Meanwhile, in Syria
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The 13-year civil war in Syria has roared back into prominence with a surprise rebel offensive on Aleppo, one of Syria’s largest cities and an ancient business hub. The push is among the rebels’ strongest in years in a war whose destabilizing effects have rippled far beyond the country’s borders.
It was the first opposition attack on Aleppo since 2016, when a brutal air campaign by Russian warplanes helped Syrian President Bashar Assad retake the northwestern city. Intervention by Russia, Iran and Iranian-allied Hezbollah and other groups has allowed Assad to remain in power, within the 70% of Syria under his control.
The surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent front reopening in the Middle East, at a time when U.S.-backed Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both Iranian-allied groups.
Robert Ford, the last-serving U.S. ambassador to Syria, pointed to months of Israeli strikes on Syrian and Hezbollah targets in the area, and to Israel’s ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon this week, as factors providing Syria’s rebels with the opportunity to advance..
https://apnews.com/article/syria-hts-assad-aleppo-fighting-2be43ee530b7932b123a0f26b158ac22
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When I began teaching at my previous school, a huge number of our students were recent refugees from Syria. I began teaching there in September of 2017 and I taught grade 7/8 so my students had some memory of their lives before the war. Two of them paired up to do a research project and I remember them showing me photos of beautiful landmarks in Aleppo (where one of the students had lived). A few days later, they stumbled across one of those “before and after” posts showing the same landmark, which had been destroyed. I don’t think I will ever forget the look of sorrow on her face.
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Now that the war is over, the next war likely will begin. The "opposition" is a motley mix of factions and the region has no tradition of power sharing and political pluralism. The Turkish factions will kill the Kurds. The ex Al-Qaeda faction will fight with the SDA. The folks in the south who are unaligned ... who knows. And the Druze will try to keep their heads very very low. Meanwhile the Christian population will probably get caught in every crossfire.
