Capture of highway seen as turning point in Syrian civil war

BEIRUT — It is arguably one of the most coveted prizes in Syria’s civil war, and after eight years of fighting, Syrian President Bashar Assad has got it back.

The Damascus-Aleppo highway, or the M5, is known to Syrians simply as the “International Road.” Cutting through Syria’s major cities, the highway is key to who controls the country.

Assad gradually lost control over the M5 from 2012, when various rebel groups fighting to topple him began seizing parts of the country. Protests against his family’s rule had erupted the year before amid a wave of uprisings in the Arab world. The protests spiraled into a civil war, following a brutal government crackdown on dissent.

Historically a bustling trade route, one Syrian analyst, Taleb Ibrahim, called the M5 “the most basic and strategic highway in the Middle East.”

For the Turkey-backed rebels fighting Assad, the highway was a cornerstone in holding together their territory and keeping government forces at bay. Its loss marks a mortal blow for opposition fighters whose hold on their last patches of ground in northwestern Syria is looking more and more precarious.

The M5 starts in southern Syria, near the border with Jordan, and runs all the way north to the city of Aleppo near the Turkish border. The 280-mile highway links the country’s four largest cities and population centers: Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, cutting through Idlib province.

Before the war, the M5 served as an economic artery for Syria — mainly feeding the country’s industrial hub of Aleppo.

Regaining control over the highway was a top priority of the Assad government since the early days of the war. Its slow and tortuous recovery, in many ways, traces the arc of the Syrian war, which has killed nearly half a million people and...