As forces loyal to the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and the non-Syrian militias aligned with them gained control over most of Aleppo this week, and the Syrian opposition factions retreated into the city's densely populated civilian quarters and faced the prospect of imminent defeat, speculation has increased regarding the fate of the Syrian Revolution and its regional and international repercussions. Some have pronounced that the defeat of the opposition factions in Aleppo means the end of the revolution, while others say that the fall of the city to regime forces is only a local setback that will not affect the course of the revolution as a whole. There have been three telling developments in the battle for Aleppo. The first is the Russian position, which has seemed to swing between a desire to halt the fighting in the city and a determination to press ahead with its aerial campaign until the last opposition fighter in the city is eliminated. This Russian wavering has been apparent in the contradictory statements made by the country's officials. The second is the Iranian position. Over the past two months this has been more and more provocative, even in the opinion of the Russians. The Iranian-affiliated Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah held a military parade in Qusayr in central Syria recently, for example, thereby declaring itself a fully-fledged army on the ground. The rhetoric was notched up further when Iranian Chief- of-Staff Mohamed Baqiri announced that Iran might establish naval bases in Syria and when Ahmed Al-Assadi, spokesman for the pro-Iranian Popular Mobilisation Units in Iraq, announced that these forces would go into Syria after the battle for Mosul ended. The third is the partial shift in the Turkish position. Turkey has ceased its support for the opposition fighters in Aleppo in accordance with a deal struck between Ankara and Moscow, and it has turned its attention to the Euphrates Shield Operation which aims to expel the Syrian Kurds from the border zone. All this has gone hand-in-hand with Washington's failure to put an end to the tragedy of Aleppo. It was apparently helpless in the face of the joint Russian-Chinese veto on 5 December against the UN Security Council Resolution put forward by Egypt, New Zealand and Spain calling for a ceasefire in Aleppo. Five days later, meetings in Paris between the main pro-Syrian opposition powers, led by the US, failed to produce results. US President-elect Donald Trump has also announced that he will put an end to Washington's policy of regime-change in Syria. As Aleppo approached its fall, Western capitals began to turn their attention to the post-Aleppo period in the light of the reality on the ground in Syria and its implications for the future. On 6 December US Secretary of State John Kerry stated that the fall of Aleppo into the hands of the forces of the Syrian regime would not end the ongoing violence in Syria. German chancellor Angela Merkel said that Aleppo would remain a “stain of shame” on the conscience of the international community because of the latter's failure to open channels for humanitarian aid. EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini cautioned the Russians that the fall of Aleppo would not be the end of the war in Syria and that the deaths and destruction would fuel stiffer resistance. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said that Aleppo was not a victory for Al-Assad or Russian President Vladimir Putin because there were millions of Syrians who would continue the fighting even after the city fell. Turkey has narrowed its role in Syria over the past two months since its relations with Moscow picked up, and it has made remarks that are not encouraging for the Syrian opposition. Ankara's main obsession is to prevent Kurdish militias that it claims are connected with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey from linking up their “cantons” in northern Syria and seeking help from the Americans. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that Turkey's Euphrates Shield Operation had nothing to do with changing the regime in Syria and that its purpose was “to end the presence of terrorist organisations” in the region. In a marked step back from Ankara's long-held position, he also said that the question of the fate of the Syrian people was “more important than the fate of Al-Assad”. More generally, the battle of Aleppo has exposed the true face of Russia to the Syrian people and the international community. It has confirmed that Russia is a partner of the regime in the war and that it cannot be a mediator in the search for a solution. Rami Abdel-Rahman, director of the Syrian Human Rights Observatory, a NGO, told Al-Ahram Weekly that “Russian air raids have killed more than 10,000 people since its direct military intervention began in September 2015. Of these, 25 per cent were Islamic State (IS) fighters, 30 per cent fighters from the various opposition factions, and the remaining 45 per cent civilians, the vast majority of them women, children and the elderly.” These figures bear witness