Author: Marika Sosnowski, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne

Sometimes nothing happens for years. And then years – decades even – happen in a few days. Over the past ten days, a range of Syrian rebel forces led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have mounted an offensive against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. They first captured Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city and economic hub, and then swept rapidly south through Hama, Homs and finally Damascus. The rebels were met with little to no resistance from the Syrian regime, nor its Russian, Iranian or Hezbollah allies. And so, the 54-year-old regime led by Hafez al-Assad and then his…