As insurgents raced across Syria in a surprise offensive launched in the country’s northwest late last year, officials from several countries backing either the rebels or Syria’s government met in Qatar on what to do.

According to people briefed on the December 7 meeting, officials from Turkey, Russia, Iran and a handful of Arab countries agreed that the insurgents would stop their advance in Homs, the last major city north of Damascus, and that internationally mediated talks would take place with Syrian leader Bashar Assad on a political transition.

But insurgent factions from Syria’s south had other plans. They pushed toward the capital, arriving in Damascus’ largest square before dawn. Insurgents from the north, led by the Islamist group Hayyat Tahrir al-Sham, arrived hours later. Assad, meanwhile, had fled.

HTS, the most organized of the groups, has since established itself as Syria’s de facto rulers after coordinating with the southern fighters during the lighting-fast offensive.

Wariness among the southern factions since then, however, has highlighted questions over how the interim administration can bring together a patchwork of former rebel groups, each with their own leaders and ideology.

HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa has called for a unified National Army and security forces. The interim defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, has begun meeting with armed groups. But some prominent leaders like southern rebel commander Ahmad al-Awda have refused to attend.

Officials with the interim government did not respond to questions.

The southern province of Daraa is widely seen as the cradle of the Syrian uprising in 2011. When anti-government protests were met with repression by Assad’s security forces, “we were forced to carry weapons,” said Mahmoud al-Bardan, a rebel leader there.

The rebel groups that formed in the south had different dynamics from those in the north, less Islamist and more localized, said Aron Lund, a fellow with the Century International think tank. They also had different backers.

“In the north, Turkey and Qatar favored Islamist factions very heavily,” he said. “In the south, Jordanian and American involvement nudged the insurgency in a different direction.”

In 2018, factions in Daraa reached a Russian-mediated “reconciliation agreement” with Assad’s government. Some former fighters left for Idlib, the destination for many from areas recaptured by government forces, while others remained.

The deal left many southern factions alive and armed, Lund said.

“We only turned over the heavy weapons … the light weapons remained with us,” Mahmoud al-Bardan said.

When the HTS-led rebel groups based in the north launched their surprise offensive last year in Aleppo, those weapons were put to use again. Factions in the southern provinces of Daraa, Sweida and Quneitra reactivated, forming a joint operations room to coordinate with northern ones.

On December 7, “we had heard from a number of parties that there might be an agreement that … no one would enter Damascus so there could be an agreement on the exit of Bashar Assad or a transitional phase,” said Nassim Abu Ara, an official with one of the largest rebel factions in the south, the 8th Brigade of al-Awda.

However, “we entered Damascus and turned the tables on these agreements,” he said.

Al-Bardan confirmed that account, asserting that the agreement “was binding on the northern factions” but not the southern ones.

“Even if they had ordered us to stop, we would not have,” he said, reflecting the eagerness among many fighters to remove Assad as soon as possible.

Ammar Kahf, executive director of the Istanbul-based Omran Center for Strategic Studies, who was in Doha on Dec. 7 and was briefed on the meetings, said there was an agreement among countries’ officials that the rebels would stop their offensive in Homs and go to Geneva for negotiations on “transitional arrangements.”

But Mr. Kahf said it was not clear that any Syrian faction, including HTS, agreed to the plan. Representatives of countries at the meeting did not respond to questions.

A statement released by the foreign ministers of Turkey, Russia, Iran, Qatari, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq after the December 7 meeting said they “stressed the need to stop military operations in preparation for launching a comprehensive political process” but did not give specifics.

The initial hours after armed groups’ arrival in Damascus were chaotic. Observers said the HTS-led forces tried to re-impose order when they arrived. An Associated Press journalist saw an argument break out when HTS fighters tried to stop members of another faction from taking abandoned Army munitions.

Mr. Abu Ara acknowledged that “there was some chaos” but added, “we have to understand that these people were pent-up and suddenly they achieved the joy of victory in this manner.”

During a visit by AP journalists to the western countryside of Daraa province this month, there was no visible presence of HTS forces.

