Fall of the Assad Regime
The offensive followed nearly four years of a largely frozen civil war (Syria's front lines had barely moved since 2020) and exploited the weakening of Assad's foreign backers: Russia's forces were consumed by the war in Ukraine, and Hezbollah and Iran had been badly degraded by their 2024 conflict with Israel. HTS, which had spent years consolidating an Islamist but locally-governed statelet in Idlib, launched the offensive on November 27, 2024; the Syrian army, hollowed out by years of attrition, corruption, and unpaid conscripts, largely collapsed rather than fought. Assad's fall ended the region's longest-running civil war and the last of the region's Ba'athist dynasties.
- Year: 2024 CE
- Category: Military
