Syria’s civil war, which entered its 11th year this March, may at first look like a clear-cut case of good versus evil, in which a bloodthirsty dictator, Bashar Assad, tries to snuff out any semblance of opposition to his rule. Yet, the conflict is far more complicated than that. Far from being a game of checkers, Syria best resembles an unsolvable Rubik’s Cube, in which the different sides are rarely in alignment.
While the Syrian government has recaptured approximately two-thirds of Syrian territory with the help of its Iranian and Russian partners, the territory outside Damascus’ control is divided among a jihadist faction in the northwest of Idlib, Turkish-supported militias in the north, the Syrian Kurds in the northeast and a smattering of Islamic State cells in the east and center.
Those forces often clash as they did last week, when Turkey, a NATO ally, conducted airstrikes against the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, in retaliation for what Ankara says was a Nov. 13 Kurdish terrorist attack in Istanbul that killed six people. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened another ground offensive against Syrian Kurdish positions in what would be the fourth major Turkish military operation in Syria since 2016.
