Syrians Are Celebrating Fall of Assad, Even as “the Bigger Picture Is Grim”: Scholar Bassam Haddad
By Bassam Haddad, Amy Goodman
The fall of the Assad family’s 50-year regime in Syria brings with it “many more questions than answers,” says Syrian American scholar and the executive director of the Arab Studies Institute, Bassam Haddad. While the regional and global implications are “not good,” as Israel in particular is celebrating the loss of Assad’s material support for Palestinian and Lebanese armed resistance, Haddad says the immediate relief of those suffering under Assad’s totalitarian regime should not be ignored or invisibilized. Haddad also discusses the political prospects for the rebel forces led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which he says will likely form a coalition with other groups as the future of Syria is determined in the coming days and weeks.
The Ousting of the Brutal Assad Regime Brings Euphoria and More Questions
Image, Youtube screenshot.
“There are indications that it was unarmed civil resistance led by the resurgent popular committees and local councils, which initially came to the fore in the early nonviolent phase of the revolution back in 2011, that actually wrested control of much of the local governance from the regime.”
In this interview, exclusive for CounterPunch, foreign policy expert Stephen Zunes talks about the lightning offensive that resulted in the unseating of authoritarian president of Syria Bashar al-Assad. Zunes breaks down how the capitulation will go down in history as a surprise as well as provides the meaning of what comes next militarily and politically. Further, he talks about the wider Mideast war, the role of US foreign policy doctrines, and how conversations around Syria impact the broader leftist discourse.
Daniel Falcone: As someone who studies the Middle East as a professional analyst and scholar of international relations, how did the recent events leading up to the collapse of the Assad regime come as a surprise?
Stephen Zunes: The surprise is rooted in the naïve assumption that political power comes solely from above, that an autocratic leader who has the most weapons and international support can maintain power indefinitely. Clearly, though, this was a political collapse more than a military defeat. There were hardly any battles in those final weeks. It demonstrates once again that political power is ultimately dependent on the perceived legitimacy of the rulers in the eyes of the people. In the case of the Assad regime, it has always been low and has only worsened over the years because of his savage repression, the endemic corruption, and the country’s growing poverty.
The world was similarly “surprised” at the collapse of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese regime in the spring of 1975 and the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan regime in the summer of 2021. Yet people are willing to allow even autocratic movements to take over if they see the existing regime as even worse or if its staying power is based on foreign backing rather than a social base. Assad was only able to stay in power if he did because of outside assistance. Now, however, without Russian air support, which largely left the country to fight in Ukraine, or Hezbollah ground forces, decimated by Israeli attacks in both Lebanon and Syria, he had to rely on his own largely conscripted army, who were clearly unwilling to fight and die on his behalf.
While it was the advancing military forces of Hayat Tahrir al Sham who marched into Damascus as Assad and his family fled, there are indications that it was unarmed civil resistance led by the resurgent popular committees and local councils, which initially came to the fore in the early nonviolent phase of the revolution back in 2011, that actually wrested control of much of the local governance from the regime, particularly in Daraa and As-Suwayda provinces in the south.
Daniel Falcone: From a global politics perspective, what does the removal of Assad mean for the wider Middle East war?
Stephen Zunes: Russian and Iranian influence in the region has now been substantially reduced, but this struggle was a Syrian one. Syrians were not thinking in terms of geopolitics. They simply wanted to rid themselves of a repressive regime which had torn the country apart.
The Syrians still want to liberate their occupied Golan region from the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation. Israeli occupation forces in the Golan, however, are taking advantage of the change in regime to extend their military occupation further into Syria and that is likely to be met with strong resistance. In addition, my strong impression is that Syrians still support the Palestinian cause. They recognize that, despite his rhetoric, Assad was no friend of Palestine, suppressing any Palestinian movement not under his control. Though Israel indirectly contributed to the rebel victory because of its war with Hezbollah, Israelis have long indicated they would rather have Assad in power than Islamists.
Assad had repeatedly offered to make peace with Israel in return for the Golan Heights, which Israel invaded and occupied in 1967, but the Israelis have refused, in part due to the encouragement of the United States, which is the only country in the world to formally recognize that occupied territory as part of Israel. Indeed, if Israel maintains its illegal occupations, apartheid system, and attacks against civilian population centers, there will be continued war on some level in Israel/Palestine and beyond.
