The sudden fall of Bashar al-Assad

With that opposition blitz-offensive in Syria on December 8, the entire era of the rule of the Assad family, which lasted for 53 years, ended. How did it come about?

Four years ago, President Bashar al-Assad, with the help of Russia, Iran and Iran-backed militias, brutally crushed the rebellion that began in 2011. Turkey and Russia brokered a truce that, despite sporadic fighting, has largely held.

Assad's government regained control of most of Syria's cities, but large parts of the country were still out of its control. The northern and eastern areas were controlled by a US-backed alliance of Kurdish armed groups. Islamic State cells remain in the Syrian desert, in areas where energy supplies and the thin stream of gas that powers thermal power plants in central Syria come from. Most of the opposition is concentrated in Idlib province, which was controlled by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.

Isaac Shoteiner writes in the "New Yorker" that the Syrian opposition gathers more than ten factions, including Islamist and nationalist ones. "You have a combined Sunni Islamist opposition, and then a nationalist and somewhat secular opposition. But I think this kind of division misses the overarching point. The key driver of the rebels and the vanguard of the opposition is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with about 5.000 fighters. That formation was originally (2012) called Al Nusra Front and, historically, was an offshoot of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri's Al Qaeda.

Changing its name from Al Nusra Front to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham sent a message to regional supporters, especially Turkey and Qatar, and also to the international community, that the group no longer belonged to Al Qaeda. However, in the United States and the United Kingdom, she was still declared a terrorist.

Other opposition, nationalist and smaller Islamist groups had about ten thousand fighters. Their members are less dogmatic and religious, more pluralistic open to all ethnic and religious elements, but these organizations did not gain momentum, mainly because they relied on external powers, including the US. The opposition would not have been able to do what it has done in the past few days without the combat capabilities, without the will, without the organizational capacity and without the decision-making process of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham", according to Schottner.

Leading researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Sukhov, in a conversation with Fyodor Lukyanov (Russia in Global Politics), says that in the Idlib region, all jihadists from different enclaves have been united as a result of the negotiation process that was conducted in 2018, with the help of the Russian army , an intermediary, under her guarantee. The entire pot in which everything was cooked was renamed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham - translated as "Organization for the Liberation of the Levant". Now they consider her a liberator from the bloody regime. It is a Western term, says Suhov.

photo: ap photo

11 WAR DAYS

The situation escalated sharply on November 27, just a day after the cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon came into effect. The rebels of the Islamist formation Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other groups launched an operation in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, with the knowledge and tacit approval of Turkey, which has military forces there. They claimed it was in retaliation for recent Syrian government attacks on towns in Idlib, including Ariha and Sarmada.

On Wednesday, November 27, Al Jazeera reported that by evening armed opposition had captured at least 19 towns and villages, including military facilities.

The Syrian army responded by shelling rebel-held areas, while Russian forces carried out airstrikes. Just three days after launching the offensive, rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took control of Aleppo - Syria's second-largest city, which has been the scene of fierce fighting during the civil war. The government withdrew its troops and security forces.

In The New Yorker, historian Isaac Chotiner writes that he was shocked by the speed with which the Islamist and nationalist opposition managed to retake large parts of northwestern Syria, including Aleppo.

"Aleppo is the second largest city in Syria - the cultural capital. It used to be an economic powerhouse for Syria. The recapture of Aleppo by the Syrian government in 2016 marked a turning point in the civil war. This was and is a military earthquake. First, because of the opposition's ability to actually carry out a pre-emptive strike, which meant that the opposition, mainly Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and various groups, had been planning this attack for a long time. This is not a byproduct of a month or two, but probably several years. And secondly, I was surprised by the speed with which many units of the Syrian army agreed. That Aleppo fell so quickly and that the army and security forces were crushed so quickly tells me that the Syrian army and the Syrian government suffer from major vulnerabilities. We knew about them, but we didn't really appreciate their gravity and depth."

After the conquest of Aleppo, the rebels advanced to the south, towards Hama - the strategic center of the city on the Aleppo-Damascus highway.

