Syria. The territory controlled by troops of Assad’s Alawite family regime is rapidly collapsing as the government army withdraws from Hama, Deir Ezzor on the Euphrates, and numerous other locations, fleeing into Iraq through the crossing kept open by the Iraqi authorities. Jihadist forces from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group are besieging Homs, while other rebel forces are taking control of large portions of the southwestern part of the country (Daraa and al-Sawidaa in the Druze-inhabited mountains), where the pro-democracy revolution that sparked the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011. Meanwhile, in eastern Syria, Syrian Kurdish SDF forces (backed by the US during the war against ISIS) are crossing the Euphrates and spreading westward. And to the south, rebel forces who have received training from the American military at the Al Walid base on the Iraqi-Syrian border are pushing north and north-west, aiming for the capital Damascus.
