One month ago, during a meeting in Beirut, a senior western diplomat was venting his frustration: when would international sanctions be lifted from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad? Though the dictator had few friends, it seemed that the brutal killing and torture of hundreds of thousands of protesters had succeeded in finally crushing Syria’s 13-year revolution.
It was time to face facts, the diplomat said. Assad had won the war, and the world needed to move on.
As diplomats in Beirut talked, rebels in Syria were planning. A year earlier, figures in the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in north-west Syria had sent a message to rebels in the south: get ready.
I don’t think they had much of choice. Most people are just doing whatever they can to not be imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. A policy of killing anyone not killed by the previous regime wouldn’t be great for hearts and minds either.