Damascus Falls to Rebel Forces; Assad Day for Putin

A Syria Explainer

Twelve days ago insurgents began a sweeping offensive that began in a small enclave in north-western Syria. On Saturday, the decades-long rule of Bashir al-Assad and his father before him ended.

Conspiracy-minded analysts have joined with assorted ideological bots to spew a near constant stream of misinformation on social media. Many western news agencies lack a basic understanding of the country. And some propagandists are repeating inflammatory lies.

Israel/Jews have not taken over Syria. The U.S. didn’t have a role in the uprising. Russia has abandoned their assets in the country, including some stranded military personnel. Plus, the Great Satan is nowhere to be seen.

FYI- Todays’ punny headline was totally stolen from George Takei, hero of the internet.

It’s a confusing mess, and rather than wait for Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing to hear yarns spun, I’ll attempt to explain the roles of the many players. Warning! There are no good guys, only bad, worst, and suckers.

The collapse of the Syrian regime is going to challenge the world order. A period of uncertainty will affect the Ukraine-Russia battlefront, Iran’s Shiite rulers, Lebanon’s fragile ruling coalition, the Turkish-Kurd battlegrounds, Libya, and numerous African nations. You may as well use a Ouija Board to reach a conclusion about what things will look like when (or if) they settle down.

Look at all the roaches scurrying; Bashar al-Assad and his Baathist torturers, Russian military and mercenaries, Iran’s Quds Force and Revolutionary Guards, and Hezbollah units. And then there are the various factions of the rebel forces overrunning Damascus, one that used to be Al Qaeda but is now not, another as a stand-in for the Turkish against the Kurds, and a couple of ordinary jihadist-type Sunni groups looking to wipe out the infidel Shiites.

The Syrian dictator, whose family ruled with an iron fist, reportedly left the capital city of Damascus, on a plane that landed in the United Arab Emirates. Reuters says that Moscow has granted Assad and his family asylum.

Streets in major Syrian cities and in cities of its diaspora were jammed with people celebrating the end of a brutality-filled era. Refugees stranded in neighboring countries have already announced preparations for heading “home.”

The former dictator burned down his country to stay in power, destroying entire cities and killing hundreds of thousands of Syrians to keep the regime in place. So, there won’t be much “home” left after years of civil war. Neighborhoods the regime deemed as disloyal were subjected to chemical warfare and, later on, carpet bombing by Russian warplanes.

Former Congress member Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for the director of national intelligence, visited Syria at Bashar al-Assad’s request in 2017. Upon her return home, she claimed the Syrian President "is not the enemy of the United States," and accused rebel forces of being the ones using chemical warfare.

There are photos on social media purported to be the Assad regime’s security archives, and Mr Hawk without claws, aka John Bolton, has implied they may contain damaging information on Tulsi.

Via Timothy Snyder:

• Until 2014, Gabbard said nothing remarkable about foreign affairs. In 2015, just before Putin intervened to save Assad, she began her extraordinary journey of apology for atrocity. In September of that year, Putin sent Russian mercenaries, soldiers, and airmen to Syria to defend Assad. The great advantage Putin could bring to Assad was to multiply the regime's air strikes, which were turned against hospitals and other civilian targets. Hospitals were and remain a Russian specialty.

• In June 2015, as a congresswoman from Hawai'i, Gabbard visited Syria. During her stay, she was introduced to girls who had been burned from head to toe by a regime air strike. Her reaction to the situation, according to her translator, was to try to persuade the girls that they had been injured not by Syrian forces, but by the resistance. But this was impossible. Only Syria (at the time of her visit) and Russia (beginning weeks later) were flying planes and dropping bombs.

While western media are overly focused on who will rule once the dust settles, not much is being said about what the victors will be ruling over. The country, in addition to being war-torn, has suffered from years of economic sanctions.

The most high profile enterprise in the country has been the cartel manufacturing and distributing, captagon. The illegal stimulant drug became Syria's most valuable export product (to Gulf Countries) and a key source of income for the Bashir government. The total value of drug shipments sold by the Syrian government in 2021 was approximately $5.7 billion.

