“Issue of the Week”, Human Rights, War
People celebrate at Umayyad Square in Damascus on Sunday.Credit…Bakr Al Kassem/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
There is no more central event in impacting virtually every aspect of global events in the past nearly decade and a half than the Syrian revolution begun in 2011 and civil war since, with the involvement of all surrounding nations and Russia, the United States and others since. After dominating the headlines for years, then virtually disappearing for years, in days, the seemingly impossible has happened. The brutal dictator, Bashar al-Assad, has fled and the rebels have entered Damascus.
This is a uniquely stunning historical moment that will again impact everything globally. We have been writing about this for years. We will do so further as events unfold. For now, however, we refer you to the livestream dominating the headlines in The New York Times (and dominating news worldwide) and other related articles by Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof in The Times and Anne Applebaum iin The Atlantic:
“Assad Flees to Russia as Syrian Rebels Claim Power”
LIVEUpdated
Dec. 8, 2024, 8:21 p.m. ET27 minutes ago
“Syria Live Updates: Assad Arrives in Russia After Fleeing Syria, Russian Media Says”
President Bashar al-Assad landed in Russia, according to state media outlets there and two Iranian officials, after fleeing the country as rebels took control of Syria’s capital.
Raja AbdulrahimHwaida SaadFarnaz Fassihi and Adam Rasgon
Here are the latest developments.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria arrived in Russia on Sunday evening after fleeing his country, according to Russian state media and two Iranian officials. It was a stunning fall for the longtime dictator who lost his hold on power to a lightning fast offensive by rebels who took control of Damascus on Sunday.
Mr. al-Assad’s ouster was an earthshaking moment in the history of Syria, which the al-Assad family had ruled with an iron fist since the early 1970s. Rebel factions that have been trying to unseat him for more than a decade upended his government in a matter of days, after years of civil war.
Many in Syria greeted Mr. al-Assad’s fall with hope after long living in fear of a government that had gassed its own people during the civil war and used oppressive tactics to silence dissent. But deep uncertainty over who will rule Syria next raised worries of a possible power vacuum in a country where competing factions have vied for territory against each other and Mr. al-Assad’s forces.
“Our hearts are dancing with joy,” Walaa Salameh, 35, a resident of the Damascus area, said in a phone interview. “We can’t predict the future and anything is possible, but the most important thing is we got rid of this oppressive regime.”
Russian state media said that Mr. al-Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and been granted political asylum. The New York Times could not immediately independently confirm that Mr. al-Assad was in Russia, which along with Iran had helped keep him in power.
On Sunday, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the Islamist rebel leader who spearheaded the rebel offensive, declared the group’s achievement “a victory for the whole Islamic nation,” speaking from the Umayyad Mosque, an ancient landmark in Damascus, the capital. His group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, once linked to Al Qaeda, has tried to gain international legitimacy by eschewing jihadist ambitions and focusing on organized governance.
President Biden, speaking from the White House, said that the United States would support the region “should any threat arrive from Syria during this period of transition,” noting the terrorist roots of many of the rebels. But he underlined that Washington would engage with “all Syrian groups” to establish a transition “toward an independent, sovereign Syria.”
Here’s what else is happening:
- Targeting the Islamic State: U.S. airstrikes struck dozens of Islamic State camps and leaders in central Syria on Sunday in one of the largest military strikes in months, the United States Central Command said in a statement, adding that 75 “targets” had been hit. The statement said that the United States would continue to target the terrorist group throughout the “dynamic period in Syria.” A senior U.S. military official said the strikes were intended to make clear the United States was still combating the group and dissuade the new regime from cooperating with them.
- Syria transition: As questions swirled early on Sunday over Mr. al-Assad’s whereabouts, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, Syria’s prime minister, said that he would stay in the country and was ready to work with whomever Syrians choose as their leader. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham said it would work with Mr. al-Jalali and called on Syrian military forces in Damascus to stay away from public institutions, which it said would remain under the prime minister’s supervision until they are formally handed over.
- Missing American: Mr. Biden and the family of Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, said on Sunday that they believe that he is alive and could be returned to the United States after rebels groups toppled Mr. al-Assad. “We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet,” Mr. Biden said. The United States has said it believed Mr. Tice had been held captive by the government of Mr. al-Assad, although his regime had long maintained that it had no information about him.
