WASHINGTON- The stunning overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad by Islamist rebels half a century after his family took power raises an old question when it comes to regime change in the Middle East: Will the new ruling forces perform better than those that have been overthrown?
“The Assad regime has fallen,” President Biden declared from the White House on Sunday. “This is a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria.”
“It is also a time of risk and uncertainty as we all ask the question of what comes next,” Biden said.
In a matter of weeks, the rebels achieved what the United Nations, the United States and other Western powers had long tried but failed to do. The Russian government announced late Sunday local time that Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and were receiving asylum, Russian state news agencies reported.
Decades of brutal Assad rule have left Syria ethnically, religiously and politically fragmented. The victorious insurgency is also divided. The leading group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, known as HTS, has its roots in the terrorist organizations Islamic State and Al Qaeda, but claims to have reformed.
Long concerned about the possibility of HTS taking power, Washington continues to designate it as a terrorist group, which will complicate any deal with it.
The rebel victory also alters regional relations. It marks a major setback for Assad's allies Iran and Russia, while also boosting Turkey, which backed HTS and will likely be Washington's main conduit to Syria's new leaders.
The United States backed a different rebel group, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish militia that helped defeat the Islamic State but is considered a terrorist group by Turkey.
Clashes between the SDF and Turkish-backed factions were already reported on Sunday.
Israel, meanwhile, is happy to see the departure of an Iran-backed Assad, but not exactly thrilled to have Islamist leaders at its side. The country was already reinforcing a buffer zone along the border between the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and Syria and joined in the bombing of a small number of sites inside Syria.
By any measure, Syria's immediate future will be an unstable and potentially violent mix of competing groups, intense power struggles, and score-settling. Worst-case scenarios include a deepening civil war or turning the once-rich, now devastated country into a haven for militants like the Islamic State.
After 24 hours of monitoring what the White House called the “extraordinary” developments in Syria, Biden convened his National Security Council on Sunday for updates and planning before speaking to the American public.
“We will remain vigilant,” Biden said, vowing to keep militants at bay and “do everything we can to support” the Syrian people “to help restore Syria after more than a decade of war and a generation of brutality by the Assad family. “
By contrast, Donald Trump, who will take office in about six weeks, said on his social media platform that the United States should “stay out of it.” “This is not our fight,” he said.
Similarly, as president in 2019, he declared that “someone else should fight” in Syria and, in a widely criticized move, ordered the withdrawal of most US troops stationed there, clearing the way for Turkey to enter and attack. the Kurds of the United States. allies.
Several hundred American troops remain in Syria, officially to counter any resurgence of the Islamic State.
However, there are other looming issues that could demand a U.S. role, officials said.
Syria will need huge amounts of humanitarian aid, especially if some of the millions of citizens who fled as refugees during the last decade of war begin to return to the ruins of their former homes.
Additionally, critically, U.S. officials expressed concern that Assad's large stockpiles of weaponry, including missiles and chemical weapons, could end up in rebel hands. Assad notoriously used chemical weapons against his own people to quell rebellion and dissent.
Trump's pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, expressed support for Assad after a visit to Syria in 2017. She said she doubted U.S. intelligence reports that he had used chemical weapons inside his country.
For many ordinary Syrians, however, the main concern is how minorities will be treated. Some, such as the Shiite Alawite Muslim faction to which Assad's family belonged, as well as some Kurds and Christians, are considered to have been in collusion with the regime. Most of the rebels are Sunni Muslims.
The first government to congratulate the opposition's victory in Syria was that of the radically conservative and repressive Islamic Taliban of Afghanistan.
Ahmed Sharaa, the bearded HTS commander, has tried to present the group as a reformed and more moderate faction than its past associations suggest. He has preached tolerance and pluralism, although his rule over the Syrian province of Idlib, where HTS has dominated, displayed only the most minimal version of such policies. Christians, for example, have been allowed to attend church.
“These sects have coexisted in the region for hundreds of years,” he told CNN in an interview last week as rebels advanced toward Damascus. “No one has the right to erase another group.”
He promised a “transition to a state of governance and institutions” and even suggested that HTS could disband once its military victory was achieved.
It would be a highly unusual transition in the Middle East, where actors who gain power tend to keep it.
The Assad regime began in 1970 under Bashar's father, Hafez. With insidious intelligence, routine imprisonment and torture of dissidents, and tight control of the media and public discourse, the Assads maintained fierce and violent control of the Syrian population.
The 2011 Arab Spring protests led to a brutal crackdown and eventually a civil war that killed an estimated 500,000 people.
Assad remained in power with military help from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed political and military faction based in Lebanon. Over the last year, those three allies lost their ability to defend it.
Russia is overextended in its nearly three-year war in Ukraine. Iran has been hit by Israel from outside and by dissent and economic turmoil from within. And Hezbollah has been greatly weakened by Israeli assassinations and bombings.
Syria's new leaders are expected to close the Russian air base and port on the Mediterranean coast. Iran has lost much, if not all, of its land and air routes to Lebanon and Hezbollah, its proxy there.
In his speech on Sunday, Biden took some of the credit for the recent turn of events in Syria, however uncertain its future may be.
“Our approach has changed the balance of power in the Middle East through this combination of support for our partners, sanctions, diplomacy and selective military force when necessary,” he said.
