Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 23/Dec 01:22

Syrian Hardships While Transitioning In The Post-Assad Phase – Analysis

The despotic rule of Bashar al-Assad came to an unexpected end on December 8 this year with the Sunni rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) displacing the regime through a sweeping and blistering rebellion and assuming the role of the central governing authority in the transitional period up to March first of the coming year. The Assad regime in Syria has fallen like cascades with the weakening of its external patrons and supporting partners- Russia and Iran along with its regional proxies. The fate of Assad was tied to the wars in the Middle East and Europe that kept bleeding the resources and military capabilities of Iran and its regional proxies and Russia respectively which buttressed the regime since 2011. While any fledgling democratic form of governance is much better than the brutal regime of Assad, the transitional phase may bring more socio-economic and political instabilities and invite more external interferences than before. Hence, while Syria during this period would need the support of major international actors to get sanction reliefs and humanitarian aid, more assistance would be needed to reconstruct the already plagued socio-economic institutions. Neutrality must be maintained to avert meddling of neighbors. While Turkey has called for Syria for Syrians, it has already been privileged by lending its support for HTS whereas other major powers such as Israel and US maintain their spheres of influence in Syria in different geographical zones through different domestic clients. On the other side, Russia and Iran would use divergent strategies to offset their loss with the debacle of the Assad regime. China which until the uprooting of the Assad regime refrained from direct military involvement in the country is likely to enhance its footprint because of its rising security concerns emanating from the Uyghur separatists who fought against the regime alongside HTS and are now part of the umbrella group. While HTS would find it difficult to fetch the necessary assistance from international community as it has been outlawed as a legitimate actor by the UN Security Council and not all the factions of it have been viewed positively by major actors of the international community. Much in a similar vein, neutrality, in true sense of the term, is almost impossible to be implemented in the Syrian context. End of the Dynastic Rule While the Assad regime was standing on the carnage of a protracted civil war since 2011, it was nonetheless providing a modicum of enforced stability to a fractured and economically ruined society amid a plethora of rebel groups vying for influence in different pockets of the country in collaboration with their external patrons. Freedom House, which conducts annual survey on the availability of freedom in countries described in its 2023 report, Syria under Assad as "one of the world's most oppressive regimes" which "harshly suppresses freedom of speech and assembly" with "enforced disappearances, military trials and torture". However, role of external players in Syria along with attention of international community plunged after Assad was assumed to have won the civil war and a phase of authoritarian stability ensued. Protests against the despotic and despicable Assad regime began peacefully in 2011 under the rubric of Arab Spring to which the Syrian forces responded with bullets and imprisonment. The peaceful protest then turned violent and protracted pitting the Assad regime against the anti-regime forces which changed configurations and character with the passage of time. The conflict witnessed decisive shifts and became internationalized in 2015 when Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched special forces and aircraft to bombard resistance groups in towns like Aleppo. Much in a similar vein, Iran also bolstered the regime in the face of rising rebellion against it. Without caring for restructuring and reforming the governance structure, the Assad regime resorted to strategies such as use of force, brutal killings, imprisonment and suppression of dissenting voices in Syria to hold onto power. His intransigence to come to negotiating table with rebel groups and discuss the future of Syria finally ended with disastrous collapse of the regime. HTS capitalizing on people's suppressed anger and grievances ended Assad's and his family's brutal 53-year rule through unexpectedly swift and sweeping military offensive. However, with the dramatic fall of Assad regime, while security stakes for a host of external powers in West Asia has climbed for a few others it provides necessary power vacuum and chaos to spread influence for a few others. External Influences In the face of declining influence of Iran and Russia in Syria, Israel and Turkey are set to expand their sway and power deep into the country. While Turkey reportedly took steps to bring Assad, Iran and Russia to the negotiation table in a bid to find out certain balance in the Syrian governance system and address the problem of influx of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Assad's defiance led Ankara to change the tack and assist HTS to launch the lightening offensive. Turkey's assistance to HTS is quite palpable in its immediate reopening of its embassy in Damascus after Assad's fall and offering of assistance to the group in shaping the country's new Islamist order. Israel in order to spread its own sphere of influence and push back against the rising Sunni Islamic influence under HTS has unleashed territorial incursion into the Golan Heights in Syria with its resettlement strategies perceiving the danger to Jew population from the rise of Sunni Islamic groups and has launched military operations to destroy the country's military assets. Turkey under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Turkey views Israeli actions in Syria destroying its military infrastructure and occupation of Golan Heights including its resettlement plans as clear violation of international laws. Much in a similar vein, Israel's actions have also been condemned by Arab countries as these impinge on Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Russian President Putin received fleeing Assad amid Moscow's influence taking a nosedive that was a predominant player with its naval and air bases in and around Syria before the blistering ouster of Assad. The US led a military campaign against the Islamic State group and fellow radical group al-Nusra Front inside Syria. Following the airstrikes, American troops entered northeast Syria to back the Syrian Kurdish force known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, and later the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella group that consists of majority Kurdish and other ethnic and rebel groups. The American sphere of influence in Syria was maintained and sustained through the group. However, the US military support for Kurdish groups in Syria badgered its NATO ally Turkey, which views the YPG as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a designated terrorist organization. Despite the end the dynastic rule in Syria with deposition of Assad, the United Nations special envoy for Syria warned that the war "has not ended yet" as the clashes between Turkish-backed armed groups and Kurdish fighters in the north of the country continued. Turkey seeks to ensure a pro-Turkey bulwark against the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in eastern Syria. Meanwhile, HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa who is also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani in a bid to prevent external intervention in the country has expressed in categorical terms that Syria will not allow any group to stage attacks against any other country including Israel whereas the leader has called for the withdrawal of Israel from Syrian territory according to a 1974 agreement that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Even while China did not send any troops or directly sold arms to bolster the Assad regime since 2011 until Assad's ouster in December 2024, Chinese security concerns and stakes have climbed with the rise of HTS and other Islamic rebel groups in Syria. Members of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) released a video from Syria calling for militant jihad against China. Many foreign fighters within HTS are Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region who militantly pursue the political objective of carving out a Uyghur state from China. The TIP took up arms alongside other Syrian rebel groups against the Assad regime and its SDF ally. Domestic Predicaments HTS is an umbrella group that includes disparate rebel groups into its fold which have different external patrons. This apart, the group does not have control over several other militant groups active in Syria. Hence, while it has begun to govern a state, it cannot claim monopoly over power which a state needs for effective governance. Such an anarchic order could provide leeway to groups such as ISIS to reorganize. HTS itself has been labelled as a terrorist organisation by the UN Security Council which poses significant challenges for the group to gain international legitimacy to govern. The group had only prior experience of governing Idlib- only small part of Syria with the use of brute force on several occasions so to govern the entire country in the face of economic collapse and meddling of external actors with their domestic clients will be an uphill task. Decades of economic sanctions, isolation and destruction of critical infrastructure have earned the state a pariah status with rickety economic, social and political institutions which make it susceptible to further external pressures. Syria's GDP has not only contracted by 80 percent since 2011, around 90 percent of its people live below poverty line. Under such grim conditions, the refugee crisis may further get deteriorated with people fleeing the country to fetch minimum basic needs.