Syria's Four Wars Explained 14 Years On

It's been 14 years since the eruption of the nationwide protests in Syria that would devolve into a multisided civil war still raging today across the country.

Yet this Saturday marks the first anniversary of the conflict to pass with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad no longer at the helm in Damascus. The man who led the nation for a quarter of a century, preceded by nearly three decades of his father's rule, was ousted from the capital just three months ago in a lightning insurgent offensive that marked the most sudden and dramatic shift in one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century.

In his place is the man long considered one of the world's most wanted men. Syrian Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, first emerged as a top lieutenant of Islamic State militant group (ISIS) founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and later switched his allegiance to Al-Qaeda before announcing a break from all jihadi ties in 2016.

While Sharaa has dissolved his Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham faction and called for nationwide peace and unity, violence persists in Syria and foreign powers have doubled down on efforts to influence the war-torn nation in Assad's absence.

Alawites Under Attack

The sheer velocity of Assad's downfall in just 11 days at the hands of a shocking rebel advance laid bare the weakness of his ailing government at a time when allies were spread thin on other fronts.

Iran and Russia played pivotal roles in supporting the Syrian military to push back against rebel and jihadi gains in the earlier phases of the civil war. But neither Tehran (engaged in a multifront conflict with Israel over Gaza in which the Islamic Republic's own top ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, was reeling from devastating blows) nor Moscow, locked in its ongoing war in Ukraine, could intervene swiftly enough to reverse the opposition's momentum this time around.

Much of Syria appeared to quickly ditch the symbolism of Assad and his ruling Baath party in favor of the new management. Even the western coastal homelands of Assad and his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, largely acquiesced to Sharaa's leadership.

Yet hopes for a smooth transition were shattered last week after reports emerged of Assad loyalists conducting a series of deadly ambushes against the security forces of the interim government, followed by a sweeping counterattack by Damascus and allied militias. The ongoing clashes have prompted reports of around 1,400 civilians killed, mostly Alawites, across the provinces of Latakia and Tartus, as well as the outskirts of Hama and Homs, in some of the worst sectarian bloodshed of the entire civil war.

The massacre marks the first major test of Sharaa's commitment to pluralistic rule as well as his ability to rein in the vast array of rebel factions that helped to usher in his victory over Assad. The violence has also prompted international condemnation, including from Iran and Russia, though the two partners have pursued diverging strategies toward the unrest.

While Tehran's once-paramount influence in Syria was decimated by the downfall of its longest-standing Arab ally, a number of so-called "resistance" groups have emerged in the style of Iran-aligned factions active in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. These organizations, which include the "Islamic Resistance in Syria Mukhtar Forces" and "Islamic Resistance Front in Syria Uli al-Baas," have claimed attacks against the interim government's security forces and vowed further vengeance over the killing of minorities.

Moscow, on the other hand, has managed to thus far retain its military bases in western Syria, where thousands of civilians have taken shelter from the carnage. Though the Kremlin remains in talks with Sharaa's administration toward restoring the historic ties between the two countries, Russia has also joined the United States in pushing the United Nations to address the violence sweeping Syria.

In comments recently shared with Newsweek, a former Syrian diplomat under Assad's government praised Moscow and Washington's stance and appealed for international protection for the Alawites.

The Kurdish Question

President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced his disinterest in entangling the U.S. in Syria's complex of array of conflicts. "We're not involved in Syria. Syria is its own mess. They've got enough messes over there. They don't need us involved in every one," Trump said in some of his latest comments on the country in January.

But his administration has remained active on Syria. Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanded Damascus hold accountable the perpetrators of the slaughter of minority communities on Monday, and then just a day later praised a deal reached between the interim government and the Pentagon's ally, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

In fact, a senior adviser to the SDF's political wing, the Syrian Democratic Council, recently told Newsweek that the U.S. played a role in mediating the deal, which would see the SDF's Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria integrated into the central government. Meanwhile, a U.S. defense official said that the U.S. military mission remained "unchanged" in light of the pact.