Hezbollah will be further isolated, now lacking a land bridge for Iranian arms and other supplies. They were already weakened, however, by relentless Israeli bombardment and by their diminished support among the Lebanese population, in part due to their backing of Assad’s repression.
Lebanon will still be a mess because of their dysfunctional government and Israeli attacks on its civilian infrastructure. There will still be conflict in Sudan, Yemen, and Iraq. The peoples of Egypt, Iran, Bahrain, Western Sahara, and elsewhere will continue to struggle for their freedom. Most of the greater Middle East will be unchanged. The biggest question regarding war and peace is whether HTS can put forward an inclusive enough government to unify the country and avoid further warfare within Syria itself.
Daniel Falcone: From the US point of view, the Assad regime never had legitimacy as he used harsh measures to suppress his own people. Can you attribute his actions to the collective foreign policy doctrines and failures of US leadership?
Stephen Zunes: First, Assad’s repression was never the reason for U.S. opposition to his regime. U.S. support for the Israeli, Turkish, Moroccan, and Saudi armed forces in the face of horrific war crimes and U.S. backing of brutal dictatorships in the Gulf, in Egypt, and elsewhere are indicative that a regime’s repression is not an important factor when it comes to U.S. policy. Assad’s biggest crime, in the eyes of the United States, was his rejection of U.S. hegemonic goals in the region. The Bush administration actively sought to undermine his government, but Obama put an end to that, along with similar efforts targeting Iran, as soon as he came to office in 2009.
Similarly, the popular resistance movement against Assad that arose in 2011 would have happened regardless of U.S. policy, just as would have the savage repression by the regime in response. The limited U.S. assistance to secular opposition forces well after the revolution was underway was of little consequence. Despite this, Obama has been subjected to unfair criticisms both for providing some support for the resistance as well as for not doing enough. It’s easy to blame the United States for doing too much or too little, but in an increasingly complex world—particularly in a country like Syria—there are often few good options that Washington could have reasonably pursued.
Indeed, even many supporters of the revolution were wary about calls for direct U.S. military intervention, given what happened in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. Furthermore, combined opposition from Republicans and antiwar Democrats would have made it impossible for Obama to have received Congressional authorization to follow up on his threatened “red line” over the use of banned chemical and launch a war against the regime. Ironically, Trump and other Republicans who explicitly opposed U.S. intervention following the chemical weapons attack and insisted that it could not be done without the approval of Congress have subsequently criticized Obama for his supposed “weakness.”
A major problem is that the predictable fiasco from the U.S. invasion of Iraq has made it extremely difficult for Washington to support even popular internal movements demanding regime change. The legacy of Iraq has played right into the hands of tyrants like Assad. The Syrian dictator and his apologists were able to depict any challenge to his rule as some kind of Western imperialist plot.
Daniel Falcone: Will the so-called “hard left” and “tankies” deny the Syrian Revolution in your view? How will the politics of the left in Syria in the US unfold?
Stephen Zunes: The history of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East has made it easy for some critics to assume that anti-imperialist governments and movements in the region were therefore progressive alternatives. Iran and its allied militia as well as the Assad regime are/were reactionary and have engaged in imperialism machinations themselves. The attitude that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” has even led to preposterous attacks on the United Nations, human rights organizations, and progressive scholars and journalists by some on the hard left simply for documenting war crimes by the Assad regime in language which mirrors similarly disingenuous attacks against those documenting war crimes by Israel. Even rescue workers digging through the rubble of apartment buildings leveled by Syrian and Russian airstrikes were labeled as Al-Qaeda terrorists. And the well-documented chemical weapons attacks by the regime were dismissed as “false flags.”
