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Syria’s path to stability remains deeply uncertain

The group that brought down the Assad regime might be in the process of reinventing itself but it would be foolish to imagine that the Islamists of HTS have converted to the cause of liberal democracy

A woman holds the skull of her son at the morgue of Al-Mujtahid Hospital in Damascus, where people have gone hoping to identify relatives' remains. Photograph: Hasan Belal/EPA
A woman holds the skull of her son at the morgue of Al-Mujtahid Hospital in Damascus, where people have gone hoping to identify relatives' remains. Photograph: Hasan Belal/EPA
Vincent Durac
Sat Dec 14 2024 - 07:00

Until just before it became clear that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was no more, veteran Syria-watchers were disdainful of the possibility that Damascus might fall to opposition forces or the prospect of Assad fleeing the country. The speed of the downfall of the Syrian regime, after 54 years of tyrannical rule by the Assads, father and son, came as a surprise to everyone, including almost certainly the leadership of the movement which overthrew it.

Indeed, just the day before Assad’s departure, the focus was on the possibility of talks to resolve the evolving conflict in the country, as Turkey and Iran, supporters of opposing sides in Syria, along with Russia, proposed the resumption of talks between the Syrian regime and its opposition to restore calm. A few days earlier the Biden administration had been working with the United Arab Emirates on a deal to lift sanctions against Assad in exchange for Syria distancing itself from Iran and blocking the shipment of arms to Hizbullah.

However, all of this masked the extent to which Assad’s grip on power had diminished in recent months.

Ostracised by its regional neighbours following the violent repression of a popular uprising from 2011 onwards, the Assad regime relied on a brutal security apparatus in combination with the support of powerful international allies in the form of Iran, Russia and Hizbullah. But over the course of the past year the commitment to the Syrian regime, or the capacity to act on any commitment to it on the part of each of these actors, was fatally weakened.

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Israel’s series of assaults on Hizbullah, as it broadened the conflict in Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon had a devastating impact both on that organisation and on its key regional supporter, Iran. The Syrian regime lost two of its key supports.

[ Assad’s fall sees Iran’s regional influence wane ]

In addition, Iranian commitment to Assad’s survival was diminished by suspicion that Syria’s intelligence apparatus had leaked critical intelligence about Hizbullah’s operations, members and weapons in Syria. The Iranian leadership was also unhappy about Assad’s overtures to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

In May 2023, Syria was readmitted to the Arab League as Assad attended its summit in Jeddah for the first time since 2011. In January 2024 the UAE dispatched an ambassador to Damascus for the first time since the outbreak of the 2011 uprising. As Iranian disillusionment with Assad deepened, and it became clear that Tehran would not or could not intervene directly in Syria, so Russian resolve also evaporated.

The end, when it came, was rapid. Russia recalled its troops and diplomats on December 6th and began to withdraw from its bases in Syria. The same day, Iran began to withdraw its military commanders, including those from the Quds Force, linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

[ Moscow says it aims to maintain military bases in Syria ]

The group that led the military offensive that ultimately brought down the Assad regime – Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS, or the Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant) has its origins in the civil war which broke out after the 2011 uprising. HTS arose out of the merger of a number of Sunni Islamist armed factions in January 2017.

Under the leadership of Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, better known by his nom-de-guerre Abu Muhammad al-Julani, the movement has distanced itself from an earlier association with al-Qaeda, rejecting the global jihadist ambitions of the latter in favour of a focus on the struggle against Assad in Syria. In doing so it replicated a process that was not uncommon among militant Islamist groups in the Middle East, before the emergence of al-Qaeda, of forsaking conflict with the “far enemy” (the West) in favour of struggle with the “near enemy” (repressive local regimes, in this case, that of Assad in Syria).

Since coming to prominence in recent days, al-Julani has gone to considerable lengths to assure both Syrians and international opinion that HTS represents a very different version of Islamism than that of al-Qaeda or the so-called Islamic State. Its leadership has urged its fighters to protect Christians and other minorities and has met religious leaders to assure them of protection.

It has stated that it is forbidden to impose any religious dress code on women. Indeed, it has been suggested that HTS might dissolve itself in the coming weeks in favour of new “national institutions”, although what this might mean is less than entirely clear. But however it has moderated its ideological stance it would be foolish to imagine that the Islamists of HTS have converted to the cause of liberal democracy.

While HTS is enjoying some ascendancy in the new dispensation in Syria, it is by no means the only significant actor in a country that has experienced fragmentation on a devastating scale, as the regime in Damascus lost control of swathes of territory in the course of the long civil war.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is a Kurdish-led coalition of militias, with some Arab and Christian membership, which controls around 25 per cent of the territory of Syria in the north and east. The SDF claims its objective is the establishment of a secular, democratic and federal Syria. It is closely associated with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) which, under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan, has fought for decades for the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Turkey.

Syrian Democratic Forces fighters inspect an abandoned airplane at the Qamishli airport, formerly a joint Syrian-Russian military base, in northeastern Syria. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty
Syrian Democratic Forces fighters inspect an abandoned airplane at the Qamishli airport, formerly a joint Syrian-Russian military base, in northeastern Syria. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty

The prominent role of the SDF in fighting the Islamic State has brought it considerable support from the United States. But the SDF is regarded with extreme suspicion by Turkey which has maintained a significant presence in Syria both directly and through its support for a range of militias.

The Syrian National Army (SNA) is a Turkish-backed alliance of several armed opposition factions which was established in 2017 under the auspices of the Syrian Interim Government which, in turn, was set up in 2013 by a coalition of opposition groups. However, the SNA is not a centralised, cohesive organisation. Rather, it comprises a number of component members who have, at times, clashed with one another.

To complicate the picture further, in October 2019 another Turkish-backed coalition of armed factions – the National Liberation Front – merged with the SNA, bringing more than 40 armed groups together. Members of the SNA have taken part in Turkish military operations against IS but also against the Kurdish SDF in the north of Syria.

The challenge of holding all of this together falls for the moment to Mohammed al-Bashir, who was appointed prime minister of Syria’s transitional government following a meeting with al-Julani and Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali, the last prime minister appointed by Assad. However, not only is the new government faced with a bewildering array of armed actors across the country, it also faces the challenge of addressing the consequences of a civil war.

That war bankrupted the country, cost hundreds of thousands of lives and caused the displacement of millions of Syrians, within Syria’s borders and beyond. In addition, within days of Assad’s departure, Israel had launched nearly 500 air strikes in Syria on what it claimed were strategic targets, the US launched 75 air strikes against IS targets, while Turkey launched attacks on Kurdish forces.

[ Pause on Syrian asylum claims to be reviewed in coming weeks, says Helen McEntee ]

While the overthrow of Assad has generated euphoria among Syrians at home and abroad, the path to any sort of long-term stability in the country remains unclear.

Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East politics in the UCD school of politics and international relations