Assad promised to "crush" the rebels there with the help of his allies. By Sunday, December 1, Syrian and Russian aircraft intensified airstrikes on Idlib and positions in Aleppo.

Iran-backed militias have sent reinforcements to shore up the faltering Syrian army's defense lines in the Hama suburbs. However, the fourth largest city of Hama also fell into the hands of the rebels after several days of fighting.

The opposition then met no serious resistance in Homs, 46 km away, at a key crossroads connecting Damascus with Syria's coastal areas and the coastal cities of Tartus and Latakia.

Shiites, Alawites and Christians from other parts of Syria fled to that enclave of the minority Alawite community.

RUSSIAN BASE IN ALAVI ENCLAVE

Strategic Russian naval bases are located in that political stronghold of El-Assad. Retired colonel Mikhail Khodarenok, a military columnist for the Gazeta.ru portal, writes that in the new circumstances, the main question for Russia is how to withdraw Russian military specialists from Tartus and Hmeimim without losses. According to his assessment, both bases, which according to the contract with Syria should remain there until 2066, will most likely have to be abandoned.

As a direct witness, he notes that significant funds have been invested in the construction and equipping of these military facilities, starting in 2015. Tartus was built almost from scratch. Hmeimim was also converted into a first-class air base. However, he predicts that it is unlikely that the new leaders of Syria will be able to extend any agreements on the continued presence of Russian military bases in the country.

Official Moscow announced that it is in contact with all Syrian opposition factions, while its military bases are on high alert, and that the Russian military presence in the country will be decided in negotiations with those who at that moment were conquering city after city.

When members of the Turkestan Islamic Party tried to enter mountainous Latakia, the fighting ended before it began. Apparently, they were ordered not to approach Russian bases.

When the opposition finally captured Latakia, looting began, the police station near the port was on fire, warehouses were looted, eyewitnesses told RIA Novosti. But apart from the shelling, there were no provocations directed at the Russian forces.

ROBBERY AND BURSTS FOR "THE NEW SYRIA"

Starting from the northwestern regions of Idlib and Aleppo, and then Hama and Homs, in eleven days there was a rapid disintegration of the Syrian army.

East of Damascus, groups of oppositionists occupied the historic Palmyra, which was conquered and liberated during the civil war. In the east of the country, about a thousand soldiers fled to Iraq.

At the same time, the southern opposition front advanced in Daraa province. As a result of all this, armed groups led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham organization entered the capital city of Damascus on December 8 without resistance.

Less than two hours later, they seized the television and announced: "The tyrant Bashar al-Assad has escaped..."

The media reports that while trying to leave Damascus, one of Assad's relatives, Ihab Makhlouf, was killed, and another, Eyad Makhlouf, was wounded.

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali announced that it was agreed with anti-government forces that government agencies would remain under government control until they were officially handed over to the transitional government. Hayat Tahrir al-Shamma leader Jawlani ordered his forces not to approach official institutions, saying they would remain under the prime minister's authority until they were "officially" handed over.

The Syrian Ministry of Labor called on employees to continue working, reports Al Watan.

All employees at the Damascus International Airport were evacuated, in which, as reported by Al Jazeera, chaos reigned.

In Damascus, the mob tore down a monument to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, which was seen in Aleppo, Homs and other cities.

Having entered Damascus, the opposition members released detainees, including members of the Islamic State, from the most notorious military prison in the country, Sidnaya (Sednaya, eng). They opened prison doors in other cities under the control of the armed opposition.

There are reports of liberation looting, especially in the government quarter of Damascus, that local residents were taking things out of Bashar al-Assad's palace, and then the palace was set on fire.

People on the streets fired volleys into the air and greeted the "new Syria". Judging by the TV reports, there were veterans among them, but also those who, hearing that the oppositionists were coming, pulled out their Kalashnikovs and fired. Others, worried about what would happen next, stayed in their homes in the city, where the opposition declared a curfew from 16pm to 5am.

