By Song Junting and Li Shurui
The situation in Syria has undergone dramatic changes since late November. Opposition forces rapidly seized several strategic strongholds and entered the capital, Damascus, on December 8, and claimed to have "liberated Damascus and overthrown the al-Assad regime." According to Syrian media, the Syrian transitional government, led by caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir, officially assumed power on Tuesday and the interim governance will last until March 1, 2025.
Syria has been in a state of continuous turmoil since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, which has led to the coexistence of armed forces supported by different forces. The recent large-scale armed conflict has escalated rapidly and sharply changed the Syrian situation in just over 10 days, which has brought the once-cooled Syrian issue back under the international spotlight.
It is reported that the Syrian opposition group leading this offensive is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria known as the "al-Nusra Front." In 2016, the al-Nusra Front severed ties with al-Qaeda and rebranded itself. It is defined as a terrorist organization by the UN and the US. Additionally, some media reported that the Türkiye-backed opposition group Syrian National Army also participated in the operation.
Why did the situation in Syria suddenly change? Li Zixin, an assistant researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, said that this is the result of the continuous accumulation of the al-Assad regime's governance issues and the spillover of recent geopolitical conflicts. In the past few years, the Syrian opposition forces have been largely controlled by Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iran. Now, affected by the Lebanon-Israel and Iran-Israel conflicts, the al-Assad government has received significantly less support in terms of economy and weapons.
"The escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict also provided an opportunity for Syrian opposition forces," said Gao Shangtao, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the China Foreign Affairs University. Externally, Russia has been too preoccupied with the conflict in Ukraine to focus on Syria. Internally, the al-Assad government forces have shown increasing fatigue and low morale in recent years, enabling the opposition's surprise attacks to achieve unexpected results, said Gao.
"Syria may be caught in a continuous armed conflict," Li said. Recently, there have been reports that Israeli ground forces have occupied the buffer zone of the Golan Heights. This is the first time that Israeli ground forces have openly entered Syrian territory since 1974. Li said that external forces may increase their intervention in the situation in Syria, and geopolitical conflicts will further intensify.
"The previous relative calm in Syria was merely a balance of power under certain conditions, and the underlying contradictions were never truly resolved. Now that the balance has been disrupted, it will be even harder to establish a stable framework," said Gao.
Both experts said that the prolonged Palestine-Israel conflict has impacted the already fragile regional security architecture and balance of power. The sudden change in Syria has added new variables to the chaos in the Middle East. In the future, Syria's political landscape may become more fragmented, and regional security will face more severe challenges.
As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said, Syrians have endured the conflict for nearly 14 years. They deserve a political horizon that will deliver a peaceful future, not more bloodshed. The future and fate of Syria should be decided by the Syrian people. All relevant parties should act for the long-term and fundamental interests of the Syrian people and work towards finding a political solution to restore stability and order as soon as possible.