- Assad’s allies: Mr. al-Assad had kept rebel forces at bay for more than a decade with Iranian and Russian military support. But in recent days, Iran and Russia appeared to be turning to diplomacy to preserve their interests in the country rather than significant military support. The Foreign Ministry of Iran said decision-making about the future of Syria was “solely the responsibility” of Syrians. Russia requested an emergency closed consultation of the U.N. Security Council to discuss Syria’s fall and the repercussions for security in the region, according to Council diplomats.
- Broader instability: Israel’s military said it had entered a demilitarized buffer zone in territory it controls in the Golan Heights, abutting Syria. The Israeli military, which is concerned about the sudden surge in instability near its borders, said it was acting to protect Israeli civilians. Iraq has secured its border with Syria, according to the official Iraqi News Agency, which said on Sunday that the Al-Qaim border crossing was closed.
Dec. 8, 2024, 8:19 p.m. ET36 minutes ago
U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement on Sunday that “the United States strongly supports a peaceful transition of power to an accountable Syrian government through an inclusive Syrian-led process.” He said the U.S. would “support international efforts to hold the Assad regime and its backers accountable for atrocities and abuses perpetrated against the Syrian people, including the use of chemical weapons and the unjust detention of civilians such as Austin Tice,” Blinken said, referring to an American journalist who disappeared in Syria years ago.
Dec. 8, 2024, 8:19 p.m. ET36 minutes ago
Blinken continued: “We have taken note of statements made by rebel leaders in recent days, but as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions. We again call on all actors to respect human rights, take all precautions to protect civilians, and to uphold international humanitarian law.”
Dec. 8, 2024, 8:11 p.m. ET44 minutes ago
Haley Willis and Dmitriy Khavin
Footage shows a chaotic scene after rebels capture a notorious prison.
1:34CreditCredit…Independent Doctors Association
Videos sent to The Times by a group of doctors visiting Syria’s Sednaya Prison following the fall of Damascus to rebel forces show the dire conditions inside the facility, which has been notorious as a site for torturing and executing political prisoners.
The footage was shared by the Independent Doctors Association, a nongovernmental organization providing humanitarian and medical assistance in Syria. Rebels appeared to have captured the prison complex, freeing the prisoners inside, after making it a central focus of their campaign.
Numbered cells, each of which appear to have held a dozen or more people, are seen littered with debris, clothing and personal belongings. In one area, tomatoes and dirty coffee filters are scattered on the floor. The walls and ceilings are crumbling. Journalists, armed fighters and civilians, including children, roam the prison. Several men scrape at the concrete and grates along a wall, in an attempt to access hidden cells where more prisoners are believed to still be held.
In another scene, family members pore through paper records seeking information on their loved ones. “They’re looking at the medical records and prisoner records — hoping,” says the doctor recording the scene.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that documents human rights abuses in Syria, has estimated that more than 30,000 detainees have been killed in Sednaya Prison.Show less
Qamishli
Turkish-backed
opposition
TURKEY
Al Hassakah
Aleppo
Kurds
Raqqa
Main rebel
coalition
Latakia
IRAQ
Hama
Deir al-Zour
SYRIA
Homs
Palmyra
Al Bukamal
Former gov’t
control
LEBANON
Rebel fighters stormed
into Damascus
on Sunday
50 MILES
ISRAEL
Other opposition
groups
JORDAN
Note: Areas of control are as of 10 p.m. local time on Saturday night, before rebels stormed into Damascus Sunday morning. The main rebel coalition is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Sources: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
By Samuel Granados
Dec. 8, 2024, 7:05 p.m. ET2 hours ag
With Syria in flux, Turkey attacks U.S.-backed forces.
The Turkish military fired on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria this weekend, a war monitoring group and a spokesman for the Kurdish group said on Sunday, illuminating the tangle of competing interests and alliances in Syria in the wake of the government’s collapse.
Fighting erupted on Saturday in Manbij, a Kurdish-controlled city near Syria’s border with Turkey, between rebel groups, one backed by the United States and the other by Turkey. At least 22 members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in and around Manbij, and 40 others were wounded, according to the Kurdish group.
The clashes preceded a call on Sunday between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Yasar Guler.
The other fighters, the Syrian National Army, were supported in their assault of Manbij by Turkish air power, including warplanes, according to a spokesmen for the Syrian Democratic Forces. And a Turkish “kamikaze drone” exploded at a Kurdish military base on Saturday, according to the monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Turkey and the United States are allies, sworn to protect each other as members of the NATO alliance. Though both countries celebrated Sunday’s ouster of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, their interests diverge over support for the Kurds in northern Syria, far from Damascus, the capital.
