As 2015 came to a close the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and its Russian backers are on the offensive against a plethora of armed groups. However, despite Russia's intervention to prop it up, that regime has been slow to regain territory. The Syrian Kurds on the other hand had an immensely successful year.
The brutal Islamic State (ISIS) siege on Kobani ended in January 2015. The Kurds had held out and with U.S. air support managed to fight back ISIS's vicious onslaughts killing approximately 2,000 of the jihadis. Since then, according to an IHS Jane study from December, the Syrian Kurds went on the offensive against ISIS recuperating 186% more territory than they had at the start of the year when ISIS nearly overran all of their territories.
The Syrian Kurds would go on to force ISIS from Gire Spi (Tal Abyad) in the summer, cutting off ISIS from Syria's entire northeastern border with Turkey. It would press on further south putting increasing pressure on Raqqa while at the same time consolidating control over the Al-Hasakah Province. As 2015 came to a close they captured the strategically important Tishreen Dam from ISIS giving them a foothold over the Euphrates River and putting them in a position to prevent the group from moving back and forth and further denying Raqqa any access to the outside world to either bring in new recruits or smuggle out oil or artifacts to generate revenue.
On the other hand the Syrian regime has suffered many territorial losses over the course of 2015. While its enemies are too weak to march on Damascus the regime also failed to re-consolidate its control over vast swaths of Syria. In May 2015 it endured an embarrassing loss when almost the entire northwestern province of Idlib fell to a coalition of Islamists, that same month the ancient city of Palmyra also fell to the Islamic State (ISIS), the only other group to completely wrest a Syrian provincial capital completely from regime control. Some Syrian soldiers are holding onto Deir Ezzor further east but ISIS controls vast areas of that provincial capital and wider province.
Despite close Russian air support the regime has yet to reverse the losses at Idlib and Palmyra. IHS Jane's estimated that the Syrian regime lost 16% of territory it controlled at the beginning of the year. As of writing Syrian forces are seeking to re-consolidate their control over territory in the country's south province of Deraa where Russian warplanes are helping them rout anti-Assad fighters, some of whom have been trained by U.S. advisers in nearby Jordan.
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