to the fact that Russia is waging an all-out war against civilians merely because they live in areas of Aleppo controlled by the opposition. Its bombardments have destroyed hospitals, markets, schools and convoys of humanitarian aid. The battle for Aleppo has also revealed the tenuousness of the strategies followed by the Syrian opposition and the size of its mistake in moving the conflict into cities and other populated areas when it lacks the capacity to protect their inhabitants. The result has been to turn those areas into target practice for the regime's and Russia's guns and missiles. As Syrian opposition member Said Muqbil told the Weekly, “the battle of Aleppo has exposed how great the rifts are between the opposition military factions and the great folly pursued by some of them in allying with terrorist organisations such as the Fath Al-Sham [the Army of Conquest, formerly the Al-Nusra Front].” Muqbil stressed that it was time for the political and military opposition to learn the lessons of the battle of Aleppo. “They must examine their experience in a critical and responsible way detached from ideology, personal benefits or infantile revolutionary illusions and then draw up viable political and military programmes capable of persuading the international community,” he said. “They should also not believe the promises made by regional and Western powers. They should unite, while simultaneously affirming their pluralism, and they should take advantage of the breakaway army officers they have among them who are better disciplined, have greater military knowledge and are better able to dismantle the Syrian deep state.” Finally, the battle of Aleppo has made it clear that the Syrian regime will never relinquish a military solution and that all its talk of negotiations and a diplomatic solution has been to spread disinformation. The fall of Aleppo does not signal the end of the conflict in Syria, but only the beginning of a new chapter that will be shaped by factors that will emerge more clearly in the future. The main one is how the armed opposition factions will respond. Do they have fallback plans following their defeat in Aleppo? Will they continue to fragment, or will they reunite? Will they shift from the strategy of seizing control of towns and villages to a form of guerrilla warfare or strategic “fedayeen” operations? Another determinant will be the position of the new administration in Washington. Will the Trump administration continue to regard the “terrorists” in Syria as a greater threat to US national security than Al-Assad? Will it agree to barter with the Russians on a range of other issues of priority to Moscow, such as Ukraine, the Caucasus, warm water ports, energy resources and European sanctions? The new administration in Washington will have an important opportunity to produce a new situation in the Middle East. Perhaps the House of Representatives' approval on 6 December of a bill to sanction the shipment of heavy weapons to the Syrian opposition will play a part in this. The Russian factor will also be crucial. It remains to be seen whether Russia has grasped the lesson that while it is achieving victory in the air, it is at the same time handing over control on the ground to Iran and its militias. Will Russia now try to halt the spread of Iranian power in Syria, including the 66 militias on the ground that take their orders from Tehran? The victory won in Aleppo makes the Russians nervous. They are worried by the potential fallout because they are unable to control all the facets of the Syrian conflict, with its many layers of complexity and its many parties, from the Kurds to the Islamist radicals and from the regional powers that have the wherewithal to shift the ground beneath their feet to the international powers that are waiting to receive their dues. There are many possible scenarios for what lies ahead after Aleppo. But the success of the regime, even with the help of Russia and Iran, in asserting its control over the whole of Syria is not among them. Much of the country still lies outside the control of the regime, including Idlib and the area around Damascus, and these territories are bigger than Aleppo. Do Russia and Iran plan to sustain the same level of violence for years to come? Can they afford to sustain the losses they will surely accrue during that time? And how will Al-Assad govern what has become a war-torn and desolate country and one filled with vows of vengeance against him and the sectarian militias beyond his control? Revolutions do not follow straight lines. They have no predesignated course. Their means can change and they often incur exorbitant costs. In the Syrian case, the revolution erupted six years ago against a corrupt and sectarian police state. During it, half a million Syrians have been killed, according to the lowest estimate, and half of the population displaced. This has given the Syrian opposition additional reasons to press for change, even if it means waging another revolutionary war against the regime and against what the opposition is now calling the Russian-Iranian “colonialism” in Syria.