In their call on Sunday, Mr. Austin and Mr. Guler agreed that coordination was necessary “to prevent further escalation of an already volatile situation, as well as to avoid any risk to U.S. forces and partners,” according a readout of the conversation released by the Pentagon. The United States also acknowledged Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns.”
The Kurds have been instrumental partners for the United States in fighting the Islamic State, an Islamist terrorist group that rose to power early in Syria’s civil war, more than a decade ago.
The Kurds now control much of Syria’s northeast under an autonomous civil administration. About 900 U.S. troops are deployed to Syria to support the Kurdish forces. American forces have patrolled around Manbij with Turkey in the past, but it was not immediately clear if any U.S. troops were in the city this weekend during the Turkish bombardment.
On Sunday, the United States announced it had conducted one of the largest strikes against Islamic State targets in months.
Turkey views armed Kurds so close to its border as a threat. For decades Tukey has fought Kurdish separatists, who seek to carve out an independent country.
Turkey has backed several rebel groups in Syria, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group of seemingly reformed Al Qaeda members whose lightning-fast push to Damascus toppled the authoritarian government on Sunday. Turkey also has backed the Syrian National Army, a ragtag force made up of mercenaries and criminals, to help maintain a buffer zone along its border with Syria to guard against the activities of Kurdish militants.
Turkey and its proxies in the S.N.A. “are looking to utilize the current chaos to rewrite the map in Turkey’s favor,” said Devorah Margolin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They are using the distraction of Damascus to continue to grab power during this time of chaos and to undermine the S.D.F., ensuring its negotiating power is weakened.”
The power vacuum created by the fall of Damascus presents an opportunity for Turkey to increase its power and influence in Syria generally but particularly along its border, said Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The weekend’s fighting was condemned by the Kurdish-run civil administration of northern Syria.
“The other part of Syria is liberated from the tyranny of Assad,” said Sinam Mohamad, who represents the Kurdish autonomous region in its dealings with the United States.
Turkey and its proxies, he said, “want to create another conflict,” adding, “We don’t want to have conflict in the region.”
Dec. 8, 2024, 6:59 p.m. ET2 hours ago
Farnaz Fassihi and Leily Nikounazar
Stunned Iranian officials try to distance their country from the fallen Assad government.
Iranians watched in astonishment over the weekend as the reign of their nation’s longtime political and military ally, Bashar al-Assad, came to a crashing end. By Sunday, the reckoning had arrived as officials and pundits recognized that Iran was taken by surprise, and they hurried to distance Iran from a tyrant the country had supported in maintaining power.
Iranian leaders and military commanders said in public statements that it was up to Syrians to decide what kind of government should replace Mr. al-Assad, who resigned and fled Syria on Sunday after rebel forces stormed the country’s capital.
“It is the Syrian people who must decide on the future of their country and its political and governmental system,” said President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran in a meeting with his cabinet on Sunday, according to state media outlets. He added that Syrians must be free to do so without violence and foreign meddling.
It was yet another remarkable turnabout for Iran after withdrawing its military forces on Friday when the collapse of Mr. al-Assad’s government became inevitable.
State television channels candidly discussed Iran’s policies, with officials and pundits admitting that Iran had misjudged the regional dynamics and officials had overlooked Mr. al-Assad’s unpopularity among Syrians, which also reflected Iran’s lack of support there.
Hatef Salehi, an analyst who supports Iran’s government, said in a live town hall discussion on the audio chat app Clubhouse that “the most important lesson of Syria for the Islamic Republic is that no government can last without the support of the people.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on a live television interview that Iran had received intelligence suggesting that rebels in Syria’s Idlib Province were organizing an uprising in the north. He said Iran had relayed the report to Syria’s government and army, but still “nobody could believe” Mr. al-Assad’s collapse.
“What caught us off guard was, one, the inability of Syria’s army to confront the movement and, second, the speed of developments,” Mr. Araghchi said.
Mr. Araghchi said that when he traveled last week to Syria, Mr. al-Assad had expressed concern to him and complained about the army’s unwillingness to fight back. Mr. Araghchi said his impression was that the Syrian president did not have an accurate read of the situation.
