Syria without al-Assad's tyranny: not all that glitters is gold

By: Ricardo Israel - 09/12/2024

There is certainly a lot of joy, with people taking to the streets to hand out candy and sweets. However, everything in life is more complex than it seems at first glance, and it is likely that there are consequences of various kinds and that the choice is not between good and bad, but as I once heard, between traveling to Guatemala or going to Guatepeor. Is this the situation in Syria? Like other revolutions, will the forces that fought and triumphed remain united or will they fight each other?

At the time of writing this column, the armed opposition has announced the capture of Damascus and that dictator Bashar al-Assad has fled the country. His family had already done so a few days ago. Everything happened with enormous speed starting on November 27th and this end would have taken only 11 days for a variety of forces, where the military leader would be the well-known jihadist Abu Mohammed al-Golani (or Al-Jolani), who became visible after the irruption of his forces in Aleppo on November 29th.

It is undoubtedly a historic event that puts an end to the civil war that began in 2011, which generated millions of refugees in Lebanon and Europe, with a strong presence of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia in support of the al-Assad dictatorship. At the beginning, it appeared as a rebel reaction in the framework of the failed “Arab Spring” that began in Tunisia and that in Syria appeared led by the al-Nusra Front, whose origins had been both in Al Qaeda and in the Islamic State.

What we would be witnessing, if confirmed, represents the end of the hereditary family dictatorship of the Alawite clan (a branch of Shiite Islam) of the Al-Assads, both that of the doctor Bashar (since July 17, 2000) and that of his father, General (Air Force) Hafez al-Assad in the dictatorship he created, following his coup d'état in 1971.

In the 20th century, the Arab world asserted itself by confronting the outside world in three main ways. The first was the acceptance of external power, establishing alliances with them, whether colonial powers, the United States or Russia, today expressed in the monarchies of petro-states and in the Russian-Chinese alliance. The second way, still in force, was Muslim religious fundamentalism, with the Muslim Brotherhood standing out. The third, on the other hand, only survived in Syria, in the form of the statist militarism of the Baath parties, which once had leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser (in Egypt, United Arab Republic), Saddam Hussein (Iraq) or Muammar Gaddafi (Libya). Today, there are only two: jihadism and the big news, one that is growing and becoming more and more visible, which, as the war that followed the Hamas invasion on October 7 has shown, is the alliance that is being forged between Israel and the Sunni Arab states, essentially against Iran and its atomic bomb that could bring about the definitive acceptance of the State of Israel as what it is and wishes to remain, as a Jewish State.

However, there is still a long way to go before that happens, although Trump's resounding victory undoubtedly brings the possibility closer.

Much will depend on what happens in Syria: whether there is no counter-offensive by the defeated, whether the country returns to the Arab League, the kind of relations the winners will establish with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel, the attitude of the foreign forces present in the country, who wins within a front as varied as that of the winners, whether or not the US wants to get involved, or rather, whether it can afford not to get involved, whether the West will once again fail the Kurds, the largest people in the Middle East without a state, a non-Arab people of more than 30 million, spread across several countries.

The phrase that best explains what could be happening is that both the road to heaven and hell would be paved with good intentions. I dedicate this column to explaining myself.

In no case are we talking about a new Middle East, since in many ways it is the same as always, the one that the do-gooder West finds so difficult to understand, the one where legitimization by violence continues to have a great impact. It is also evidence of the world that awaits Trump as the new Sheriff and that is much more complicated and unstable than the one that existed in 2016 or 2020, essentially the legacy of the Biden administration. This is what is happening with Syria, since when Trump believed he had clarity about what he was going to do as well as what he was not willing to undertake, it is precisely when the region manifests itself with an old and permanent dialectic of continuity and change, where reality can change from one day to the next, but essentially nothing changes. That is to say, both new and old Middle East, they are not exactly the same actors, but they all act in a very similar way, quickly adapting to the new script, waiting for the new sheriff to do the same, as if they wanted to put him to the test, including aim and speed in drawing the Colt 45. In this region, respect also depends on this.

