Aleppo Conflict Timeline - Introduction

2013

2019

Aleppo city has fallen. The Assad Regime has re-imposed its authority over eastern Aleppo. However, the relevancy of the Aleppo Governorate is no less diminished. As the war enters its eighth year, the majority of fighting has shifted north where the many actors have gathered to determine the fate of their claimed territories. Under the control of various militaries, both foreign and domestic, the nearly six million inhabitants of the region are left with little control over who governs them and how. This paper initially served as a response to US President Donald Trump’s announcement that American troops would be removed from Syria. Since then, it has grown into a larger project examining the many actors at play in the governorate, their motives and positions, and the effect US withdrawal will have on the existing balance of power. This paper attempts to detail the reality on the ground and provide insight into the complex nature of a war with shifting alliances and foreign proxies that provides little voice for the civilians who suffer most. Any lasting peace will have to guarantee the free return of all displaced people and equal political representation of all communities in the Governorate of Aleppo, including Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen. To view this paper as published on the Aleppo Project website, click here: https://www.thealeppoproject.com/papers/the-larger-battle-for-aleppo/

Scholars International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice

Not a few governments of the countries in the Middle East have had their share of woes from pro-democracy movements, commonly known as the Arab Springa short hand for series of uprisings that has toppled long-held political regimes. While some of them were peaceful and civil in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, the story is not the same in the case of Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, et cetera. This paper assesses the decade long civil war in Syria and its effect on civilian victims especially the vulnerable groups amongst them. From civil protests and demonstrations; to political concessions by government (which were bluffed); and the eventual clamp down on protesters by the regime. As is common to such protests in other Arab nations, the violent military response by the Assad regime radically militarized the hitherto peaceful protesters with the sad consequence of a full blown civil war in 2011. As yet, there is no committed peace effort either at the international or regional levels. Foreign involvements in the Syrian war have fundamentally changed its dynamics. It has sharply perforated the loose bond that had existed and shred Syria along ethnic, religious and sectarian lines with each engaged in a war of attrition for survival using their different armed militias. At the receiving end are civilians whose life-support facilities are directly targeted and destroyed; are being sexually assaulted; abducted and killed and in dire humanitarian situation as a result of mass displacements.

2022

The Battle of Aleppo is undoubtedly the most decisive battle in the exhausting war in Syria. Aleppo being the largest city in the country, adding here the heterogeneous ethno-religious structure of the population, became the strategic node where the fate of the war and the survival of the Assad regime, were largely determined. It is estimated that about 30 different anti-government groups operated in the city. In the most complicated position was the Kurdish-inhabited district, protected by the Kurdish Protection Units (YPG). The multidimensionality of the war will force them to change alliances and attitudes towards other warring parties

Conflict Analysis and Mapping: Syria 8 years of war, 2019

In 2011, an Anti-government protest broke out across several cities in Tunisia in response to oppressive regimes, low standard of living and rising cost of food. What seem to be an internal crisis in Tunisia quickly spread into neighbouring countries such as Egypt, Yemen as well as Libya leading to the toppling of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, this uprising in the Arab Gulf is popularly referred to as the Arab Spring. Syria, too, erupted in peaceful protests same year, but the government responded with a brutal crackdown on demonstrators. The Syrian government began to lose the support of majority of the civilians and some part of the Country. As a result, several rebel groups and sectarian actors emerged with different views and interest in the conflict. But inter alia, the most eyebrow raising concern is the alleged use of chemical weapon by the Al Saad regime and the rising influence of violent extremist group Islamic State (IS). Eight years ago, perhaps no one could have predicted the drastic manner the Syria protest of March 2011, have now taken. Needless to say, that while the conflict escalated quickly due to the rash and brutal approach of the government couple with the undiplomatic and extreme methods implored by the domestic actors. The role of external state notably neighbouring countries such as Iran, Turkey and ‘super powers’ Russia and United States of America owing to different approach to resolving and intervening in the crisis howbeit as nothing but lead to further violence and war. According to (United Nation, 2016) over 13 million people in Syria are in need of Humanitarian assistance and half of the population are displaced.

2018

The war in Syria initially was an intrastate conflict between the Syrian government and internal armed rebel groups. However, the conflict escalated into an internationalized intrastate conflict when regional and global powers split into pro- and anti-Assad blocs and inserted themselves into the conflict.

2018

At the era of 21 st century, syrian civil war grew out of a popular uprising against the regime of president Bashar Al Assad in march 2011. It was the part of Arab spring uprisings in the middle-east. The relentless response of the security forces against peaceful protest demanding democratic reform of Syria. Gradually it turned into full scale civil war and many international players such the United States of America, Russia joined the war and make the war as proxy war.

2013

For two and a half years now, Syria has been awash in flames. What began as a limited protest by local farmers and laborers in outlying towns and villages has swelled into a broad popular uprising, and is now a bloody, full-fledged civil war. The struggle in Syria has increasingly taken on sectarian features. Moreover, this sectarianism has been tainted with a religious, jihadi element by Islamist groups within Syria, and by volunteers flooding the country from all over the Arab and Muslim world, eager to fight against Bashar al-Asad’s “heretical” Alawite regime, the ally of Shi‘i Iran and Hezbollah.