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Summary: on 8 December last year the regime of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was routed in a lightning offensive that had burst out of the previously besieged rebel enclave of Idlib. The offensive was spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa known then by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
Today we continue our all new top ten podcasts countdown. Sitting at #7 is Malik al-Abdeh’s Syria has a new strongman first broadcast 11 December 2024.
Malik is a Middle East analyst and consultant and a Syria specialist. He is the managing director of Conflict Mediation Solutions and the editor of Syria in Transition.
When we launched the podcast five years ago we had no idea what sort of reception to expect. Now more than 275 podcasts later we are delighted they have been listened to a quarter of a million times in countries right around the world. The response is a measure of the outstanding quality of our contributors. We are fortunate and very grateful to have them.
In today’s newsletter we publish a short excerpt from the podcast. You can listen to the full podcast here.
In October’s Syria in Transition you said that the HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) offensive was coming and coming very soon. But I wonder, were you surprised at all by the speed at which victory was achieved? It happened, in what, less than a fortnight?
Correct. It happened very quickly. And I think few observers, perhaps even HTS themselves, had expected the rapid collapse of the Syrian army. What actually happened was that the soldiers simply fled their positions, took off their uniforms and refused to fight for Bashar Al Assad which when you think about it is not particularly surprising. After 13 years of war few in Syria would be ready to lay down their lives for Bashar, he’d lost all credibility. He utterly failed to manage the Syrian economy and he presided over a terrible civil war that could have been resolved politically years ago. So he had lost credibility, quite clearly, and not just the credibility of the rank and file but also his own inner circle and the elite in Damascus. And so the rapid collapse needs to be seen not just as a result of a lightning military offensive – which undoubtedly was carried out very efficiently and professionally – but also it should be seen as a coup against Assad by the elite within the regime. Clearly after the initiation of the offensive there was an agreement at some point between high ranking intelligence and army officers and the HTS leadership that their way would not be barred in return for mercy. I believe this agreement may have been struck after HTS managed to break the Syrian army lines north of Hama. So really the Battle of Hama was the decisive battle more so than the Battle of Aleppo. And after Hama the writing was on the wall and it was clear that the regime could not rely on sufficient forces to defend it. And it was game over from then on.
And game over too for the allies that were backing Assad. The Russians, the Iranians, Hezbollah, they just said, ‘you know what?’ it’s over for you.
Yes. You know Assad is like a gambling addict who had accumulated huge amounts of debts to criminal syndicates and was no longer able to pay the debts back. At some point they just find it more cost effective to get rid of him rather than continuing to give him more money. That encapsulates what happened to Bashar Al Assad. These allies had tried to guide him in the right direction from their viewpoint. Most recently Russia put a lot of pressure on him to meet with the Turkish leader Erdoğan to arrange a deal whereby Türkiye would essentially take over Aleppo province in Syria in return for Ankara continuing to recognize Bashar Al Assad as the leader of Syria but also to support him at a time when Iran because of its conflict with Israel isn’t really able to support him effectively. This was an offer that was made formally since the summer and informally at least for the past 18 months. But he’d continuously rebuffed those offers. I think arrogance got the better of Bashar Al Assad and also he may have believed the promises made to him by some Gulf countries, UAE and perhaps even Saudi Arabia, that if he rebuffs Erdoğan he will be the beneficiary of major financial investments by those countries and that their support will be sufficient to both neutralise Türkiye and also to win Israel and the US to his side. He may have believed those promises but I think it was too late for him. So when Ankara decided to activate this (HTS) military offensive – and let’s not be in any doubt that Türkiye is very, very much involved in this offensive and without Turkish support this offensive would not have happened – clearly his allies knew the offensive was coming and they weren’t prepared to invest the military resources to save him. Quite simply, he wasn’t worth saving.
I like your reference to Assad being a gambling addict who had run out of people prepared to back him up. But right now Malik, the question that many observers and analysts are asking is will Abu Muhammad al-Julani stick to his word and create an inclusive transitional government? And of course, there’s UN 2254 resolution. Is that still in play? Or do we just simply say the transition is actually happening now and that transition is Julani’s. 2254 doesn’t count anymore.
Well, this is the fork in the road that confronts Syria’s new leaders. Do they abide by international law on this issue? Because clearly UN 2254 specifies a transitional governing body created by the opposition and the regime. The problem is that the regime doesn’t exist anymore and so those who are close to HTS are now saying 2254 doesn’t really apply anymore. It’s no longer valid because there’s been an outright military victory. Now those who want Syria to abide by international law but also have good relations with the international community in the West, they’re saying 2254 is still applicable and we need an inclusive transitional government that has international support. And this government can’t just be imposed by Julani, by the fact that he’s the strongest military actor in Syria right now. I think the way that Julani will form his transitional government will be a key indicator as to how Syria will be governed in the future. And all indications are that Julani is, let’s say, inspired by the Taliban model where a military victory was followed by a government that was by and large a Taliban government. And I think Julani is likely to go along this path partly to appease his own supporters and his people within his own organisation who are probably looking forward to becoming ministers in this new government but also Julani needs to vindicate his vision. He’s proven that his sort of Islamist style governance, which is not democratic, but perhaps technocratically efficient was able to govern Idlib reasonably efficiently and reasonably well. Now he wants to apply the same model on a larger scale to the whole of Syria and the recent announcement of Mohammed Al Bashir, the head of the Syrian Salvation government, which is the HTS Idlib government, as the new transitional Prime Minister is a suggestion that he’s likely to go down this road. Now this will not be received well by a lot of Syrians who may appreciate what HTS has done in terms of getting rid of Bashar but at the same time are nervous about a potential Islamist turn because Syria has long been a secular country. People don’t want Syria to turn into Afghanistan. So this is a real fear right now especially among the opposition not to mention people who had long supported the regime. Those people are probably just happy that there hasn’t been any retribution so far. But those who’ve been opposed to Bashar and may have been involved in the armed uprising against him for the past 13 years are also nervous that we’re seeing indications of a cult of personality emerging. On Syrian TV at the moment, as we speak, there are images of Julani strolling among his people quote, unquote. So there are indications that Julani has ambitions to dominate Syrian politics going forward. He wants to be the new strong man of Damascus. And I think this is worrying for Syrians of a more democratic inclination.