The fall of the Assad regime is by all accounts a monumental development in the history of the modern Middle East, and it came rapidly and unexpectedly. Though in some respects the war which began in 2011 has never fully ended, it was assumed that Assad had effectively won and as recently as last year there was talk of trying to bring Syria back into the international community. The war was by all accounts over. The resistance was reduced to a small and contained area. The country was far from healed or duly re-constituted, but the notion that the regime would fall seemed distant at best.
But everything changed in 2024. Russia's stalemate in Ukraine, the crushing of Hezbollah, Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Iran - as well as several bombing attacks every week on Syria, changed the situation. I think the timing might of also been a factor as the US political scene is in the midst of a transition. If a move was to be made, it needed to happen before the end of January 2025.
It seems clear enough that Assad simply stood down and in the face of defeat and coming massacres he decided that he'd had enough. He quietly abdicated and went into exile in order to protect his family. Russia and Iran obviously made it clear that they were not going to save him as they did in 2015, and Hezbollah is almost out of the picture at this point and what's left of their movement has enough on their plate in Lebanon fighting Israel. To launch a major defensive campaign in Syria was not a possibility.
Assad's army was impoverished and corrupt. People speak of him not reconciling with his people as the civil war wound down. The truth is the country is largely a fiction and always has been and the Assad paradigm was necessarily authoritarian. Anything less would mean the collapse of the regime and potential chaos if not a bloodbath for the minorities - including Assad's own Alawite community. The situation became increasingly acute in the aftermath of 9/11 and America's wars which have fostered instability and waves of Islamic radicalisation. As such when the protests began in 2011, he was not prepared to give an inch. But this time the protesters were not only more determined, they would suddenly receive a great deal of outside support - Salafists who were in turn supported by Western intelligence. In Libya it turned into an all out NATO air campaign. In Syria, the situation was more delicate and with greater risk. NATO stuck to its proxies and the plan was working until ISIS spun out of control, crossed into Iraq, and declared a caliphate, and around the same time both Iran and Russia began to intervene and aid Assad. The Western campaign of regime change stagnated and effectively collapsed - until 2024.
Why was the Assad regime so harsh? What brought the nation to this point? Was there a reason for it, or was the dictatorship nothing more than an exercise in Assad-family cruelty?
Syria, conceived as a unique, independent, and even sovereign state was created in connection with Lebanon out of the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920's. The British and French carved up the empire and created many new 'mandates' and eventual countries which hitherto had not existed as such. Syria was under French rule until 1946 at which point the Second Syrian Republic emerged (officially) in 1950. For the next thirteen years, the multi-ethnic nation struggled to find its identity and was ruled for a time by a military dictator. In 1958 it joined Nasser's United Arab Republic which sought (under the aegis of secular Pan-Arabism) to join Egypt and Syria with hopes of further expansion on the basis of Arab nationalism. The Syrian army staged a coup in 1961 and pulled Syria out of the union. For the next two years the country was in a state of instability until finally the Ba'ath Party (by means of another coup) took over in 1963. By 1971 Hafez al-Assad had consolidated power and he ruled as a dictator until his death in 2000, at which point his son Bashar took over.
The country is a mosaic of of Sunni, Shiite, Druze, Alawite, Kurd, Yezidi, Christian, and others. There is no true Syrian identity and no social consensus. The same is true Lebanon and Iraq - nations also created by the Western powers, nations that have troubled histories and have proven unable to form liberal democratic societies. In more recent years the West does not necessarily have a problem with this - as long as the ruling regime is compliant. If not, they play the liberal democracy card and invoke human rights and so forth in order to provoke war and regime change. The reality is that democracy won't work in a place like Syria. Those who believe in its universality are idealists who don't understand the necessary foundations for it to work and they clearly do not understand history.