The history — I suppose if you had to name the “good old days” for what is now Syria, it would be the rule of the Ottomans, who largely let people be as long as they worshiped the Prophet Mohammed and contributed to whatever war effort was in progress at the time.

The Ottoman Empire entered World War 1 on the side of the Germans. Everybody’s favorite European colonizers of the day proceeded to split up the Middle East, and made nobody happy. In any case, Syria gained its independence from the French in 1946.

The post-war period was defined by coups upon coups upon coups. You needed a scorecard to keep track. In the late 50’s, Arab Nationalism swept the region. In 1958, the country merged with Egypt, a move stemming from regional hatred of Israel. That flopped.

In 1963, the Baath party took over, had a plan, and proclaimed themselves rulers. But the days of endless coups weren’t over until General Hafiz al-Assad took the reins in 1970.

By putting members of his Alawite ethnoreligious group in key positions throughout the government and promoting a cult following for himself, al-Assad took total control, passing it on to his son Bashar al-Assad in 2000.

After a brief period where it seemed like the new western educated ruler was interested in reforms, Syria returned to the Baathist totalitarian dirge. The current civil war dates back to 2011 when the Arab Spring and its hopes for democracy swept the region.

Bashir ordered his troops to fire on student demonstrators in 2011, an opposition group calling itself Free Syrian Army began waging campaigns a couple of years later. The ongoing conflict in the country drew in the Russians in 2015, whose air power crushed insurgents in battles and ultimately led to a stalemate that existed until two weeks ago.

Modern day Syria is a horror story. Six hundred thousand people have died in the civil war, 6.8 million people are internally displaced, and 5.4 million are living as refugees in Turkey and Europe. More than 90% of the population live in poverty and 80% face food insecurity.

Prior to the take-over, there were 27 prisons housing an estimated 136,000 people in Bashar al-Assad’s country. At Sednayah, known by Syrians as the “Human Slaughterhouse,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates 30,000 prisoners died over a decade due to torture, ill treatment, and mass executions.

The existence of more than 55,000 photographs documenting the killings of about 11,000 detainees was revealed by the Guardian in January 2014. They were smuggled out by a former military police photographer who defected and fled the country. Social media channels are carrying videos purporting to show dazed prisoners being freed by rebel forces.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Iran, Turkey, and Russia issued a joint statement on Syria, declaring the ongoing crisis a threat to regional and international security.

They’re urging a “political solution” which (I think) would be complicated by a lack of institutional infrastructure and that Iran, Turkey, and Russia have competing interests. Rebels in southern Syria are calling for international help to dispose of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons.

Russian presence in Syria was meant to be their first big (post-Soviet) intervention outside what it thinks of as its "near abroad". Among other things, it was a statement about the full return of Russia to the great power club.

The Khmeimim airbase at Latakia and naval base at Tartus were critical to Russia’s military operations in Libya, the Sahel, and the Central African Republic. Khmeimim in particular is the refueling point for planes carrying Russian military equipment, personnel, and other supplies further on to Libya and sub-Saharan Africa. There is no truth to the rumor that insurgents have agreed to let Russia keep its facilities.

From John Lechner’s Substack, Beyond the Front:

• Starting in 2017, when Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir invited Russian instructors to train his forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, his PMC Wagner Group, and like-minded members of Russia’s security institutions worked hard to draw the Russian state back to Africa. They found, and helped further create a steady demand for Russia’s primary export to Africa: security.

• Africa remained, of course, a relative backwater until Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Narratives that painted Russia as a force for de-colonialism in the global south suddenly became critical to Kremlin efforts to show the world, and its own public that it was not isolated. Russia’s military footprint in the Sahel extended from Mali to Burkina Faso and Niger.

• Now, Russia’s political and military leadership (and its influential military blogger community) is loath to be seen as “giving up” on those partnerships. But Africa Corps and Wagner operations in Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, and elsewhere rely on Syria for military logistics. If Russia loses Tartus and Khmeimim, there are few good alternatives.

Russia was unable to intervene on Syria’s behalf like they did nine years ago because their forces are stretched thin and weakened by their assault on Ukraine. Three-quarters of a million men have been lost in the effort to complete what Putin originally saw as a three-day conquest of his much smaller neighbor.

