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Syria After Assad: Hope and Fear for the Future
After decades of oppression and 14 years of war, it will take much more to heal these wounds and guarantee a new era of freedom, justice, prosperity, and reconciliation.
Dec 13, 2024
Syria, known throughout history as the “crossroads of civilization,” now finds itself at a crossroads of its own. After 54 years, the Assad family’s brutal dictatorship in Syria has finally ended.
“I never thought I’d live to see this day,” said my dad, who left Aleppo as a teenager. My parents grew up there.
After Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, elated Syrians rejoiced in the streets. Moving videos emerged of political prisoners being freed after enduring decades of torture in the regime’s notorious prisons. The whereabouts of many still remain unknown.
In addition to respecting Syria’s territorial integrity and the aspirations of its people in a future government, the U.S. should immediately lift all sanctions on Syria to help with reconstruction and economic recovery.
Assad’s fall is undeniably worth celebrating—it’s a rare unifying force for a deeply fractured country. But after decades of oppression and 14 years of war, it will take much more to heal these wounds and guarantee a new era of freedom, justice, prosperity, and reconciliation.
The popular uprising for Syrian dignity that ignited in March 2011 was violently crushed by Assad and morphed into several proxy wars involving Russia, Iran, Israel, the U.S., Turkey, and numerous armed groups, including al Qaeda-linked terrorists.
Heinous war crimes and other human rights violations were committed by all parties throughout the war, which has killed over 350,000 people. In the world’s largest forced displacement crisis, over 13 million Syrians have either fled their country or have been displaced within its borders.
The war has damaged Syria’s infrastructure while Western sanctions have further shattered Syria’s economy. Poverty is widespread, and more than half of the population currently grapples with food insecurity.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), once allied with al Qaeda in Syria, was largely responsible for Assad’s overthrow on December 8. Designated by the U.S as a terrorist organization, HTS has its own track record of brutality in Syria. The rebel group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, founded the Al Nusra Front, once had ties to ISIS, and still has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.
Jolani has since renounced his ties with al Qaeda and recently said he supports religious pluralism in Syria. But it’s reasonable to be skeptical that HTS and its allies are now truly committed to freedom, justice, and human rights for all long-suffering Syrians.
Still, foreign occupation and intervention are antithetical to a sovereign and “free” Syria.
Following Assad’s fall, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes and unlawfully seized more territory beyond its illegal, 57-year occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights. Whether Turkey gives up occupied land in northern Syria also remains to be seen, especially if Syrian Kurds end up forming an autonomous region within the country.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military still occupies part of Syria, including the oil fields in the northeast, and it’s unclear when the U.S. will withdraw its remaining 900 soldiers. In addition to respecting Syria’s territorial integrity and the aspirations of its people in a future government, the U.S. should immediately lift all sanctions on Syria to help with reconstruction and economic recovery.
As a Syrian American, I try to remain hopeful as I think about my relatives in Aleppo, friends in Damascus, and the generous strangers who’ve taken care of me as their own when I’ve visited. I look forward to returning to a Syria where people can finally breathe, rebuild, and live in dignity. But I also fear for the future.
Syrians have always taken pride in their rich ethnic and religious diversity. An inclusive and democratic government that guarantees the equal rights of all Syrians is essential to ensuring that the country stays unified and doesn’t plunge into sectarian chaos. It would be tragic if one authoritarian ruler is replaced by another or the country becomes balkanized into armed factions.
While much remains uncertain and immense challenges are ahead, prioritizing the immediate needs of Syrians is a logical first step. And, more than anything else, we must ensure that the Syrian people are the ones who steer the destiny of a peaceful, post-war Syria that reflects their remarkable resilience, courage, hopes, and dreams.
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The West Celebrates Assad’s Fall, But What Comes Next May Be Even Worse
How can the fall of the admittedly brutal Assad regime create a “historic opportunity” for the Syrian people when the country is now under the control of jihadists?
