad mainly for money. The territories conquered by Turkey, which are in northern Syria, today are mostly inhabited by Sunni Arabs, while the Kurds have left out of fear of violence. The US dollar does not circulate here, as in Kurdish areas, but the Turkish lira, and the Turkish government pays local officials directly. These territories are connected to the electricity grid present in southern Turkey.
Idlib, Syria (AP Photo / Felipe Dana, file)
The last war fought in Syria was put into to support a year ago thanks to a ceasefire negotiated by Turkey and Russia between the Assad regime and the rebels who control Idlib province (the one indicated in dark green on the map above).
This area of Syria has a unique history within the Syrian conflict. For years, Idlib province has been the destination of many Syrians who were forced to flee their homes due to the shelling of the Assad regime and its allies. Without knowing where to go, around 1.5 million people took refuge in Idlib, a territory controlled by the rebels since the early stages of the war and for some time dominated by the most radical jihadist fringes, such as Hayat Tahrir al Sham. Despite the temporary suspension of fighting, wrote the International Crisis Group, “the possibility of a resumption of hostilities is real” and the risk of a major humanitarian crisis is very high.
Today Syria is a very different country than it was ten years ago, deeply in crisis and extremely divided: half of the population is even displaced, both inside and outside the borders.
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