How did Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapse?
Over the weekend, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia as opposition forces took control of the capital, Damascus, ending an uprising that began in 2011 and left hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions displaced. It appears that the Assad regime has gained the upper hand after receiving significant military support from Iran and Russia. But with its allies tied to conflicts against Israel and Ukraine, respectively, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a rebel group that had been linked to al-Qaeda under its former name, Jabhat al-Nusra, marched with astonishing speed through key areas of Syria. Cities.
To understand what this turn of events means for Syria’s neighbors and how the country can achieve a semblance of normalcy, I recently spoke by phone with Emile Hakim, director of regional security and senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Strategy. Studies, who has written extensively on Syria for nearly two decades. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the internal dynamics that led to the decline of the Assad regime, why Assad’s regional enemies remain concerned, and what the rebels who overthrew the government really want.
Over the past 48 hours, we’ve seen people celebrating the fall of Assad, but what are you most worried about now and why?
I think everyone’s concern is about the partisan divisions that have spread not only in the opposition but also in Syria. The regime itself was divided, as had been the opposition in the past. Syria has a Kurdish population, and ISIS It is still rearing its ugly head in the eastern desert. So, part of the country was united for a long time around Assad because he seemed to be the lowest common denominator. But that became part of the reason for his downfall. The opposition became relatively more united because it had one enemy to rally against. Now we basically return to the competition for power, land, and legitimacy. That will be the difficult task here, which is to rise above that.
But I don’t think we should be cynical. Just because it was difficult in the past and did not work elsewhere, does not mean that the Syrians will fail. There is a strong case for optimism here based on the fact that this was in some way a purely Syrian victory, or a Syrian solution to a Syrian problem. This was not an international or regionally supported effort that led to Assad’s demise. The fact that it was a bottom-up process may reduce some of these divisions.
Specifically, the fact that we have avoided the so-called Gaddafi moment — where Bashar al-Assad was neither captured nor killed, which happened to Gaddafi in a most horrific way — could help defuse tensions. If we had had a Gaddafi moment, I think the way this would have played out in the Syrian sectarian world would have been troubling, that would have been an overwhelming picture.
Because it was possible for the religious majority, the Sunnis, to kill someone – even if they deserved it – someone from a minority sect, in this case the Alawites?
exactly. In a way, yes, it is sad that he escaped, and there would certainly be very legitimate calls for justice. But avoiding that violent climax of that process — even though there’s still violence and I’m not whitewashing what’s happening — and not having that one moment, the one image that crystallizes all the fears, really helps.
I said that this is the Syrian solution to the Syrian problem. Does this mean that you think Türkiye’s role in supporting this group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, is exaggerated?
certainly. Türkiye is the big geopolitical winner, but I think we need to provide some context there. First, Türkiye is not a direct sponsor of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, but is in fact the sponsor of another coalition called the Syrian National Army, which has brought together the remnants of other groups. If anything, HTS, although coming from an extremist jihadi past, has actually been quite disciplined in this area, and in recent years has avoided some extreme behavior that Turkish-backed groups like the Syrian National Army have not. I would argue that the Syrian National Army is a more problematic force in this regard.
I do not believe, and a number of other analysts do not believe, that Türkiye was the one that orchestrated the march to Damascus from day one. I believe that the Turks intended to achieve limited achievements in and around Aleppo. The rebels wanted to advance further, but the Turks were on board for a limited operation. It’s just that the speed at which things happened, and the momentum the rebels gained, exceeded initial calculations. I believe that this march and this feverish advance is largely due to the momentum with which the rebels themselves were surprised.
But more importantly, and I think this is the main factor, is that it exposed the emptiness and rot of the Assad regime. Pro-Assad circles decided it was not worth fighting. Why? Because Assad defeated his enemies, and they stopped posing an existential threat to him. But there were no gains for victory the next day, which severely damaged his constituency. He won, but there were no positive returns economically.
Who was his constituency?
It was highly diverse, and included Alawite individuals and clans who benefited from the regime and served in key security functions. But it extended to a large group of Sunni officers, and to a large section of the middle class, the urban Sunni elite, and the upper class. Minority members included: Armenians, Christians, and others. It was a disparate coalition that supported him first and foremost because it served as a bulwark against Islamists, broadly defined. And they shed a lot of blood for him. They have suffered terribly, and have justified Assad’s murderous campaign in recent decades.
But these electoral constituencies, and their economic and social wealth, have declined since victory. Assad did not have the mindset, he did not have the plan, and he did not have the resources to make things better, including for his constituency. Indeed, his regime has become more plundering, greedy, and violent in the past few years. He never regained cohesion. He never regained a sense of purpose.
There is an argument that Assad’s most important foreign backers, such as Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, withdrew their support or were unable to provide the same levels of support, leading to the collapse of the regime. I assume you think that’s part of the reason, but it also seems like you’re saying something special.
Look, I’m not denying the huge contribution that Iran’s weakening and Russia’s expansion has made in all of this. But the speed with which the regime’s forces collapsed, the complete absence of those popular militias that had rallied in the past, and the fact that Assad had no speech, were important. He has not appeared on television once in the past ten days. All of this points to the absolute hollowness of his regime and the fact that it has lost the support of all those bases that were essential to survival during the previous iteration of that war, between 2011 and 2017. I don’t think anyone can understand what happened if one ignores that important dynamic. So, yes, there is certainly a geopolitical context to all of this, but there is Syrian agency. There are local circumstances that allowed this to happen the way it did. They remembered the economic collapse, and the fact that they lost access to the Lebanese economy.