To paraphrase Churchill, if it is not the beginning of the end, will it at least be the end of the beginning? What is the aim? To restore the pre-7X region or to resume with the Palestinians what they rejected from Trump after the success of the Abraham Pacts? The question is for the new Trump administration, since, although it does not take office until January 20, in practice it acts as if it already inhabits the White House, with a Biden who has already lost prominence.

An indication of what is happening is the question of whether it is true that before his fall, al-Assad had sent an emissary to Israel asking for support in such a difficult time for his regime in exchange for distancing himself from Iran. Although it has the format of the most fantastic of hoaxes, this fake news also pays tribute to a historical truth, that of the speed with which alliances are changed at the same time as there is always a rapid adaptation to the increased or decreased military power of external actors, in this case Israel and Iran, the main winner and loser in Gaza and Lebanon.

An old protagonist has also reappeared in the person of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, or Turkiye, as the country is now asked to be called, who is believed to have been behind the impressively effective jihadist incursion. My fear is that Erdogan wants to regain his presence, trying to repeat what Turkey did in 1974 when it invaded Cyprus in response to a pro-Greek coup, to establish the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” over 3,555 km. For Erdogan, what he does today in Syria is part of a patient strategy of recreating the power that the Ottoman Empire had in the region, overcoming its old Persian adversary (now Iran), eliminating any possibility of a Kurdish presence as an autonomous power in Syria (and if allowed, also in neighbouring Iraq).

Will the US once again use Syrian refugees as a weapon against a very weak Europe, as it did in 2015 against Mrs. Angela Merkel, then the dominant power Germany? The US will have to take this opportunity, as Putin will do his best not to be ignored, maintaining his role, given the importance of his base in Syria, and this, regardless of how the war in Ukraine develops.

Even for Turkey, the fluidity of what is happening in Syria raises a question: how much will Erdogan be listened to by the jihadists now that they have won? Moreover, the next steps will clarify what kind of jihadists are now in Damascus, since they have made a notable effort to change an image that terrified Christians, Kurds and similar groups. But can someone who walks like a duck, looks like a duck and is yellow in colour stop being what he has always been, just for reasons of public image?

Doubts also reach the US, since behind Assad's collapse is the Israeli military success in Lebanon and against Iran, since it prevented what in the past gave results for the Syrian regime in the civil war from working, such as the use of the Hezbollah militias that have been devastated by Israel. However, there is doubt as to whether the agreement in Lebanon will survive, since more than being an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, it is one where, on the one hand, for 60 days, there is an agreement between Hezbollah and Lebanon with the US and France on the one hand, while on the other, there is one between Israel and the US where, in addition to leaving Biden alone (the 60 days lead directly to Trump's assumption of office), Israel reserves - via an additional letter - the right to intervene militarily if the scenario of continuous aggression by Hezbollah reappears, this time without making a difference between the terrorists and the Lebanese army. For its part, in order to participate, Macron's government, which was almost powerless internally, had to go through the humiliation of ensuring that, contrary to what had been previously said, if Netanyahu traveled to Paris, the French government would not detain him or comply with the order of the International Criminal Court, over which judges and prosecutors lacked jurisdiction.

The doubts do not stop there, as there is no evidence that Turkey would benefit from having the source of permanent instability that would mean for Erdogan's government to have a jihadist force as a neighbour in Syria, which, for its part, would also create problems for Israel, beyond the satisfaction of not having Assad anymore, but with the potential to repeat what happened with Hamas. Could this experience be reproduced on this border?

For Israel itself, the questions are pertinent, since although the commission of inquiry into what happened with the invasion of October 7 has not been appointed and therefore Netanyahu has not been forced to resign (and if there were elections today, he would probably win them), everything indicates that Israel has returned to a more realistic strategic conception about what can be expected from the region where they live and that they have already overcome the bias of "westernization" that was behind the terrible failure of 7-X, where political leaders, and above all, those responsible for the army and security forces thought, for wrong reasons, that Hamas was not the danger that it actually represented, since there was penetration of a westernized vision that, instead of being prepared for any event, falsely thought that Hamas was not planning the invasion that it carried out. In other words, they confused what they would wish for it to be with reality.

