Post Assad, what’s the road ahead for Syria?

The Arab Spring that dawned in 2011 has toppled yet another dictator: Bashar al Assad, the autocrat who ruled Syria since 2000 after his father, Hafez al Assad, who staged a coup and seized power in 1970.

It took under two weeks since the opposition fighters seized Aleppo for the Assad regime to collapse.

Opposition fighters led by the Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which means the Committee for the Liberation of the Levant, had captured Aleppo on 30 November, before advancing and taking the strategic city of Hama on 5 December and finally marching into Damascus on 8 December.

What’s behind Assad’s hasty exit?

In his play, The Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare says: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

Assad belongs to the last category.

He was happily settled in London, working as an ophthalmologist for eight years, when his father summoned him in 1994 to Syria to be groomed as his successor.

Hafez had originally nominated his other son, Bassel, as successor, but the latter died in an accident in 1994.

Has Assad done any good for Syria?

It is difficult to identify any good he did. He could have steered Syria away from the iron-fisted rule of his father towards democracy.

But he didn’t.

As Shakespeare’s Marc Antony says: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Assad has done plenty of evil that has survived his fall.

The first thing to understand about Assad is that though he was formally known as President of Syria, he did not control all of the country.

A good part was held by the Kurds, Turkey and various anti-Assad Syrian forces.

To the utter surprise of Assad and the rest of the world, including HTS and the other fighters who joined the latter, the regime caved in rapidly.

It is important to note that HTS was not the only actor.

The Syrian National Army (SNA), backed by Turkey, and the US-supported Kurdish militants Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are also important actors.

Though HTS, SNA, and SDF have fought among themselves from time to time, they all agreed months ago to work together to topple Assad.

HTS has said it had started working on a plan to fell Assad about a year ago, along with Turkey and the others.

Why was Assad caught by surprise? After all, Assad had an elaborate intelligence agency, known as the Mukhabarat in Arab countries.

Perhaps, the dictum about “absolute power” by 19th-century British writer John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, better known as Lord Acton, can explain.

Acton said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We may add a rider: Power isolates and absolute power isolates absolutely.

Assad’s absolute power isolated him, leading him to underestimate threats and ignore crucial warnings from allies like Iran.

Tehran has claimed that its warnings were ignored by Assad, who fled to Moscow on 8 December after Damascus also fell to the opposition forces.

So, who won and who lost?

Turkey and Israel have gained geopolitically, while Russia and Iran have lost heavily.

Tehran is said to have spent about $30 billion in Syria. The number of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah fighters who died in battle is not known but will run into tens of thousands.

Far from finding fault with Iran and Russia for not rushing to Assad’s rescue, we should consider it providential that both decided to abandon him.

If Russia and Iran had acted differently, hundreds of thousands of Syrians would have died.

Russia did use its air force for a short while in Aleppo, but soon good sense prevailed.

Israel has captured Syrian territory in flagrant violation of the 1974 agreement that it had signed with Syria on disengagement relating to the Golan Heights in Israeli occupation since 1967.

As on 15 December, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has occupied about 400 sq. km of Syrian territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the occupation is ‘temporary’, but he is hardly believed.

Influential voices from the ruling coalition have publicly asserted that capturing Syrian territory is part of the “Greater Israel” project, calling for getting rid of the Palestinians by means fair or foul, with the fouler the better.

Has the US gained anything?

US President Joe Biden has taken personal credit for Assad’s fall, though it came as a surprise to US intelligence.

The Pentagon has for years retained some 900 troops to fight the Islamic State (IS) and Al Qaeda in Syria.

The Pentagon announced on 3 December that its troops in Syria had carried out strikes “in self-defense.”

Later, on 13 December, it was announced that three US soldiers were injured.

Apart from the troops, there are a certain number of “contractors,” too, in Syria.

So, who gained the most from Assad’s fall?

The external powers who gained the most are Turkey and Israel, but let us not forget that the biggest gainer is the people of Syria, who celebrated the fall of Assad with fireworks and dancing in huge numbers in Damascus.

The atrocities committed during the rule of Assad should be investigated by the UN and documented.

Amnesty International has done some investigations: “Under the rule of Bashar al-Assad, and before him his father Hafez al-Assad, Syrians have been subjected to a horrifying catalogue of human rights violations that caused untold human suffering on a vast scale. This included attacks with chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and other war crimes, as well as murder, torture, enforced disappearance and extermination that amount to crimes against humanity.

Obama’s foreign policy misstep

We need to highlight a seldom mentioned matter.

Former US president Barack Obama had an opportunity to prevent the rise of the Islamic State (IS), which had captured Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, in June 2014.

The IS started in Raqqa city in northern Syria on the northern banks of the Euphrates River, which was its de facto capital between January 2014 and October 2017.

When the IS took over Raqqa in 2014, the US intelligence assessed that it was a good development as it would help weaken Assad.

Obama had publicly called on Assad to step down in August 2011.

Washington spent $500 million to train reliable Syrians to fight Assad and produced as many as five fighters.

The IS started moving a small force about 1,500km from Syria to Mosul in June 2014.

The Pentagon had the option to stop them by air raids.

But Obama decided not to do that, and used the IS attack as one more argument to put pressure on then Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Malaki to expand his cabinet to include Shias.

The capture of Mosul added tremendously to the strength of the IS as the city housed a branch of the Central Bank of Iraq with substantial cash reserves, and the retreating Iraqi army of 60,000 left behind weapons and supplies

So, what next?

Let us consider the best possible scenario.

HTS and other factions work together sincerely to guide Syria toward an inclusive democracy, granting the Kurds autonomy similar to that enjoyed by their counterparts in Iraq.

HTS, though a Sunni organization, reforms itself to seek a modus vivendi with the minority Alawites, to which Assad belonged.

Washington lifts its sanctions on Syria and removes the $1 million bounty on HTS leader Abu Mohammed al Jolani, now known as Ahmed al Sharaa, who has adopted Western-style attire in place of traditional religious dress.

Syria receives assistance to rebuild its economy, and Turkey and Israel should respect Syria’s territorial integrity.

Whether this optimistic vision can become Syria’s future remains uncertain.

Two key figures—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Netanyahu—could obstruct such progress.

Erdogan harbors territorial ambitions and opposes an inclusive Turkey that grants autonomy to its Kurds population, which accounts for over 15% of its citizens.

Netanyahu is likely to pursue his ‘Greater Israel’ project at any cost.

The question remains: Will US president-elect Donald Trump, a businessman with an aversion to wars, take steps to rein them in?