WASHINGTON — The 13-year civil war in Syria has roared back into prominence with a surprise rebel offensive that captured Aleppo, one of Syria's largest cities and an ancient hub of Middle East culture and commerce. The push is 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 Russian air campaign retook the northwestern city for Syrian President Bashar Assad after rebel forces had seized it. 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.
Insurgents led by the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched the two-pronged attack on Aleppo last week and moved into the countryside around Idlib and neighboring Hama province. The Syrian military and its foreign allies have rushed reinforcements and launched airstrikes as they attempted to stall their momentum.
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 last week, as factors providing Syria's rebels with the opportunity to advance. Russia, Assad's main international backer, is also preoccupied with its war in Ukraine.
Here's a look at some of the key aspects of the new fighting:
Why does the fighting in Aleppo matter?
The long war between Assad and his foreign backers and the array of opposition forces seeking his overthrow has killed an estimated half-million people and fractured Syria. It started as one of the popular uprisings against Arab dictators in the 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad's crushing of what had been largely peaceful protests turned the conflict violent. Some 6.8 million Syrians have fled the country since then, a refugee flow that helped change the political map in Europe by fueling anti-immigrant far-right movements.