Syrian soldiers changed into civilian clothes and fled, throwing away their weapons. It was collected on the streets by smugglers and ordinary people for "no need for evil" in troubled times.

The Iranian embassy was robbed. ANSA agency quoted sources from the Italian ministry who said that Syrian fighters entered the residence of their envoy in Syria, but did not injure him or his security. They only took three cars and that was it. The ambassador and policemen have been moved to a safe location.

The Russian embassy, ​​guarded by the Russian army, was not touched.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that al-Assad had resigned, left Syria and ordered a peaceful transition of power.

The Syrian Air Il-76, which appeared on radar in the Damascus area around 2 UTC, disappeared from radar after 40 minutes of flight near Homs, data from Flightradar24 showed. In the following hours, this fueled speculation that Assad may have been killed...

Late in the afternoon of that long day, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that the Russian Federation had received former President Bashar al-Assad - who had resigned and fled Syria, where there was a $10.000 price on his head - and granted him political asylum.

Asad, ALONE ON THE BATTLEFIELD

"The Economist" writes that the day before, Assad personally addressed the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed El Nahyan, and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and other countries.

As reported by Bloomberg, Assad contacted the newly elected President of the USA Donald Trump through the United Arab Emirates and suggested concluding an agreement and ending all cooperation with paramilitary groups supported by Iran. The Wall Street Journal writes that Assad had earlier rejected a similar offer from the outgoing administration.

Be that as it may, the Russian media write that Assad was left alone on the battlefield. Nikolay Suhov believes that one of the reasons for the current "quake" is the complete long-term impasse in the political process in Syria.

"I was 'lucky' to participate in this process in 2017-2019, when I worked in the office of the UN Special Representative for Syria. Our task was to somehow facilitate that process, which didn't work then, and it still doesn't work now. Assad's sharp response not so long ago to Erdogan's proposal to continue this process sounded like this: 'First withdraw your troops from our sovereign territory, then we will talk'."

The Syrian leadership saw the solution to all issues only in force, and they no longer had enough strength for that. "Four years ago, there were forces, but they were foreign: the Russian Air Force, Iranian or pro-Iranian infantry (Hezbollah and other units). There was Wagner (Russian private army of businessman Prigozhin) - don't forget! Russian infantry was also present. In Syria they remember it well, but this is all in the past. Israel's operation against Lebanon, which greatly undermined Hezbollah's forces (manpower, logistics, etc.), plus the American control of communications in the east towards Iraq and Iran - all these combined completely changed the situation. Militants used it quite intelligently...", writes Suhov.

Historian Isaac Schottner in The New Yorker points out that the main regional and global supporters of the Assad government are now preoccupied elsewhere. Russia has withdrawn most of its forces from Syria over the past three years.

Israel has systematically targeted Iranian assets in Syria on a daily basis, especially last year, and has also targeted Hezbollah units, which have allowed Bashar al-Assad not only to survive, but to defeat most of the opposition. That is why Iran began withdrawing most of its leaders from Syria in the past year, and Hezbollah was deeply engaged, first in supporting Hamas in Gaza and then in Israel.

ALAWI COALITION

However, Isaac Schottner thinks that the only partially correct explanation is that the Assad regime's military weaknesses lie mainly in the fact that its allies - the Iranians, Hezbollah and Russia - are busy in other areas. Namely, he explains that most observers of Syria do not actually recognize the effects of American sanctions that have decimated the Syrian economy. "We have reports that the Syrian army is not getting the food it needs for its soldiers and units. Not only do you have a devastated economy, not only do you have abject poverty, not only do you have an army that is starving - the Israeli attacks have turned that same army into a shadow and in the last two or three years they have dealt a heavy blow to the infrastructure, to the morale, to the units , to the leadership. And you have to consider that Syria has been at war since 2011. The Syrian army has lost around one hundred thousand soldiers since 2011.”

In his commentary for RIA Novosti, Dmitry Bavirin, on the other hand, writes that, contrary to popular myth, in the first phase of the Syrian war, which has been going on since 2011, Assad was not saved by Russia, Iran, or any other external players, because they - players, not a convict rescue service. He saved himself by showing the viability of the "Alawite" state project.

