The armed Syrian opposition succeeded in toppling the Assad regime after more than half a century of Assad rule, which, with each passing day, reveals new layers of its atrocities. The regime’s fall came after over a decade of brutal war with armed Syrian opposition factions that formed in the wake of the Syrian revolution, which erupted in March 2011. This war deeply complicated Syria’s map of influence, as the structure of Syrian armed factions changed several times throughout the prolonged conflict, turning Syria into an international battleground with varying degrees of involvement from the forces of five foreign countries.
Throughout its history, Syria, like the Fertile Crescent (the historic region in the Middle East known for its rich soil and early civilizations), has been characterized by a dispersed demographic distribution. Its population has clustered around diverse urban centers, leaving vast areas of sparsely populated regions in between. This demographic fragmentation mirrored Syria’s political dynamics, where a unified central state was the exception in a geographical space historically marked by divisions resembling city-states, akin in some ways to Renaissance Italy.
Modern Syria, with its present-day borders, emerged from Anglo-French agreements following World War I. While these agreements did not entirely disregard Syria’s historical and geographical realities, they highlighted the absence of a strong political center around which the peripheries could orbit, as well as the lack of geographical continuity that might have resisted division. French High Commissioner Henri Gouraud’s initial plan to divide Syria into six sectarian and regional states aimed to exploit these divisions. However, the failure of this project indicated the necessity of geographical unity if a nation-state were to emerge in the region.
This tension between necessary unity and the lack of a strong center has shaped Syria’s political history. Following independence, the Syrian political elite was divided: the Aleppo-based People’s Party sought the unification of the Fertile Crescent to preserve Aleppo’s commercial centrality and its connections to Mosul, Persia, and Central Asia. On the other hand, the National Bloc, led by the Damascene elite, feared that unity would diminish their influence. Consequently, state-building efforts in Syria remained stalled for years due to the elite’s inability to create effective institutions and a unified nation that transcended sectarian divides and the urban-rural dichotomy.
For decades, the Assad regime often claimed to have transformed Syria into a stable state, elevating it from a conflict-ridden arena to a regional power with vital geopolitical roles. However, the civil strife between the Assad regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, starting in the mid-1970s, coupled with Hafez al-Assad’s paranoid grip on power, turned his state-building project into one that preyed on its own population. The regime viewed the majority of its citizens as potential threats, adopting an antagonistic stance and exploiting sectarian and ethnic fault lines, ultimately leading to the explosive events of the Syrian revolution.
Syria today has not strayed far from its historical nature, presenting compounded challenges for the process of building a nation-state—a priority on the Syrian national agenda.
The Armed Syrian Opposition
The armed Syrian opposition has undergone successive phases throughout the revolution. The Syrian Free Army was announced in July 2011, quickly becoming an umbrella for numerous armed groups lacking unified command. Among the earliest prominent factions was Liwa al-Tawhid, formed in Aleppo in mid-2012. It spearheaded efforts to capture Aleppo, a battle that lasted years before the regime, bolstered by Russian intervention, reclaimed the city in 2016.
In early 2012, two other groups emerged as key players in the subsequent years of conflict leading to Assad’s downfall. The first, Jabhat al-Nusra (The Nusra Front), was established as an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The second, Ahrar al-Sham, adopted a Salafi jihadist approach similar to Jabhat al-Nusra but later shifted toward a more local agenda, distancing itself from global jihadism.
The pivotal moment for these groups came in March 2015 when they unified, including Jabhat al-Nusra, under a joint military operation called Jaish al-Fatah (The Army of Conquest). This coalition launched an offensive that culminated in capturing the northwestern city of Idlib. However, the factions suffered a major setback in late 2016 when the regime, supported by Iranian militias and Russian air power, drove them out of Aleppo, confining them to the Idlib region.
By mid-2017, Jabhat al-Nusra rebranded itself as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), or the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, after an earlier rebranding in 2016 as Jabhat Fath al-Sham. This move included severing ties with al-Qaeda and aiming to present itself as a local Syrian group. Simultaneously, Turkey organized the remaining Free Syrian Army factions under the Syrian National Army, a coalition comprising prominent opposition factions like Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki and smaller Turkish-aligned groups operating as de facto Turkish proxies in Syria.
Tensions between HTS and Turkish-backed factions erupted in early 2019, but these were later resolved through the formation of the Fateh al-Mubin Operations Room to counter regime offensives on Idlib. The region encompassing Aleppo, Idlib, and Hama remains a natural base for these factions, given its distance from Damascus and its predominantly Sunni population, accounting for about a third of Syria’s population in 2011.
Today, HTS dominates militarily and politically in northwestern Syria. It serves as the political backbone of the Salvation Government, formed in Idlib in late 2017, effectively sidelining the National Coalition and its affiliated Syrian Interim Government, which had initially gained international recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
Regional Challenges in Syria
The northern factions lack a military presence in Syria’s southern provinces—Daraa, Quneitra, and Suwayda. Suwayda, the historical stronghold of Syria’s Druze community, has largely remained neutral in the conflict. Daraa, the most populous of the three, is controlled by the Southern Operations Room, a coalition of smaller opposition groups that reconciled with the regime in 2017 under Russian sponsorship but resisted relocation to the north. The strength and political leanings of this coalition remain uncertain, although leaders like Ahmed al-Oudeh and Nassim Abu Ara have been reportedly linked to Russia.
Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights poses another challenge, potentially pressuring northern factions to confront Israeli provocations, particularly given recent Israeli airstrikes near Damascus. Israel is unlikely to tolerate opposition factions near its borders, possibly necessitating alternatives such as international forces or locally aligned militias akin to the South Lebanon Army.
In Syria’s western coastal region, home to Alawite communities traditionally allied with the regime, public discontent with Assad’s rule has surfaced. However, this region houses Russia’s key Mediterranean naval base, making its inclusion in a post-Assad political framework a sensitive issue.
Eastern Syria, especially areas east of the Euphrates, remains under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the U.S. Turkey prioritizes dismantling SDF influence, viewing it as an extension of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey. Given Turkey’s sway over opposition factions, tensions between these forces and a new central authority are likely.
Thus, Syria’s path toward nation-building and restoring sovereignty is fraught with challenges, rooted not only in foreign interventions but also in a demographic composition resistant to centralization. Creating fair institutions and equitable resource sharing will be critical to fostering a sense of belonging for all Syrians.
