From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, December three. The government says it will crack down on sexual violence in the military and change the rules for officers promotion, all part of a bid to stop defense personnel self harming and taking their own lives. That stories live right now at the Australian dot com Doreyu. Just when you thought you had your head around the
Middle East, now there's fresh conflict in Syria. Dictator Bashah al Assad is on a mission to reclaim the city of Aleppo from rebels who seized it in a surprise raid over the weekend. Assad is backed by Iran, Russia and Hesbalah. But they're all a little busy right now. Today our chief international correspondent, Cameron Stewart joins me to
sort out who's who and what they're fighting for. It was a stunning and unexpectedly successful assault, the relative stability brought about by decades of dictator rule destroyed in a matter of days. In Aleppo's town squares, Rebels fired guns into the sky. Music blared from vehicles as they skidded across concrete and monuments to Syrian president Bashah al Assad were toppled for days. The attack went unanswered by Syria's military. Its allies in Russia and Iran finally sent reinforcements for
the regime to Hummer in the nation's northwest. The rebels storming into Aleppo on the back of Toyota Hiluxes are in Islamist militia called Hayat Tarier a cham HTS. Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent.
When the Syrian Civil War pretty much ended in about twenty eighteen, they had a bastion up in the northwest of the country and they've had their own little community basically that they've run without being harassed by the Syrian government. And what they did was they took this opportunity that it was a great time to give a go at knocking off Bashah l Assad, of course, the Syrian dictator. They've been waiting to do this for a long time.
And so what they did was they charged into Aleppo, the huge northern city up there, and they went through it in seventy two hours. And I think they even shocked themselves how quickly they took the city and all of a sudden, you have a civil war which has been reignited.
Syria's civil war began in twenty eleven, growing out of the so called Arab Spring uprisings, where mass protests across the Middle East began calling for democratic reform. In Syria, the protesters were demanding an end to the regime of dictator Bashah al Asad, a former ophthalmologist and soldier who's been in power since two thousand, when he took over
from his father, Hafez al Assad. Russia swept in on the side of Bashi al Assad, helping him launch a ruthless crackdown as the rebellion ballooned into a full blown war. From twenty fifteen, Russian airstrikes killed tens of thousands of Syrians and shifted the war in Asad's favor. But now Russia's busy handling its own brutal war in Ukraine.
So the situation has come about because of two seismic events in the world. One was the October seven Hamas massacre of Israelis and also Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So what that's done is it's knocked out the three main allies of Assad, the three allies who helped him win that civil war from twenty eleven to twenty eighteen, and they were Hesbalah in Lebanon, and also Iran, and also Russia.
And each of those allies is now involved fighting against democracies, very much weakened, very much distracted, and very much not in the mood to be sending an awful lot of military assistance as they did last time to Asad. So suddenly he now finds himself much more alone than he ever was, with this rebel group advancing very quickly towards him.
Let's talk about that trio cam Iran, Hesbala and Russia. Hezbla is essentially a puppet of Iran. It's the way Iran flexes its muscle in Lebanon and therefore inflicts pain on Israel, on Iran's behalf. But what's Russia's role in this game?
Russia, It considers Syria a very valuable, its most valuable ally in the region. And in twenty fifteen, Russia effectively turned around the civil war in Asad's favor by providing troops and air support. And you might recall very very vigorous and quite brutal Russian bombing of Syrian cities and that really did turn the war in Assards. In fact, frankly, it saved him as a president. So he's been very grateful to Russia ever since. Now Russia is still its biggest,
his biggest supporter. It still has warplanes in the country and in fact, we've actually seen some of these planes being deployed to bomb Aleppo in the last few days, because after the rebels took it over. But the thing is, the Russians took a lot of the military support they had in Syria out of Syria and brought it back to Russia to be deployed.
Against Ukraine in the war against Ukraine.
And so there are far fewer Russian forces now in Syria than there were before, and it really is an open question as to how much use they are going to be. Certainly there'll be much use, much less used to Asad than they were last time.
And what's in it for Vladimir Persian to be propping up for al Assad.
He wants to be a geostrategic player, He wants to have influence around all of Russia's region and with Syria, you know, he has a base there that he can propagate Moscow's interests political, strategic, economic from that base, and he is He worries that if he loses Assad, then Russia loses its influence in the Middle East.
