Fighting among various opposition groups in Syria has declined, but the war is not officially over.
“Syria is living through what we can call a frozen conflict,” Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Qutaiba Idlbi said. “Basically, the war itself has not been over, but we’ve been seeing a steady cease-fire since 2020.”
Turkey and Russia agreed to pause fighting in March 2020. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and said he hoped the agreement would lead to a halt in military action in Syria’s rebel-held northwestern region.
“In reality, though, while the war has stopped, we have also seen somehow a partition of Syria. In a sense, we are seeing three different Syrias, one influenced or controlled by Russia and Iran, one influenced by the United States and one influenced by Turkey,” Idlbi said, “which kind of makes the Syrian conflict today managed completely by those three parties.”
The U.S. began assisting Syrian rebels in 2014 as part of a military operation to defeat the Islamic State. Around 900 U.S. troops are still based in Syria. They mostly support the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which control most of northern Syria.
“We have an exemption of almost all sanctions for areas across northern Syria which allows investment in that region,” Idlbi said. “In terms of the economic model and the living conditions, it seems that northern Syria is providing much better conditions and is even attracting families who are living under the Assad regime to migrate into northern Syria.”
The U.S. has supported other government opposition groups in addition to the SDF and has operated a training base in Eastern Syria. Turkish and Syrian Arab Proxy Forces are occupying an area in the northwest. Extremist groups have claimed a small region in the west. Even China reportedly is trying to influence the country.
“Our position has been very clear. We’re not going to be in the business of normalizing relations with Assad, with that regime,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a news conference in Saudi Arabia on Thursday. “It has not earned that step forward — that recognition toward acceptance.”
Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., criticized the Arab League for allowing Assad to return and said holding dictators accountable was important as a warning to other bad actors.
“If you allow one brutal dictator to go unchecked, then you allow another. So it could happen on a continuous basis, and then sooner or later it could start hitting you at home also,” Meeks said. “It’s important for us to be in lockstep with our allies, those that have the same beliefs that we have, those that have the same common ideas of democracy stick together so that we can begin to isolate the dictators who kill their own people and commit war crimes.”
One year later, Obama requested approval from Congress to send U.S. troops to Syria. Military intervention was avoided at that time after Syria agreed to accept a deal negotiated by the U.S. and Russia.
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The agreement called for inspecting, controlling and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons.