November 27 – 30, 2024 · Aleppo Governorate Theater
November 27 – 30, 2024
On November 27, 2024, a rebel coalition led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army launched Operation Deterrence of Aggression out of the Idlib pocket — the last opposition enclave, frozen since the 2020 ceasefire. What was expected to be a limited probing attack collapsed the front within hours. The Syrian Arab Army, hollowed out by a decade of desertion, unpaid conscripts, and officers running smuggling rackets rather than units, simply dissolved. Aleppo — the city Assad had spent four years and tens of thousands of lives reconquering between 2012 and 2016 — fell in roughly seventy-two hours, with rebels driving into the city center against almost no organized resistance. Russian airpower, absorbed by Ukraine, arrived late and thin; Hezbollah, gutted by its 2024 war with Israel, never came at all.
Commanders