Dec 11, 2024
The toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was cheered by U.S. President Joe Biden and other major Western leaders, like French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as it ended the reign of a brutal regime more than 13 years after Assad’s crackdown on anti-government protests ignited Syria’s civil war.
Indeed, Biden described Assad’s fall as a “historic opportunity” for the Syrian people, echoing Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS) that took over Syria, who said, “This victory, my brothers, is historic for the region.”
But wait. Isn’t HTS on the list of banned terrorist groups and Jolani a jihadist militant whose journey began in Iraq with links to al Qaeda and later to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI)? So why is the West cheering for al Qaeda and its allies?
When all is said and done, forcing regime change rarely succeeds.
The European Union Agency for Asylum describes HTS as a coalition of Islamist Sunni armed groups that “frequently commit serious human rights abuses, including harassment, assassinations, kidnapping, and torture, as well as unlawful detention of civilians.” It goes on to say that “civilians have also been extorted and kidnapped for ransom” and that “the group has conducted formal military campaigns, assassinations, hostage takings, and ‘lone wolf’ operations, including suicide bombings,” while “members of religious minorities have been forced to convert to Islam and adopt Sunni customs.”
So, what is going on here? How can the fall of the admittedly brutal Assad regime create a “historic opportunity” for the Syrian people when the country is now under the control of jihadists? But we’ve been witness to this comedy drama before. From 1979 to 1989, the United States (along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) armed and financed the Afghan Islamist fighters known as the mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet Union. The plan from the beginning was to keep the Islamist insurgency going for as long as possible, thus sucking the Soviets into a Vietnam-style quagmire.
The Islamist fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets was “the good jihad,” according to Washington. The mujahideen were fighting for peace against an enemy of the Western world and deserved U.S. support. Of course, we know how that turned out.
The Bush administration embarked on a campaign against terrorism following the 9/11 attacks, with the first phase of the campaign focusing on “capturing or killing bin Laden, destroying his al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, and deposing the Taliban-regime.”
Undoubtedly, bombing into oblivion the Islamists in Syria if the new government, headed by Mohammed al-Bashir who has been appointed as interim prime minister, fails to lead a new path is a contingency plan that Washington has probably already considered. The job, in fact, could be given to Israel, for whom bombing is second nature. Since the fall of Assad, Israel has already carried out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria, targeting airports, naval bases, and military infrastructure. And the U.S. Central Command announced that it has struck more than 75 targets, including ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps.
Hypocrisy and duplicity, followed in the end by astonishing moral and political somersaults, are trademarks of the way Washington and its Western allies approach world affairs and conduct diplomacy. And these elements have been in full display since the start of Syria’s civil war. The Obama administration provided support to the anti-Assad forces, primarily to the Free Syrian Army forces and its affiliates, but the CIA began to support other groups as early as 2013 even though they had jihadi orientations. CIA’s covert operation against the Syrian regime, known as Timber Sycamore, was a joint effort with Saudi Arabia that had long ties with radical Islamist groups. But regime change is what Washington was after in Syria, so everything else was of secondary concern.
The fall of the Assad regime has staggering implications for security in the region, but the speed with which it collapsed suggests that, in the end, it may have been mainly internal rather than external pressures that made the difference. Syria was under imperialist attack for the past 13 years. The U.S. (along with Turkey) backed and funded mercenaries and terrorist forces against Assad’s regime, imposed economic isolation of the country through sanctions, and denied plans that would have contributed to reconstruction even though aid was desperately needed for civilians. In April 2017, the U.S. even ordered direct military action against Syria in retaliation for the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. The Trump administration claimed to have been moved by the deaths of some 80 civilians; yet then-President Donald Trump refused to lift his ban on accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S.
