Assad's End

A dramatic exit and the emergence of a new order in the Middle East

So this is the story, how and why it happened. Read it and let it do its magic on you:

On October 7th Hamas decided to attack Israel, banking on the fact that it had the solid support from both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the regime in Iran. This was a correct assumption as Hezbollah started its yearlong campaign of raining missiles on Israel while Iran joined the action, albeit in a more measured way, avoiding a full out war. In addition, the Houthis in Yemen carried out their part of the plan and in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad continued to serve as one of Iran’s key conduits, collaborating closely with neighbouring Hezbollah. Tehran’s ring of fire strategy had indeed encircled Israel or so it seemed for a brief moment in time. That is until pagers starting going off in Lebanon and Israel started to hit back at Hezbollah, hard. As the ceasefire between the warring parties took hold a few weeks ago, it became clear that Hezbollah had lost, Iran was losing and this combined to expose Syria’s Assad who could no longer count on his partners for help or protection. And he needed that badly as his enemies, Islamist rebels in Syria’s north and Kurds in the east smelled an opportunity that for the first time since the paused Syrian Civil War, a dramatic recalibration of the battlefield had taken place. While they numerically were not the force expected to topple Assad, they now all of a sudden could. And worse for Assad was that his other key protector, Russia, had become too deeply distracted in Ukraine to allocate resources to its Syrian presence. The alertness of his direct opponents, the concurrent collapse of his own unmotivated forces coupled with the absence of Iranian and Russian support, it all combined to conspire the demise of the Assad regime. And fast. As of last night Damascus had fallen with no trace of Assad and family.

And that means the end of one of history’s most blood-soaked dynastic rules. Father Hafez al-Assad who came to power in the early 1970s retained power until his death in 2000 when son Bashar took over. Hafez will go down as not only the man who waged endless wars on Israel, he also occupied and brutalized Lebanon while waging an endless war on his own people, the 1982 massacre in Hama is just one of the many horrors to mention here. But Bashar, the London-educated ophthalmologist who initially was thought of as a man with a ‘western’ outlook and the potential to be a ‘reformer’, more hope than reality really, was no different. Here is some unnerving testimony from Michel Kilo, the late Syrian dissident and former prisoner of Assad’s dungeons:

And this was from 2012, well before the Syrian Civil War got going which killed over six-hundred thousand, in often the most gruesome ways imaginable. Yes, it was Assad who used chemical weapons on his own people. Kind assistance during this war was provided by Russia who needed access to Mediterranean seaports and Iran who needed the land bridge to Hezbollah in Lebanon and encircle Israel. In doing so Russia sharpened its skill set that it would again deploy in Ukraine and which consists mostly of endlessly bombing and maiming civilians. That all is now over and the consequences are fairly dramatic:

1. Iran has suffered a huge blow to its Middle East strategy. Assad’s fall exposes Tehran’s weakness and has now created and opportunity to cripple the mullah regime.

2. Russia is out of the Middle East, pretty much. The resulting vacuum could be filled by Israel and the US, but also by a rapidly emerging Turkey. The Saudis could also fill part of the void.

3. The Kurds may have an opportunity to strengthen their position and finally take a shot at statehood, something the world has denied them forever out of fear for the interests of Turkey, Iraq and Iran. You are right to wonder with the lifelong global attention to sovereignty for Palestinians why the same obsessive effort was never accorded to the long suffering Kurds.

4. The central and most important parts of Syria are now being controlled by a radical Islamist group, Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The big question is how they will rule Syria and what the consequences will be for its minorities: the Druze, Kurds and Christians.

5. Where there once was an iron line of enemies on its northern and north-western borders there now is a brief vacuum wherein Israel can operate. Not for long, however. HTS will quickly consolidate and in doing so become another longer term threat to Israel’s existence. Fresh reports indicate Israel today captured parts of the Syrian side of the Hermon mountain.

6. America which has had an abysmal record in trying to deal with Syria and Iran will now have to rework its entire Middle East approach. As Trump is already stepping up as president the question is how it will play its cards on the maps of a restructured Middle East. Its legacy is not good and it may be a good moment to let the late John McCain reflect on the American record in Syria:

So, you are witnessing a dramatic unfolding of history much like the collapse of the Soviet controlled Eastern Europe in the 1989-90 years. Assad’s flight is reminiscent of that of Nicolae Ceaușescu, once perceived to be invincible leaders, backed up by powerful regional players, too hard for the West to topple. The Hamas attack on Israel however initiated an unexpected chain of events that revealed an all too familiar historical pattern: tyrants eventually fall and when they fall they fall hard. For now, for this brief moment, let’s celebrate the exit of the butcher of Damascus and hope there is a better future for Syria, its people and the entire region.

Photos: Hafez al-Assad and family (top left) and Bashar al-Assad and family (top right).