The city of Allepo in Syria has fallen to the Syrian government forces and its key allies Russia and Iran. Allepo is a city in Syria, serving as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate.
According to Samer N Abboud, nobody can claim victory yet. Samer is an Assistant Professor of International Studies at Arcadia University, Pennsylvania. His current focus is on Syrian capital flight.
The Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad, and Syria's key allied forces are Russia and Iran. The opposing forces are anti-government rebels who are said to be backed by other western countries including the US.
Many regime defenders have declared the re-capture of Aleppo as the signal of the end of the Syrian war. Others have said it is not the end, but rather the beginning of the end.
"We should avoid such absolutisms today, which are driven more by political will than they are by any serious consideration of what destruction and suffering the conflict has engendered." says Samer in this Al Jazeera report.
Samer also says in the same report that saying this is the end of the war suggests not only that the fighting will cease, but that the regime has the total control already of Syria, that it can assert itself through the countryside and cities, control all of the militias, and begin engaging in reconstruction.
Fighting continues to run rampant throughout the country, not only in Aleppo and even in areas supposedly under regime control, insecurity and violence is still part of the daily lives of Syrians. International involvement and multilateralism in Syria's future are extremely unlikely now because of recent events.
Instead, the regime and its allies have relied on local agreements and truces as mechanisms for reconciliation and dialogue, even though they are just façade. The continuing aerial bombardment and the existence of armed groups simply mean that the violence will still exist in Syria and not just in Aleppo, and persist in different forms.
The Syrian regime and its supporters will be made bolder by what happened to Aleppo and will use this to assert their military and political will throughout Syria. The existence of so many militias and various regional interests may be the breeding grounds for more conflict, rather than cooperation.
Samer says: "We are thus faced with the proverbial victory of the battle at the expense of the larger war. The Syrian regime may indeed rid large parts of the country of rebels, as they did in Aleppo, but at what expense?
"This was achieved through excessive reliance on regional supporters, the destruction of the country, the tearing of its social fabric, and a long-term generational crisis of unparalleled trauma. Nobody can claim victory after all of this." See Al Jazeera report.
