The Fall of Assad

National Review Online

Sunday, December 08, 2024

 

In a stunning turn of events, Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime has collapsed. As rebel groups celebrated in the streets of Damascus and tore down large posters of his face, the dictator fled the country. Rebel leaders declared Syria “free of the tyrant” and Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali called for free elections.

 

These were scenes few would have expected to happen so suddenly, given that the country has been in the midst of a deadlocked civil war for twelve years that grew out of the Arab Spring. It was difficult to assess that the rebels had gained such an upper hand, even when they captured its second-largest city Aleppo.

 

The fall of Assad marks the end not only of his leadership, but of more than 50 years of brutal rule by his family, which dated back to 1971 when his father Hafez al-Assad seized control of Syria, and continued when Bashar took over in 2000.

 

The elder Assad became infamous for his 1982 crackdown against a Muslim Brotherhood-led uprising during which he massacred tens of thousands of people in the town of Hama. When Bashar took over in 2000, there was some initial hope that he would be more moderate, given that his reputation was of a low-key doctor who had studied ophthalmology at the Western Eye Hospital in London. But any lingering hopes of a moderate streak were dashed during the civil war, which has killed an estimated 580,000 people, with over 300,000 estimated to be non-combatants. During that time, Assad launched several chemical weapons attacks on his own people.

 

In addition to his savage rule at home, Assad became close allies to some of the worst actors on the international stage, primarily Russia and Iran. Iran specifically used Syria as a route through which to smuggle weapons to the terrorist proxy Hezbollah. In recent weeks, both allies had seemed to abandon support for Assad. It remains unclear whether that was due to their having seen the writing on the wall or because they are now in less of a position to intervene — Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, and Iran because of the blows Israel has dealt over the past year to its leading terrorist proxies as well as inside its own territory.

 

At this point, it’s difficult to know what to expect. Assad was a tyrant, but those fighting Assad were not one monolithic, freedom-seeking rebel group. The rebels are a collection of lots of different rebel groups with different grievances against the regime — and this includes jihadis. Insurgent leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani formerly fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq and was designated a terrorist by the United States.

 

There was always a realist argument that as bad as Assad was, we have no idea what will happen without him in control, with the biggest fear being that Islamist groups could seize power in different areas of Syria and gain access to abandoned weapons. There have been reports that Israel has already taken precautionary measures, including bombing a chemical weapons cache and entering a demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights on its border with Syria to prevent infiltration.

 

It’s difficult to shed any tears about the fall of an evil dictator. But our hopes for a new Syria will be tempered by trepidation.