Via William Roebuck and Hussein Ibish in agsiw.org: In a mere week, the map of Syria has undergone a shocking redrafting: not the cartographic map of straight lines and known cities but the geostrategic map of control, contestation, and military outcomes. The regime of ruthless autocrat Bashar al-Assad has collapsed after just a few days in political intensive care. The distracted and depleted Russian and Iranian regimes proved strikingly unable to provide the urgent, regime-saving intervention once again required, as when they jointly intervened in the fall of 2015 to save Assad from precisely this kind of scenario. A massive political earthquake struck Syria, reordering everything in ways that everyone, even its principal authors, are still struggling to comprehend and much of which has yet to play out. While other rebel groups, including the Syrian National Army, have a closer proxy relationship with Turkey, HTS in its current incarnation has been shaped significantly by Turkey’s handiwork. Ankara has used support, guidance, and the other strings and sticks of influence to shape the group (crucially including helping HTS clean up its image) and try to exert some control over it.
