The fall of Assad – A pivotal moment in Middle East History by Kola Odetola

In politics, there are decades where nothing happens, then weeks when decades happen. Perhaps the only caveat that can be added to this well known quip by Vladimir Lenin, the great Russian revolutionary leader is that in Syria, it took days, not weeks for decades to happen.

The collapse of Basher Assad’s dictatorship in Syria occurred at astonishing speed. A dynasty that has ruled Syria for almost half a century disintegrated virtually overnight. While the mainstream media uniformly portray the Assad regime as sustained only by its exceptional brutality, that retained power solely through mass murder, torture and repression, the truth is a bit more complex. The Assad family came to power in 1971 through Basher’s Father, Hafez, a general in the Syrian air force and a member of the Syrian Baath party, a Pan Arab, secular and left leaning nationalist party.

The Assad’s were popular at first

Like fellow thinkers in other ‘revolutionary’ Arab republics, such as Mummar Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq respectively, Assad, the senior initially won mass popular support by sweeping social reforms, nationalising key industries and providing near full employment, free education from cradle up to university, heavily subsidised health care services and the provision of mass social housing for the poor. But these reform minded rulers soon became victims of their own success, producing a relatively healthy, cultured and well educated populace, far more advanced than the average in the region. Leading to increasing demands including for political reform which they could not meet. To preserve the privileges of the ruling stratum Hafez and later his son Basher, like Gaddafi moved closer to the west taking the poisoned pill of IMF/World bank ‘reforms’ which further undermined their legitimacy as it eroded most the social gains of their rule leading to increasingly loud challenges to their legitimacy. Without ‘food’ dictators lose the sole rationale for their rule.

The Arab Spring turns sour

The result was the 2011 uprising in Syria which Basher Assad crushed with the help of Russia and Iran, the hijack of the revolution by jihad radicals splitting its base and giving Assad and his foreign backers a platform to mobilise elements of Syrian society against the movement.

Russia and Iran throw Assad under the bus

But politics is nothing if not fluid and conditions if not interests change. Russia being bogged down in Ukraine is one reason why Putin refused to support Assad this time around. But there is also a calculation that Assad was done. Propping him up any further would have resulted in sinking resources into a lost cause. For Putin Ukraine, not Syria is the existentialist conflict. Sending troops to Syria to fight an endless war supporting a hopeless cause would have meant playing to a tune dictated by his enemies. There is no doubt that western intelligence agencies, the Mossad together with Turkey masterminded the recent rebel offensive. There are also credible accounts of Ukrainian Special Forces working with the insurgent Syrian troops. The plan? To draw Russian forces away from the east and southern Ukrainian frontlines where they are currently on the front foot to defend Assad in Syria. Vladimir Putin whose entire legacy will be determined by what happens in the Donbas, not Damascus was never going to fall into that trap. Having said that the fall of Assad is a strategic defeat for Moscow and huge blow to Russian prestige and its reputation in the Middle East and global south. There is also the risk that Moscow could lose its warm water naval bases in Syria, although his depends upon what happens in Syria in the coming period as the situation is still very fluid and unstable.

Then there is Iran which has backed Assad to the hilt against his and their Sunni and wahabbi enemies over the last 13 years. It was Iranian forces and Hezbollah on the ground under the cover of Russian air power which helped turn the tide in 2015 when the rebels were on the verge of overwhelming Assad. Iran needs Syria to provide a direct link to its most powerful allied militia, Hezbollah in Lebanon. The fall of Assad is a major blow to Tehran. But this should not be overstated. There have been increasing tensions between Assad and the clergy in Iran for years. Having secured his position during the war with Iranian help, the Syrian dictator then started moving away from them and towards the oil rich Arab kingdoms, Iran’s regional enemies, in order to secure funds to rebuild his shattered country. The outbreak of the Gaza war in October last year further deepened the gulf between Damascus and Tehran. Assad has remained strangely muted about the genocide in Gaza and the killings of Hamas and Hezbollah’s senior leaders by Israel. Even the killing of senior Iranian generals by Israel in a missile strike on its Damascus consulate drew only desultory condemnation from Assad. His silence clearly a sign to the wealthy gulf monarchies he was courting that he was willing to keep some distance between his regime and the Ayatollah’s in Tehran.

