The war in Syria was supposed to have ended five years ago — or even more.
The Assad regime’s capture of Aleppo in 2016 ended the threat from the rebel forces — both pro-western and jihadist — which had risen against it in 2011 but were by then confined to a small part of northwest Syria, centred on the city of Idlib.
Syria’s rebel-held northern city of Idlib after a strike by the regime’s air force on Sunday
MUHAMMAD HAJ KADOUR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Front lines elsewhere stabilised in 2019 when the Syrian Democratic Forces,the western-backed Kurdish-led militia, overcame the last stand of Islamic State at Baghouz in Syria’s far east.
Syria was divided into four. The regime in the major cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama and Deraa; the Turkish-backed rebels in the north; the jihadists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), by now divorced from