For Shiites, whose stronghold is Iran, Alawites are Muslims. For the Sunnis, who are the majority in Syria's declared borders, they are more of a sect. Both under the Ottoman Empire, and under the French mandate, and in independent Syria after 1941, Alawites were discriminated against. Almost the only social rise for them was in the military, where the Alawites eventually occupied most of the key positions. Syria, as we knew it until yesterday, is the child of the Alawite military coup, and the Assads are the clan that won their internal battle, Bavirin writes.

The elder Assad, Hafez, Bashar's father, survived the Islamist insurgency of the 1970s. It started five years after he became president, lasted six years and failed due to three factors - the Syrian army, Moscow's support and the formation of a kind of coalition of minorities around the Alawites. These are Shiites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, Yezidis, atheists, communists and other national-political and religious communities of "others" who were threatened with extermination under the rule of the Islamists.

A similar thing happened in 2011 when the Sunni street rebelled against Assad the younger. This became part of a process that went down in history as the "Arab Spring" that, due to rising grain prices and mass unemployment, boiled over in the Middle East and North Africa. In some places governments fell within weeks, in others within months. Bashar al-Assad lasted almost 15 years, says Bavirin.

There were significantly more foreign players then than under Hafez. The Kurds started their game, but the Shiites, this time under the close patronage of Iran, Christians, Druze and other minorities, again sided with the Alawite elite. At the same time, the best results were not shown by parts of the "official" Armed Forces of Syria, but by local militias in defense and private military campaigns in the offensive.

FORCE INERTIA

In the first phase of the war, the main opponent of the motley coalition gathered around Assad were the forces that the West labeled as "moderate" (although they were not moderate). In 2014, taking advantage of the partial defeat of the "moderates" and the division among them, the open extremists of the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations came to the fore.

When the remnants of the terrorist underground in the North Caucasus swore allegiance to the Islamic State, and Assad's power proved its stability, on the Russian side, writes Bavirin, this was a bet on the winner, or rather an investment in him: if Assad's Syria remains, Russia would win the continued use of military bases in Tartus and Hmeymim, vital for logistical support of operations in Africa.

After the end of the acute phase of the civil war, 2018-2020, after the victory over the militants in the suburbs of Damascus, there was euphoria in the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk ("I observed all this while I was there", writes Nikolai Sukhov). But it was not long-lived, because the economy always takes its toll.

"You can rejoice in the victory, but if you don't have energy, you don't have electricity, you don't have opportunities for development, sanctions hinder the movement of funds, goods and so on, there is disappointment. The Syrian government then had to think about how to get out of all these crisis phenomena, how to rebuild the country, and that plan had to be made public. In the end, I discovered that there is such a plan, but no one knows about it", says Nikolai Suhov.

Promises of constitutional reform and redistribution of power have gone to waste, the economy has stalled due to sanctions and losses during the war, the armed forces have not been modernized due to lack of funds and desire. Just a few months after the victorious spring of 2018, the mood of the population turned pessimistic. Before the implementation of the so-called "Caesar's Act" (sanctions against Syria), the business fell, then somehow recovered, naturally. In the end, Lebanon finished him off…

photo: ap photo

SYRIA AFTER Assad

While the Assad regime was collapsing in Syria, in Doha the diplomats of the "Astana format" - Russia, Iran, Turkey and the five Arab countries of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq - called for a political solution by which the new government would somehow have to balance the competing interests of the various forces that hold Syrian territory. The situation is reminiscent of Iraq in 2003 when American troops overthrew Saddam Hussein, only more complicated.

