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Thirteen years after children scribbled anti-regime slogans in the southern city of Deraa, sparking the Syrian revolution, Bashar al-Assad and his kleptocratic family have fallen. The end of a dynasty that has brutalised and pillaged one of the Arab world’s most important countries for more than five decades will be celebrated by the hundreds of thousands of families of those the Assads killed, maimed, imprisoned and made to disappear. The extraordinary collapse of the regime also marks a watershed moment in the Middle East: Syria was both Russia and Iran’s most important ally in the region. The end of Assad confirms the shift in the regional balance of power. Tehran and its proxies are further undermined and Russia’s influence weakened.
Since Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel, old certainties across the region have been scrambled, the political cards shuffled. The Middle East that emerges from the wreckage of the past year of conflict and carnage, however, is still uncertain. Much will depend on who rules Syria after Assad. The only obvious winner from Assad’s ouster is Turkey, long the main backer of Syria’s rebels. The Sunni Arab states of the Gulf had recently re-embraced the Syrian dictator, bringing him back into the Arab fold. For them, as for Israel, the prospect of an Islamist-led government in Damascus will not be welcomed.
Syria’s long forgotten war was awakened by a confluence of factors: Assad had only prevailed over a collection of rebel factions because of the support of Russia and Lebanon’s Hizbollah. It was Russia’s air force and Hizbollah’s fighters on the ground that turned the war to his advantage. With Moscow distracted by the invasion of Ukraine and Hizbollah devastated in recent months by the conflict with Israel, the rebels found a propitious moment to strike. So battered was the Syrian army that within days the jihadi HTS, the most well-armed and motivated of the rebel factions, over-ran government-held cities and reached the capital Damascus. There were probably a few deals, a sign of how the Assad system was broken.
For many Syrians, this is a moment of joy. The rebels have opened prisons, reuniting families with loved ones long lost in Assad’s torture dungeons. Among the more than 5mn Syrian refugees who fled the war many now hope they might go back to homes they had despaired of ever seeing again.
But what happens next will depend on HTS. The group has sought to portray itself as a reformed jihadi organisation, its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who was once part of Isis and al-Qaeda, styling himself as a statesman. He has promised to treat with dignity Syria’s Christian and Kurdish minorities, and even the Alawi minority from which the Assad family hails. Many will still fear the Islamists will instigate reprisals or impose their own religious dictatorship. For now, HTS has spoken of protecting state institutions, suggesting it wants an orderly transition.
Syria now faces two possible paths. The first is the reignition of the civil war, which will take the country the way of Yemen and Libya, long failed and broken. The second is a stabilisation, a chance to heal, and to bring home millions of refugees scattered across the world. To seize the opportunity of a more hopeful Syria, those who can influence Jolani — Turkey and perhaps also Qatar — must ensure that he leaves the governing of the country to a civilian administration that reflects Syria’s myriad of religious communities. That should allow Arab and western governments that designate HTS as a terrorist organisation to engage with the government. The world let Syria down, time and again, even when Assad used chemical weapons against his people. It, too, now has an opportunity to help the country get back on its feet.
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