Mr. Araghchi confirmed that Iran and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the offensive against Syria’s government, had exchanged diplomatic messages ahead of the fall of Damascus, Syria’s capital. He said Iran had requested protection for its embassy and Shiite religious shrines and that the rebels had agreed.
Still, a crowd of rebel supporters stormed Iran’s Embassy in Damascus shortly after the fall and ransacked the building, destroying furniture and documents, according to videos and photographs circulating in Iranian media. They also climbed the entrance fence of the embassy and tore down huge posters of Hezbollah’s leader who was recently killed by Israel, Hassan Nasrallah, and Iran’s slain top general, Qassim Suleimani, who had commanded troops in Syria’s civil war in support of the Assad government.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said all of its diplomatic staff were safe and no one was present when the building was vandalized.
Ordinary Iranians experienced a range of emotions as they watched jubilant Syrians flood the streets, tearing down symbols of Mr. al-Assad’s oppressive government.
“All I can think about is the fall of Iran’s dictatorship regime. Will this sweet moment finally arrive?” Behrouz, 33, an engineer from Iran, said in a telephone interview.
He and other Iranians The New York Times interviewed asked to be identified by only their first names for fear of reprisals.
Lili, a 40-year-old university professor, said her first emotion upon hearing the news of Mr. al-Assad’s fall was “a sense of escape, of being let go, of freedom. And then will I, will we, ever see this day?”
But supporters of Iran’s government lamented on social media and in live town hall discussions that the loss of Syria was yet another devastating blow to Iran’s network of militant allies in the region.
“The Berlin Wall of unity for the axis of resistance has collapsed. That’s it,” said Meysam Karim Jaffari, a conservative journalist and analyst affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards Corps, referring to Iran’s network of regional allies that included Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Syrian government, the Houthis of Yemen and armed groups in Syria and Iraq.
In just a few months, several top leaders of these militant groups were eliminated by Israeli assassinations or political upheaval. Analysts noted that these events signified a pivotal shift in the region’s history, particularly after Hamas’s attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but in a direction that starkly contradicted Iran’s aspirations.
“The fall of Assad puts an exclamation point on the fact that decades of Iranian strategy and investment in the Levant have come undone in a matter of weeks,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution organization.
Dec. 8, 2024, 6:40 p.m. ET2 hours ago
Syrians in New York City celebrate the fall of Assad.
Around 100 people gathered in Washington Square Park in Lower Manhattan on Sunday afternoon to celebrate the fall of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who fled his country after rebel forces stormed the capital earlier in the day.
Syrian expatriates and their supporters beat drums and sang revolutionary songs in Arabic, holding hands and forming circles for the dabke, a dance that is common at celebrations in the Middle East. Some were draped in the flag of the Syrian opposition, with green, white and black stripes and three red stars.
Others chanted anti-Assad slogans and, after reading news reports that Russian and Iranian officials had said that Mr. al-Assad had fled to Russia, joked about going to Moscow to force him to leave there as well. As the celebration continued in the square, people distributed baklava and shawarma.
One attendee, Marcelle Shehwaro, 40, from Aleppo, Syria, said she had been compelled to leave because of her participation in political activism there. While she does not know what to expect, she said, she is cautiously happy.
“I don’t want to think about the next phase in Syria’s future because I want to take in the happiness of this historical moment,” she said in Arabic.
After government forces killed her mother, Ms. Shehwaro said, she staged a demonstration and published criticism of the regime under her real name, which made her a target. She was questioned multiple times by the secret police and lived in hiding for a while, she said. She left the country in 2014.
Ms. Shehwaro said she had given up on returning to Syria. But after seeing reports in recent days that rebels were freeing prisoners of Mr. al-Assad’s regime, she felt jubilant, and believed that justice was being restored.
Ms. Shehwaro has some family members “who have been scared to contact me for 12 years,” she said, “and now we are finally in touch.”
Hazem Alanani, 33, also from Aleppo, works in health care I.T. and said he left Syria in 2019. He also participated in political demonstrations in the country and was questioned by the secret police, and said he considered himself lucky to have never been jailed.
He said that many Syrians had abandoned hope of regime change. “It was disheartening for me and I went through an overwhelming amount of hopelessness and helplessness while the Syrian regime was gaining ground” in recent years, Mr. Alanani said.
