Charles Lister. The regime remains — rightfully — an international pariah guilty of a virtually endless list of war crimes and according to the United Nations, it remains in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the associated disarmament deal.
Having shaken down longtime regime ally Rami Makhlouf in May , the regime has continued periodic attempts to squeeze valuable assets from other members of the crony elite, but whatever fruits might be reaped, they are far from sufficient. Buying bread to put on the table has now become a daily ordeal. Unsurprisingly, frustration with the regime is rising and expressions of anger from within its traditional support base are louder and more frequent than ever before.
In short, Syria is in a very bad state — arguably worse in terms of its long-term prospects than at the peak of armed conflict in and There is no light at the end of the tunnel and the regime is going nowhere. The victor in those elections is of course pre-determined and well known, though Russia is likely to force through a number of additional candidates in an attempt to avoid the kind of 95 percent victory that Syrians have become accustomed to.
It is into this challenge that a new Biden administration will soon step. Given a string of clear and strong statements made in recent months by President-elect Biden and senior appointees such as Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken, U. However, that by itself is not enough, particularly given the currently prevailing dynamics in the country which if left untouched, guarantee a further spiral into chaos that promises further regional and likely international instability.
Hundreds of rebel groups sprung up and it did not take long for the conflict to become more than a battle between Syrians for or against Mr Assad. Foreign powers began to take sides, sending money, weaponry and fighters, and as the chaos worsened extremist jihadist organisations with their own aims, such as the Islamic State IS group and al-Qaeda, became involved.
That deepened concern among the international community who saw them as a major threat. Syria's Kurds, who want the right of self-government but have not fought Mr Assad's forces, have added another dimension to the conflict. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights SOHR , a UK-based monitoring group with a network of sources on the ground, had documented the deaths of , people by December , among them , civilians.
The toll did not include , people who it said were missing and presumed dead, including 88, civilians believed to have died of torture in government-run prisons. Another monitoring group, the Violations Documentation Center , which relies on information from activists across the country, has recorded what it considers violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, including attacks on civilians.
It had documented , battle-related deaths, including , civilians, as of December Almost 12, children have been killed or wounded, according to the UN children's agency Unicef. The government's key supporters have been Russia and Iran, while Turkey, Western powers and several Gulf Arab states have backed the opposition to varying degrees over the past decade.
Russia - which had military bases in Syria before the war - launched an air campaign in support of Mr Assad in that has been crucial in turning the tide of the war in the government's favour.
The Russian military says its strikes only target "terrorists" but activists say they regularly kill mainstream rebels and civilians. Iran is believed to have deployed hundreds of troops and spent billions of dollars to help Mr Assad.
Thousands of Shia Muslim militiamen armed, trained and financed by Iran - mostly from Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, but also Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen - have also fought alongside the Syrian army. But they have prioritised non-lethal assistance since jihadists became the dominant force in the armed opposition. A US-led global coalition has also carried out air strikes and deployed special forces in Syria since to help an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias called the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF capture territory once held by IS militants in the north-east.
Turkey is a major supporter of the opposition, but its focus has been on using rebel factions to contain the Kurdish YPG militia that dominates the SDF, accusing it of being an extension of a banned Kurdish rebel group in Turkey. Turkish troops and allied rebels have seized stretches of territory along Syria's northern border and intervened to stop an all-out assault by government forces on the last opposition stronghold of Idlib.
Saudi Arabia , which is keen to counter Iranian influence, armed and financed the rebels at the start of the war, as did the kingdom's Gulf rival, Qatar. Israel , meanwhile, has been so concerned by what it calls Iran's "military entrenchment" in Syria and shipments of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah and other Shia militias that it has conducted air strikes with increasing frequency in an attempt to thwart them. As well as causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, more than 2.
More than half of Syria's pre-war population of 22 million have fled their homes. Some 6. ON TV. On social media. Who are we? Fight the Fake. Daily newsletter Receive essential international news every morning Subscribe. Syria's 10 years of war.
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