This Syrian uprising has to be humiliating, as there will be political damage from Russia’s refusal or inability to stand by their ally Assad, both in Africa and in their strategy of undermining European democracies.

Putin stood to gain by using Assad to continue the war in Syria and increase the number of refugees fleeing the area. Their movement in Europe has caused division and conflict, along with increasing support for far right politicians/parties, who in turn supported Putin

Iran’s position in the region has been undermined by Israeli targeting of key military assets, the battle losses of its proxies, outdated weapons, and economic problems ranging from deep-seated corruption to debilitating U.S. sanctions to economic domination by religious institutions.

On Friday, the New York Times cited sources in the region including Iranian officials, that Tehran had begun extracting its military commanders, some diplomatic staff, their families, and other civilians, from the embattled country.

The evacuation reportedly included the Iranian Embassy in Damascus and bases of the Revolutionary Guards. The paper said people have been leaving by plane, land routes to neighboring Lebanon and Iraq, and via the port of Latakia.

I wouldn’t say that Hamas and Hezbollah (Iranian proxies in the region) are crushed, but the days when Iran can use them as military tools are over for (at least) the near future.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:

• "What happened in Syria is an American-Zionist plot to create problems for the Axis of Resistance."

Iran needed Syria to project military power in the region. Bashar al Assad

relied heavily on Iranian militias for ground troops. Syria served as a transit point and staging ground for Tehran’s proxies. Israeli missile attacks on Syria have thinned the ranks of senior Iranian militia commanders, as well as supply lines.

And on Friday, Kurdish forces in northeast Syria, who have long been buttressed by a contingent of about 900 U.S. troops, reportedly took control of the main border crossing that Iranian forces used to enter Syria from Iraq.

It’s a widespread belief this offensive could not have happened without the blessing of Turkey. They have denied backing the insurrection’s leaders. U.S. officials, as reported by CNN, claim Turkey gave Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) the go-ahead for last week’s offensive on Syrian Army positions in northern Syria. It’s gone way better than expected.

By ridding his nation of three million refugees, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan believes he’ll be removing a strain on the economy and tamp down citizen resentments.

The fact that banks, following the fall of Aleppo, were replacing Syrian currency with Turkish lira, and the abrupt switch of cellular service to a company operating on Turkish networks tells me that President Erdogan isn’t hedging any bets.

The most important player on the ground in Syria is 42 year old Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (a nom de guerre). He’s the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group fronting the coalition that ousted Assad.

Much has been made of the group’s one time alliance with Al Qaeda. I think that’s missing the point; HTS has controlled most of Idlib Province, in northwestern Syria, for years during the long stalemate in the conflict.

In recent years, Jolani and HTS built an administration in the territory they govern, collecting taxes, providing limited public services, and even issuing identity cards to residents. Christian churches remain open, according to a U.N. report.

Via foreign correspondent Tracy Wilkinson:

• The rebel victory also scrambles regional relations. It deals a major setback to Assad’s allies Iran and Russia while boosting Turkey, which backed HTS and will probably be Washington’s main conduit to Syria’s new leaders.

• The U.S. backed a different rebel group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, a Kurdish militia that helped defeat Islamic State but that Turkey considers a terrorist group.

• Clashes between the SDF and Turkish-backed factions were already being reported on Sunday.

A better comparison for the future as far as HTS is concerned (one that won’t thrill western mindsets) is a government like present-day Iraq over the government in Afghanistan. Jolani is seeking international acceptance so he can play nice with gulf states that will be needed to finance reconstruction. Has yesterday’s jihadist has become today’s moderate?

As far as the US is concerned, it’s important to know that Jolani spent several years in a US run prison in Iraq. So, yeah, we’re probably infidels.

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Israel has already grabbed land (as a “buffer”) in Syrian-controlled areas of the Golan Heights, as its military warned Syrians living in five villages close to the Israeli-occupied portion of the strategic area to “stay home.” The Israeli air force is bombing weapons depots in southern Syria aiming to prevent opposition groups from seizing them.