And Europe?

As such, it does not appear anywhere, at least not as a decisive or relevant actor, which will surely be confirmed when direct negotiations between the US and Russia on Ukraine begin. Perhaps what happens in Syria will show Trump that trying to resume the analysis of the Middle East based on the great success of the Abraham Pacts and the future signing of the Peace Agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia and trying to establish two states side by side in this way does not adequately reflect the current reality, which has changed so much after the war in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the probable attack on Iran, once the ayatollahs are about to have their atomic bomb.

What will happen to those who have supported the al-Assads? Syria remains a complex situation, and nothing better demonstrates this than the declared preference of Christians for family dictatorship, given the justified fear of Islamists and their jihad, original Christians who with their church have been part of the landscape, at least 5 to 6 centuries before the appearance of Islam.

This military outcome was preceded several months ago by Saudi Arabia's offer to the Alawite clan of a way out, the offer of a peaceful exile, provided that it would definitively distance itself from the now weak Iran, guaranteed by the return to the Arab League. The Saudi offer recognized the basic reality of the Middle East today, that the ayatollahs have been the great loser of the war they started on October 7, probably to prevent the signing of the Saudi agreement with Israel.

Apparently, the Saudi offer was not responded to by the al-Assad regime and the silence on what was happening gives an idea of how poorly the international mainstream press reports on the reality of the Middle East.

The fall of the Syrian regime is a change of enormous magnitude that affects many countries and actors, with winners and losers, although the fog of war still prevents us from accurately identifying most of them, especially because some, like Israel, are not clear about the path they should take.

Hopefully it will bring peace, otherwise it could even affect the planning of the Trump administration, since during the campaign he said many times that his goal was to end wars and that under his mandate no new ones would be started that would have repercussions on the US.

And beware, above all, that there could be an imminent confrontation, given the collapse of Iran's strategy of using other countries as proxies so that Iran can attack Israel. It no longer works as such, and we do not know if the triumphant jihadists will provide some kind of cover for Iran and its proxies to continue attacking Israel. We presume that what has been happening on Syrian soil for too many years will not continue, that is, an Iranian game that consisted of using a cover for the search for the nuclear bomb by the ayatollahs, since the strategy of the proxies was due to Iran needing to keep Israel busy with assorted attacks while a militarily weaker Tehran searched for the bomb. In other words, what has just happened in Syria could be bringing closer, rather than moving away, the moment of direct confrontation between Iran and Israel over the nuclear program. Be careful, Israel will certainly not have the difficult relationship it had and has had with Iran in the US, since Washington will now have to provide the explosives and transport that Israel needs to attack from the air the launch sites, which are many meters underground.

Meanwhile, a brief description of some of the actors involved in what has taken place in Syria gives an idea of the complexity of the war and political scenario.

Let's start with the triumphant jihadists. They are HTS or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group with impeccable fundamentalist origins, first as a division of Al Qaeda in 2016, and then as successive subdivisions of Isis, since they are groups that, especially in the Middle East and Africa, have found in the franchise system a way to remain in force. Now, they reappear under the name of HTS, also giving us an idea of what may happen to Hamas in Gaza, that is, they may lose relevance, but not disappear completely.

In parallel, there was another offensive, led by the Syrian National Army, which also functions as an umbrella organisation, but in this case its target is Kurdish forces.

There is a real international operating around HTS, of particular interest being the so-called Turkestan Brigade, with troops coming mainly from Central Asia (for example, Uzbeks and Tajiks) as well as Chinese Uighurs, i.e. Muslims who arrived last decade to participate in this Jihad, and who have faced the Russians more than once. It is necessary to keep in mind the origin of these forces in order to understand why China and Russia see them more as an element of national security than of religion or human rights.

