The Days After in Syria

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The intertwined misrule of Syria by its Shia Alawite minority led by the Assad dynasty and the secular Baath Party is over. The rebel takeover of Damascus and the unveiling of the corrupt wealth gathered in Bashar al-Assad’s palaces recalls the fall of Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu or Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych as well as the final denouements of Kabul and Saigon. For decades Syria has been a factor in most Middle Eastern conflicts from the Arab-Israeli wars to internecine religious and ethnic violence that stretched from Lebanon’s shores to Iraq’s deserts. Damascus under the Assads was the keeper of the anti-Israel flame long after that flame went out in almost every other Arab capital. Can this dynamic change or will it remain under a different guise?

Despite recent events, Syria remains what it has been for years: divided, volatile, and unviable as an independent state. The main rebel group that took Damascus and a strip of territory from Idlib to the Golan Heights is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant. The U.S. State Department designated HTS a foreign terrorist organization due to its al-Qaida (AQ) ties – an association HTS claims no longer exists. HTS worked with non-jihadi groups such as the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) to overthrow Assad. Now that this coalition controls Damascus, the world waits to see if it will be a Sunni-nationalist force focused on domestic affairs or a Jihadist one dedicated to terrorism beyond its borders, particularly its border with Israel? So far, its actions in power have been responsible but its AQ background and the Salafist ideology espoused by many of its rank-and-file members raises the question as to how long this will be. A future internal clash between various rebel factions on ideological grounds may be needed to determine the answer to that question.

HTS now controls Damascus, but Syria remains a patchwork of armed camps. Syria’s coast and home to the Alawite minority is, as of this writing, unconquered. The northern border with Turkey is controlled by either the FSA or anti-Turkish Kurds of the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). In the south is a U.S.-protected enclave of FSA forces and further east are several small U.S. military bases in SDF territory. Scattered in Syria’s eastern desert are pockets of the Islamic State (IS) and pro-Iranian militias. For these parties there is no Syrian state. Their loyalties are based on ethnicity and/or confession and centered on a particular geographic section of the country. Syria is similar to China in the 1920s when it was carved up by regional warlords and competing international powers with their extraterritorial enclaves, but with no Kuomintang party in sight to unite the people under the rubric of nationalism.

For Syria’s neighbors, Assad’s fall has meant stark pluses or minuses. Israel may have exchanged one security threat for another one. The fact that the HTS leader, an alumnus of Abu Ghraib prison, uses the nom de guerre “al-Julani” (from Golan) emphasizing his family’s roots there, cannot be lost on Jerusalem. Turkish power is ascendant after covertly aiding HTS. This is the second time in recent history that Ankara has reshaped the region’s balance of power as it did in 2020 when it helped Azerbaijan retake Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish influence between the Caucasus and the Levant has not been this dominant since the Ottoman era. Iran’s influence has just as equally declined. In the past year its Alawite, Hezbollah, and Hamas allies have either been defeated, diminished, or pulverized. Only the Houthis remain strong. Tehran’s ability to influence Syrian affairs via the Shia Alawite minority is gone and its land bridge to Hezbollah in Lebanon is broken.

Equally broken is Russia’s foothold in the Mediterranean. Without Syrian bases, its ability to project power into the Middle East and support its commercial cum mercenary adventures in Africa will be considerably weakened. It may try to gain a new naval base in war-torn Libya, but its client there, Khalifa Haftar, is a weak reed to lean on after what Moscow has just experienced with the Assad regime and its civil war.

So, will Syria remain a locus for conflict in the Middle East as either an instigator or victim?

That will depend on how a new Middle Eastern security order is formed, something that should concern America. As Henry Kissinger once noted, “you cannot make war in the Middle East without Egypt, and you cannot make peace without Syria.” As a splintered multi-ethnic, multi-confessional state, Syria could continue to be an incubator of terrorism and ethnic conflict that threatens key Middle Eastern countries – Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. To end this, a process must begin to provide a modicum of stability in Syria. The goal would be to create a functioning central government and then a modus vivendi between Damascus and Syria’s minority groups, especially the Kurds, to end grievances that have fueled internal and external ethnic and sectarian conflicts. Success would remove the threat posed by AW and IS not just to Damascus but also Amman and Baghdad and prevent Iranian malign influence from returning to Syria. This would secure both Israel’s and Jordan’s northern borders and Iraq’s western ones and prevent Hezbollah from regaining strength via the overland shipment of Iranian arms – particularly missiles. This would be consistent with long-standing U.S. interests to remove external threats to Israel and internal threats from terrorism or separatism to Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. It would also blunt Moscow’s influence in the region and restrict its predatory activities further afield in Africa.

The United States does not need to intervene forcefully in this process. It can work with partners overtly or covertly to support mutually beneficial initiatives to protect Israel, further destroy AQ and IS, and block the return of Iranian power to Syria. However, if the U.S. takes a “hands off” approach, others will reorder the security architecture of the Middle East and not take U.S. interests in mind when they do so. If we wish to increase Israel’s security, limit the influence of Russia and Iran, and prevent the return of jihadi extremists, we will have to remain engaged and take advantage of the new opportunities that the fall of Assad gives. Such opportunities in international affairs are rare, when they even happen at all, and should not be wasted.

Philip Wasielewski is the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare and a Senior Fellow in FPRI’s Eurasia Program.