al-Assad’s fall and fallouts

 He withstood a gruelling insurgency in his country for more than 13 years. But when rebel fighters moved to oust him early last week, it took less than two weeks for their final push that resulted in his fall. Bashar al-Assad was kicked out in Syria to end his 24-year-long hold on power. His ouster ended more than 50 years of Assad family rule in the Middle East country, having in 2000 succeeded his father, Hafez al-Assad, who in 1970 seized power in a coup to become Syria’s ruler till his death.

Assad’s staying power amidst the turbulence of the volatile region was fabled. Following the eruption of the Arab Spring that saw no fewer than four Arab rulers flushed out of power by mass uprisings, opposition fighters took up arms in 2011 to press for regime change in Syria. Protests rocked many other Mideast countries but elicited different outcomes, with conflicts recorded in Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Djibouti, Sudan, Palestine, Iraq, Bahrain, Libya, Kuwait, Morocco, Mauritania, and at the borders of both Lebanon and Israel. Rulers who fell as a direct result of the uprisings were Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia in 2011, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya in 2011, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011, and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in 2012. Assad’s survival in Syria largely informed media rephrasing of the term ‘Arab Spring’ as ‘Arab Winter,’ referring to the deterioration of many of the conflicts into drawn-out sectarian strife and armed violence with no immediate consequential change.

Assad waged a brutal war against insurgents to retain his hold on power. In August 2013, he unleashed sarin gas attack on a densely populated rebel-held suburb near Damascus, killing more than 1,400 civilians, among them hundreds of children. The attack was despite a warning by then United States President Barak Obama that use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict was a red line not to be crossed. Obama did not follow through on moving against Assad, perhaps dissuaded by the venture of his predecessor, George W. Bush, into a war in the Gulf region following the 11th September, 2001 attack on American homeland that became a wearisome mire for the country. There were other reports of chemical weapon usage by the Assad regime, but none as severe as the August 2013 incident.

The stunning overthrow of Assad penultimate Sunday came nearly 14 years after Syrians rose in peaceful protests against his government, whereas he met them with violent repression that spiralled into a bloody civil war. For their last stand, a coalition of opposition fighters launched a major offensive against pro-government forces on 27th November at the front line between opposition-held Idlib and neighbouring governorate of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. They seized that city and from there captured other strategic towns previously held by Assad’s government, and then marched on the capital city of Damascus that they took on 8th December. Their push against the capital encountered little resistance from soldiers loyal to Assad, who fled into exile reportedly in Russia.

Syrian insurgents reached the precincts of Damascus on Saturday, 7th December, in a rapid offensive that saw them take over some of the country’s largest cities. It was reportedly the first time that opposition forces were reaching Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured areas on the outskirts of the capital city following a years-long siege. The fighters were led by the most notable insurgent group in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, along with factional Turkish-backed rebel militias under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army. The rebels opened up Assad regime’s prisons along their path and set free political prisoners held inside.

Analysts ascribed the lightning speed of Assad’s fall to both internal and external factors, though more of external ones. Internally, there was Syria’s struggle with its economy that had tanked and leaned heavily on illicit trade in psychoactive substances for a breather. Assad had become hugely unpopular as Syrians found it tougher to survive, including his soldiers who mostly no longer wanted to fight for him. Soldiers and police officers were reported abandoning their posts, handing over their weapons and fleeing ahead of opposition advance. When Assad himself was fleeing Syria via Damascus international airport on 8th December, the facility was only momentarily secured by his soldiers who abandoned it immediately thereafter, allowing for easy take-over by approaching rebel fighters. Even Assad’s prime minister, Mohammed al-Jalali, seemed eager to hand over power to the rebels. 

“If ISIS regains a foothold because of Assad’s fall, even far-flung regions could feel its terror vibes”

 On the external front, the Assad regime had been weak militarily for some years and had relied heavily on Russia and Iran as props. Lebanon-based Iranian proxy group, Hezbollah, was also a mainstay of the Syrian regime. But Russia is presently bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine while Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, have been degraded by Israeli attacks over the Gaza war and could not readily support the faltering Syrian army. In the final days of the rebel offensive, the Russian military mounted intense airstrikes against them in support of Assad’s army. But it was apparently too little too late to halt the dictator’s fall. The strikes followed what was the boldest rebel assault for years in a civil war where the front lines had largely been frozen since 2020. 

United States President-elect Donald Trump described the situation quite graphically. In a post on his Truth Social platform, he commented: “Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers (Russia later denied the stats) lay wounded or dead in a war that should never have started and could go on forever. Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now – one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success…”

Even though Assad was a Moscow ally, the United States has some troops in eastern Syria posted to keep Islamic State (ISIS) fighters at bay. On the heels of the dictator’s ouster, U.S. officials confirmed that Iranian forces who had been defending him had “pretty much” evacuated from Syria. They further noted that Russia, his main foreign backer, is busy with its war in Ukraine while Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah, which at some point sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad’s forces, has been weakened by the year-long conflict with Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has seen its other proxies across the region also degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes. 

The new power in Syria, HTS, once known as the Nusra Front, is itself designated a terrorist group by the U.S., Russia, Turkey and other states. But with Assad out of the equation, Israel has one headache less to deal with in the boiling geopolitical cauldron, especially now that its hand may be further strengthened by Trump when he takes office from January, next year. Already, Israel has seized on Assad’s fall to launch airstrikes on Syrian ports and missile warehouses while ground troops push deeper into Syrian Golan Heights, effectively expanding Israeli occupation.

The Syrian civil war was rated among the bloodiest in the 21st Century, claiming more than 500,000 lives including those of 164,000 civilians as of March 2024, according to United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Over the years, Syria’s neighbors including Turkey, Israel and Iran were drawn into the conflict to varying degrees, along with outside powers like Russia and the United States. It was in September 2015 that Putin intervened to support Assad militarily and, along with Iran and Hezbollah, became one of its key backers. The conflict was also a factor in the rise of ISIS, a terror group that at its height controlled about 30 percent of Syria and, though not directly involved in the rebel offensive, has sleeper cells in Syria’s deserts. Reports, last week, cited a top Syrian commander warning that the terror group was taking advantage of Assad’s overthrow to resurge.

The temptation is strong to feel unconcerned in this clime about goings-on in Syria. But if ISIS regains a foothold because of Assad’s fall, even far-flung regions could feel its terror vibes, and that not exempting our own. Wisdom is to proactively erect security shields against such eventuality.