21 December 2021

The civil war in Syria: an intractable conflict with geopolitical implications


The armed conflict in Syria has now lasted for more than ten years. What started as an uprising during the 2011 Arab Spring soon turned into one of the most deadly and destructive civil wars of the modern era. The conflict has reached a violent protracted stalemate in which several different armed confrontations are taking place at the same time, overlapping with regional-security concerns about Turkish, Iranian, Israeli, Kurdish and jihadi activity.

The Syrian regime, despite its limited power, has skilfully balanced the regional and international actors and their competing agendas to ensure its own survival. The political deadlock between opposing forces within Syria reflects the dominance of third-party states in shaping the current phase of the civil war. From a regional-security perspective, the conflict is unmistakably a proxy war and a key theatre for the foreign-policy ambitions of international and regional state actors, who are pursuing goals that extend beyond Syria.

By 2021, the civil war in Syria had become a military stalemate on the ground: the country is effectively partitioned into four or five areas, controlled by different forces, most of which are backed by third-party states. The largest of these areas, covering about 70% of the country, is controlled by the Syrian regime. It includes most of the urban centres and is home to nearly two-thirds of the remaining population. An almost totalitarian regime is in place under President Bashar al-Assad and any expression of dissidence is brutally repressed. The provision of security is fragmented, however, as in certain areas the regime relies on co-opted militias and networks of racketeers, in addition to foreign backing. Extreme poverty is widespread and basic services are crumbling – access to electricity, for example, is estimated to be at 15% of the pre-war level.

Areas of influence in Syria


The de facto partition of the countryIn the northeast of Syria there are competing external powers (Russia, Turkey and the United States) and a volatile military situation. The area is nominally controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with the forces of the Syrian regime having only a limited territorial presence. The SDF, backed mainly by the US, was created in 2015 as a direct response to the advance of the Islamic State (ISIS) into the north of the country. It is dominated by the Syrian Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG), and includes Arab militias and tribal figures. Turkey strongly opposes the YPG, as Ankara perceives it to be an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), against which it has fought a war since 1984. This area is the traditional breadbasket of Syria and it also still produces about 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Although the humanitarian situation is slightly better than in the rest of the country, the local economy has suffered from the impact of an intense drought and limitations imposed by Turkey on the movement of goods.

In the northwest part of the country, a fragile ceasefire has been in place since March 2020, when Turkey and Russia secured a truce that halted the Syrian regime’s offensive against the last opposition stronghold, Idlib. The ceasefire ended major military operations in Syria, although violence has remained pervasive across the country. The situation in the northwest is still volatile, with frequent breaches of the ceasefire. Idlib province is divided into territory controlled by a hardline Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and territory regained by the regime in 2019 and early 2020. Arguably it is the northwest that has the worst humanitarian situation: 60% of the population are internally displaced and essentially living hand to mouth, wholly reliant on humanitarian aid transported via the sole border crossing from Turkey.

In the south of the country, the province of Deraa is where the first protests against Bashar al-Assad took place in 2011. Currently under the control of the regime, the area has witnessed an escalation of violence since 2020, in which waves of street protests and other forms of unrest have been met with repression. In 2018, a Russian-backed deal allowed the rebels to remain in Deraa, with partial self-government, in return for surrendering their weapons. In July 2021, after residents in various parts of Deraa province called for a boycott of the national presidential election, regime forces besieged and attacked the city, leading to heavy fighting in the area. A new Russian-brokered truce was achieved in September, lifting an economic blockade that had been in place since June. In the southeast, a small and sparsely populated area adjacent to the borders with Iraq and Jordan is under the military control of US forces.

Foreign patronsIn addition to being numerous and highly fragmented, the domestic actors in Syria’s civil war are far from autonomous. There are no fewer than five foreign powers exerting political influence over local forces or military dominance over part of the country. The SDF is arguably the most independent of the actors on the ground, though it is still heavily reliant on Western support. Iran, Israel, Russia, Turkey and the US are all involved militarily and politically in the conflict, albeit to different degrees. A remarkable feature of the civil war is that the interests of third-party states have sometimes clashed but at other times converged, depending on the location, the local clients involved and the issue at stake. For example, Russia–Turkey relations with regard to Syria have alternated between competition and cooperation, though always characterised by a high degree of mistrust. Iran and Turkey, nominally partners in the moribund Astana process, are engaged in a rivalry in the north of the country. Russia ignores Israeli strikes against Iranian targets inside Syria, even though Moscow and Tehran have been close partners in securing Assad’s survival.