Even the assassination of key Iranian ally Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah by Israel in October was largely passed over in silence by Assad and his inner circle. Increasingly Tehran had begun to view Assad as a costly and ungrateful liability. However the collapse of his government will have serious repercussions for Iran. It removes a key if increasingly unreliable ally in its axis of resistance it also closes off a land route to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon. This will impact Hezbollah too but the militia is too deeply rooted in the Shia community in Lebanon to collapse as a result of the cutting off of direct aid from Iran. The bigger danger for Hezbollah is the energising of the Sunni community in Lebanon by the victory of its co-religionists in neighbouring Syria and a resumption of the Lebanese civil war, which is now a real possibility.

Israel playing with fire, again

There is little doubt that Israel played a key role in helping organise the militants in Syria and their recent offensive. But what also cannot be denied is even they did not expect the speed of Assad’s collapse nor did they plan it. Their intention was to apply pressure on Iran and Hezbollah by attacking its supply routes through Syria. For Israel Assad and his father were ‘useful enemies’. Not too powerful. But powerful enough to scare the Israeli public and American governments to justify their continued support for and funding of the Jewish colonial state. Assad’s inability to respond to the constant Israeli attacks on his country underlined this theory. He was for Israel the perfect political scarecrow. While they won’t mourn his fall, it puts them in a new and uniquely dangerous position.

Israel’s strategy over the last seventy years has been to rely on three props to defend its existence and continued theft of Palestinian land. Overwhelming military strength, the support or silence of unpopular Arab kings and autocrats and where the first two props proved insufficient, dividing its enemies. Where popular anti Israel movements have arisen Israel has promoted others to oppose and undermine them. But this strategy is worn and has proven increasingly lethal for the Zionist state.

To undermine the PLO in the 1970’s and 80’s it promoted what started as a peaceful and innocent Palestinian Muslim charity – Hamas. Hamas as we all know would later on the 7th of October 2023 inflict the most grievous defeat on Israel in half a century. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to crush the PLO but triggered the birth of what until now has been the most effective Arab military force it has ever faced. Hezbollah. Now to defeat Hezbollah it has help raise to power for the first time ever in a serious and strategically situated Arab state, the direct heirs of Osama Bin Laden. Syria is a modern relatively developed inspite of years of war Arab state. It has a highly educated population and a diaspora numbering in the millions. It is no Afghanistan or Yemen, desolate, dirt poor mountainous nations in the middle of nowhere. Syria is important and is a majority Sunni state. The victory of the Sunni rebels will attract militants and jihadis from across the world to Damascus and to Israel’s border, something which the Assad’s for 50 years inspite of their rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause never allowed, including using brutal force against Palestinian militants who defied this détente with the Jewish state.

Events are not what they seem. Syrian rebels victory has weakened Hezbollah but will strengthen Hamas and the broad Arab street

The new leaders of Syria, the HTS or Hayat Tahir Al-Sham might try to moderate their image and even their actions in order not to frighten the Isaelis and the west. But politics has an iron logic of its own regardless of the views of political leaders.. You can’t ride to power on the backs of thousands of fanatics and totally rid yourself of their most powerful instincts when you do. And no instinct is more powerful in the middle east uniting both Shia and Sunni than hatred of the state of Israel. Shaving your beard and replacing Arab dress with a western blazer will only cut it so far. For the first time a militant Sunni government now sits at the heart of the middle east and shares a border with Israel. Crucially for Israel and the west this is happening when the Arab street is simmering with rage at the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza. The new Sunni militants will now have to compete with their Shia enemies who have borne the brunt of state fighting with Israel by burnishing their anti Israel credentials and they have a border to do it.

