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The speedy fall of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria brings about a dramatic change in the politics of the Middle East. In the first place, it changes the dynamics in Syria, given that the 54-year family domination of the country, first by Hafez Assad and then by his son, has come to an end. In the second, the success achieved by Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), the rebel force which is now in control in Damascus, leads to the next question, which is whether Syria now has a democratic opening or there is the dire probability of the country sliding to Islamist rule.
One cannot ignore the fact that in countries such as the United States, the HTS leader Abu Mohamed al Jawlani remains on a list of terrorists. To what extent or whether that name can be removed from the list is a big question, the answer to which depends on the next few days and on what the rebels mean to do with their new found power. To suggest that the HTS has full control over the country would be wrong owing to the fact that over the last more than a decade Syria has been sliced into pockets of domination by various groups, all of which were dedicated to the overthrow of the Assad dispensation.
The dramatic change in Syria raises a good number of other questions, all of which have a bearing on geopolitics, especially on the state of the region from here on. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been cheered by the change, gloating that his country has reshaped the Middle East. Whether the military offensive by Israel in Gaza against Hamas and in Lebanon against Hezbollah has been a fresh and positive beginning for the Middle East is a question for scholars and historians to dwell on. The organised murder of 44,000-plus Palestinians and the scores of Hamas and Hezbollah senior figures killed in Israeli missile strikes are certainly no marker to any positive change.
But, yes, Israel's relentless military assaults on Hamas and Hezbollah have left the two forces hugely diminished in their power to undertake any fresh armed assault against Tel Aviv. The manner in which Israel pounded away at Hezbollah positions in Lebanon was admittedly instrumental in decimating the group, which for years has been a dominant player in Arab radicalism in the region. With Hezbollah in a battered state, the Assad regime had little chance of survival. More to the point, a weakened Hezbollah is a reflection of the loss of regional influence which now stares Iran in the face. Neither Hezbollah nor the clerics in Tehran had anticipated such a situation arising in the days when they backed Bashar Assad in his campaigns against his enemies.
The victory of the HTS leaves Iran with influence greatly shredded in the current situation. Add to that the loss of face for Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has been a strong pillar of support for Assad in the latter's fearsome military campaigns against the forces trying to remove him from power. Yet in the past couple of years, Moscow's focus on its war against Ukraine inevitably led to a steady erosion of military supplies to the Damascus regime, leaving Assad rather high and dry. The definitive conclusion today is that it is not merely Bashar Assad who has lost power; it is Iran and Russia which suddenly find themselves out of Syria, a loss of influence which may never be recovered, if at all, anytime soon.
The swiftness with which the HTS rebels overran Syrian cities is testimony to the determination with which the group shaped strategy to push the long-entrenched regime out of power in Damascus. The jubilation with which the rebels were welcomed in Damascus and the hero's treatment accorded to Jawlani when he arrived at Damascus' leading mosque were clearly a release of emotions long suppressed by Syrians. That thousands of Syrians went searching for their relatives long imprisoned by the regime in public and secret prisons threw up the image of the brutality which defined the working of the Assad regime. It may well be that many of those hidden away by the regime will never be found.
And that is a tragedy which is generally the aftermath of the fall of brutal and corrupt regimes in the underdeveloped regions of the world. In Syria's difficult history, such brutality and corruption surfaced in the 1950s, following feeble attempts to have the country, free of dominance by the French, who ruled the place from 1920 to 1946, under what was known as a mandate, inaugurate a democratic order for its citizens. Coups, counter-coups, intrigues, executions of military officers caught in the act of planning insurrections have been part of Syrian history. There have been leftist politicians such as Michel Aflaq whose attempts to have Syria governed through socialism amounted to little. And then came the short-lived political union with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser, known as the United Arab Republic (UAR). It lasted from 1958 to 1961. Syrians were happy to have their independence restored following the collapse of the UAR experiment.
Syria was pulverised in the Six-Day War in June 1967 by Israel. It lost the Golan Heights even as Egypt saw the Sinai passing under Israeli occupation and Jordan lost the most productive part of it, the West Bank, to Israel. To put it briefly, Syrians have historically paid a price for reasons that were not of their making. But worse was to come after 1967, when in 1970 Hafez Assad, defence minister in the government, seized power and would keep the country in his grip till his death in 2000. Any expectations that his passing would lead to a democratic opening for Syria came to naught, given his family's hold on power. Pusillanimous loyalists of Hafez Assad duly placed Bashar Assad, an eye specialist trained in Britain, in power as the country's new President. Under both Assads, sections as well as religious sects in the country suffered heavily. Under both men, chemical weapons were freely deployed against civilians and groups opposed to the regime.
The fall of the Bashar Assad regime sharply changes equations in the Middle East. It introduces a new element in a widening circle of global crises. With Ukraine and Russia remaining locked in war, with Sudan unravelling through the unabashed ambitions of its generals, with Afghanistan back in medievalism, with the far right making dents in European politics, an Assad-free but unstable Syria adds to the woes of the world. Looking behind one's shoulder, one spots the grave uncertainty looming over the coming four years with Donald Trump back in the American presidency.