Syria’s uneasy rebellion: jihadists and geopolitics.

the microscope untangles Syria’s descent into chaos, exploring the fractured rebellion and the geopolitics behind it.

This post is part of our weekly microscope series. In this series, we take a deep dive into the topics shaping our world, looking critically past the headlines to uncover the truth. Become a paid subscriber below to support my work breaking through the narratives. 🔬

The inaugural microscope post was and still is free, giving everyone a taste of the depth, detail, and substance this series offers. Moving forward, these posts are exclusively for paid subscribers, who make it possible for me to continue producing the spectacle. Join me and help support independent journalism.

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Good day, spectators,

I would like to preface this post by saying a couple of words about Syria. Syria is one of the most complex geopolitical cases in the world and its people long for peace. It's a diverse country made up of different ethnicities and religious groups who have all lived together in harmony until recently, relative to history. And it is for that reason that I will be including comments and quotes from the Syrian people I know throughout this article. I would like us to remember that, ultimately, it is the working-class person on the ground who is suffering in all of this and whilst we chat about it like it's a movie, for them, it’s very real and they will endure the consequences of any outcome.

With that in mind let's start trying to understand Syria.

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from Moscow to mayhem: Assad returns to a rebellion.

When Bashar al-Assad departed for Moscow just days ago, perhaps to secure more support from his Russian allies or simply to reaffirm his regime’s alliances, he likely couldn’t have anticipated the chaos awaiting his return.

In his absence, Syria erupted into turmoil, with a coalition of extremist groups launching an insurrection that has already claimed key cities. The spectre of civil war looms over Damascus once again.

For many Syrians, this latest outbreak of violence is an unwelcome return to the uncertainty and fear of past years. While Assad’s rule has mostly been characterised by brutality and authoritarianism, the relative peace of recent years under his secular regime offered something close to stability and that’s something which many people in Syria are scared to lose.

The rebellion, however, is not a united front of hopeful revolutionaries or democratic reformists. Instead, it is a patchwork of factions, many of which adhere to extremist Islamist ideologies. And for Syria’s diverse population which includes Christians, Kurds, Druze, and Alawites, the prospect of such groups taking power is a terrifying one.

But how the hell did we get here? What do we know about these so-called ‘rebels’ who seemingly appeared out of the blue, what do they want and who is paying them? Most importantly, what does this rebellion mean for the people of Syria, who have already endured more than a decade of war and hardship?

Let’s start to untangle the chaos.