The rebel army that's taken Aleppo back has connections to Turkey. What do we know about that relationship.
Yes, it's a very shady relationship. Before this group HTS which is what the rebel group is. It's an offshoot of the Nusra Front, which in fact was allied to Al Qaedra at one point, although they are distancing themselves very much from that. They say they are a much more moderate group. But they're still listed as a terror group by the United States, and they are being backed by Turkey, but we don't quite know to what extent
they're being backed by Turkey. Turkey does not like Asad, it wants Assad out, but how much it actually likes this group is very unclear too, because you have an Islamist group that is labeled as a terror organization fighting Assad, who of course is backed by Russia, Iran and HESBLA, and of course is no friend of the West either.
Coming up, the rebel militia was formally linked to Al Qaeda, So is it going to be kinder to civilians than side that's after the break. Presumably the enemies of Bashah alas Sade, for example, the United States and perhaps Israel would be glad that there's a distraction going on for him now, that that Syria is now riven again by civil war, and that he'll have to turn his focus on defeating this insurgency in Aleppo. But what does it mean for the rest of the region? Cam If anything.
It certainly destabilizes the region Claire. It's amazing how it's been like this ever since October seven. It has spread like a bushfire, fairly slowly. Obviously into Gaza. We've had the warring Gaza, then we had it spread into Lebanon. We've had the Hooties in Yemen being attacking and being bombed. We've had Iranian bat militia in Syria and in Iraq attack Israel. I mean, the region is very slowly going up in flames, and it's getting larger and larger with
every passing month. And so to have the possibility of another civil war in Syria is hugely destabilizing for the entire region. And we don't know yet of course what where this offensive will go. I think the rebels have surprised themselves by going so quickly so far, and so it's going to be interesting to see whether they want to keep pushing on towards Damascus to really threaten Assad's
actual existence. And of course it's unclear to what degree the allies of Asad will come to his aid, because as we said, they are so weak and compared to what they once were. So will Assad actually mount a major offensive to try and retake a leper or is he not strong enough? And they're the questions I think in the next three or four days we're going to see answered.
Ordinary Syrians have suffered terribly under Bashah al Assad. He's a brutal dictator. His regime has been accused of shocking crimes of terror against his own people. But is there any suggestion that life would be better for them under the rebel army.
People are actually fleeing the government controlled areas Assyria and going up to the rebel held areas that includes in the northwest which are controlled by the Hts, and in the northeast of.
Syria, which is controlled by the Kurds.
And the reason why they're doing that is because the basics of life up there are seen to be better than they are in the government controlled areas, and that means very simple things like electricity and water supplies, etc. They're much better organized than they are in the government controlled areas, and I think that flight speaks a lot to the fact that Assad is very much on the nose, and that's partly because he promised to be the civil war to improve the economy.
It really didn't happen.
The economic conditions across the government controlled areas are very very grim, and people who have been cheering their rebels as they came in to a Leppo and move further south, locals have been going out and cheering them. So I think that says a lot about how Asad is on the nose.
You mentioned the Kurds. That's an ethnic group that's been fighting for their own homeland for many, many generations. Now they're managing to run what seems like a fairly functional state in the northeast of Syria. Who's backing the Curds now and what role do they play in relation to the other side regime.
Well, they've basically got the northeast of Syria. Now that was sort of after the Civil war, they just occupied that the government troops could not come back and retake it, so it's almost like an autonomous region for them at the moment.
Clear, even though it's very unofficial.
The US, though, has backed the Kurds, and in fact there's US troops stationed in the eastern there's several hundred of them there. Now there's no suggestion that the US is going to suddenly back the curves to move against a sad but they are a big player in this whole equation, and you know they're sitting there and they
don't want to sard in power either. So there's lots of opposition groups who have different ideologies up in northern Syria that want a side out of power, but they don't necessarily agree with each other.
Cameron Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. The Family Court has granted cross sex hormone treatment to a gender dys for a fifteen year old born a boy but who has identified as a girl since the age of three. It's a complex case and the judge says there's a lack of legal material about whether kids who transition end up with regret that's an exclusive live now at the Australian dot Com dot a