The long-running Syrian Civil War has seen a resurgence in violence, with rebel groups capturing key cities like Aleppo and Hama.
CGTN’s Iolo Ap Daffyd explains the situation.
#SyriaCrisis #MiddleEastConflict #HumanitarianCrisi
CGTN’s Iolo Ap Daffyd explains the situation.
#SyriaCrisis #MiddleEastConflict #HumanitarianCrisi
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00:00There are many factions involved, we'll come on to that, but you're right, this war has
00:06been forgotten and barely talked about since before the COVID pandemic, before the Russian
00:10invasion into Ukraine, and before the fighting in Gaza and the war in Lebanon and Hezbollah.
00:17And the people who have suffered since the beginning of this civil war in Syria, since
00:24March 2011, have suffered enormously. Not just people all across Syria, but the millions
00:31of people who have left, 6.5 million have left, and more than 7 million are displaced
00:35inside Syria. That gives you an amount of more than half the population which have been
00:41affected in the last decade. But on to the very complex picture now, the map of Syria
00:47shows how much has changed in the last week. So around the Idlib area, where a lot of the
00:54rebel groups have been corralled for many, many years now, they have pushed out to Syria's
01:00second largest city, Aleppo. They've taken that city, as you've just reported, they've
01:05taken Hama, and Hama is a very, very important city because it is one of the cities that
01:12is controlled and has been controlled consistently by the Baath party, the party of Bashar al-Assad.
01:18It's a crossroads across Syria into the areas which is very still supportive of al-Assad,
01:26but it's also a third of the way down towards the capital city, Damascus. They've taken
01:30the prison, they've taken the military airport near there, so really the road might be open
01:37even beyond that region now. Now, the area in red there is controlled by Assad's forces.
01:43You can see it's barely half of the country. And then two other very significant areas
01:48which are also a part of this story, and this evolving story now in Syria, is the colours
01:55in brown on the Turkish border. Well, those areas are the Syrian National Army, which
02:00are backed and armed by Turkey. They're controlling that border, and the area in yellow for now
02:06is controlled mostly by Kurdish, but also other Arab fighters as well. And they're controlling
02:12that area because they were fighting ISIS. Now, ISIS, and one of the groups that have
02:19come out of ISIS in the last few years is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is this group
02:24that has seemed to be the most successful. But really, you're talking about a coalition
02:29of very diverse groups, obviously want to fight Assad, and obviously in the last week
02:35have put Assad, and also court, his supporters on the back foot.
02:41So as you say, this war actually going on for some time, but it has reignited in the
02:46last week or so. Why is this happening now?
02:49I think there are many answers to that. Partly because of Turkey's involvement on the border,
02:55but mostly because Russia and its forces and its aircraft, which did definitely throw
03:01the balance of the war behind Bashar al-Assad a few years ago, especially those years from
03:072016 onwards. And also the fact that the Hezbollah, which were strong in Lebanon, they have now,
03:16their leadership have been killed by the Israeli forces in recent weeks. But also Hezbollah
03:21were fighting for Iran inside Syria. So if Hezbollah and Iran and Russia are otherwise
03:29engaged, Iran has also had several setbacks in terms of the fact that their leader, Ali
03:35Khamenei, is seriously ill. They've lost their Rassisi, their former president. They've lost
03:41some of their important people. For instance, the general four years ago, Qasem Soleimani,
03:47and Haniyeh from Hamas, assassinated in Tehran. They've had lots of setbacks. All this, I
03:53think, has emboldened the rebel groups in Syria, and that's why they're pushing forward.
03:58We've had a comment also by the UN Secretary General. He says that Syria's sovereignty
04:05must be restored and unity must be set again in stone. But the question is, unity for whom?
04:13And that's why possibly President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from Turkey, hugely influential now
04:19on what's happening in Syria, he says, things are being managed calmly, he says, and it's
04:24time for the Syrian people to have a political solution.