It should also not be forgotten that Hamas is not only a Sunni organisation, they also fought alongside HTS and other Sunni jihad groups against Assad during the peak of the Syrian civil war, something Assad never forgot or forgave. The Palestinian people overwhelmingly supported the Syrian revolution and are unlikely to mourn an Assad now toppled by an organisation that shares their faith which Assad (an Alawite Shia never did) If Hamas leadership is driven out of Gaza or even Tehran Israel has just provided them a new headquarters with their fellow co-religionists in Damascus. Further Israeli attacks on Syria with Iran now out will have the effect of uniting and galvanising Syrian opinion against them, rather than the indifference from the Syrian population when the dictator was in power.

The west and the Gulf states. Rejoicing at Russia’s ‘defeat’ coupled with concern and increasing alarm

While hypocritically welcoming the toppling of Assad by an organisation top of their terror list, like Israel the west now find themselves in uncharted and choppy waters teeming with sharks. Unlike Libya where the islamists would not have seized power without Nato air cover, providing the west significant leverage over the outcome, in Syria such was the speed of the islamist advance and Assad’s collapse, they had not got the time nor the will with Biden a lame duck president to intervene in order to influence the outcome, with the presence of Russian forces also providing a deterrent. The Syrian rebels seized power without any direct western support meaning their credibility with the Syrian masses will be immeasurably greater than was the case in Libya. This poses the clear threat to western imperialism of events in Syria slipping out of their grasp. They have limited military assets on the ground and will be forced to rely on the slippery and ever treacherous Erdogan to influence the situation there.

How this will end

There are different factions amongst the emerging and successful Syrian rebel alliance. But the Islamists are clearly the most organised and most powerful group. They are also likely to win any election held in Syria on the strength of their credibility in having done the lion share of the fighting to topple Assad’s dictatorship. How this will play out is not clear. The lack of western forces on the ground in Syria means the Islamists for now will have a free hand. A massive scramble for power and influence by the major powers is now likely to commence. The west will arm the weaker ‘pro-western’ factions as will Turkey. There will be strenuous efforts to isolate the Islamists who were supposed to be used as pawns against Assad, before crowning themselves kings. Further and more bitter fighting cannot only not be ruled out, sadly it is likely to be the most likely outcome. It will focus for control of the the main cities like Allepo, Homs and Damascus as the various groups struggle for control. It is also very likely that there will be limited invasions from Israel and more ambitious ones from Turkey. A full scale Turkish invasion is unlikely but can’t be ruled out if Erdogan who wants to control Syria doesn’t get his way. It should not be forgotten that just over a century ago the entire Arab world was part of the Ottoman or Turkish Empire. Erdogan has not forgotten this, nor have the Arabs. A Turkish occupation of Syria will destroy Erdogan and possibly precipitate the collapse of Islamic rule in Ankara a fate Erdogan narrowly avoided in last year’s Turkish elections.

Finally while the fall of Assad has provoked rejoicing at Russia’s defeat coupled with some unease at the victory of Islamism in the west, it has provoked near alarm in the Gulf States and Arab autocracies like Egypt and Jordan. The sight of ordinary people toppling statutes of a dictator and his late father in a country that has been at the heart of Arab politics for the last sixty years would have sent chills up the spines in royal and state houses in Riyadh, Kuwait, Cairo and Amman. While Sunni, the Arab ruling houses have always hated popular or street based Sunni mass movements and or rebels appealing to the street. Coming at a time when the Arab street is boiling at the genocide in Gaza, there is a real risk that this could go anywhere. If it’s possible in Damascus, why not Cairo the street will wonder. This is a fraught situation and exceptionally dangerous one for the established order in the Middle East and its patrons in the west. The first blow has landed on Iran and Russia. The coming far more lethal blows will explode somewhere very different.

Kola Odetola is a UK-based public affairs analyst and geopolitical commentator. He contributed this article from London and can be reached via +44 7707 594076 (WhatsApp only).