Why did Assad fall so quickly?

On December 14, 2024By Online Niel

The end was “as amazing as it was quick,” said Rania Abouzeid The New Yorker. Less than two weeks after it launched a lightning strike from its stronghold in northern Syria, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) succeeded this week in ending the 24-year rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

The regime had pledged to defend the capital, Damascus, with a “ring of steel”; but in this case the rapid southward advance of the rebels met with little resistance. Regime soldiers abandoned their posts, leaving uniforms and equipment strewn on the street, while Assad and his family fled the country.

The brutality of the Assad regime masked its extraordinary weakness, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. Assad would have lost power a decade ago in the wake of the Arab Spring if Iran and Russia had not come to his aid with ground forces and air power. He should have used the breathing space provided by their rescue to try to strengthen his legitimacy and expand his power base beyond the Alawite minority, the branch of Shia Islam to which he and most of his friends belong. Instead, he carried on as before, leaving Syria’s Sunni majority to “blame discontent”, relying on his allies to deliver him again if necessary. But with Russia tied up in Ukraine and Iran gripped by Israel’s attack on its proxies, no one was willing to fight for him this time.

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Amidst the euphoria, there was also desperation as people headed to jails opened by rebels in a frantic search for missing loved ones, Sam Joiner said in FT. Videos shared on social media showed emaciated and dazed prisoners, including small children, emerging from dark cells into the light. Some of the freed men apparently did not know that Bashar’s father, former dictator Hafez al-Assad, had died – an event that took place 24 years ago.

The scenes at Sednaya prison, a large facility outside Damascus known locally as the “human slaughterhouse”, were particularly grim, David Patrikarakos said in Daily Mail. The rebels discovered an iron press used to crush and execute prisoners. Officials appealed on social media for people to provide the codes to the electronic doors leading to the underground cells, where inmates could be seen on CCTV monitors.

By dawn on Sunday, Assad, his British wife, Asma, and other members of their family had everything fled to Moscow. Assad will have plenty of time to ruminate on his mistakes in his new home, said Simon Sebag Montefiore in times. He is no stranger to the city: his family is said to have a huge portfolio of properties there, including at least 18 apartments in the City of Capitals skyscraper complex; and his eldest son, Hafez, just graduated in mathematics from Moscow State University.

But while he and Asma might feel at home browsing the city’s “gilded malls”, they “face the prospect of a life in obscurity – half-guests, half-prisoners”. As Assad is only 59, there is a decent chance he could still be handed over to an international tribunal following a regime change in Russia, Marcel Dirsus said in The new statesman. Whatever happens, he’ll “never be truly safe again” given how many people wish him ill.

There is much to worry about in Syria, he agreed The Times. Although HTS claims to have evolved from its jihadi roots and become more inclusive, it remains to be seen how genuine this is. And beyond HTS and other Islamist fighters, there are many other factions vying for control in Syria, including a coalition of Kurdish groups in the northeast, Druze factions in the southwest, and Syrian opposition forces in the southeast. It is all too likely that Syria will now descend into factional fighting, said Colonel Richard Kemp Sun.. This would be disastrous for the country and risk propelling millions more refugees into Europe.

“Black pessimism is rarely unfounded when considering events in the Middle East,” Patrick Bishop said in Daily Mail. And it will certainly be difficult for Syria to move on from half a century of dictatorship. There are, however, some reasons for hope. Before the last decade of bloody civil warSyrians of different faiths had a “long, if intermittent” history of “harmonious coexistence”. Syrians are tired of war and desperate to build a new future, says Kim Ghattas FT. It was surprising that Assad’s fall was celebrated even in regime strongholds such as Latakia.

Citizens of many other countries in the region they are also eager to move on of war and embrace economic development, said Arash Azizi in Atlantic. “No one expects a thriving liberal democracy to emerge suddenly from the ashes of the Syrian civil war,” but if Syrians can put aside their differences, “they can begin to build an effective policy” that would advance their country’s interests and benefit the whole. Middle east.

Why didn’t the regime fight more?