The Collapse of the Assad Regime in Syria
Authored by Navroop & Himja Parekh
In our book “The New Global Order” (2016) we have extensively covered the Syrian conflict which has its genesis in the 2010 Arab Spring and the PSD-11 (Presidential Study Directive) of Obama Administration which still remains classified even after 14 years and Trump 1.0 Administration from 2017-2021. The PSD 11, as we had discussed in our book emphasized about installing Muslim Brotherhood governments across the Middle East. Muslim Brotherhood is a banned terror organisation in many GCC States or Arab Monarchies like Saudi Arabia, UAE and even Egypt. The ideology of political Islam in Muslim Brotherhood is championed by Qatar and Turkey as a modus operandi to reshape the West Asia into neo-Ottoman empire under the influence of Turkey. In our previous two blogs, I have extensively covered how Turkish sponsored groups HTS & SNA collaborated to accentuate the fall of Assad regime. The fall of Bashar Al Assad in Syria will have huge regional and global consequences but before moving on to discuss the aftershocks of Syria lets understand how Syria as state was tottering along ever since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2010.
Origins of Syrian Conflict
The origins of the conflict itself in Syria, which led to recent events, can be found only in a tangled chain of already forgotten events. For example, in the 1970s, Turkey began to build a cascade of power plants and an irrigation system for its lands in Eastern Anatolia on the upper reaches of the Euphrates River. The flow of water to Syria began to decrease, the Syrian irrigation system in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and the Tra-Euphrates stopped working, and earlier fertile lands turned into salt marshes. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were left without means of subsistence and rushed to large Europeanized cities. They couldn't fully adapt to them, lived in poverty, but gave birth to a lot of immigrants.
As a result, in 20 years, entire satellite cities of Damascus - Gouta and Douma grew with a very young, uneducated and unemployed population. And the 1990s were the period of the rise of radical Islam all over the world, and mosques when extremist preachers began to appear in such neighbourhoods. By the beginning of the 21st century, there we already armed extremist groups in Syrian countryside and as a result, in the 2010s, Ghouta and Douma were stormed, much like similar neighbourhoods in Aleppo, and the city of Raqqa which was turned into ruins by the efforts of the Allied sponsored rebels. It all started with power plants in Turkey.
The French mandate (essentially colonial) administration united together three different state entities (Damascus, Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor) and appointed a small armed sect - the Alawites - to manage all this. This is generally the French way of governing the colonies: choose a small but active group and make them conductors of your influence. But the Alawites eventually squeezed out the French and did not share at least part of the power with representatives of other tribes. And later, the accession of Kurdistan, Latakia and the lands of the Druze in the south to Syria added further to the confusion.
Israel and Syria
The eternal confrontation between Syria and Israel does not provide for a settlement by peaceful means not only for religious and political reasons, but because of the Golan Heights. Tel Aviv believes that this hill is critical to Israel's national security. From it- Israel can roll down tanks directly to Galilee. And that's why Tel Aviv doesn't care at all what the state system in Syria is, who runs it and how - they need Mount Hermon, and now Israel has received it.
Sanctions and The Fall
Syria was involved in the confrontation first of the superpowers - the USSR and the USA, and then many regional powers. Not only Iran, but also almost all Arab monarchies, who in turn do not get along with each other, have their interests in Damascus. This whole system is constantly changing, situational alliances arise, new players are born. And Turkey gradually began to believe that the Ottoman Empire had not collapsed, but simply harmed for a while. Throughout the civil war, Syria continued to be under sanctions, which seriously affected its economy. At the same time, oil revenues were almost not received in Damascus, as the oil-bearing areas were under the control of the Kurds, who found a common language with the Americans and international shadow traders. They also have extensive agricultural land on which wheat is grown.
Thus, state revenues decreased and expenses increased. Prime Ministers Hussein Arnus, and then Muhammad Ghazi al-Jalali, who is now transferring cases to the winners, remembered that during the civil war a number of basic taxes were not charged to the population. In Damascus, they decided that now that the war seems to be over, it's time to charge them again. Moreover, the law was given retroactive force, that is, taxes began to be charged all at once over the past 10 years. A decision that bordered on political suicide.