For the past decade since the U.S. first abandoned the opposition to Assad, this mission has been tied to the partnership with the SDF against ISIS. But the SDF has also clashed with another, far more powerful U.S. ally, Turkey, a member of the NATO alliance.

Like the Alawites, the Kurds constitute roughly 10 percent of majority-Arab and Sunni Muslim Syria's population. Both communities have a sizeable presence in neighboring Turkey as well, though the greater Kurdistan region also spans parts of Iran and Iraq, where Kurdish separatist movements are also active.

In Syria, Turkey considers the SDF to be directly linked to the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), with which Ankara signed a landmark ceasefire agreement earlier this month. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also hailed the deal between the SDF and Damascus, though reports continue of violent clashes between Turkey-backed militias nominally aligned with the interim government and the powerful Kurdish-led group.

Here, too, Sharaa must contend with the potential for divided loyalties, as the Turkey-aligned Syrian National Army holds vast territory along Syria's northern border.

Further questions surround the lasting commitment to the SDF from Trump, who has previously expressed a desire to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and began to do so in a deal forged with Erdogan in 2019.

Damascus, the Druze and the IDF

While Turkey has sought to empower Sharaa's efforts to unify the nation, a rival U.S. ally, Israel, has rejected the interim government and has instead sought to guarantee the rights of another minority sect, the Druze.

Building upon advances against the Palestinian Hamas movement in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Israel has increasingly turned its focus to Syria, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has conducted massive strikes against Assad-era military sites and seized territory beyond the 1974 Golan Heights armistice line. Israel had already annexed much of the southwestern Syrian territory without international recognition in 1981 and has since expanded operations in the area following Assad's downfall.

This month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu identified a new pretext for further Israeli military presence in southern Syria as reports circulated of clashes between Druze militias and security forces of the interim Syrian government in the southern outskirts of Damascus. The Israeli premier has since declared the lands stretching from the capital to the occupied Golan Heights to be a demilitarized zone, drawing veiled warnings from Erdogan.

The move has been met with controversy as a number of Syrian Druze have protested the Israeli overture and occupation. An Israeli flag was torn down and burned moments after it was raised last week in the southern province of Sweida, home to the Jabal al-Druze region.

As with the Kurdish-led SDF, the Syrian interim government has sought to strike a deal with Druze leaders in line with Sharaa's vision for a reunited Syria, while Israel appears to be undermining this project by fostering greater links between the Syrian Druze and its own Druze community as the IDF shores up an indefinite presence in the south.

An Opportunity for ISIS

The sprawling caliphate once claimed by ISIS across large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq may have been beaten back by separate campaigns waged by local forces, including the former Syrian government and the SDF, and foreign powers, including the U.S., Iran and Russia, but the group has retained an insurgent presence since its 2019 defeat.

Sharaa, once poised to serve as the head of ISIS operations in Syria before refusing to merge his Al-Qaeda-aligned Nusra Front, the predecessor to HTS, has now inherited the threat posed by his former allies. The SDF, meanwhile, holds thousands of suspected fighters and their families, including foreigners, in prisons, the largest of which is Al-Sina in northeastern Al-Hasakah province.

ISIS cells claimed hundreds of attacks throughout Syria over the past year, including about a dozen targeting SDF personnel since Assad was overthrown in December. With Iranian and Russian counterinsurgency efforts thrown into disarray by the change of power in Damascus, the U.S. has stepped up strikes against ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria over the past three months.

But ISIS has also demonstrated its ability to strike abroad. The group's Afghanistan-based Khorasan branch, known as ISIS-K, claimed some of the deadliest-ever attacks in Iran and Russia last year, while members and acolytes continue to conduct acts of violence across Africa, Asia and Europe.

Trump, who has bragged about defeating the group "in record time" during his first administration, has repeatedly vowed to oversee a more peaceful and stable Middle East during his second time in office. With the White House focused on settling the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, ISIS threatens to challenge Trump's attempts to extract the U.S. from open-ended conflicts in the region.