Update on the military situation

HTS offensive continues to advance, SNA/SDF lines static, new vacuum in the Badiyah

While the regular newsletter is paused I plan on publishing updates and other work relating to the ongoing situation. This post covers recent military developments while highlighting some recent HTS-related work at the bottom.

Today, December 6th, marks the tenth day of the ongoing Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led “Deterrence of Aggression” (Rad‘ al-‘Udwan) offensive. What started as a well-coordinated operation initially targeting approximately twenty kilometers of front line defenses in western Aleppo has provoked the collapse of the Syrian government’s military forces across the entire northwest of the country. By the evening of November 29th opposition forces had seized almost the entirety of Aleppo, Syria’s “second city,” virtually unopposed. After moderately stiffer resistance on the part of regime forces, the city of Hama fell to the opposition on October 5th.

By this morning (October 6th), the HTS-led offensive was on the outskirts of Homs, Syria’s third largest city after Damascus and Aleppo. Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus, which sit north to south on what was once the hajj road from Istanbul to Mecca, are Syria’s four historically most important and symbolic significant cities. Momentum or the absence of significant resistance by the Syrian Arab Army and various allied militias is rapidly pulling the ‘Deterrence of Aggression’ offensive down the M5 highway, in the direction of Damascus roughly 200km to the south. Nothing really needs to be said about the importance of Damascus and the increasingly dire situation the regime finds itself in.

The situation in northwestern Syria as of 12/06/24 (source)

While various factions of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) have taken part in the HTS-led offensive since its beginning, the SNA launched an offensive of its own, named “Dawn of Freedom” (Fajr al-Hurriyah), on November 30th. Taking advantage of the regime’s collapse, the SNA easily seized much of the eastern Aleppo countryside south of al-Bab before focusing its attentions on the SDF’s isolated Tell Rifa‘at pocket north of Aleppo city. While the SDF had initially deployed some forces through regime territory west from Manbij and north from al-Tabqah in order to create a corridor to its possessions in northern Aleppo, these efforts were stymied by the SNA, numerically superior in the area. The SNA ended up in control of the Aleppo-Raqqah highway in the Deir Hafir region, blocking the SDF approach from the east while also capturing al-Jarrah airbase and al-Khafsah, preventing the SDF from linking Manbij to al-Tabqah on the right bank of the Euphrates.

By the evening of December 1st, the SNA captured Tell Rifa‘at and much of the surrounding SDF territory, causing tens of thousands of the region’s residents - the majority already IDPs from Afrin - to flee to SDF territory to the east. Meanwhile the SDF’s pocket in the al-Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood of Aleppo - now surrounded by HTS and its allies - still remains intact, with negotiations between the two actors regarding the neighborhood’s future status reportedly ongoing. Significant fighting between the SDF and HTS has not occurred and the HTS-led Military Operations Department heading the entire offensive has sought to demilitarize Aleppo city.

The frontlines between the SNA and SDF along the Manbij axis have remained static for several days now though rumors of an upcoming offensive aimed at capturing the region swirl. Today the SNA’s Dawn of Freedom operation announced control over four villages south of Manbij, previously held by the regime and including al-Tayhah, site of the al-Tayhah/Abu Kahf crossing into SDF territory. The SDF likely moved into the village earlier in the week, however it sits outside the region’s years old defensive fortifications.

Meanwhile tensions have risen between HTS on the one hand and the SNA on the other, as the former seeks to fold areas captured in the past week under its ‘Syrian Salvation Government,’ while the latter will not wish to cede control of the areas seized during its own military operations.

The biggest news of the day was reports that regime forces are in the process of withdrawing from the Deir ez-Zour province and much of central Syria, presumably in an effort to consolidate around Damascus. This creates a dangerous vacuum in the badiyah region, the sparsely-populated hilly desert between Palmyra and the Euphrates which the Islamic State has maintained a significant presence in since the ‘fall of the caliphate’ in 2019. The badiyah has nominally been in regime hands throughout this time, however it was seemingly never able to commit the resources required to rooting out IS and instead focused on protecting the highway running from the Iraqi border to Damascus via Deir ez-Zour city and Palmyra in addition to key oil and gas facilities in the region. In recent months the US has carried out a handful of airstrikes against Islamic State facilities in this region.

Following the reported withdrawal the SDF moved into at least some of the population centers along the riverbank in the Deir ez-Zour and al-Raqqah governorates, including Deir ez-Zour city itself (see video below of SDF crossing this bridge). While the withdrawal of regime militias means they will no longer be attacking the SDF along the Euphrates and that rocket and drone attacks targeting US bases will likely decrease, it’s unclear how far west the SDF will be capable of deploying to fill this vacuum the Islamic State will attempt to fill.

More on HTS

Meanwhile CNN correspondent Jomana Karadsheh interviewed HTS commander Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani on the offensive, HTS’s current governance project, as well as the changes both him and his group Jabhat al-Nusrah/Jabhat Fatah al-Sham/HTS have undergone since the group’s founding in 2012 as part of the then al-Qa‘idah-affiliated Islamic State in Iraq (later the Islamic State in Iraq al-Sham, later the Islamic State).

For more on these topics check out Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi’s recent appearance on the Drop Site podcast, Aaron Zelin’s piece for War on the Rocks several days ago, and this open access profile of HTS by The Syria Report.