{"id":25814,"date":"2024-12-01T05:10:27","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T05:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=25814"},"modified":"2024-12-01T05:12:43","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T05:12:43","slug":"who-are-the-rebels-seizing-control-of-syrias-second-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2024\/12\/who-are-the-rebels-seizing-control-of-syrias-second-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Who are the rebels seizing control of Syria’s second-biggest city?"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – Rebel forces have launched the largest offensive against the Syrian government in years taking control of “large parts” of the country’s second-biggest city, Aleppo.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The surprise offensive prompted the first Russian strikes on Aleppo since 2016, and saw Syria’s military withdraw its troops from the city.<\/p>\n

The attack was led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – which has a long and involved history in the Syrian conflict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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HTS was set up under a different name,\u00a0Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of Al Qaeda, reported BBC.<\/p>\n

The leader of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group,\u00a0Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also involved in its formation.<\/p>\n

It was regarded as one of the most effective and deadly of the groups ranged against President Assad.<\/p>\n

But its jihadist ideology appeared to be its driving force rather than revolutionary zeal – and it was seen at the time as at odds with the main rebel coalition under the banner of Free Syria.<\/p>\n

But in 2016, the group\u2019s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, publicly broke ranks with Al Qaeda,\u00a0dissolved Jabhat al-Nusra and set up a new organisation, which took the name Hayat Tahrir al-Sham when it merged with several other similar groups a year later.<\/p>\n

President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s rule is essentially uncontested in the country\u2019s major cities, while some other parts of Syria remain out of his direct control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These include Kurdish majority areas in the east, which have been more or less separate from Syrian state control since the early years of the conflict.<\/p>\n

There has been some continued, though relatively muted unrest, in the south where the revolution against Assad\u2019s rule began in 2011.<\/p>\n

In the vast Syrian desert, holdouts from the group calling themselves Islamic State still pose a security threat, particularly during the truffle hunting season when people head to the area to find the highly profitable delicacy.<\/p>\n

And in the north-west, the province of Idlib has been held by jihadist and rebel groups driven there at the height of the war.<\/p>\n

The dominant force in Idlib is the one that has launched the surprise attack on Aleppo, HTS.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
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ENDS<\/strong><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebel forces have launched the largest offensive against the Syrian government in years taking control of “large parts” of the country’s second-biggest city, Aleppo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":25815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,194,338,4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-world","category-middle-east","category-news_","category-headline"],"views":59,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25814"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25819,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25814\/revisions\/25819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}