10 January 2025

People of EPA celebrate the overthrow of Syrian President Al-Assad in Umayyad Square in DamascusEnvironmental Protection Agency

Syrians may be celebrating the fall of Assad, but the country's future is uncertain

In the end, Assad's regime was so hollow, corrupt, and decaying that it collapsed in less than two weeks.

No one I spoke to was more amazed at how quickly the regime turned to dust.

In the spring of 2011, the year of the Arab uprisings, things were different, when the Syrians tried to extract some of the revolutionary magic that had toppled the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt and was threatening the veteran strongmen of Libya and Yemen.

By 2011, the regime created by Hafez al-Assad and passed to his son Bashar after his death in 2000 was already corrupt and decadent.

But the regime built by Hafez still had much of the brutal power he believed was necessary to control Syria. Assad Sr. had seized power in a country that was prone to coups and handed it over to his son and heir without major challenge.

Bashar al-Assad returned to his father's playbook in 2011.

It's hard to imagine now, but at the time he had more legitimacy among some of Syria's population than the old autocrats who were toppled by crowds chanting the slogan of that year – “The people want to topple the regime.”

Bashar al-Assad was a strong supporter of the Palestinians and Hezbollah during his successful fight against Israel in the 2006 Lebanon War. He was younger than before and soon became former Arab leaders.

Since his father's death he has been promising reform. Some Syrians still wanted to believe him in 2011, hoping the demonstrations would be the catalyst he needed for the change he promised, until he ordered his men to shoot and kill peaceful protesters in the streets.

A British ambassador to Syria once told me that the way to understand the Assad regime was to watch mafia films like The Godfather. Obedient people can be rewarded.

Anyone who disobeys the head of the family or his closest associates will be eliminated. In the Syrian case, this might mean the gallows, a firing squad, or indefinite imprisonment in an underground dungeon.

We see them now, gaunt and pale, blinking in the light, photographed on the mobile phones of the rebel fighters who freed thousands of them from years behind bars.

Reuters Bashar al-Assad attends the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, November 11, 2023 - He sits slightly reclined in his seat with a serious expression on his face, a Syrian flag visible in the ground nearby. He is wearing a blue suit and blue tie.  Reuters

The weakness of the regime, to the point where it collapsed like a wet paper bag, was hidden in the terrifying and oppressive labor camps it maintained.

The international consensus was that Bashar al-Assad was weak, dependent on Russia and Iran, and presiding over a country he had divided to maintain his family rule – but still powerful enough to be considered a fact of life in the Middle East, and who could be useful.

In the final days before the rebels exited Idlib, it was widely reported that the United States, Israel and the United Arab Emirates were trying to separate Assad's Syria from Iran.

Israel has been launching increasingly intense air strikes against targets inside Syria that it said were part of the supply chain used by Iran to deliver weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli attack on Lebanon dealt severe blows to Hezbollah, but the idea was to prevent it from regenerating. At the same time, the UAE and the United States were trying to find incentives for him to break the alliance with Tehran, ease sanctions and allow Assad to continue his international rehabilitation.

Both Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden have claimed credit for the fall of the Assad regime. There is something in that.

The damage Israel has inflicted on Hezbollah and Iran with US weapons and continued support, and Biden's arms supplies to Ukraine, have made it impossible, even undesirable, for Assad's closest allies to save him.

But the fact that they saw Assad as part of their strategy to contain and damage Iran even days before his fall clearly indicates that they did not believe for a moment that he was days away from fleeing to Russia at midnight.

They contributed to its end, more by accident than design.

Getty Images A man embraces a child at the entrance to the city of Aleppo, on December 9, 2024, as people wait for the return of their relatives following the release of detainees from Syrian government prisons following the overthrow of the Syrian president.Getty Images

Regime change in Syria has led to the release of many from the country's prisons

The fall of the regime may have ended the Iranian supply chain, if Syria's new rulers decided that their deals with others were more beneficial than the Iranian alliance.

All parties are thinking hard and thinking again about what comes next, and it is too early to draw definitive conclusions. Now Syrians, their neighbors, and the entire world are facing another geopolitical earthquake, the largest of its kind that followed the Hamas attacks on Israel in October of last year. It may not be the last.

Iran is witnessing the final collapse of the basic pillars of the network that it called the Axis of Resistance. Its most important components have been transformed; Hezbollah was badly damaged and the Assad regime was gone.

Iran's rulers may want to follow up on hints about holding talks on a deal with Donald Trump once he takes office. Or its new strategic nakedness may push it to make a fateful decision to convert the highly enriched uranium in its possession into a nuclear weapon.

Syrians have every reason to rejoice. In the years since 2011, despite all the repression and brutality of the regime, Assad and his cronies can still find men willing to fight. Many soldiers I met on the front lines told me that Assad was a better choice than the jihadist extremists of the Islamic State.

In 2024, faced with a well-organized rebel force that insisted it was nationalist and Islamist but no longer jihadist, the reluctant army conscripts refused to fight, were stripped of their uniforms and returned home.

EPA People walk in front of a tank abandoned by Syrian forces after opposition fighters took control of the city of Hama, Syria, December 7, 2024. Environmental Protection Agency

Syrian forces have abandoned their military equipment, including tanks, and in some cases their uniforms

The best scenario is that the Syrians, with the help of major players in the region, find a way to create a mood of national reconciliation in the post-war period, not a wave of plunder and revenge that would drag the country into a new war. Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the leader of the victorious Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, called on his men and all Syrian sects to respect each other.

His men overthrew the regime, and he is the closest thing to an actual leader in Syria.

However, Syria has dozens of armed groups that do not necessarily agree with him and would want to seize power in their areas. In southern Syria, the tribal militias did not recognize Assad's order. They will not follow orders they do not like from the new regime in Damascus.

In the Eastern Desert, the United States saw a significant enough threat from ISIS remnants to launch waves of air strikes. The Israelis, concerned about the possibility of an Islamic state rising on their borders, are bombing the military infrastructure of the Syrian armed forces.

It might be better to find a way to make a reformed Syrian Arab Army part of the solution in a country that lacks much law or order. The reckless decision taken by the United States in 2003 to disband the Iraqi armed forces had dire consequences.

In Türkiye, President Erdogan must be satisfied with what he sees.

Erdogan's Turkey has done more than any other power to preserve the autonomy of Idlib province, where Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham was transforming itself into a fighting force when Syria appeared to be in a deep freeze.

Erdogan may see that his influence extends beyond Israel's borders, at a time when Israeli-Turkish relations have been poisoned by the war in Gaza.

The worst scenario for Syrians is for their country to follow the example of the two Arab dictatorships that fell into a state of violent chaos after the fall of their regimes.

Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq were removed with no ready replacement waiting in the wings. Ill-conceived foreign intervention has created two disasters.

The vacuum left by the tyrants was filled by waves of plunder, revenge, seizures of power, and civil war.

Syrians have not been responsible for their fate for generations. The two presidents Al-Assad and their followers were robbed of it. The country lost it after the war left it so weak that major foreign powers used it to increase and maintain its power.

Syrians still do not have the ability to control their lives. They might have a chance to create a new and better country if they did.

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