The 53 years of the Bashar al-Assad family’s rule over Syria was terminated rather shockingly early morning of Sunday, 8 December, when rebels romped into Damascus the country’s seat of power, forcing Assad to flee the country. He is said to be in asylum in Russia.
According to early agency reports, the rebels who have been fighting the Iran-Russia-backed al-Assad’s government for 13 years, declared that they had freed Damascus with Assad nowhere to be found. In just one week, after a frozen lull of about four years on the front lines, the rebels ran riot over the country, taking Aleppo, the country’s second biggest city, then Hama, while government soldiers fled their positions leaving large caches of arms and ammunitions behind.
WatchmanPost recalls that in 2011, Assad violently terminated a peaceful pro-democracy protest against his government. This degenerated into a civil war that took down the lives of six million people and forced a dozen others to flee the country.
In the heat of Assad’s desperate attempt to retain power that had been in his family for more half a century, reports emerged that Assad turned to Israel for help, but Israel demanded assurances that he must first expel all Hamas and Hezbollah fighters and their sponsors from Syria. Assad had been allowing Hezbollah to use his territory to fire missiles into Israel. No deal was cut before the collapse of his Assad regime.
Russia, bogged down by its self-inflicted aggression war against Ukraine, with tens of thousands of troops killed on both sides, could not save Assad. Iran could not help him either as it is having issues with its own in-house insecurity, with its failure to sustain its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah in their wars with Israel.
Assad’s nemesis is an Islamist jihadi group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), backed by Turkiye, which has been able to mobilize other anti-Assad armed forces to end the 53-year rule of the Assad family in Syria.
The mostly Sunni rebels say they want freedom for all Syrians, but with Turkiye’s leader, Erdogan, who only earlier in the year called for the destruction of Israel as their main backer, the tension in the region can only be expected to heighten the more.
While some Syrians are said to have heaved a cautious sigh of relief, concerns have been also expressed by Christians and other minority groups about their safety and security with a jihadi group like HTS taking over power in Syria. HTS, was raised in 2012 with the name, al-Nusra Front, and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2013. Three years later, it fell out with al-Qaeda and merged with other jihadi groups. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani (a.k.a Mohammed al-Golani and Muhammad al-Julani), born in the Golan Heights, has been designated as a global terrorist by the US that has placed a bounty of $10m on his head.
President Bashar al-Assad had been ruling Syria since 2000 taking over from his father, who had ruled the country for almost three decades.
The emergence of a jihadist regime in Syria is most likely to worsen the tension in the Middle East. Turkiye, which has been backing Hamas in its genocidal misadventure in Gaza, would likely find a willing proxy in HTS, and may use it as surrogate in its opposition against Israel. Iran that had all along been backing the collapsed Assad regime may decide to get involved in the unfolding and yet indeterminate situation in Syria.
Meanwhile, Israel has given a watch-it order to Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reserves to strengthen its position in the Golan Heights, it seized from Syria in the 1967 War, in preparation for any spillover effect of the chaos in Syria. In a video posted online, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that “the collapse of the Assad regime”, was “a direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad’s main supporters”, and sets off a chain reaction for all those who want to free themselves “from this tyranny and its oppression.”
He added that it also meant that Israel will have to “take action against possible threats”, as the situation meant the collapse of the separation of forces agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria. Reason: With the collapse of the Assad regime, the Syrian army has abandoned their position, and Israeli army has been given the order “to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel”, noting that this was a temporary preventive measure while awaiting how events turned out in Syria under the emerging rulers.
Reacting to the collapse of the Assad regime, US President Joe Biden, seemed to be celebrating the situation. His words, “After 13 years of civil war in Syria, more than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Assad, Assad and his father before, rebel forces have forced Assad to resign his office and flee the country…. At long last the Assad regime has fallen. This regime brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians. The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice. It’s a moment of historic opportunity for the long suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country. It’s also a moment of risk and uncertainty.”
On what comes next, Biden said, “The United States will work with our partners and the stakeholders in Syria to help them seize the opportunity to manage the risks.” He said that the main backers of the Assad regime were Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, adding rather snidely that over “the last week, their support collapsed, all three of them because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office.”
Biden then went ahead to badmouth Hezbollah and Hamas and pledged continued collaboration with Israel. He berated Russia for failing to protect their “main ally in the Middle East”, even as that country has suffered losses on the battle field fighting Ukraine, because the US and its allies have been supporting Ukraine. Perhaps Putin would remind Biden of US shabby withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden’s watch.