Israel also bombed locations in Damascus, including the Customs Administration building (which is also a site for intelligence services), the Scientific Research Complex, and the Mazzeh Airbase (site of a torture prison).

Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the 1974 agreement with Syria was destroyed due to the withdrawal of Syrian forces, and because of this, Israel took control of the buffer zone.

Via Reuters:

• The pace of events stunned Arab capitals and raised concerns about a new wave of instability in a region already in turmoil following the spread of conflict after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Gaza war.

• Jubilant supporters of the revolt stormed Syrian embassies in a number of cities around the world, lowering red, white and black Assad-era flags and replacing them with the green, white and black flag flown throughout the war by his opponents.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Assad's fall was a direct result of blows Israel had dealt to Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, once the lynchpin of Assad's security forces but pounded by Israel over the last two months.

President Joe Biden took to TV to announce that US forces stationed in Northeastern Syria were staying put and will continue to target ISIS. U.S. Forces conducted a dozen precision air strikes within Syria, targeting 75 ISIS camps and ISIS operatives on Sunday.

He promised to aid in the reconstruction of the country, and was wary about the intentions of rebel forces leadership.

Via the New York Times:

• U.S. intelligence agencies and top officials in the Biden administration are still in the process of evaluating the group and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who is eager for legitimacy and has mounted what one senior U.S. official characterized as a “charm offensive” aimed at allaying concerns about the organization’s intentions and past affiliations.

• The way the official put it, “A charm offensive might mean that people are turning over a new leaf and they think differently than they used to, so you should hear them out. On the other hand, you should be cautious because charm offensives can sometimes be misleading.”

• U.S. officials said that the Biden administration was allowed to talk to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader even though they are on the terrorist list, but that it could not provide them with material support.

• While the Biden administration has so far stopped short of directly talking to the group, it has been working closely and directly with the U.S. military’s main counterterrorism partner in Syria, a Kurdish-led militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

***

After Syria, the world must realize that Russia can be defeated – Polish Prime Minister

Border drownings rose as migrants rushed to cross and Texas clamped down by A Washington Post team of reporters

• But as gang violence, chronic poverty and political instability grew, many more women and children began making the journey in the mid-2010s. Smugglers spread the word that minors were released quickly and allowed to stay in the United States. By 2014, so many children were crossing the border alone that President Barack Obama declared it an “urgent humanitarian situation.”

• Then in 2020 came the pandemic. Migration to the United States plummeted, but a year later, people began making their way to the Rio Grande. Entire families from countries such as Venezuela were arriving. Unlike those who had crossed years earlier, they wanted to surrender to U.S. authorities in hopes of qualifying for asylum.

• Death records reviewed by The Post and its news partners reflect that changing dynamic. More and more people from South American countries began washing up dead in Texas and Mexico. In 2022, women made up nearly 22 percent of all deaths, higher than any of the other years examined. At least 75 children drowned in the river from 2017 to 2023.

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Ocasio-Cortez bids to become top Democrat on key House committee By Joseph Gedeon at The Guardian

• In an official appeal to her colleagues, Ocasio-Cortez wrote that the role carries “a profound and consequential” responsibility. She argues that her generation of lawmakers is ready to take on leadership responsibilities, positioning herself as a fresh alternative to more established party members.

• Connolly, a 74-year-old longtime representative from Virginia, is Ocasio-Cortez’s primary challenger and represents the experienced counterpoint. With 16 years in Congress and touting a track record of protecting federal employees, he offers a more traditional approach to the committee leadership.

• The competition reflects broader dynamics within the Democratic party – a tension between political veterans and energetic progressive voices seeking to take the reins on political strategy.

***

Lara Trump steps down as RNC co-chair and addresses speculation about Florida Senate seat via the Associated Press:

• Lara Trump will step down as co-chair of the Republican National Committee as she considers a number of potential options with her father-in-law, President-elect Donald Trump, set to return to the White House.

• Among those possibilities is replacing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Trump tapped to be the next secretary of state. If Rubio is confirmed, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will choose who takes the seat through the remainder of Rubio’s term, which expires in 2026.

• “It is something I would seriously consider,” she told The Associated Press in an interview. “If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like. And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”