Many of these Western “anti-imperialists” are themselves stuck in an imperialist mindset which denies agency to people of color in the Global South (or Slavs in Eastern Europe) who are struggling for their freedom against tyranny. We may not always agree with their ideology or tactics, but they are acting on their own perceived imperatives for action, not because someone in Washington is telling them to do so. The United States could no more cause a revolution to take place in Syria that the Soviet Union could cause a revolution to take place in Central America. As Marx recognized, revolutions can only take place because of certain social conditions. The popular struggles in Syria against Assad had little in common with CIA coups of the Cold War era or the rise of mercenary armies like the Nicaraguan Contras, neither of which would have ever taken place without U.S. intervention.
Despite what some are alleging, the United States has never armed or funded Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. In fact, the State Department formally recognizes HTS as a terrorist group and the U.S. government has offered a $10 million award for information leading to the arrest of HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. In 2012-14, the U.S. provided some limited assistance to some secular rebel groups in Syria, some of which later aligned with some Islamist groups to resist advances of regime forces into liberated areas. Some U.S.-made weapons made their way to Islamists via the Gulf or Iraq, but the U.S. never armed such groups directly. Indeed, the United States has not armed any Syrian rebel group taking on Assad since 2015, in large part because the Islamists came to dominate the resistance. Instead, the U.S. has been arming a Kurdish-led Syrian group fighting ISIS, not the regime.
Daniel Falcone: Journalist Dima Khatib has written: “The Assad regime will go down in history as one of the ugliest, bloodiest, and most brutal regimes ever known. The post-Assad era is unknown. Everything is possible. But this is a truly historic moment of freedom that is worth celebrating, big time, regardless of what comes next.” What do you suspect will come next?
Stephen Zunes: I really don’t know what to expect. Given the need to mobilize Syrian society to rebuild the country and its institutions, repatriate refugees, and deal with the economic mess, the HTS leadership could indeed recognize that they need to be open to some degree of political pluralism. While their rule in Idlib was conservative and autocratic, they appear to have respected the rights of religious minorities and did not force women to completely cover up. They would also have an incentive to convince areas of the country not under their control that it would be safe to once again be part of a unified Syria.
It is also quite possible, however, that they could take advantage of their triumph and the desperate situation in the country to try to impose some kind of hardline Salafist rule. In addition, with so many different armed groups in the country, there is the risk that some will try to assert power militarily, either in fighting the new government for influence or further carving out fiefdoms of their own.
Most Syrians I know, who are overwhelmingly secular and leftist, are nevertheless celebrating Assad’s removal. After decades of totalitarian rule, with over 350,000 killed, half the popular displaced, the economy in ruins, and tens of thousands imprisoned, torture, and disappeared, it is hard for many to imagine things getting worse. What they are unsure about is whether the HTS will prove to be liberators or simply removers. Or whether the demand for freedom, justice, and democracy which ignited the initial unarmed revolution against Assad in 2011 is still strong enough to resist the authoritarian impulses of Syria’s new rule.
Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is still listed by the U.S. government as a specially designated global terrorist with a $10 million reward for information that leads to his capture.
Chilling Warnings for Syria: When Foreign Interventions Go Bad
December 11, 2024
Photograph Source: Voice of America – Public Domain
The reports through Western presses read rather familiarly. Joyful residents taking selfies on abandoned, sullen tanks. Armed men ebullient and shooting into the sky with adventurist stupidity. The removal of statues and vulgar reminders of a regime. Prisoners freed; torture prisons emptied. The tyrant, deposed.
This is the scene in Syria, a war with more external backers and sponsors than causes. The terrain for some years had been rococo in complexity: Russia, Iran and Shia militants in one bolstering camp; Gulf states and Turkey pushing their own mixture of Sunni cause and disruption in another; and the US throwing in its lot behind the Kurdish backed People’s Protection Units (YPG). Even this schema is simplified.
While there will be an innumerable number of those delighted at the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the end of the Arab socialist Baathist regime provides much rich food for thought. Already, the whitewash and publicity relations teams are doing the rounds, suggesting that we are seeing a sound, balanced group of combatants that will ensure a smooth transition to stable rule. Little thought is given to the motley collection of rebels who might, at any moment, seek retribution or turn on each other, be they members of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), or those from the largest, most noted group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
There is little mention, for instance, about the blotted resume of the aspiring usurper, Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, who retains a bounty of US$10 million for information on his whereabouts and capture by US authorities. Human rights activist and former British diplomat Craig Murray helpfully posted a link from the US embassy in Syria from 2017, with the blood red title “Stop This Terrorist”. As he acidly notes, “You might want to retweet this before they delete it.”
