You see it time and time again. You don’t even have to zoom out that far from the map, or go back that far.
The advance of the Islamic State jihadist group in 2014. The retreat of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021. Now, in Syria in 2024, when rebel groups led by hard-line Islamists advance towards the capital Damascus.
It is very quick to advance militarily when you meet no, or basically no, resistance. About exactly as fast as you can drive a pickup with a machine gun welded to the bed.
Anyone who looks at a live map with Syria divided into different color fields can get a slightly distorted picture of what one or the other side actually controls, because it does not distinguish between empty desert and densely populated metropolis, on dusty paths and large highways.
Catastrophic setback regardless
On the other hand, there is no map in the world where the advance of rebel groups is not a catastrophic setback for President Bashar al-Assad.
The rebels, most somewhere on the scale “more or less radical Islamists” and many internationally labeled as terrorists, have been able to storm forward basically unimpeded. Many have celebrated their successes. Even people who hardly share the dream of sharia but who have seen relatives killed during a brutal civil war or friends tortured in the regime’s dungeons.
There are no reliable figures, but since 2011 the al-Assad regime has been responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties in the war. Which may be worth remembering if you want to understand why it is so loathed by many, especially in Sunni-dominated areas.
Testimony of panic
The big questions now are whether the regime can regroup its own forces and offer some resistance in the parts of the country that matter most – Damascus, the coastal areas, Homs that connects them.
If Russia or Iran can and cares enough to save al-Assad again, like in 2015 when rebels advanced on Damascus.
And what happens if the Islamist rebels really take more areas and hold them. They have promised that minority groups have nothing to fear, but after almost 14 years of bloody war, trust is at an end and from inside Damascus there are testimonies of panic.
“What happens next remains to be seen” is such a well-worn ending to a TV feature that we here in the SVT house usually joke about it.
But sometimes that’s also the only thing you can say.