NEARLY six years into the civil war, the government in Damascus believes that, at last, it is winning. The Syrian army, bolstered by Russian air power, is prevailing in battles against the rebels. But with each passing month the conflict becomes more complicated. Officials in Damascus say there are now 85 different nationalities fighting on Syrian soil.

“The government controls around 50 per cent, the militant Islamic State (IS) group controls 25 per cent and the rest is held by a combination of jihadist and other rebels,” said Alaa Ibrahim, a Damascus-based freelance journalist who has worked for both Western and Syrian state media outlets. The government has the advantage of holding most of the major population centres.

Sources in Damascus say that there are a few hundred Pakistanis fighting on both sides of the conflict. Some Shias, recruited whilst on pilgrimage in Iran, have been flown to Damascus from Qom, so as to fight with the government forces. Sources say the Shia fighters arrive in Syria with a tag around their neck, but no paperwork.

Their records are all held in Qom, Iran. The IS also has Pakistani recruits. Officials say they have intercepted messages being spoken in Seraiki, Pashto and Urdu. It is believed some of the Sunni recruits have been ‘airlifted’ out of southern Punjab.

Hundreds of Pakistanis are believed to be fighting on both sides of war

The Western powers are still calling for President Bashar al-Assad to stand down. They point not only to the humanitarian disasters in areas besieged by the government but also to the government’s long-standing record of political repression. Amnesty International believes that since 2011 at least 17,000 people have died in Syria’s detention centres.

Many frontlines are still fluid and the conflict could last for many years yet. The most visible flashpoint is the ancient trading city of Aleppo, much of which lies in ruins. The east of the city, held by rebels and populated by 250,000 people, is not only besieged but also regularly bombarded by Syrian and Russian forces. Winning control of eastern Aleppo is now the Syrian government’s top priority and with US president-elect Donald Trump expressing support for Russian military objectives in Syria, there has been a resumption of air strikes.

The rebels’ attempts to break the siege means that bombs also land in government-held western Aleppo sometimes.

The ancient market in the city’s old quarter — once a world heritage site — is now in ruins. The ability of rebel snipers to fire at people walking through the old city means that no attempt to clean it up has even begun. An area which for centuries has been overflowing with trading activity is now home to a few stray cats picking their way through the debris of war.

“We used to have a thousand factories,” said Fares Shehabi, one of the city’s members of parliament and chairman of the Syrian Chamber of Industry. “Now we are operating at 10 per cent of what we used to have.”

Mr Shehabi is subject to EU sanctions for providing economic support to the Assad government.

In July last year President Assad gave a speech to the nation in which he admitted that his forces were so stretched they were withdrawing from some of the territory they held. “Concern for our soldiers forces us to let go of some areas,” he said. A few months later Russia entered the conflict and transformed the government forces’ situation. Since then IS and other rebels forces have lost significant amounts of territory.

A country in ruins

The conflict has ruined the country. The UN’s Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has estimated the number of deaths since the war began at over 400,000. More than 11 million people have been forced to flee their homes. Throughout the country towns and villages — emptied of their residents — are little more than rubble.

The Russians are just one of many foreign powers now involved in Syria. President Assad is also backed by militias from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Against him are the Syrian Kurds and Sunni Arab rebels aided by Turkey, the Gulf monarchies and Saudi Arabia.

Syrian officials complain that they face an international war being fought by proxy. But some of the frontlines reflect long-standing internal rivalries. The Syrian Kurds now occupy a narrow band of land running alongside Syria’s border with Turkey. Called Rojava, the territory has created anxiety not only in Damascus but also many other capitals in the region.

Turkish troops are now in Syria and Ankara wants to turn Rojava into a 30-kilometre-deep buffer zone in which it can resettle Syrian refugees.

The coming battle for the IS’s headquarters in Raqqa will bring these differing ambitions into conflict. Turkey wants to be involved in the offensive and insists the Kurds should be kept away from it. But the Kurds have some of the strongest forces near Raqqa and are seen by the US as an important asset in the campaign to liberate the city.

In Syria – as in Iraq - the US is trying to focus on opposing the militant Islamic State group. But the Pentagon’s efforts faced a severe setback when a $500 million training programme begun in the spring of last year was abruptly cancelled six months later. It turned out that far from creating a force of around 15,000 rebels, the US managed to train around 100. When they crossed into Syria to fight, they were rapidly captured by IS and ended up handing over US-supplied weapons to the militants.

Millions of Syrians have left the country. But those that have expressed anything critical of the government fear that if they return to their country they will be detained and meet a very uncertain fate. And the splits between militants and more secular-minded fighters within the opposition ranks have led to some confusion “We know exactly what we are against, but we don’t really know exactly what we want,” said Khalid Elekytiar, a Syrian writer now based in Beirut.

Even if the Syrian government can make some advances in the next few months, the longer-term picture is far harder to predict. President Assad shows no sign of reaching out to reconcile with his political opponents. There could be battles for many years to come, with some areas ruled by competing tribal, criminal and jihadi warlords.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2016