For the people living under the Assads - the arrangement was simple. You could live your life in peace as long as you stayed out of politics. If you got political, you would end up in prison and possibly suffer torture. If there was mass resistance, there was a good chance of slaughter - such as what occurred at Hama in 1982. Otherwise you could worship freely and thrive, always understanding that those connected to the regime were going to be favoured and reap the economic benefits. For ethnic Christians and others it wasn't a bad arrangement and generally they favoured the Assad family. They have long feared political Islam which for many years was represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, but has since America's invasions in the early 2000's been represented by Salafist forces like al Qaeda and ISIS. A secular regime like that of the Assad dictatorship provided security. Democracy would simply mean Sunni domination.
That said, things have become so unbearable in the country due to war and the economic conditions that many proved willing and eager to see Assad gone - with the hope that something better might (they hope) appear, and that perhaps once a political life emerges (if in fact it does) there will be some hope of negotiation and change. They may regret such wishes in the days ahead.
The US played no small part in breaking the regime. By occupying the east of the country (with US troops and Kurdish proxies) since the ISIS campaign in 2014, Assad was blocked from accessing the oil wealth he would need to rebuild the country. The US also imposed crippling sanctions which were not lifted after the 2023 earthquake. This was suffering as a political strategy - hoping to breed poverty, discontent, desperation, and anger.
Western media played a critical role in this project and still is. The recent (and ridiculous) re-branding of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a moderate and nationalist group represents the latest effort. We've seen these 'moderate' rebels before. HTS was and is al Qaeda. The US cannot officially support such an organisation even though this was an on-the-ground reality way back in the early 2010's - and was quietly admitted in the halls of power.
HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani appeared on CNN just a week ago and was presented as a respectable resistance fighter. The fact that a multi-million dollar US bounty was on his head was conveniently ignored. Can you imagine an al Qaeda figure being interviewed on CNN back in the early 2000's? That's how sideways all of this has gone. Given the way this all seems to have been orchestrated, it would seem the al-Jolani interview was an introduction or roll out of sorts - the timing is just too perfect. Clearly a plan was in place and there were already talks going on behind the scenes between the major parties involved. The media just happened to be there as all the critical events were played out and they are of course eager to provide the justification for the regime's overthrow by being on-site as the prisons are opened. Focus on how bad Assad was and ignore who the Salafist 'rebels' are - there's nothing to see here.
The media has long spun the Syrian War. The charges concerning chemical weapons attacks were publicly disproven and cast into doubt - but you wouldn't know it if you limit yourself to Western mainstream media. Formed by a Western intelligence operative, the White Helmets who work with al Qaeda and other Salafist groups are nominated for prizes and promoted on Netflix. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) a British-based intelligence operation that is used by all mainstream media outlets even though its bias is patent, and there have been numerous occasions in which its accuracy has been challenged and found wanting.
Even now, HTS and al-Jolani are being presented as a force to bring liberal democracy to Syria - an absurdity as any analyst worth his salt will tell you. And yet if you listen close enough, there is some ambiguity among the statements of Western leaders. They don't want to align themselves hard and fast to HTS - because the situation will likely change and they may just be a flash in the pan, a means to an end. It's hard to see how anything other than a new chapter of civil war will come out of this. Right now the nation is completely fragmented and HTS has no tools, authority, or means of persuasion to re-unify the country. And given what has happened over the past few days, this is even more unlikely. With retributive killings already taking place (as expected) and Israel's widespread and highly destructive aerial campaign and seizure of territory, the country is more likely to fall into chaos and remain divided.
Türkiye has sponsored the Syrian National Army (SNA) once called the Free Syrian Army. It's interests are mostly related to the Kurds in the region as Ankara has fought a decades long battle against them in the southeast of the country. The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) was once based in Damascus and along with the Kurds, there are other areas of tension between Syria and Türkiye. Some are historic such as the dispute over Hatay and others are more recent - the Turkish dams on the Euphrates which have exacerbated water shortages in Syria. The desperation in parts of the country related to water shortages and economic struggle have undoubtedly played at least some part in radicalisation.