But the Assad regime had created a hellish place, with 90% of Syrians living in poverty and widespread malnutrition. The country was in a vicious downward spiral. The economy had plummeted by 85% due to nearly 14 years of civil war. The inflation rate had risen to over 120% in 2024 while electricity production had dropped by 80%, with power outrages having become a common phenomenon. And the only thing that the Assad’s regime had to offer was more repression.
Still, the collapse of the regime, now celebrated throughout the Western world, raises more questions than answers. There are too many actors, both inside and outside Syria, with diverse interests and conflicting goals and aims. Assad’s regime used secularism as a tool to repress opponents, but there should be no expectations for the emergence of stable secular nationalism in Syria anytime soon. The fear that Syria will face the same fate as Afghanistan is also unfounded. The country has too many hostile factions for a dominant group like the Taliban to take complete control of the country. If anything, it is probably destined to become a failed state like Libya following the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 with the help of NATO, an event that was also widely celebrated by the Western leaders of the time.
Indeed, when all is said and done, forcing regime change rarely succeeds. In fact, U.S. foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster in the post-Cold War period, creating more problems that it tried to solve. Think of the Balkans, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East.
Syria will be no different. It was a hellish place under Assad but will more likely than not end up next as another “black hole” in the lost list of U.S. "achievements" in forcing regime change.
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Russia's Loss in Syria Is Not Necessarily a Win for the US
The Middle East resembles a billiard table, in which the movement of one ball is liable to send the others flying off in different directions and in turns bouncing off each other. Which way the balls fly, however, is impossible to predict.
Dec 10, 2024
The fall of the Baath state in Syria is a serious defeat for Russia (and a disaster for Iran). It would however be a grave mistake to assume that this by necessity makes it a success for the United States.
Moscow and Washington may indeed now face similar challenges in Syria.
Three issues led Russia to intervene in the Syrian civil war to save the Assad regime. First was a general desire to preserve a partner state — one of the very few remaining to Russia after the U.S. overthrow of the regimes in Iraq and Libya, which helped to prop up Moscow’s international influence. Second was a desire to retain Russia’s only naval and air bases in the Mediterranean.
Third was a deep Russian fear that an Islamist victory would lead to Syria becoming a base for terrorism against Russia and its partners in Central Asia. That anxiety was increased by the presence of numerous fighters from Chechnya and other Muslim regions of Russia in the ranks of the Islamist forces in Syria and Iraq.
Moscow’s hope of preserving a partner state has now irredeemably collapsed. As to the terrorist threat, we will have to see. Given the huge challenges it will face in rebuilding the Syrian state, it would seem insane for the new regime led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to sponsor international terrorism; and, as part of his general strategy of disowning his Al Qaeda past, its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has promised not to do this.
There will, however, be a question mark over HTS’s ability to control its allies, and some of its own followers. In Afghanistan, the Taliban promised not to back international terrorism when they returned to power, and have apparently kept their word. The Afghanistan-based Islamic State of Khorasan (ISK), however, continues to do so; and from some mixture of weak control over parts of Afghanistan and unwillingness to engage in new conflict, the Taliban have not been able fully to prevent this.
This leaves the issue of the Russian naval base at Tartus and air base near Latakia. The Russian squadron based at Tartus has reportedly left the port. This could be either a definitive evacuation or a precautionary move to keep them out to sea until relations with the new regime are clarified. The Russian air base is said to be surrounded by HTS forces, but has not been attacked. It is reported that there has been a deal between Moscow and HTS to guarantee the security of the bases, but, if so, this arrangement may be purely temporary.
Given the extremely complicated and uncertain nature of its relations with all Syria’s neighbors, it might make good sense for the new regime in Damascus to allow the bases to remain (perhaps in return for Russian supplies of oil and food) in order to balance its diplomatic and economic options.
This issue however is intimately tied up with that of the new regime’s policy towards Syria’s ethno-religious minorities, which generally supported the Baath regime out of fear of Sunni Islamist oppression (a fear amply justified by the savage fate of their communities in Syria and Iraq which fell to ISIS).