This weekend’s developments came as a shock. “I haven’t gotten the chance to completely process it,” he said, adding, “I broke down crying many times when I realized what had happened.”
He went on, “Everything that we chanted for and fought for in the early days of the revolution has become a reality.”
Dec. 8, 2024
The Assad family’s legacy is one of savage oppression.
Over decades, ghastly, chilling images from Syria have cemented the Assad family’s legacy of savagely oppressing the country’s population.
In 1982, photos showed the pulverized central city of Hama after the regime bombed and bulldozed a Muslim Brotherhood uprising, leaving up to 20,000 people dead.
In 2013, images emerged of hundreds of ghostly pale bodies in a rebellious Damascus suburb, victims of one of the government’s chemical weapons attacks. Many of the dead were children.
That same year, a former military photographer smuggled thousands of photographs out of Syria documenting how political prisoners had been starved, beaten and subjected to brutal torture — their eyes gouged out or their genitals mangled.
“These people did not care; the leadership cared nothing about the Syrian people,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former U.S. government official on security issues. “They launched Scud missiles against their own people — who does that? — while the chemical weapons were a sign of just how far they would go to hold on to power.”
Syrians sometimes said the Assads were like the fictional Corleone crime family, but with secret police networks attached — a ruthless clan of brothers and cousins who dominated the political system, the military, the economy and even the exports of illegal drugs. Much of the country lived in fear.
“They were not running a country with a history of 5,000 years of civilization,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, a former college friend of President Bashar al-Assad who joined the opposition out of disgust over the lack of reform. “They were running it like the Mafia, as if it was a private estate, the whole country was their backyard inherited from their father.”
After World War II, Syria was known as the most unstable country in the Middle East, with at least eight coups carried out from the end of French colonial rule in 1946 until 1970.
Hafez al-Assad, an air force officer, put an end to that after he seized power that year, rebuilding the country as a Soviet-style, single-party police state that exploited sectarian differences among Syria’s mosaic of religious and ethnic groups to retain power.
He set about turning the country into a power to be reckoned with in the Middle East, launching the 1973 war against Israel in conjunction with Egypt and exerting control over neighboring Lebanon and the Palestinian political leadership there to end its long-running civil war. In power for 30 years, he built fearsome, overlapping internal security agencies, with thousands of victims disappearing into his prisons.
When he died in 2000, the government changed the Constitution to lower the age needed to be president to 34 from 40 so that his son Bashar could take over. Bookish, shy, socially awkward and trained as an eye surgeon, Bashar became the designated heir only after his swashbuckling older brother, Basil, died.
Bashar, with his glamorous, Syrian-British wife, Asma, announced plans for political and social reform that he soon abandoned when he realized it would require dismantling his father’s legacy. “To both father and son, making concessions was not acceptable,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute in Washington. “Eventually that is what brought Bashar down.”
In 2011, amid the uprisings across the Middle East, Syria’s large youth population rose up against Mr. al-Assad, incensed at the lack of democracy, jobs and overall freedom.
The violent government crackdown transformed what had been nonviolent street demonstrations into a bloody civil war.
“Bashar came to power with many doubting that he had the will to rule Syria with the kind of iron fist that his father did,” said Firas Maksad, a Syria expert and the director of strategic outreach at the Middle East Institute. “He had a chip on his shoulder and was out to prove that he, in fact, could be his father’s son. And in some ways, he ended up exceeding his father’s brutality.”
The Assads had built a power base from their community of Alawites, a minority sect that’s an offshoot of Shiite Islam. His supporters adopted the slogan “Assad or we burn the country.” Millions of refugees fled Syria to surrounding countries, while an estimated 500,000 people were killed or went missing.
But Bashar was less shrewd than his father. As the rebels, dominated by Sunni Muslim jihadist groups, seemed on the verge of overthrowing him in 2015, he turned to Iran, Hezbollah and Russia to prop up his government.
For a time, they did. He proved unable to manipulate them, however, and his obstinate personality soon alienated his allies. With Iran and Hezbollah severely weakened by their conflicts with Israel, and Russia concentrating on its war in Ukraine, there was no force willing or able to prop him up anymore. His own army melted away, even as he made a last, desperate attempt to shore up their support by ordering a 50 percent pay raise last week.
The rebel forces that grew out of the civil war finally managed to overthrow him, opening many of the notorious prisons in which his family’s government had for years jailed, tortured and executed political prisoners. The rebels themselves appeared surprised by the speed and ease with which the seemingly entrenched Assad dynasty finally crumbled.