Türkiye is hostile to the Kurds forming an autonomous state on its southern border which would likely link up with Iraqi Kurdistan to the east. Ankara has launched military strikes into Iraq as well in order to combat these Kurdish fighters - who move freely across the porous border. The roughly 40 million Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a country - a casualty (once again) of World War I's aftermath and the drawing of lines on maps by British and French strategists. The Kurds remain divided between Türkiye, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
For Türkiye's part, it cannot grant legitimacy to Kurdish, Greek, or Armenian claims in Anatolia. All of these groups antedate the Turks and once privilege, reparations, or a settlement is granted - the viability of the Turkish state itself is in question.
Erdogan will certainly celebrate Assad's fall and he will back proxies in creating a buffer and use the territory to hold the Syrian Kurds in check. If he can exert influence in Damascus - even better from his perspective.
ISIS and al Qaeda are also part of the equation. Both have been reduced in strength and al Qaeda has clearly gone through various permutations built around personalities and national contexts. There are theological differences as well as disputes over how to wage war - as well as ultimate goals. Al Qaeda rejected the Caliphate claims made by al-Baghdadi in 2014. This is further complicated by the presence of Turkmen groups as well as Uighur affiliates of al Qaeda - a story which is connected to US policy and operations in Central Asia and within China itself.
These groups pursue their own interests but will also form practical alliances with other players in the region. Under Timber Sycamore and other programmes, the United States trained and armed various groups - including some of the Salafist militias. At this point in time they've changed names and gone through re-shuffles, but in many cases the same people are still in play. Officially the US admitted that some of these fighters might fight alongside al Nusra/al Qaeda and that some weapons might end up in the hands of groups like ISIS - but that was an unintended and unfortunate result. Numerous investigations and testimonies have exposed these claims as absurd.
These operations also included pipelines of weapons and fighters being shuttled initially from Libya, but ultimately from immigrant communities in Europe. And these shadowy ops are connected to some of the terror-related events in Europe which played no small role in shifting public sentiment to the Right over the course of the 2010's.
Some have labeled these nebulous operations as Gladio 2.0 - in reference to the original complex of Gladio programmes during the Cold War, when the US and its NATO assets sponsored Right-wing terror groups in order to sow chaos and engender hostility against the far left and communist parties in particular. In many cases their actions were deliberately blamed on Left-wing groups or there are other instances of infiltration in which Left-wing paramilitaries were duped or provoked into operations that worked against them politically. Italy's Gladio is the best known, documented, and widespread of these national operations and as such 'Gladio' is often used to refer to the spectrum of operations which spread to Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and beyond. The larger story is also connected to not just NATO, but organised crime, drug profits, and various episodes such as the Vatican Bank scandal of the late 1970's and early 1980's.
Whether one agrees with all of the reports and interpretations surrounding NATO support for Syrian fighters and Salafists - the one thing that is clear is this - the official narrative is bogus and the media has engaged in malpractice and disinformation. They have either aided in the cover-up (which I think is clear enough) or have suppressed stories and connections, and have shut down investigations - demonstrating collaboration with Western governments and thus journalistic corruption. The reporters who have laboured to expose this have been blacklisted and castigated and in some cases killed.
How will Syria be put back together? Even if a government was formed and democratic elections were held, what then? The Sunnis would dominate and the other groups would not have it. If their respective regions (which are not easily defined) are granted autonomy, the country will effectively be splintered and some regional players such as Ankara won't have that. And what happens when the Americans leave? Who gets the oil region? There's already fighting taking place in the Kurdish zone where oil is found.
While the Turks won't allow the Kurds to set up an autonomous zone, it's also unlikely Israel will allow the Shiites to form an autonomous region as it would become a potential forward operating base for Iran or the reconstitution of Hezbollah. The Alawites are heavily settled on the coast - would a Sunni majority (let alone Salafists) allow them to dominate the fertile, forested region with the nation's ports? Will the Druze continue to cede land in the south to Israel? Few at this point have raised the question of how this might spill over into Lebanon where these various groups are also represented. Indeed Syria and Lebanon have been often joined at the hip - the former usually dominating the latter.