Where Russia’s bases are situated along the Mediterranean coast lies the heartland of Syria’s Christian and Alawite minorities. The Assad dynasty came from the Alawites, a Shia sect, and, for the past 50 years, the Baath state in Syria has been to a great extent an Alawite one. Alawite militias played a crucial role on the government side in the civil war, and inflicted numerous atrocities on their opponents.
Al-Jolani has promised that there must be no revenge for this, that minority rights will be respected, and that there will be no imposition of severe Sunni Islamist law. Even if he is sincere about these pledges, however, his followers may feel differently.
An HTS-led regime in Damascus that wishes to reassure the Alawites and Christians might see an interest in allowing the Russian bases to remain. A regime fearful of minority revolt (and outside backing for such revolt), however, would likely see the Russian bases as potential support for such rebellion.
For Russia to retain its bases against the will of the new Syrian government, and with the support of local Alawite and Christian forces, would not only require the intervention of Russian ships and aircraft but also the deployment of significant numbers of ground forces. Given the war in Ukraine, it is highly unlikely that Russia has such forces to spare.
Moreover — as with the equally rapid collapse of the U.S. proxy Afghan state — the way in which Syrian state forces melted away in the face of the HTS-led insurgent forces will hardly encourage Russia to continue the fight in Syria.
In a different form, these issues also face U.S. policy in Syria. Will Washington attempt to keep its own bases in Syria (from which it has attacked both ISIS and Baath regime targets)? Will the new regime turn a blind eye to them, or attempt to force them out?
The greatest issue of all for the U.S. to consider is the fate of the Syrian Kurds. During the Syrian civil war, with massive help from the U.S. and the semi-independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, Syrian Kurdish forces (the Democratic Union Party or PYD) occupied a huge swath of northeastern Syria, considerably beyond their core ethnic territory. The U.S. has several bases and logistics operations in the region.
The one outside the country which appears to have been critical to HTS’s victory, and to have profited unquestionably from it, is Turkey and the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The HTS offensive emerged from the Turkish-controlled area of northern Syria and could hardly have occurred without Turkish support. HTS’s successful use of drones strongly hints at Turkish aid.
Turkey has two core interests in Syria. The first is to establish a situation in which the three million Syrian refugees in Turkey who fled their homeland during the civil war can return home. That may now be achievable, if the new government in Damascus can establish basic peace and order and receive some international aid. Hundreds of refugees are reportedly already queuing up to cross back into Syria from Turkey.
The second Turkish interest is to reduce the power and territory of the Syrian Kurds, whom it has accused of being allied to PKK Kurdish rebels in Turkey. Simultaneously with the HTS offensive against the Baath regime, the Turkish-backed “Syrian National Army” rebels supported by Turkish airpower launched an offensive against the Kurdish PYD (officially designated by Turkey as “terrorists”), capturing the town of Manbij. This creates a situation in which proxies backed by a NATO member (though an increasingly estranged one) are attacking a U.S. proxy, without the U.S. seemingly being able to do much about it.
If Turkey pushes the new regime in Damascus to join in the attack on the Kurdish-controlled territories in northeastern Syria, this will create dilemmas for Washington akin to those facing Russia in the west. Would the Trump administration abandon its Kurdish allies, in accordance with Trump’s statement that “This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved?” Or would the demands of “credibility” compel Washington to come to their aid, even at the potential cost of triggering a deep crisis with Turkey?
The Middle East resembles a billiard table, in which the movement of one ball is liable to send the others flying off in different directions and in turns bouncing off each other. The difference is that, unlike in billiards, even the most insightful expert cannot predict in which direction the balls will move; and no outside player has been able to control them.
On the whole, the wisest approach by far would seem to be that of the Chinese, who import much of their energy from the region while determinedly avoiding intervention and taking sides in its conflicts.
For, as a Chinese diplomat said to me many years ago, “Why would we want to get involved in that mess?”
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