Syria: The Day After

Anyone who has visited Syria in the past has been struck by the contrast between Syrians’ profound humanity, the Sunni or Christian urban elite’s gentleness, and the inhuman brutality of Bashar al-Assad's regime. When you've lived through this regime, it is hard not to share the surge of happiness Syrian society is currently experiencing.This momentum is reflected in the impressive desire of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries to return home.

I myself had the privilege of serving in Syria as a diplomat between 2006 and 2009. So I know a little about the country, to the point of being considered a specialist of Syrian matters. I experience the same feelings of relief and hope as the Syrians and I think with emotion of the countless lives lost as a result of Assad’s bloody reign.

I also remember the comment made by one of my superiors at the start of my career in the Foreign Ministry: "specialists are always wrong". Over the last few days, I've come to appreciate its relevance. I first thought that, having lost Aleppo, the regime would put a stop to the rebel offensive, probably in Hama, or at least Homs, two strategic cities on the way to Damascus. But I was wrong. No regime forces stood up to the rebel’s breakthrough. By the end of the week, when it became clear that Assad's forces would be defeated without a fight, I imagined that Assad would not flee, that he would at least seek to barricade himself on the coast, within his Alawite community.

In the Syrian case, the process was somewhat different, but also came to an end very quickly: Assad's power had three protectors - Hezbollah, Iran and Russia - whose positions have weakened over the last few months, the first two as a result of Israeli attacks, the third because he needed to focus his efforts elsewhere (Ukraine). When HTC (Hayat Tahir al-Cham, Levant Liberation Front) troops - massed in the Idlib pocket and led by Abu Mohammed al-Joulani - got the green light from their Turkish sponsors to launch the offensive, they were met with no resistance from the regime's demoralized, underpaid, ill-equipped armies.

Neither Russia nor Iran - not to mention Hezbollah itself on the brink of collapse in Lebanon - considered it possible or desirable to embark on the undoubtedly superhuman task of saving a regime in such disarray.

 The Uncertainties of the Immediate Future

Once the joy of seeing one of the most atrocious dictatorships of this century fall is over, it is legitimate to wonder about the countless perils surrounding the arrival of new leaders.
First of all, will HTC and some other group agree to form a government? On December 10, Assad's last Prime Minister did hand over his powers to Mohammed al-Bachir, the man who has governed Idlib for the rebels in recent months and who is close to al-Joulani. Al-Joulani who  meanwhile has reverted to his original name, Ahmed al-Shaara. Will the other rebel groups, including the Turkish-affiliated groups in northeast Aleppo, accept HTC's authority? In any case, the new government's territorial reach will not cover the entire Syrian territory, since the Kurdish zone in the north-east of the country will remain outside of its control, and perhaps other parts of the territory too, including those controlled by the Turks. On this point, the Kurdish question presents a fundamental difficulty: if the new government wants to acquire national stature, it must reach out to the Kurds, who have carved out an autonomous fiefdom for themselves in the north-east of the country - and who incidentally control a large part of the oil windfall. Yet, it is against them  that HTC's Turkish protectors want to fight first and foremost.

This brings us to another difficulty: Syria is a worn out country in ruins. The resources of Assad's regime relied on international humanitarian aid, Iranian oil deliveries and large-scale drug trafficking (captagon). How can the new authorities revive the economy and rebuild the country? And in what regional context? The Turks have an anti-Kurdish agenda (in addition to sending back as many Syrian refugees as possible) and have taken advantage of the transition period to conquer new enclaves in Syrian territory (Manbij, Kobane). The Israelis, for their part, have carried out massive bombings of Syrian army installations and military depots to prevent dangerous weapons falling into the wrong hands; moreover, on the Golan Heights, they now illegally occupy the buffer zone that had been placed on the Syrian side in 1972 by a UN resolution.

