How re-building of Syria will be a herculean task for new regime

In a lightning offensive commencing on November 27, 2024, from their safe locations in Idlib province, Turkey-backed Hayat Tehrir Al Sham (HTS) launched multiple attacks and captured Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria; pressed their attacks on Homs and Hama; and reached Damascus on December 8. What had not been achieved in 13 years, the armed opposition groups did in less than 13 days. The 24-year rule of Bashar Al Assad and the 54-year regime of the Assad family came to an abrupt end with Assad escaping with family to Russia.

The Syrian Civil War has resulted in nearly 650,000 deaths; more than half of its population (13 million) has been displaced once or multiple times. Nearly 6.7 million refugees have moved to the neighbouring countries of Turkey (3.5 million), Lebanon (1 million), Jordan (0.7 million), Iraq (0.3 million), Egypt (0.2 million), and North Africa (0.1 million). European countries have taken in a million refugees in Germany, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece, and France.

In August 2012, during my pre-induction briefing at UN Headquarters in New York as the Head of the Mission and Force Commander Designate of the UN peacekeeping mission at Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, I was told that the fall of the Assad regime was the writing on the wall. It could take a few weeks, if not days, to happen. That Assad regime continued for another 12 years because of the support of Hezbollah from Lebanon, Republican Guards, and wherewithal from Iran and moral and material support from Russia.

While Hezbollah and Iran provided foot soldiers since 2012, Russia gave air support to engage opposition groups on the ground beginning in 2015. The minorities in Syria, Christians (10 per cent), Shias, including Alawis (12 per cent) and Druz (3 per cent) were strongly supporting the Assad regime to ensure their own security. 15 to 20 per cent of the majority Sunni population also supported the Assad regime since the affluent Sunni businessmen and bureaucrats were favoured by the government. Therefore, around 40 to 45 per cent of the population was with the regime all along, in a bid to survive and safeguard their own future.

Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, the strong founding leader of HTS, joined Al Qaeda in 2003 and fought against the Americans in Iraq. In 2006, he was taken prisoner by the Americans and kept in jail for five years. Later he joined Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi to raise Jabhat Al Nusra, an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Syria. When Al Qaeda wanted to make a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Jolani fell apart from Abu Bakr and Al Qaeda and took pains to reshape Al Nusra, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, into an indigenous and disciplined freedom-fighting group. Once Al Nusra was designated as a terrorist group, Jolani decided to rename the group as Jabhat Fateh Al Sham, which was rechristened as HTS in 2017 once all the other opposition groups merged with it. HTS has been autonomously ruling Idlib Province since 2016 through the Syrian Salvation Government.

In late November this year, HTS commenced the attacks on Syrian Arab Armed Forces (SAAF) and National Defence Force (NDF) positions east of Idlib into Aleppo Governorate. By December 1, Aleppo, the second largest city, fell to the rebels. The attacks were further pressed south onto Hama and Hom, which were captured by December 5 and 6, respectively, and Damascus fell in the wee hours of December 8. Throughout the offensive, SAAF and pro-government militias hardly gave any worthwhile resistance and just melted away.

The morale of SAAF was at the lowest ebb as they were not paid wages for the last few months, and there were large-scale desertions of officers and men, some of whom switched sides and joined the HTS. Seeing the phenomenal success of HTS, the rebel groups in the South also launched offensives on December 3 on Daraa City, from where the unrest had started in 2011. These attacks also had very little resistance, and after the capture of Daraa, the rebels reached the outskirts of Damascus. In the northeast, the Kurdish militia group, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), advanced and captured the eastern city of Deir Ezzour. HTS has finally lived up to its name, which means ‘Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant’.

The timing of the offensive had been very thoughtfully chosen. The lame duck administration of President Joe Biden was thickly involved in bolstering the Ukrainians to use heavy weapons against the Russians in the last bid to secure gains before an impending ceasefire and trying to pester Israelis to go easy on offensives in Gaza and Lebanon. The Russians had pulled out the majority of their troops to be deployed in the Ukraine war. The Iranians and Hezbollah had been weakened by successive Israeli attacks, especially targeting leadership and strategic assets in the last few months. Therefore, without the active involvement of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, the ragtag SAAF stood little chance of holding against the ferocious, bold, and determined attacks by HTS.

Israel has quickly occupied the buffer zone in the Golan Heights, which was, hitherto, manned by the United Nations Disengagement and Observer Force (UNDOF), a contingency they have often rehearsed over the years. I had always advised Israelis against taking such a step and told them that they would end up making their new frontiers porous and open to guerrilla attacks. The future of UNDOF is being discussed at the Security Council in a series of closed-door meetings at the behest of Russia at the time of writing this article.

UNDOF is putting up a brave front and still holding to its positions and posts under a determined Deputy Force Commander from India. Israel has also conducted numerous airstrikes in the last few days in Syria to target the war-waging material of the besieged country and to weaken it to an extent that Syria would never be a potential conventional threat to Israel in the future. However, in violating the sovereignty of Syria and destroying its military might, it is sowing the seeds of unabated sub-conventional threats from its northeastern neighbour. It is ironic that Jolani has his roots in the Golan, and while he has a major portion of Syria under his control, the Golan Heights have been completely occupied by Israel!

Mohammed Al Bashir, the erstwhile governor of Idlib, has been appointed the interim prime minister to facilitate a smooth and bloodless political transition. He has also prioritised getting the repatriation of Syrian refugees from the neighbouring countries. The biggest challenge for the new PM and the HTS is to form an inclusive government to accommodate all factions and communities, including Kurds in the north and northeast and other armed groups in the south.

The reconstruction of the nation and its major pillars, like armed forces, police, and judiciary; revitalising the economy; addressing the political vacuum; and ushering in an all-representative democratic government are the major challenges to be addressed by the new interim government. Demobilisation, disarmament, reorientation, and rehabilitation of the various armed groups is a Herculean task. Stability, rule of law, order, and calmness need to be brought back to society. Gulf Cooperation Council countries should be giving generous grants for the reconstruction and redevelopment of the country.

In the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, when opposition armed groups were making steady progress in their attacks from the north and south, Bashar Al Assad had declared, “We build Damascus and the nation; if we are forced to leave, there will be no Damascus left. We will destroy it.” He succeeded to a large extent in destroying suburbs of Damascus and other major cities of Syria wherever the rebels were in strong numbers in the last 13 years. Stability and reconstruction are going to be a nightmare for the new establishment in the war-torn country.

The author was the head of the mission and force commander at the Golan Heights from 2012 to 2015. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.