When foreign powers meddle, particularly in the Middle East, the result is very often a cure worse than the disease. The billowy rhetoric follows a template: evil dictators, oppressors of their people, finally get their just desserts at the hands of a clearly demarcated, popular insurrection, helped along, naturally, by the world’s freedom lovers and democracy hailers. That those same freedom loving powers tolerated, traded and sponsored those same despots when it was convenient to do so is a matter confined to amnesia and the archives.
A few examples suffice. The scene in Libya in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 NATO intervention that overthrew Muammar al-Gaddafi saw commentary of delight, relief and hope. New prospects were in the offing, especially with the news of his brutal murder. “For four decades the Gaddafi regime ruled the Libyan people with an iron fist,” statedUS President Barack Obama. “Basic human rights were denied, innocent civilians were detained, beaten and killed.” At the end of the regime, Obama confidently claimed that the new administration was “consolidating their control over the country and one of the world’s longest serving dictators is no more.”
UK Prime Minister David Cameron struck the same note. “Today is a day to remember all of Colonel Gaddafi’s victims.” Libyans “have an even greater chance, after this news, of building themselves a strong and democratic future.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy chose to see the overthrow of Gaddafi as the result of a unified, uniform resistance from “the Libyan people” who emancipated “themselves from the dictatorial and violent regime imposed on them for more than 40 years.”
What followed was not stability, consolidation and democratic development. Jihadi fundamentalism exploded with paroxysms of zeal. The patchwork of unsupervised and anarchically disposed militia groups, aided by NATO’s intervention, got busy. Killings, torture, enforced disappearances, forced displacement and abductions became common fare. The country was nigh dismembered, fragmenting from 2014 onwards between rival coalitions backed by different foreign powers.
The same gruesome pattern could also be seen in the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq of 2003. It began with a US-led invasion based on sham premises: Weapons of Mass Destruction that were never found. It also resulted in the overthrow of another Arab socialist Baathist regime. Statues were toppled. There was much celebration and looting. Even before the invasion in March that year, US President George W. Bush was airily declaring that “a new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.” In November 2004, Bush would dreamily state that the US and Britain “have shown our determination to help Iraqis achieve their liberty and to defend the security of the world.”
The consequences of the invasion: the effective balkanisation of Iraq aided by the banning of the Baath Party and the disbanding of the Iraqi Army; the murderous split between Sunni and Shia groups long held in check by Saddam with Kurdish rebels also staking their claim; the emergence of Iran as a regional power of significance; the continued thriving of al-Qaeda and the emergence of the caliphate-inspired Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) group.
Even as the body count was rising in 2006, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair was still fantasising about the political wishes of a country he had been so instrumental in destroying. “This is a child of democracy struggling to be born,” he told a gathering at Georgetown University in May that year with evangelical purpose. “The struggle for Iraqis for democracy should unite them.” The unfolding disasters were mere “setbacks and missteps”. Blair continued to “strongly believe we did and are doing the right thing.”
And so, we see the same pieties, the same reassurances, the same promises, played on a sedating loop regarding Syria’s fate, the promise of democratic healing, the transfiguration of a traumatised society. How long will such prisons as Sednaya remain unfilled? Therein lies the danger, and the pity.
The Sectarian Risk: Turkiye’s Syrian Mission
Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan must be delighted about what is unfolding in Syria, though it is a feeling bound to be tempered by swiftly changing circumstances. Iran’s Shia proxies have been weakened by relentless Israeli targeting and bombing. Russia’s eyes and resources are turned towards war in Ukraine. With reports that Syrian rebel groups are now fighting on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, the Assad regime looks frail, its leader either in hiding or evacuated.
In the salad mix of jihadis, nationalists, and run of the mill mercenaries, Turkiye’s hand looms large. Its intervention in Syria’s conflict was motivated by two main goals: the containment, if not elimination of Kurdish militants in northern Syria, seen as indistinguishable from their PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) counterparts in Turkiye itself, and creating conditions of stability or “safe zones” that would enable a return of Syrian refugees when feasible.
