I interviewed Syria’s militias at the start of the war – they will listen if other countries engage them

By William Plowright, Assistant Professor in International Security, Durham University

On Sunday morning, the world woke up to news it perhaps had stopped thinking was possible. The murderous regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, is gone and the Syrian civil war may be coming to an end after 13 years of suffering.

In just a few days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – an armed Islamist group based in Idlib in the north of Syria – swept south, overrunning Aleppo and Homs and then taking the capital…

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