One final uncertainty remains: what is HTC? Who is its leader, Ahmed al-Shaara, who, by taking back his family name, no doubt wants to remind us that he belongs to a vast clan in the Deraa region? From a turbaned jihadist affiliated to al-Qaeda, the man turned into an Islamist leader, dressed in a khaki uniform à la Zelenski, who managed his former fiefdom of Idlib rather well, albeit with an iron fist but without sectarianism. He had broken with al-Qaeda in 2016. He ordered his troops to respect religious minorities. To date, no massacres were committed against supporters of the former regime. However, the intelligence services attribute to him a particularly heavy past, even recently. To what extent has Ahmed al-Shaara converted to a softer version of Islamism? Experts in these matters doubt a former jihadist's turnaround. Are the experts really always wrong?

The Game of External Players

For many observers, there is little doubt as to who are the winners and losers in the regime change in Damascus: in the first category, Iran and Russia; in the second, Turkey and Israel.

The reality is more nuanced. Iran is witnessing the collapse of an essential part of the "Shiite axis" it had built up to keep Israel at bay. In practice, however, Iranian positions in Syria had already been seriously reduced over the months by Israeli bombing and the decapitation of Hezbollah. The post-October 7 crisis led to the paradoxical result that the Saudis and Emiratis are their new friends, more useful in reality than a cumbersome bloodthirsty dictator, unpopular among Iranian people. Similarly, Assad's defeat is a major symbolic defeat for Vladimir Putin and for his image with all the authoritarians on this planet. However, it was a cost-benefit calculation that prevailed in Moscow: Putin said no to Assad when the latter came to him asking for more aid, in the days before the fall of Damascus, because the Kremlin master considered it better to cut his losses.

It is likely that the Russians will be able to negotiate with the newcomers, whoever they may be, to maintain their naval base at Tartous, fundamental to their action in the Mediterranean, and perhaps their air base at Hmeimim.

Likewise, the Israelis have won an important symbolic victory, but may be concerned about the substitution of a potentially radical Islamist power for an Assadian one that was inoffensive to them - to the risk of provoking a self-fulfilling prophecy. With a broader view, won't the episode leave its mark on relations between the Turkey-Iran-Russia trio, the driving force behind the so-called "Astana process"? The conspiratorial tendencies of the leaders of these countries naturally lead them to believe that Turkey has betrayed the other two, that the Russians will come out on top, and that Iran is a victim of its support for Hamas and Hezbollah. In the same vein, in Moscow and other capitals, the sudden end of the Syrian regime will necessarily be blamed on an Israeli-American, or even Israeli-American-Turkish plot.

And if we go even further, it is striking that Assad's brutal repression of opponents in 2011-2012 marked the end of the Arab Spring wave, the beginning of the ebb: could not the fall of the Syrian dictator revive hope among the peoples of the region?

What can we do?

Our interest is obviously in ensuring that the new Syria does not become a rear base for radical Islamists planning attacks in Europe. Several dozen French jihadists are fighting in the ranks of HTC. Others, even more numerous, are being held in camps in the north-east, under the guard of the Kurds of the FDS. More generally, we must strive to foster the emergence of a peaceful, stable Syria, which is reborn economically and regains its sovereignty and territorial unity.

Three courses of action for a "re-engagement in Syria" are emerging:

• Establishing a channel of communication with the new leaders, which could lead, if necessary but only under certain conditions, to the reopening of our embassy in Damascus, closed since March 6, 2012.
• Negotiating with them to take into account our concerns in terms of security (French jihadists in particular) and guarantee respect for a certain number of rules, including citizenship for all Syrians, on an equal footing, whatever their faith. Along with others, we must insist on the need for "inclusive" governance to relativize the influence of radicals. We have a number of levers at our disposal in this respect: the possible lifting of sanctions; economic and humanitarian aid; the removal of HTC from UN and EU lists of terrorist organizations.
• Finally, given the scale of the challenges facing the new authorities, on the political level (territorial and political fragmentation) as well as on the economic (rebuilding the country) and human levels (return of refugees, reintegration of released prisoners, transitional justice, trauma of an atrocious period, etc.), it would be very useful to provide the new Syria with an international framework; this can only come from the United Nations. Such a framework should consist, on the one hand, of help with the necessary process of internal political dialogue and reconstitution of a state (the new authorities have announced that the new government is only appointed until March 2025, when a constitutional process is due to begin); on the other hand, of a mission of humanitarian assistance and economic support.

Copyright image : Omar HAJ KADOUR / AFP
Damascus, December 9, 2024.