For more than a decade Syria has been a patchwork of contesting tribal loyalties overlaid with the geopolitical ambitions of neighbours and great powers.
With the help of Russia and Iran, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad controlled the capital, Damascus, its western approaches and eastern lands to the Lebanon border.
Assad’s forces occupied a strip of Mediterranean coastline north to the border with Turkey. Russian air bases were thought to be the regime’s linchpin, with control of the air for some years keeping hostile Islamist forces at bay. That was the extent of “Assad’s Syria”. What looked on the map like a long border with Turkey was in reality a mix of Turkish-backed forces and Kurds operating a de facto autonomous statelet.
Sunni Islamist forces of varying degrees of extremism and with unclear international backing operated north, west and south of Damascus. Even the Americans maintain a number of special forces and military “contractors” in Syria’s northeast working with the Kurds, and on Syria’s southeast border with Iran and Jordan.
I use the past tense because it seems that Assad, as of late Sunday afternoon, has already fled the country.
The Syrian patchwork is being redrawn at the hand of rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The group had controlled Idlib province for years. With the wind at its back, it has now occupied the city of Homs, 160km north of Damascus, and pushed fast and hard into the capital.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is said to have split from al-Qa’ida in 2016. It is Sunni and extremist, but pragmatically so. Its focus in Idlib has been governing rather than establishing an ISIS-like theocracy. Crucially, the group is reported by The New York Times as having “formed an alliance with a variety of other rebel factions, some backed by Turkey”.
The unusually telegenic head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. Looking like he uses the same outfitters as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, al-Jolani has already given an interview to the NYT saying his aim – now apparently achieved – is to remove Assad.
In a country full of unattractive political choices, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s moderate brand of extremism (a term that makes sense only in the Middle East) is gaining popular resonance. Assad’s Syrian Arab army simply melted away without offering any resistance.
In scenes reminiscent of the ISIS group’s military blitzkrieg of Iran and eastern Syria in 2014, government-backed forces shed their uniforms and abandoned bases and huge volumes of military equipment.
Timing is everything in war. Iran is evacuating military and diplomatic staff from Damascus. An Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps memo is reported acknowledging Assad will fall.
Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters retreated from Homs before the arrival of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham foot soldiers.
The calculation for Tehran may be that it simply could not help Assad. Hezbollah has been defeated in Lebanon as an organised force. If Iran can’t draw on military resources in Lebanon to help the Syrian regime, its options for assisting Assad are few.
Last week Russian aircraft bombed Islamist forces in Aleppo but Moscow was unwilling or unable to assist Assad with more offensive support. Russia has significant military assets in north and west Africa known as the Africa Corps. Savvy US think-tank the Institute for the Study of War speculated last week that these Russian and mercenary fighters might be sent to Syria.
Any sign of these forces moving would have been a key indicator of Moscow’s interest to support Assad. Too late! Vladimir Putin was too hard-pressed mounting a major winter offensive in eastern Ukraine to do anything for Assad. Now we will likely see Putin attempt to exfiltrate precious combat aircraft and pilots from Syria. Moscow may try to cut a deal with al-Jolani in an effort to retain forces in-country.
That strikes me as an unlikely outcome. After brutally backing Assad for years, Russian military personnel unable to leave the country will face an ugly future.
Who are the winners and losers from this latest round of violence? The losers are more numerous: first, the Syrian people. They will lose an oppressor they know and hate for another oppressor whose capacity for ruthlessness is yet to be discovered.
Russia loses. Putin is staking everything on getting an advantageous outcome in its Ukraine war. Russia lacks the money and capability to prosecute Putin’s adventurism globally.
Iran is the biggest geopolitical loser. If Tehran is unable to use its proxies and the Revolutionary Guards Corps in Syria, that will put an even tighter death grip on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Over the past 12 months Iran has seen the collapse of its strategy to strangle Israel with its proxy forces. This has been a massive defeat for the Revolutionary Guards Corps as the authors of this strategy.
Tehran will also look at the ugly sight of what popular regime change means in the streets of a capital city. The mullahs will be feeling vulnerable.
Turkey may be a big winner depending on the level of its influence over Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Ankara’s first objective may be to prosecute a harder fight against Kurdish groups along the Turkish border.
Global Sunni Islamist terrorism will get a boost from the apparent success of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The West benefited from al-Qa’ida and ISIS prosecuting such an ugly ideology that few people would willingly support it.
Imagine the international recruitment potential of a Sunni extremist group not determined to make their followers live in the dark ages. This will threaten regime stability in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.
Israel wins if the Syrian turmoil hurts Iran and Hezbollah. Lebanon wins if the political cancer of Hezbollah is weaker and can’t receive Syrian assistance. America wins if the Sunni Arab world looks to Donald Trump for regime protection against the Arab street rising, inspired by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Australia is a diplomatic loser because our government’s undergraduate obsession with the Palestinian cause blinds us to the realities of power and influence and the Middle East. No friend or foe could care less about what Canberra thinks of these developments.
Our first order of business should be to think through the counter-terrorism implications. Another somewhat charismatic Islamist group rises on the horizon. How will that play in the minds of the naive young radicals protesting in our city streets?
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