This has been one of those weeks when decades happened.
In the space of about a week, Syrian rebels took over much of the north, and then moved south, taking over Homs and, last night, Damascus. Bashar al-Assad, the brutal dictator who ruled the country for the past 24 years, fled the country, and is thought to be in Russia. The rebel factions, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (an ex–al-Qaeda affiliate), celebrated the fall of Assad and released political dissidents from prison.
Many people are celebrating, understandably, the fall of a truly evil dictator. During his rule, Assad presided over the slaughter of nearly 3 percent of the country’s population—his own forces have killed, by some estimates, more than 600,000 civilians during the country’s civil war, which has displaced more than 13 million people since 2011. He and his regime have waged war against his own people, disappearing dissenters and persecuting religious minorities. And yet, is his departure all good news? Could those about to take power be worse? What are we to make of the rebel factions, who were formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda? And what are the implications of Russia and Iran’s retreat from Syria?
These are just some of the questions raised by the sudden collapse of the Assad regime. There’s no one better to answer them than The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins. Filkins has reported from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and pretty much everywhere else on the map. He is the author of The Forever War.
Adam Rubenstein: Could you describe the fall of Assad?
Dexter Filkins: The collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad has been breathtaking, decisive, and fast. First, the rebels took Aleppo, then Homs, now Damascus. On the ground, in many places, there is chaos: The Iranian and Russian advisers, and the fighters from Hezbollah, who rescued Assad’s regime in 2016, are fleeing. The Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries, imported by the Iranians to help, are trapped. The pivotal moment came Friday and Saturday, when the regime—one of the world’s most murderous—pulled back from the suburbs of Damascus. It seemed for a moment that Assad’s army was falling back for a last stand, but in fact, it was just disintegrating. Assad has fled the palace and reportedly, even Syria itself. The rebels and their commander, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, have taken the capital. No one could have predicted that events would move so fast.
AR: What’s the significance of Assad’s fall?
DF: The fall of Assad is a pivotal event in the history of the modern Middle East, for two reasons. First, even though we don’t know yet what the immediate future will bring, it’s a great moment for the Syrian people. The Assad imperium, which began with the ascension of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, a former army officer, in 1971, lasted 53 years. (Bashar took over in 2000.) From the start, the Assads were brutal and corrupt and ruinous, tolerating no dissent; they immiserated the Syrian people. The second reason the fall of Assad is so important is that it represents the collapse of the long Iranian campaign to dominate the Middle East. Only 18 months ago, Iranian power was at its peak, with its local allies dominating a broad swath of the region and nearly completing the encirclement of Israel: Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza. The Iranians called it the “Axis of Resistance.” It was primarily aimed at Israel; the clear threat was that any Israeli attempt to attack Iran, particularly its nuclear weapons program, would be met by a rapid and devastating response by Iran’s allies. At the same time, the Axis of Resistance was a vast looting exercise; Assad, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon were parasites, sucking and draining the wealth from the countries they inhabited and crippling the states and governments where they lived. And now, after only a few months, the Iranian project lies in ruins. Hamas has been destroyed, Hezbollah is crippled, Assad is gone, and the Iranian regime itself is severely weakened.
It should be said: Most of the credit goes to Israel, which, by destroying Hamas, decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership, and leaving Iran’s leaders exposed, kicked away the support struts of Assad’s regime. The Ukrainian army deserves a nod, too. It was the Russian military that led the effort to save Assad when he was teetering in 2015; they bombed rebels and civilians indiscriminately. And now, eight years later, the Russians are tied down and bloodied in Ukraine, where they have sustained some 600,000 casualties. The Ukrainians, too, played an important role in Assad’s demise.
AR: What do we know about those likely to govern Syria?
DF: The leader of the revolt goes by the nom de guerre Mohammad al-Jolani, a Syrian. He’s smart, young, and ambitious. The “Jolani” in his name is derived from the Golan Heights, from which his family was forced to retreat in 1967, when Israel captured the region in the Six-Day War. Al-Jolani began his career as a cold-eyed zealot, traveling to Iraq in 2003, where he was captured and put in an American prison when he was just out of his teens. The detention facility, Camp Bucca, was a notorious incubator of jihadis; if you weren’t a radical when you entered, you were by the time you left. Al-Jolani was freed in 2008 and promptly joined al-Qaeda in Iraq, the supremely murderous gang that led the insurgency against the Americans in Iraq. When the Syrian uprising began in 2011, al-Jolani returned home, where he founded an al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, which became one of the principal groups fighting in Syria’s long, brutal, and multipronged civil war. At its founding, the al-Nusra Front, as it was known, acted like every other al-Qaeda affiliate: It was bloodthirsty and sectarian. The U.S. put a $10 million bounty on his head, and it’s still there. But after years of sectarian fighting, al-Jolani broke with al-Qaeda and formed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, based in the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib. As the leader of HTS, al-Jolani, at least on the surface, changed; as he marched across Syria, he ordered his remarkably well-disciplined troops to leave the Christian and Shi’ite minorities alone—the very groups al-Qaeda spent so many years killing. Al-Jolani also told non-Syrian jihadis to stay away, indicating that he’s more a Syrian nationalist than an Islamic fanatic. Is al-Jolani’s transformation real or merely tactical? Nobody knows. But it’s interesting that in all the years that the U.S. has had a bounty on al-Jolani, they haven’t tried to kill him. Maybe American intelligence officials think he’s for real.
AR: Is there risk of a broader collapse in the region, a new Arab Spring?
DF: I don’t see much chance that the Arab Spring will come again. The Arab Spring was a series of internal revolts against decrepit regimes; the Syrian revolt was, too. But I think the events of the past six months are much better understood as a throwing-off of foreign—Iranian—domination. Of that, Syria finally appears free.
AR: Where is Assad right now? X was lighting up over a rumor that a Syrian government plane fell precipitously, and its radar stopped transmitting data. Anything to that?
DF: I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on X searching for Assad. If he’s alive, he’ll show himself. I’d guess Moscow.
AR: Israel has just taken critical territory on the top of Mount Hermon; there’s an image circulating of IDF soldiers holding an Israeli flag on the Syrian side of the Hermon. Our Matti Friedman said this is “probably the most dramatic development on the Israel-Syria border in 50 years.”
DF: I think the more significant development was Israel’s announcement that it had struck Syria’s chemical weapons factories. Everyone should be terrified at the prospect of those falling into the wrong hands.
AR: What are the next moves, and countermoves? A vacuum in eastern Syria? Turkey pummeling the Kurds in the north?
DF: There’s a good chance of Syria falling into chaos. It’s an artificial country, created by a few ill-considered pen strokes after the First World War. It contains multitudes of sects and tribes, which will now have to figure out how to live together, and they will have no institutions, like a free press or civil society, to help them, as they were long ago destroyed by the Assads. And then there are Syria’s neighbors—Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—competing for dominance. I will hope for the best and fear the worst.
AR: What are the Iranians thinking right now? Is it “Are we next?”
DF: Assad’s fall is a body blow to the Iranian regime. They have been exposed by the Israelis (and Americans) as being far more vulnerable than anyone knew. And the loss of Assad, Hezbollah, and Hamas reveals them to be cowardly and impotent. [Ayatollah] Ali Khamenei’s life work—the Axis of Resistance—is in ashes. He’s 85. He, and everyone around him, must be worried indeed.
Adam Rubenstein (@RubensteinAdam) is a contributing editor at The Free Press.
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