But there was still not enough money, and salary cuts in the budget sector began, including in the army. Reductions in the personnel of the armed forces have also begun. The army was not only reduced by three times, not only the units recruited during mobilizations were disbanded, but also the assault groups trained by Russian instructors. Due to the reduction and delays in the monetary allowance, the best officers began to retire. Even the Russian private mercenaries’ contractors like Wagner were booted out by Assad for differences over oil revenue sharing contracts. The Russian MoD suggested the deployment of Redut PMC however Assad refused the offer relying on Iranian Shia militias and Hezbollah ground forces.
However this decision would come back to haunt him badly with Russians being engaged in Ukraine and Hezbollah taken out by Israel, the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad was all set to fall like a pack of cards. It was the national minorities that actively supported the current government, since the Assad dynasty, itself being a minority, guaranteed Christians, Shiites, Druze and Yazidis safety and even some privileges. Purges began among the generals, as Damascus considered that the influence of "civil war heroes" like General al-Suheil had become too great. They were removed from command, the mukhabarat (security service) was put on them. An important detail: most of these generals actively cooperated with the Russian contingent, and in the last couple of years the arrogant mukhabarat has become the main mediator in contacts with the Russian command.
For all these reasons, the collapse of the government army was predictable. For both professional military and ordinary soldiers, the protection of the native state has ceased to be a value. Now, during the offensive of the armed opposition from Idlib, these settlements either rebelled or gathered councils of local sheikhs and mukhtars and declared "neutrality", waiting for whose will take. Iran is not ready to fight anyone right now. Everything is clear with Hezbollah, it doesn't want a trouble and looking to survive itself after Israeli onslaught in Lebanon. And the Russian contingent, in principle, was not designed to fully fight alone against a group of 30,000.
This was the work of the Syrian government army, and the allies could only help. But the disenchanted & underpaid Syrian Arab Army just laid down arms under influence of local groups/commanders that would be rehabilitated in Syrian state if they stand down not obeying Assad’s order. Time had come full circle for Assad family, Turkish Rebel Groups rolled over with help of Israel and American air cover not allowing any military aid to flow to Assad from Iraq or Lebanon bringing its inevitable collapse.
Syria at Crossroads
So all these factors came together: military, economic and political weakness and led to the instant collapse of the Assad regime. The collapse of Assad regime was accentuated by the offensive of Hayat Tahrir al-sham (HTS) & Syrian National Army. HTS is a group lead by Ahmed Al-Sharaa alias Al Joulani, a former Syrian Jihadist professing Salafist ideology who has taken over the reins in Damascus. The jihadist leader soon dawned suit and tie instead of military uniform and is conducting international diplomacy with his first engagement with Turkey whom he termed to be a strategic ally of Syria. Ahmed Al-Sharaa declared that there will be no persecution of minorities in Syria, people are free to celebrate Christmas, Syria will profess a free market economy, women rights won’t be curbed and Syria shall not engage in war with any other country.
The underlying message in one of his interviews was Syria will profess a modern approach like Turkish society and not follow the path of Taliban in Afghanistan which he says is a tribal society. It would be fair to say that Ahmed Al-Sharaa alias Al Joulani is a Turkish asset planted in ISIS who went on to betray Baghdadi and break ISIS. Then later joined Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) but when Zawahiri gave call to join ISIS, he then split up with Al Nusra as well and formed his own group Hayat Tahrir al-sham (HTS) which worked under direct command and training of Turkish Intelligence establishing a mini state under his control in Idilib Governate of Syria. Now he is professing to re-build a secular, liberal Syrian state on the lines of Ottoman Turkey in sync with Muslim Brotherhood ideology patronised by Turkey & Qatar. No wonder he has taken to formal suits and conducting international diplomacy as de-facto leader of Syria.
But was Turkey alone in this operation!?