Will the Russians simply withdraw and abandon naval bases they've held since the Cold War? It's possible - but not everyone will be encouraged by such a move.
The only way to keep the nation together is to grant autonomy to the various regions and try to hold them together by means of some kind of federalism. But this won't work and won't be allowed - nor can the nation simply be unified as such 'democracy' would spell disaster. What's the solution? There isn't one apart from a dictatorship or the permanent breakup of the country.
The fall of Assad represents a significant victory for the Likud-connected Neo-Conservative faction within US politics. Once intimately connected to the GOP, they always had supporters in the Democratic Party - including the likes of Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Today, their views have significant support among both parties - a majority among the Democrats who have shifted Right, and while they've lost some ground among the Trumpite Republicans, they still have considerable support within its ranks. The GOP has divided over questions of Russia and China as well as Trumpite unilateralism and its illusion of isolationism. Once castigated in Europe, the Neo-Conservative ethos actually has considerable support - largely among the Centre-Left parties that supported the US in Libya and Syria. The old opposition that reared its head against Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 has been significantly reduced.
Wesley Clark revealed a Neo-Con plot to invade seven Muslim countries back in 2003 - based on conversations he had in the fall of 2001. The Neo-Cons planned regime change operations in the following states: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. If you pause a moment and think about the course of events in these countries over the past twenty years, one is forced to conclude that the Neo-Con programme continues to be official policy despite the fact that they were completely discredited by the end of Bush's second term.
The difference is this - the plans have permutated and despite their broad agenda being pursued, in reality nothing has gone the way they planned. In some respects they've been highly successful and yet when viewed from another angle they are abject failures and have only succeeded in sowing chaos and producing rivers of blood and piles of bodies. One thing is certain - they are unrepentant and delusional.
Iraq didn't go as planned but Saddam Hussein was removed. Gaddafi was overthrown and brutally murdered in the streets. After a terrible civil war, the country is far from united, but at least the fighting has stopped for the present. Lebanon has gone through multiple political crises and is largely broken. Hezbollah, a chief target of their plan has been decimated by Israel over the last year. The Ayatollahs still rule in Iran but the plan to break their revolutionary regime is well advanced and the fall of Hezbollah and the Syrian regime represent significant and crucial steps along that road. Somalia's history is tangled but the official government is now a US proxy - though much of the country is outside its control and far from pacified. And Bashir's government in Sudan was overthrown in 2019 and the country is still in turmoil. The crisis there is epic in scale but ignored in light of US politics, Ukraine, Gaza, and murdered millionaire CEO's.
I listen to the myriad voices on the news and while some are cautious, some despairing and pessimistic, I also hear voices of hope. They hope that politics will be possible and some are eager to return as soon as possible. Others will be forced to do so as Austria and other European nations stand poised to force the Syrian refugees (who came in waves around 2015) to leave. Those that aren't talking about deportation are halting asylum applications and yet in all likelihood Syria's darkest days are yet to come.
Has no one learned anything from the examples of Iraq and Libya? I fear there is a bloodbath coming. The over half-million dead from the first round of civil war was not enough it would seem. The West wanted Assad gone and Netanyahu wants to re-draw the map of the Middle East. Be careful what you wish for, you may regret it in the end. I hope the Syrian people find peace but I think it unlikely.
I hear Americans including those connected with Trump suggest that the Syrian troubles 'have nothing to do with us'. It has everything to do with the United States. Washington started the regional fire over twenty years and smashed the delicate (if far from ideal) balancing act. Since then, Washington and its allies have poured an endless stream of fuel on the fire. There's plenty of blame to go around and plenty of bad actors, dishonesty, and corruption. But the US cannot claim innocence or ignorance. It cannot wipe its mouth and say it's done nothing wrong. Those that do so are far from being isolationists or peace-loving. These militarist vampires are eager to turn away from the Middle East because they have a bigger war they want to fight against China. Their lust for blood is insatiable.
See also:
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-questions-that-arise-with-syrias-re.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-august-2023-druze-anti-assad.html