The question that will then arise is whether we will quickly see a Taliban-style interpretation of Sharia over and above ordinary law, with the potential to subsequently spread to Europe. To believe that this will not happen is to continue in the desolate naivety that has characterized the West for so long, including large cities and university campuses.

Has there been adequate preparation for such a scenario, of the Syrian jihad being diverted to the West? The truth is that there has not been, although the question is really for the US, since Europe, with a few exceptions, has clearly not done so, and has rather backed off its will to fight in a process that has been going on for many decades, at least since the way they judicially attacked someone who always had a clear idea, such as Oriana Fallaci.

Furthermore, HTS, like its predecessor Jalbat al-Nusra, has a long history of negative treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, and with the Assad dictatorship being so cruel, it would not be surprising if the Alawite and Shiite population could be subjected to revengeful and violent treatment. To begin with, there are old mass killings that have not yet been officially clarified, such as the death of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood militants in the city of Homs in February 1982, committed by the dictator Hafez Al Assad.

If this were to happen, it is even likely that there would be a territorial concentration in the retaliation with a strong emphasis on the coastal areas, where Russia has its naval bases (Tartous), which are extremely important, since it is not only the Mediterranean, but it is the only Russian presence in warm waters, so it can be used all year round.

Repression, which, if it were to occur, would not only create problems of conscience in the West, but would also create a problem with groups supporting the dictatorship such as politicians, businessmen, police, journalists, etc., who would probably seek to emigrate to neighboring Sunni countries such as Jordan or Iraq, rather than going to others.

Above all, in my opinion, something of enormous importance would be what happens to the Kurds, whom the West has a duty to protect, since the promises of a state of their own and national self-determination have been continually promised to them, starting with the First World War, a promise that is even included in treaties such as the Versailles Treaty, signed by more than 50 countries.

And the US?

Beyond what Trump represents, as of January 20, the US as a military power has limitations and setbacks, an example of which is its unwillingness to stop the Houthis from attacking international trade in the Red Sea. It has also lost its deterrent capacity and the ability to call on others as it did in the two Gulf Wars, and it could not intervene militarily in the Syrian scenario as Israel has done in several places. Would the US attack with all its might if the Islamic State, which was defeated, quickly regrouped in the new conditions? Furthermore, in the broader scenario, for Moscow the fall of al-Assad is not as important as keeping the Tartus air base.

For Israel, not everything in the world we live in is necessarily bad or good, and it is likely that it will maintain the same critical distance that it had during the civil war, that is, its fundamental objective was to prevent Syrian territory from being used to introduce weapons to be used by Israel's enemies, such as Hezbollah or Hamas. In any case, Syria in the hands of the jihadists means that Iran's influence, without al-Assad, necessarily diminishes, as the capacity to supply weapons to enemies is reduced, which is added to the control that it has today of airports and roads in Lebanon, that is, Israel reserves the right to attack so that Hezbollah does not become the danger that Israel already defeated. However, on the other hand, for the same reason, Iran will attack with everything in its search for the atomic bomb.

In other words, sweet and sour.

For Lebanon, with the fall of al-Assad, direct control of Syria, as well as through Hezbollah, disappears. Moreover, perhaps for the first time since the civil war and the Syrian bomb that killed Bashir Pierre Gemayel on September 14, 1982, there would be a new opportunity for peace, perhaps similar to one that was thwarted. Gemayel was a Christian lawyer, politician and paramilitary commander who was elected president but did not succeed in taking office, and who was available for a deal with Israel, which his assassination prevented.

In the end, there is one doubt and one certainty. The doubt is whether the Pentagon will be able to overcome unsuccessful analyses and adequately understand the new realities of the Middle East, while I do not know how the United Nations, the international press, human rights organizations and elite universities will agree to blame Israel if something goes wrong in Syria.

- @israelzipper

-Master and PhD in Political Science (University of Essex), Bachelor of Laws (University of Barcelona), Lawyer (University of Chile), Former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013)

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».