The Long and Winding Road to Damascus
The fall of the Syrian regime is a cause for celebration, but caution is just as warranted.
In just under two weeks, the Syrian rebels were able to do what they could not accomplish in over a decade: defenestrate Bashar al-Assad and destroy his evil dictatorial regime. The Assad dynasty, in power in Damascus for over half a century, collapsed in a matter of days, revealing the deep cracks in the artifice of Syria’s governing autocracy. Without his external support systems – namely Russian air attacks, Iranian advisors, and Hezbollah fighters – Assad was nothing more than a paper tiger. The Syrian army simply melted away when faced with even the slightest of opposition; after all, this all began with what the rebel forces believed was a stand-off over Aleppo and morphed rapidly into the overthrow of one of the worst regimes in modern history.
That destruction of the Assadist regime should absolutely be a cause for celebration among those who oppose tyranny, support human rights, and seek a less powerful regional influence for Tehran and Moscow. Bashar al-Assad, despite the idea early on in his tenure that he may be a friendlier face in Syria, was an abhorrent and wretched butcher of his own people. He gassed them, put them in some of the most tortuous prisons this side of the Lubyanka, and used despicable military tactics to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians and political opponents. Syrian Ba’athism, just like the Iraqi Ba’athism of Saddam Hussein, was a truly appalling ideology founded entirely on the oppression of its citizenry for the benefit of the ruling clan. It is absolutely a good thing that Assad will no longer run Syria and that he has fled to the warm bosom of his patron in Moscow. Good riddance.
The world would be a much better place, however, had this man been overthrown in 2011 when the Syrian civil war began, but the Obama administration failed miserably at managing the crisis. Instead of strongly supporting the then-moderate rebel factions, ones who actually desired a pluralistic democratic state, Obama dithered and permitted Assad to gain reinforcement from Iran and Russia. And that reinforcement allowed the regime to destroy the moderate opposition, presenting Assad as the only thing stopping Syria from becoming a jihadist hellhole.
That brings us to the non-celebratory part of the Assad regime’s downfall – the major faction that actually did topple the government. They are not at all moderate forces, but are, in fact, jihadist Islamist ideologues. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main force that toppled the Syrian government, is merely a rebranded version of Jabhat al-Nusra, a subsidiary and affiliate of al Qaeda. The rebrand was pushed by Qatar and Turkey, the region’s primary supporters of Sunni Islamist factions like the Muslim Brotherhood, solely to hide the terrorist inclinations of the group and falsely present it as a ‘moderate’ option.
Still, many foreign observers are treating HTS like it is a liberal group fully intending to shape an open, pluralistic society – entirely on the basis of statements from its leadership. They buy the idea that ethnic and religious minority rights will be safeguarded, ignoring the evidence that attacks on these communities have already commenced. The Biden administration has pledged to send foreign aid dollars to Damascus to help rebuild the country, in shades of the White House’s acceptance of Taliban rule over Afghanistan. The new power in Syria is no longer a tool of Iran and Russia, but of Turkish and Qatari Islamists; this is not a sea change by any means. Despite resetting the Syrian table, HTS is unlikely to be a significant upgrade from Assad in the long run, for the Syrian people, our regional allies, or American interests.
The last point is particularly important, as there is widespread contention on the online right that this upending of Syrian politics was a project of the United States under the outgoing president. This could not be further from the truth. America was not the secret hand pulling the strings behind this rapid end to the Assad regime; we were actually caught off-guard by the speed and success of the final rebel offensive. In reality, the Biden team – and the Obama administration whose policy it built upon – was not at all interested in an end to the Syrian regime, but an accommodation with it. The foreign policy consensus under Obama/Biden was to conciliate Iran, avoid confrontation with Russia, and sideline our traditional allies in Israel and the Gulf States, all in the aim of extracting America from the Middle East. This is why support for the moderate factions in 2011 was not forthcoming, why the ‘red line’ against chemical weapons use was never enforced, and why the Biden administration was just recently considering sanctions waivers for Damascus. In short, the United States was not only not behind this rebel success, it was very nearly on the other side of it.
The lightning collapse of the Assad regime was due to other factors, both indirect and direct. The indirect cause was the withdrawal of support from its allies, Russia and Iran, due to conflicts elsewhere. For Russia, the war in Ukraine has sucked up most of Moscow’s manpower and materiel, leaving Syria as a geopolitical afterthought. Iran has had far worse problems, as its existential war against Israel, begun by Hamas on October 7, has backfired totally, leading to the devastation of Hezbollah armies that helped sustain the Assad regime. Without these supports, the Syrian government fell quickly with even a basic direct assault. That direct cause was provided by the aforementioned Turkish-backed Islamist rebels who ended up capturing the whole country in less than a fortnight. Other groups, namely the Kurds, took advantage of the collapse of the Assad regime and gained territory of their own, setting the stage for more conflict down the line. Bashar al-Assad may be in Moscow, but the fighting is not over and the situation is still in flux.
There are several regional and global actors that will be impacted by the revolutionary upheaval in Damascus, from the Syrians themselves to the United States. In Syria, none of the options seem very good; either the Islamist jihadist faction will consolidate power and create a state in line with its malign ideology, the internecine combat will continue, or ISIS will return in force, bolstered by prison escapees. The Syrian people deserve freedom and self-determination, but it is unlikely to shake out that way in the near future. And that is a shame. For the Kurds, perhaps the only good guys in the whole situation, things look fairly bleak. Although they are free of the Assadist yoke, they are now faced with an unconstrained Turkey and its Islamist proxies who are dedicated to marginalizing or eliminating this ethnic minority population. This is a fight for their very existence, and unfortunately, they will have little in the way of external support.
For other regional powers, the situation presents a potential challenge or an opportunity. For Israel, the opportunity to secure its borderland with Syria is once-in-a-lifetime. Jerusalem has already taken advantage, fully securing the approaches to the Golan Heights, including Mount Hermon, and destroying the chemical weapons stockpiles held by the Assad government. These actions will help secure the future of Israel’s strategically important northern territories. Iran and Russia are dealing with the opposite: a major challenge to their regional position and geopolitical prestige. These two enemies of America are the biggest losers in the whole situation, being revealed as fair-weather friends and relatively weak at power projection abroad. Iran lost a satrapy and one of the key tentacles surrounding Israel, as well as the primary supply route for weapons going into Lebanon for Hezbollah. Russia lost access to its major military bases at Tartus and Latakia, removing a critical warm-water port from Russian control and hampering efforts at power projection further afield. This humiliation, along with the failure of Russian military equipment, has undermined Moscow’s status overseas significantly.
Turkey, on the other hand, is the big winner. Ankara is making a strong play for regional hegemony under the banner of a revived Islamism, acting against both American and Israeli interests in the process. Erdogan has played his cards quite well, retaining the NATO umbrella while operating in conflict with its major aims in the region. He has bargained European security for his nation’s vendetta against the Kurds, undermining NATO’s primary mission for his personal gain. Syria is no longer an Iranian satrap, but it may quickly become a new sanjak in the neo-Ottoman project being implemented by Ankara. If that is the case, let Turkey have the responsibility for repairing the war-torn nation it is inheriting.
On that note, American involvement in the new Syria should be minimal, with the exception of policing actions intended to protect our allies in the area, both Israeli and Kurdish. America has no national interest in rebuilding Syria, especially if it is destined to become an outpost of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group rife with anti-American sentiment. Washington should hope for a democratic future for the Syrian people, but it is not our job to make that dream into a reality. That is for the Syrian people to achieve themselves. We should wish them luck in that admirable endeavor.