Certainly not, such big a regime in a middle eastern country like Syria cannot be without America’s blessings and tacit support of Israel. The Israeli factor we have already discussed in our earlier posts on how Israel smothered Hezbollah, IRCG Commanders, Shia Militias and Syria defences ever since 07th October 2023. The Hamas attack was the trigger akin to Pearl Harbour moment for Israel much like 9/11 was for America. But it begs the question as how come one of the high secure border zones in the world was left open for Hamas terrorists to infiltrate into Israel and Mossad/Shinbet (Israel’s Intelligence Agencies) failed to foil the massive attack.
The massacre of 07th October 2023 laid the ground for sequence of events that would reshape the whole region. The decimation of Gaza, taking out of Hezbollah leadership and IRGC commanders were in the hindsight a calibrated plan by America & Israel to finish off the remaining part of the plan to dismantle the pro-soviet regimes in the Middle East as General Welsley Clark had remarked in 2007 which we have covered in our book as well. The fall of Assad regime could not have been possible without American help and the recent article of Telegraph has written about it. The Telegraph article on 18th December 2024 quotes as follows:
“British and American-trained fighters in the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA), a group aligned against Islamic State, were told “this is your moment” in a briefing by US Special Forces before Assad was ousted. In the first indication that Washington had prior knowledge of the offensive, the RCA revealed it had been told to scale-up its forces and “be ready” for an attack that could lead to the end of the Assad regime.
“They did not tell us how it would happen,” Capt Bashar al-Mashadani, an RCA commander, told The Telegraph from a former Syrian army air base used by Russia on the outskirts of the city of Palmyra. “We were just told: ‘Everything is about to change. This is your moment. Either Assad will fall, or you will fall.’ But they did not say when or where, they just told us to be ready.”
In the weeks before the briefing at the US-controlled Al-Tanf air base on the border of Iraq, according to Capt Mashadani, the RCA’s ranks were swollen by smaller freelance units like his brought under its command. US military commanders in Syria ordered the advance to prevent remnants of Isis – which occupied much of the north-east of the country until its defeat in 2019, taking advantage of a power vacuum if Assad fell – senior RCA officers said.”
“It indicates not only that Washington knew about the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which toppled the Assad regime on Dec 8, but that it had precise intelligence about its scale. Until one month earlier, Capt Mashadani had been second-in-command of the Abu Khatab brigade. This small unit of 150 men was created by US Special Forces and trained by their British counterparts in Jordan until 2016, to hunt down Isis fighters near Deir ez-Zor, a city in eastern Syria.
But, in early October, Capt Mashadani and his fellow commanders said, American officers at Al Tanf brought the Abu Khatab brigade and other units under the joint command of the RCA. The RCA’s ranks grew from about 800 to as many as 3,000 as a result, he said. All members of the force continued to be armed by the US and to receive their salary of $400 (£315) a month, nearly 12 times what the soldiers in the now defunct Syrian army were paid.
As the offensive began, RCA forces fanned out across the eastern desert, taking control of key roads. They also joined up with a rebel faction in the southern city of Dera’a that reached Damascus before HTS. Capt Mashadani said the RCA and the fighters of HTS, which is led by Syria’s interim leader Mohammed al-Jolani, were co-operating, and communication between the two forces was being co-ordinated by the Americans at Al-Tanf. It would therefore be only one of many ironies if the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria until it broke away in 2017.”
The above article makes it as clear as a daylight that Washington not only knew but also helped and train the jihadist rebels in the offensive against Assad regime which ultimately toppled it. The American plan to dismantle the pro-soviet regime in Syria has succeeded and the goal of enabling Turkey in Syria means the coming back of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood something which has unnerved powers in the region and across like Saudi Arabia, UAE & Egypt. The shockwaves from Syria will also prompt Russia to re-calibrate its response to recent setbacks in Syria specifically its intelligence failure to gauge this big an operation while it was tied up in the war in Ukraine. We shall discuss more on the geo-political aspect of it in our next part.
Notes:
US Prepared Syrian rebels group to help topple Bashar al-Assad - The Telegraph - 18th December 2024 - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/18/us-prepared-syrian-rebel-group-to-help-topple-bashar-assad/?ICID=continue_without_subscribing_reg_first