 "Syrians gather at Umayyad square celebrate during a demonstration following the first Friday prayers since Bashar Assad's ouster, in Damascus' central square, Syria, on Friday. AP")
The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and the swiftness with which its collapse took place recently have taken the world by storm. Assad’s Ba’ath Party (it was also the name of Saddam Hussain’s political party in Iraq), which was supposed to be the most potent political formation in the Arab World, also came to an end. It’s not only the demand for regime change and the ensuing civil war that followed it, which has lingered on since 2011; it was the swiftness with which the change was brought about with minimum bloodshed as compared to the toll that civil war took in 13 years in which more than 600,000 people were killed.
The importance of the fall of the regime in Syria is not only the end of that autocratic regime; it also ended the rule of the Assad family, which came to power in 1970. The regime’s fall is bound to change West Asia’s political and strategic map, and the region’s power politics will change in the years to come. The major players in the area, such as the US, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, would see a significant change in their level of influence, increasing or decreasing relative to their involvement and the new strategic configuration.
The military campaign was led under the joint operation led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist outfit; the Southern Operations Group, a coalition that was formed a few days before as a coalition of anti-regime militias; and the US-supported Syrian Free Army. This armed militia controls the area near the Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi trijunction. Two more groups compete over the northern and eastern regions of the country: the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by a left-wing Kurdish party with links to fellow Kurds in Turkey, and its opponent, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA). Even as the armed groups and civilians were celebrating the fall of Damascus, the SDF and SNA were fighting for control of Manbij, the only central town the SDF held west of the Euphrates.
The world has cautiously welcomed the new developments in the region. Many experts keeping an eye on the developments in Syria do not rule out a protracted conflict in Syria in months and years to come with no definitive solution in mind.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsMajor Parties
The major parties/factions or militant groups in Syria have different and varied ideologies and beliefs. The most important of that group is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led by its charismatic 40-year-old leader Ahmed al-Sharaa—better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a former Al Qaeda operative who broke away from Al Qaeda years back but still retains his militant Islamic identity, with the United States putting a million-dollar bounty on his head and struggling hard to shrug off his militant Islamic past.
HTS and its leader, Jolani, take their inspiration from the Taliban, and the speed with which they entered Damascus is also reminiscent of the way the Taliban had taken control over Kabul. The Taliban leadership was quick to congratulate Jolani and his men. Seeing their initial reactions, they are unlikely to go the Taliban way. The other group, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is supported by the US, much to the chagrin of Turkey, where they have an active secessionist movement of Kurds. The US also maintains approximately 900 troops around oil wells in northeastern Syria controlled by the Kurds. SDF has its roots in Kurdish feminism and is inspired by the late American socialist-anarchist thinker Murray Bookchin. It has supposed links with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a militant organisation banned in Turkey and the US.
The third major group, the Syrian National Army (SNA), supported by Turkey, is part of the northern borders with Turkey and is instrumental in curbing the cross-border movement of the Kurds from the Turkish and the Syrian side of the border. Besides these, ISIS remains active and controls limited parts of Syria and is under constant watch from various factions, all of which are opposed to it. The southern part of Syria is dominated by rebel forces on the Syrian-Jordanian border. They control this area and are now in a temporary alliance with HTS.
This razzmatazz of forces that operate in Syria with various powers and interests involved is a perfect background for another round of instability in Syria and West Asia. Israel has also stepped up its attack on the remnants of the Syrian Army, calling it a ‘pre-emptive’ strike to finish the military hardware, preventing it from falling into the hands of Hezbollah, which Iran and Assad’s government supported.
Varied Power Interests
There are six major players in Syria that have interests here, namely Turkey, the US, Israel, Iran, Russia and the EU, all have their axes to grind. Turkey sees the developments in its favour and is likely to become the most essential player in the days to come at the cost of Iran and Russia. The way the HTS and others swiftly moved in with overt Turkish consent reminded me how it managed Russia to prevent its intervention in Nagorno-Karabakh, which forced Armenians into the Nagorno-Karabakh region in a matter of 24 hours on September 19, 2023. With active Kurdish insurgency in this region, the new Syrian regime, due to help received from Turkey, will be receptive to Turkey’s interests in Syria.
The US and Israel had almost similar interests in curbing support to Hezbollah and checking Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ in the region. The practical land-based route from Iran to Syria via Iraq has now been closed, which will significantly curb Hezbollah’s arms and ammunition supply, which also helped its cadres trained by the Assad regime with the help of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The European Union is also involved here as the refugees flow from Syria to different countries in Europe, mainly Germany, which hosts 1 million Syrian refugees. The EU and UK have also suspended taking in all refugees from Syria with immediate effect. Turkey, which hosts 3 million refugees, is also planning a similar move. The EU has programmes that support Turkey in hosting Syrian refugees in Turkey.
As reports suggest, Russia is in talks with HTS to allow hosting its naval and Air Force bases in Turkey. Russia was also suffering from war weariness in Ukraine, and it was challenging to maintain the tempo of support that it had been keeping since 2015.
Iran is the biggest loser in this game of one-upmanship in the region. It had consistently supported the Assad regime (both Hafez al Assad and Bashar al Assad) since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It recognised the Alawite sect of Shia, which were not accepted as followers of Islam by hardcore Muslim Sunni theologians. The regime in Iran recognised the Alawite sect to which the Assads belonged as part of the mainstream Shia sect of Islam, thereby legitimising Assad’s regime in Syria inside and outside Syria.
Seeing the increasingly complex situation in Syria, it would be foolish to expect that democracy would suddenly start flourishing. Seeing the checks and balances of the various interest groups within and outside Syria, it can be concluded that these forces would not allow Syria to drift into the crisis in which Iraq was post-2003, and Libya drifted and never recovered after the forcible removal of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule in 2011.
Amitabh Singh teaches International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.