The terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Qaeda/al-Nusra, may have seized control of Damascus and Syria’s major cities, but it faces challenges from other power centers both inside and outside the country.
The regime’s mosaic of foreign and domestic enemies may serve the goals of different countries—Iran, seeking to regain influence, or Turkey, trying to maintain its influence. However, the free world can still prevent the new Syria from becoming a dangerous terrorist stronghold.
Turkey, a key backer of HTS in the overthrow of the Assad regime, has occupied parts of northern Syria, adjacent to villages belonging to the country’s Kurdish minority. In the past, Turkish forces have attacked camps of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in both Syria and Iraq. The PKK seeks independence for Turkey’s large Kurdish minority, or at least autonomy from Ankara. It is unclear how the new regime in Damascus will view Turkey’s military incursions into Syrian territory.
Syria’s national sovereignty is also challenged by the presence of some 2,000 American troops, stationed in several camps in the country’s northeast, in the Kurdish region. These soldiers are protecting the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is guarding prisons where thousands of Islamic State (IS) prisoners are being held.
Israel is also preventing HTS from taking full control of Syria, as the IDF now holds territory beyond the UN-administered buffer zone in the Golan Heights. Jerusalem is unlikely to withdraw IDF forces from the area, as it is a strategic area that gives it a tactical advantage and is located only 20 km from the capital Damascus. The new regime in Syria may find it difficult to accept the seizure of this territory, as its leader was born in the Golan region.
Iran, a Shiite-theocratic regime, is expected to continue to aid the remnants of pro-Iranian forces in Syria. Iran was the main force that kept the former Assad regime in power. Tehran sees the Sunni HTS in Damascus as a clear enemy, a fact that became more acute after the new regime of Abu Muhammad al-Julani (Ahmad Hussein al-Shraa) appointed Sunni extremist Abd al-Rahman Fatahi as his mediator with the Islamic Republic. Fatahi fled Iran to Syria in 2014, where he arrived in Idlib province, which was the center of Sunni resistance to the Assad regime.
In Idlib, he founded the "Movement of Sunni Immigrants from Iran," which strongly opposes the Iranian regime. Iranian security forces will closely monitor HTS and Fatahi's attempts to destabilize Sunni areas of Iran, especially the Sunni province of Balochistan in the east of the country.
The internal opposition to the HTS regime in Damascus is made up of ethnic, religious, and political minorities. Reports of atrocities against population groups perceived as supporting or not sufficiently opposing the former Assad regime are increasing.