Tuesday | 14 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
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Tuesday | 14 January 2025 | Epaper

The fall of Assad regime: Will anything change?

Published : Thursday, 12 December, 2024 at 12:00 AM  Count : 362
Sudipto Kabir
Renad Soda was among the dozens of people who gathered in Belfast after the demise of the Assad regime. It's been nine years since she left her relatives in Syria, only at the age of seven. Now, she is hoping to reunite with her loved ones, with hopes of a better future.

While countless Syrians were celebrating around the world, a man was packing his belongings in some unknown corner of the Syrian borders. He was waiting to leave his homeland with his family at the first chance he gets. The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, feels even more unsafe under the new leadership that toppled Assad because of his orthodox Christian identity.

BBC reporters have seen people from the Alawite minority trying to leave the country. They also fear sharp retaliation under the new leadership. With Bashar al-Assad out of the picture, more than five decades of a family dynasty came to an end. People are hoping things will change for the better. Things will change for sure, but for better or for worse-it's too early to say. The fall of the regime created a massive power vacuum in the war-torn country. Something or someone will fill that gap, which will dictate the future of the Syrian people. But who might be Assad's successor?

The Car Crash That Changed Everything: Bashar al-Assad, the second son of Anisa Makhlouf and Hafeez al-Assad, was never intended to be in politics. He was the Michael Corleone of the Assad family. Instead of joining the military like his father at a young age, he chose medicine. After graduating from the Syrian University, he went to London Eye School to become an ophthalmologist. That was the year 1992. But fate had something else in store for him. In 1994, his elder brother Basel al-Assad died in a car crash. Basel, the first-born son of President Hafeez al-Assad, was being groomed to take over the family business-ruling Syria, of course. But after the accident, Bashar was brought back to the country. He joined the military and completed a crash course on politics under direct authorization from his father. Hafeez al-Assad remained in power until he died in 2000. He ruled the country single-handedly for almost three decades. During his time, Hafeez crushed any coup that was attempted and denied the people a democratic, western-style election system.

Same Old, Same Old: Bashar al-Assad became president only at the age of 34. But to install him in that position, the constitutional barrier of a president being at least 40 years of age had to be amended. The second son of Hafeez had a western education, married a modern girl, had a different leading style, and uttered words like "transparency," "accountability," and "democracy"-he might have seemed different from his father, at least that's what Syrians thought at first. Unfortunately, the apple did not fall far from the tree. His political doctrine, as it would emerge, was no different from his father's-a highly personalized dictatorship with power concentrated in the armed forces, including the air force, and intelligence agencies. 

In 2001, Assad's government detained a lot of people who were vocal about government policies. Though later, a number of political prisoners were released in a presidential amnesty as part of his campaign to demonstrate to the west that Syria was changing, it was always window dressing. The arrests had really never stopped. It was business as usual. Bashar's initial offer of reform was to promise economic change ahead of political transformation, replacing unpopular state monopolies with a free market, but which ultimately benefited a crony elite, such as his cousin Rami, who made an empire after Bashar came to power. After years of corruption, exploitation, and unemployment, people were already on the edge. By 2011, and with the onset of the Arab Spring, Syria had all the necessary elements to get caught up in the wind of change. 

At first, people started demonstrating peacefully. But Assad decided to handle things with brute force. From that time onwards, Syria plunged into a civil war that displaced about 14 million people and claimed the lives of more than 500,000. In 2012, leaks of thousands of hacked emails by WikiLeaks relating to Bashar and his family and their contacts across the region provided a rare insight into the deliberations and life of the Assads inside Damascus: Asma ordering expensive jewelry in Paris; the inevitable PR consultants advising how to appear to be reforming while pursuing a violent crackdown. Key among the revelations that year, even as the first Russian military advisers began arriving to bolster the regime, was Bashar's personal involvement in signing off on daily orders for the continuing violence, even as a sense of unreality pervaded-prompting Asma's British-based father to question the wisdom of the timing of a New Year's Eve party planned by the couple as Syrians were being slaughtered.

Everyone Wanted a Piece of the Pie: The civil war in Syria became a proxy war for global and regional powers. The Assad regime was backed by Iran and Russia. On the other hand, the rebels were backed by Turkey, the United States, and its other allies. Iran used Syrian land to maintain a smooth supply route for their proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. According to analyst Robin Wright, to protect its interests in the region and the Shiites in Lebanon, it was very much necessary for Iran to back Assad. Not to anyone's surprise, it was in Israel's best interest to see Assad crushed, so Hezbollah would become weaker. On the other hand, the USA wanted to make sure that no religious extremist group became a threat for them. The fall of Assad would have threatened Russia's interests and eliminated another regional ally. This would have been a major blow to Moscow, particularly after the Western-backed toppling of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, which Putin, then a prime minister, personally opposed and criticized then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for enabling.

Another key player was Turkey, which considered the Kurds as a security threat. Syria had a large Kurdish population in the northwestern region, sharing borders with Turkey. Ankara considered them a threat to national sovereignty.

The Slow but Steady Demise: The course Assad took was simply delaying the inevitable. He was riding heavily on the support of his backers. After years of fighting, the funds were drying up. With the three-year-long Ukraine war, Russia, their biggest backer, could not fund them like they used to. Almost 600,000 soldiers were killed or wounded, according to Zelenskyy, which was a huge toll on the Kremlin. The Gaza war was another blow that sped up Assad's demise. For the last few weeks, Israel bombarded Lebanon, killing almost the entire higher-ups of Hezbollah. Things were getting out of hand quickly. 

Assad refused to hold talks with Erdogan until Turkish forces were out of the country. Then came the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which swept the countryside in just a few days, and finally toppled the regime. Assad was forced to leave the country and seek refuge in Russia.

What Lies Ahead?
The new leadership is an offshoot of al-Qaeda. But they claimed to have cut their ties with any group seeking a global caliphate and decided to focus only on issues that concern Syria. They claim to ensure that every citizen, irrespective of race and religion, will be treated justly. Analysts think it was Erdogan who implicitly gave the green signal to HTS to advance. But now they face the risk of whether they will be able to control them. The USA, in the Cold War era, mobilized the Taliban to fight off the Soviets. Eventually, the Taliban became a pill they could not swallow. Is Turkey opening the same Pandora's Box?

On the other hand, Netanyahu has claimed credit for Assad's fall. Even if he does have something to do with it, he is now facing risks of the situation backfiring upon him. Israel is concerned about the rebels getting their hands on Assad's chemical and other destructive arsenals, which could be used against them. Syria was an important supply route for Hezbollah. After weeks of wreaking havoc in Lebanon, Israel brought the organization to its knees, which was also a reason that Assad could not hold on. 

But as of today, some Iranian officials claim to have contacted the newly formed leadership. If they decide to join hands, things could turn worse. In the Middle East, the Shiite-Sunni clash is almost inevitable, at least that's what we've seen for decades. The previous dynasty was Alawite, which follows Alawism, a sect that splintered from early Shia Islam in the early ninth century. The Assad family recruited many Alawites into the government, which created major discontent among the Sunni majority population. The party that toppled Assad, HTS, is a Sunni political and armed organization. The Kurds are also of the Sunni majority. Iran, a long-term supporter of Assad, backs Shiites around the region. Is another Shia-Sunni clash coming up? We will find out soon enough. 

It would be a sweet ending if people like Renad Soda could live in the Syria they envisioned. But, alas! The only thing we've learned from history is that we humans are poor students of history.

The writer is a contributor


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