Since August 2016, Turkiye has made three incursions seizing parts of Syria’s north, imposing an occupation using regular troops and auxiliary forces including the Syrian National Army (SNA) and a coalition of groups comprising former Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters. In 2018, the Military Police was established by both Turkish authorities and the Syrian Interim Government (SIG), a force ostensibly intended to protect the civilian population. Instead, this period of Turkish rule has been marked by brutality, repression and sheer neglect.
In its February 2024 report, Human Rights Watch documented instances of abductions, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions (these include children), sexual violence and torture. The perpetrators spanned elements of the SNA, the Military Police, members of the Turkish Armed Forces, the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı, MİT), and various military intelligence directorates. To this colourfully gruesome range of cruelties can be added the abuse of property rights, looting, pillaging, confiscation of property, extortion and the absence of any consistent system of restitution.
READ: Turkey’s Erdogan says there is a new reality in Syria
The group enduring the heaviest burden of suffering are Kurdish residents, notably those that had received protection from the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) comprising the People’s Protection Unit (Yekineyen Parastina Gel, YPG), and the Women’s Protection Unit (Yekineyen Parastina Jin). These forces proved crucial in countering the Islamic State (ISIS) group. In October this year, Erdogan reiterated the long held view that such Kurdish protective units were merely “the Syrian branch of the PKK terror group, destined to be abandoned, left isolated.” Arabs and other groups seen as having links to the SDF and the Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria (AANES) have also been targets of Turkish-led ire.
The SNA is no friend of the headline grabbing Islamist outfit, Hayat Tahrir-al Sham (HTS), the primary spear in the lighting operation against the Assad regime. HTS has marketed itself as a self-sufficient, modern, more considered group, less fire and brimstone from its al-Qaeda and al-Nusra iterations and supposedly more tolerant to other religions, sects and views. Its leader, Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, has managed to receive praise and plaudits in the Western media for that change, despite his listing by the US State Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” worthy of a $10 million reward to anyone willing to offer information leading to his capture.
Even on the progress of HTS, Turkish influence cannot be discounted, despite Ankara eschewing open support for the group. As Fuad Shahbazov, writing for the Stimson Center remarks, the recent advances of HTS “would have been unthinkable without Turkiye’s military and logistical backing, and provision of advanced weaponry.” It has also been suggested that Ankara gave a nod of approval to the offensive led by HTS after it failed to secure a rapprochement with Assad.
Erdogan’s statements on the advance show a slippery mind in operation. On December 6, he told reporters after Friday prayers that the target of the offensive was evidently Damascus. “I would say we hope for this advance to continue without any issues.” But he also expressed the view that these advances were “problematic” and “not in a manner we desire”. While not elaborating on that point, it could be gleaned from the remarks that he is concerned about various “terrorist organisations” operating in the rebel forces.
OPINION: As predicted, the revolution in Syria has reignited
The next day, the Turkish President decided to be lofty in his assessment as the rebels entered the suburbs of Homs. “There is now a new reality in Syria, politically and diplomatically,” he declared in a speech delivered in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep. “And Syria belongs to Syrians with all its ethnic, sectarian and religious elements.”
In keeping with the views of other leaders responsible for intervening in the affairs of another state, Erdogan spoke of Syrian independence as viable, the will of its people as inviolable. “The people of Syria are the ones who will decide the future of their own country.” He hoped that the country would “quickly regain the peace, stability, and tranquillity it has been longing for 13 years.” He went on to remark that “responsible actors and all international organisations” should support the preservation of the state’s territorial integrity.
The audacity of such statements does nothing to conceal the sectarian and ethnic dangers unfolding at the end of this Ankara-sponsored mission. The fall of Bashir al-Assad will imperil Shia communities and do even more harm to the Kurds, leaving the door open for Salafism. The rebel groups, only united by the common cause of overthrowing Assad, may well find battling each other hard to avoid. As for the territorial integrity Erdogan speaks of, Turkish officialdom and policy will never wear it short of any number of guarantees Ankara is bound to extort on hefty terms. And as for refugees? Expect many more to gush out in desperation.
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