At one former Syrian Army site, a fighter with the Free Syrian Army, the main faction in the area, stood guard in jeans and a camouflage shirt. Other local fighters showed off a site where they were storing tanks abandoned by the former Army.

“Currently these are the property of the new state and Army,” whenever it is formed, said one fighter, Issa Sabaq.

The process of forming those has been bumpy.

On New Year’s Eve, factions in the Druze-majority city of Sweida in southern Syria blocked the entry of a convoy of HTS security forces who had arrived without giving prior notice.

Ahmed Aba Zeid, a Syrian researcher who has studied the southern insurgent groups, said some of the factions have taken a wait-and-see approach before they agree to dissolve and hand over their weapons to the state.

Local armed factions are still the de facto security forces in many areas.

Earlier this month, the new police chief in Daraa city appointed by the HTS-led government, Badr Abdel Hamid, joined local officials in the town of Nawa to discuss plans for a police force there.

Hamid said there had been “constructive and positive cooperation” with factions in the region, adding the process of extending the “state’s influence” takes time.

Mr. Abu Ara said factions are waiting to understand their role. “Will it be a strong Army, or a border guard Army, or is it for counterterrorism?” he asked.

Still, he was optimistic that an understanding will be reached.

“A lot of people are afraid that there will be a confrontation, that there won’t be integration or won’t be an agreement,” he said. “But we want to avoid this at all costs, because our country is very tired of war.”

Opposition forces take control of areas outside Aleppo, Syria, on Friday (November 29, 2024).
| Photo Credit: AP

Syrian government troops battled insurgents inside the country’s largest city, Aleppo, for the first time since 2016, while warplanes targeted rebel supply lines on the city’s edge, state media reported Saturday (November 30, 2024).

Insurgents broke through government defense lines in Aleppo on Friday (November 29, 2024) and entered the city’s western neighborhood with little resistance. The insurgents launched their shock offensive in Aleppo and Idlib countryside on Wednesday (November 27, 2024) and wrestled control of dozens of villages and towns along the way, including a strategic town south of Aleppo.

The pro-government Al-Watan newspaper reported airstrikes on the edge of Aleppo city, targeting rebel supply lines. It posted a video of a missile landing on a gathering of fighters and vehicles, in a street lined with trees and buildings.

Twenty fighters were killed in the airstrikes that targeted rebel reinforcements, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s unresolved civil war. Aleppo residents reported clashes and gunfire, and some were fleeing the fighting.

Schools and government offices were closed Saturday (November 30, 2024) as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station. Bakeries were open.

In social media post, the insurgents were pictured outside of Aleppo citadel, the medieval palace in the old city center, and one of the largest in the world. In cellphone videos, the insurgents recorded themselves having conversations with residents they visited at home, seeking to reassure them they will cause no harm.

State media reported that a number of “terrorists,” including sleeper cells, have infiltrated parts of the city. Government troops chased them and arrested a number who posed for pictures near city landmarks, state media said.

On a state TV morning show Saturday (November 30, 2024), commentators said army reinforcements and Russia’s assistance will repel the “terrorist groups,” blaming Turkey for supporting the insurgents’ push into Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted Oleg Ignasyuk, a Russian Defense Ministry official coordinating in Syria, as saying that Russian warplanes targeted and killed 200 militants who launched the offensive in the northwest on Friday (November 29, 2024). It provided no further details.

Aleppo has not been attacked by opposition forces since they were ousted from eastern neighborhoods in 2016 following a grueling military campaign in which Syrian government forces were backed by Russia, Iran, and its allied groups.

The attack on Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas. Turkey, which has backed Syrian opposition groups, failed in its diplomatic efforts to prevent the Syrian government attacks, which were seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the line of the conflict.

The offensive came as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home. A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel took effect Wednesday (November 27, 2024), the day the Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria during the last 70 days.

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the insurgents have seized control of large parts of Aleppo and Idlib countryside.

The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after 2011 protests against President Bashar Assad’s rule turned into an all-out war.

Russia and Iran and its allied groups helped Syrian government forces reclaim control of the city that year after a grueling military campaign and a siege that lasted for weeks.