Besides the obduracy of the Assad regime, the main factor frustrating any attempt at meaningful conflict resolution is the fact that all the foreign powers involved are pursuing strategic goals, in terms of regional security and geopolitical influence, that extend beyond Syria. Iran has a flexible posture and continues to use Syria to confront Israel by investing in military infrastructure and sponsoring militias. In Syria, Israel pursues its goal of containing Iran’s expansion through intelligence and air capability. It controls the Golan Heights and its aircraft are able to operate freely in Syrian skies, with the Syrian regime unable (and Russia unwilling) to stop them. Turkey’s core goal is to frustrate any Syrian Kurdish ambitions of independence, while keeping its own Kurdish rebellion in check. That is why it has established military buffer zones in Syrian territory. Ankara’s goal has nonetheless become less ambitious during the decade of conflict: its earlier efforts to bring about regime change in Damascus were frustrated by opposing geopolitical interests, and have since proved unrealistic given Tehran’s and Moscow’s support for Assad.

As for Russia, its direct military involvement since 2015, although heavy-handed, has played a major role in preventing the fall of the Assad regime. Moscow’s main focus has been on providing military support to government forces, helping them regain territory and exerting political influence over Assad, whose survival arguably depends on Russia. Meanwhile, the US administration, under presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, has disengaged from conflict-management efforts in the Middle East, including in Syria.

Limited prospects for progressThe civil war is nevertheless in a situation of stalemate, with a high degree of intractability. A sense of fatigue and disillusionment has emerged on the part of several domestic and international actors. On the one hand the war has exacted a high toll, primarily on Syrian society, significantly decreasing the morale of domestic actors and their belief in their ability to produce change on the ground – a sentiment that obviously also reflects the ‘freezing’ of areas under foreign influence. Meanwhile, third-party states have achieved a degree of stability on the ground that they may want to maintain in the short term. On the other hand, a sense of ‘authoritarian solidarity’ among rulers in the region has swept away the remnants of any hope of democratic openings.

Over the last year, regional actors have reviewed their involvement in Syria, reconsidering what type of influence they want to project and whether they can find non-coercive ways of influencing the outcome of the conflict. Facing further economic decline, the Syrian regime is trying to bring an end to its regional and international isolation in the diplomatic arena. Gulf states that played an influential political and economic role in the conflict up until 2015–16 – chiefly the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – have signalled that they are ready to re-engage with Damascus. The UAE and Saudi Arabia consider that Assad will stay in power, and that neither the United Nations nor the US can advance their interests or contain Turkish or Iranian power.

When the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, visited Damascus and met with Assad on 9 November, this represented a controversial but concrete step towards the partial normalisation of diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime. Assad may also be attempting to leverage the virtual collapse of the state in Lebanon as a potential means of re-engaging with neighbours on foreign-policy issues and rehabilitating his image in the region. Such re-engagement with Assad would be at odds with the West’s perspective and particularly that of the US, given that the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act imposed additional sanctions on entities conducting business with the Syrian regime.

Diplomatic normalisation reflects the reality that an ineffective UN-led constitutional process and a lack of international interest mean that none of the core issues that led to the Syrian civil war will be addressed. As such, while a regional embrace of Assad might bring economic and humanitarian benefits, Syria is unlikely to be sustainably and inclusively stabilised. The regime’s military victory has ruled out political reform or reconciliation; unless pressed by Russia, which is unlikely, it will do little to heal the divides in Syrian society. The regime is both unable and unwilling to reduce humanitarian suffering: it benefits financially from humanitarian assistance and uses its relationship with humanitarian and UN agencies for leverage over domestic opponents and external powers. Nor, at present, is there any prospect of international diplomatic intervention proving effective: the UN process is marginal and out of sync with the geopolitical realities. In these circumstances, stabilisation and the return of refugees remain out of reach: there can only be progress in that respect when Syrian refugees consider that there is a safe and secure environment to go back to.

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