Demotix/Majid Almustafa. All rights reserved.The Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, has managed to remain in power throughout nearly five years of civil war, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process. During the last few years, the appearance of Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, ISIL or IS) has thrown the country into further disarray.
Now all players are determined to defeat the Islamic State and believe in the necessity of boots on the ground. On the one hand there are the Syrian Democratic Forces, dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units who oppose Assad’s regime, and on the other hand there are the pro-regime forces backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
In the spring of 2015, Assad’s government suffered a string of defeats by various groups. Jabhat al-Nusra particularly played a major role in the seizure of Idlib on 29 March, the biggest anti-Assad victory since the seizure of Raqqa by the rebels two years earlier.
