What’s at Stake in Syria’s Battle for Aleppo: QuickTake Q&A

Even a war as pitiless as Syria’s can have a low point. The battle for Aleppo has produced carnage, civilian suffering and, according to some, war crimes on a scale rarely surpassed in the five-year conflict. Backed by Russian airstrikes and militias supported by Iran, forces belonging to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad are fighting all-out to definitively defeat rebels who have held on to eastern parts of the city. Trapped there are an estimated 275,000 civilians in increasingly dire circumstances.

Before the Arab Spring uprising against Assad began as peaceful protests in 2011, Aleppo was Syria’s economic capital and its most populous city. After armed conflict broke out, the country divided increasingly along sectarian lines. Aleppo, with its Sunni Muslim majority, became a symbolic center of the insurgency seeking to topple Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Northern Syria, including Aleppo, was the target of an early offensive to expel government forces by the Free Syrian Army, led by officers who had defected from the military. That failed, and Aleppo has been divided ever since. That neither side could prevail in the city has symbolized the larger stalemate in the conflict. A government victory there would put all the major population centers under Assad’s control and free up regime forces to focus on remaining opposition strongholds, including around the capital Damascus.