The Syrian Civil War is now grinding on into its fourth year. Over 150,000 people have died, and tens more are being killed every day in the ongoing fighting. Millions have lost their homes. Many will almost certainly never return to them. This is by far the greatest disaster to have hit the Levant in a generation. It has impacted not only Syria itself, but also its neighbours – with most profound implications for Iraq and Lebanon.

Syria today has in many ways ceased to exist as a coherent entity. Since mid-2012, the regime of Bashar Assad has ruled over only a minority of the territory of the country (about 40 per cent) and a bare majority of its population. No united successor regime has arisen in the area not controlled by the regime. Rather, a number of projects are under way.

Perhaps the most powerful and consequential of these is the Islamic proto-state controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) organisation, stretching from Anbar and Ninawah provinces in western Iraq, up through eastern Syria to the Turkish border.

A Kurdish autonomous project has also emerged, ruling over three non-contiguous areas of majority Kurdish population in northern Syria. Elsewhere, a variety of rival Sunni Arab rebel groups have carved out fiefdoms of their own. The country today is a confusing patchwork of rival powers. The regime possesses a coherent entity stretching from the capital, Damascus and its environs, up to the western coastal area ­– the heartland of the Alawi sect to which the president belongs.

The regime has won a series of victories in recent months, first of all in the Qalamun mountains area, culminating in the capture of the town of Rankous. Regime forces followed this by clearing out the city of Homs, part of which had been held by the rebels since the first year of the uprising.

Read the article in full at Fathom Journal.