In an article entitled "From Iron Grip to Collapse: The Collapse of the Assad Regime and the Reconstruction of the Middle East", in the magazine "Russia in Global Politics", Lisa Isaac writes that, by all accounts, the borders of the Syrian Arab Republic will not remain the same. In the northeast, scattered territories remain under the control of the US-backed Kurds, while the Druze continue to hold power in the southern region of Sweida province. Alawites from various provinces captured by terrorist armed groups are returning to their villages in the coastal areas, and Shiites loyal to Iran are being transported to Iraq across the Iraq-Syria border. Meanwhile, Sunnis, recognized by the majority of the population, now lead local movements. Syria's demographic landscape appears to be undergoing significant changes. Lisa Isaac describes it as a new reality in the region, characterized by changing borders. They will be imposed and create a fundamentally different Middle East than the one we have known since the borders were established by the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, she predicts.

The picture of the field also speaks of this. For RIA Novosti, the vice-president of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev says that the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian National Army, with the support of Turkey, managed to find a common language, but they are hostile towards the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the east of the country, which they "oversee" United States.

The Kurds entered Deir ez-Zur. Clashes have already begun between the Kurds and forces supported by the Turks in Aleppo province, in Manbij, the "Times of Israel" reports.

Turkey's Anadolu Agency reports that 80 percent of Manbuj is controlled by the Syrian National Army. The United States will maintain its military presence in eastern Syria, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Daniel Shapiro said, as reported by Reuters.

It is also not clear how relations will be built between the pro-American forces of the Free Syrian Army in the south of the country and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which has long cooperated with the Islamic State, whose cells the Americans targeted 70 times during the crisis. The Israelis have entered the demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights, and the Israeli Air Force is carrying out airstrikes on targets in Damascus, local media reported.

photo: ap photo

THE WINNER AND HIS PROTECTOR

Some opposition members are proposing an 18-month transition period, constitutional change, inclusion, etc., but many eyes are on the man who arrived in the Syrian capital victorious on December 8, hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government. He addressed the people of the Arab Republic from the 1300-year-old Umayyad mosque, which has a strong symbolic significance. "This victory, my brothers, came through the suffering of those who were in prison... This victory is for all Syrians, they were all part of this victory..." said Abu Mohammed al-Julani, head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the most powerful armed group. opposition forces in Syria that led the offensive to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

The Russian Eurasian portal EaDaily, on the other hand, interprets that during the long journey from a young Al-Qaeda militant two decades ago to a rebel commander who preaches religious tolerance, Abu Mohammed al-Julani had enough time to plan and perfect his future line of behavior in the newly emerging situation in Syria.

"This new triumph, my brothers, marks a new chapter in the history of the region, a history full of danger that has made Syria a platform for Iranian ambitions, spreading sectarianism, fueling corruption."

In the USA, according to Eadely's writing, these words of his were interpreted in the following way. The "axis of resistance" that Tehran built after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, in which one of the key places was given to Damascus and the rule of Bashar al-Assad, received a strong blow to its very foundation. Land access to Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon has been halted…

Abu Mohammed al-Julani was born Ahmed Hussein al-Shara in 1982 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His father worked there as a petroleum engineer. The family returned in 1989 to the Damascus area.

According to Al Jazeera and other news agencies, he was allied with the top leadership of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda before cutting those ties to rebrand and present a more "moderate" image of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, which the UN, US and EU, as well as Russia, as terrorist.

photo: ap photo

Isaac Schottner writes that the United States has deliberately avoided targeting Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and attacking Abu Mohammed al-Julani and its top leaders, not because it could not do so. It wasn't a lack of resources or a lack of will. The US knows their addresses. They are all in Idlib, in the northwest of the country, near the Turkish border. This was a strategic decision by the United States because they wanted to drive a wedge between the Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State which posed a greater threat to American interests and its allies in the region, and also because of the relationship between Turkey and the Al Nusra Front and now Hayat Tahrir al Sham . Turkey and Qatar (until 2017) provided that formation with financial support and probably weapons.

With ties to the factions that fulfilled his long-held dream of conquering Damascus on Sunday, December 8, giving him more influence than any other foreign leader, the Financial Times reports, one of the biggest beneficiaries of Assad's departure could be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan.

In an unclear, unstable and uncertain situation, the question is whether these armed groups will be able to fill the dangerous vacuum on their own or whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will assume the role of "guardian" of the Syrian state in the transition period.