The Economist explains

Who controls Syria?

The Assad regime has clawed back some territory, but the country remains split into enclaves

THE ASSADS came to power in 1970 promising to recreate Greater Syria, a swathe of the Levant that included Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Syria, and lead an Arab baath, or renaissance. But as Bashar al-Assad prepares to win his fourth seven-year term as president in a sham election on May 26th, his family’s hold on the country has shrivelled to a fraction of its original domain. Syria has been balkanised into a patchwork of fiefs. Scores of checkpoints line the route between Qamishli in the far east and the capital, Damascus, many beyond the regime’s control. So who actually controls Syria?

Almost as soon as Syria signed a treaty of independence with France in 1936 it began losing territory. In 1939, the population of Alexandretta in Syria’s far north-west voted in a referendum to join Turkey. And in 1967 Israel captured most of the Golan Heights in the south-west. But these were small losses compared with the unravelling that has followed the Syrian uprising in 2011. As protests turned to battles in the heart of Damascus, regime forces retreated from much of the country’s periphery, leaving local militias to seize control. In 2014, Islamic State, a jihadist group, took control of the Euphrates valley as well as the oilfields along the border of Iraq. At its nadir in 2014, the regime controlled just 30% of the country.

Today control has largely consolidated into four enclaves (see map), each with its own dominant ethnicity or sect, militia and, increasingly, currency. Mr Assad’s sect, the Alawites, still control their coastal heartland. They have also clawed back Syria’s mercantile cities from Aleppo south to Daraa, largely by devastating them. All told, they now rule about 60% of the country. An American-led coalition defeated Islamic State and delivered the north-eastern territory they took, oilfields included, to the Kurds. Turkey has created a haven for the Sunni fighters who fled the regime’s counter-attack. It has pushed deep into the north-west (including Idlib, where Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist group, holds sway). It has also seized a buffer beyond its southern border to prevent Kurdish forces from allying with their kinsmen, in revolt in Turkey. Rebels under loose Jordanian protection control small enclaves in the south. Islamic State still has a pocket inside regime-held scrubland in the east.

Mr Assad still says he wants to regain every inch of his country. But he may have reached his limits. Each sector has at least one foreign protector. Over the heads of the Assads, the Russians, Americans, Turks and Iranians have negotiated a series of stabilisation deals that demarcate territory and freeze the frontlines. Fighting has subsided from 200 attacks a day five years ago to around 40 a month. And even within his fief, Mr Assad remains tightly constrained. The state is so penurious that Druze tribes in the south (who follow an esoteric religion) and Arab ones in the east largely fend for themselves. Beyond his capital, Russian forces march unchecked. Iran and its proxy militias control much of the border zones east of Lebanon and west of Iraq. And Israel bombs with impunity. Mr Assad still harps about the glories of Arabic and Islamic civilisations. But for a dynasty that promised to resurrect Syria’s sovereignty, the Assads have failed.

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