Still, after more than a decade of fighting, Syria’s main cities lie in ruins and the male population between the ages of 20 and 40 has been decimated. “Both the infrastructure and the human capital are totally destroyed,” said Mr. Abdel Nour.
Dec. 8, 2024, 2:18 p.m. ETDec. 8, 2024
Reporting from Washington
Biden Says U.S. Conducted Airstrikes Against ISIS in Syria
President Biden hailed the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s government and said U.S. forces took action to wipe out pockets of the Islamic State on Sunday.
At long last, the Assad regime has fallen. This regime brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians. The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice. We’re cleareyed about the fact that ISIS will try to take advantage of any vacuum, to re-establish its capabilities and to create a safe haven. We will not let that happen. In fact, just today, U.S. forces conducted a dozen of precision strikes, airstrikes, within Syria, targeting ISIS camps and ISIS operatives. We will engage with all Syrian groups, including within the process led by the United Nations, to establish a transition away from the Assad regime, toward independent sovereign, an independent, independent, I want to say it again, sovereign Syria, with a new Constitution, a new government that serves all Syrians. And this process will be determined by the Syrian people themselves.
Biden Says U.S. Conducted Airstrikes Against ISIS in Syria
For President Biden, the fall of Syria’s tyrant on Sunday was a moment to cheer what he called a “fundamental act of justice” and to claim a measure of credit for his own policy.
But it also presented Mr. Biden with a fundamental challenge late in his presidency: How does the United States make friends with the newly emerging forces taking control in Syria when it has deemed them terrorists? And should it?
The main rebel faction that toppled President Bashar al-Assad is a group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was once an affiliate of Al Qaeda and, even though it broke with the older organization years ago, remains designated a terrorist group itself by the U.S. government.
The United States has been passing messages through the Turkish government in recent days to the rebel groups involved in the lightning blitz that suddenly took down Mr. al-Assad, mainly warning them against teaming up with militants from the Islamic State. The groups responded through the Turks with assurances that they had no intention of allowing the Islamic State to be part of their movement, according to U.S. and Turkish officials briefed on the messages.
But now Mr. Biden and his top advisers are debating the extent to which they should engage directly with the rebel groups going forward, according to the officials, who described internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity. U.S. intelligence analysts and administration policymakers were trying to determine whether the groups had substantially changed, or were prepared to change, their ways to address the concerns of the United States and its allies in the region about terrorist affiliations.
In a televised statement from the White House hailing the fall of the Assad family’s half century of repressive rule in Syria, Mr. Biden gave voice to the mix of cautious optimism and wary uncertainty about the new forces taking power in Syria.
“Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses,” he said on Sunday. “We’ve taken note of statements by the leaders of these rebel groups in recent days and they’re saying the right things now. But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words but their actions.”
The Islamic State, or ISIS, remains a key concern for U.S. leaders. After destroying the so-called caliphate that the group carved out of Syria and Iraq for itself, the United States does not want to give it any opportunity to reassert itself in the chaos that may follow the fall of the government in Damascus.
“We’re cleareyed about the fact that ISIS will try to take advantage of any vacuum to reestablish its capability, to create a safe haven,” Mr. Biden said. “We will not let that happen.”
To that end, Mr. Biden authorized U.S. airstrikes on Sunday against Islamic State camps and operatives inside Syria. A swarm of B-52, F-15 and A-10 warplanes hit more than 75 targets in central Syria with about 140 munitions, according to U.S. officials.
“There should be no doubt — we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria,” said Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region. “All organizations in Syria should know that we will hold them accountable if they partner with or support ISIS in any way.”
The situation for the United States is all the more complicated by its own transition in Washington. Mr. Biden has just six weeks left in office before turning over the White House to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has taken pride in his role in defeating the Islamic State in his first term while otherwise agitating to stay uninvolved in Syria.
In his only comments after Mr. al-Assad’s fall on Sunday, Mr. Trump gave little clue to his thinking about Syria’s future. Instead, he cast the matter entirely in terms of its implications for Russia, which had propped up Mr. al-Assad for nearly a decade but essentially left him to his own fate in recent days while it remains tied down in Ukraine.
“Assad is gone,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site. “He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer.”
He added that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia should now pursue peace talks over Ukraine. “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” he wrote. “Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act.”
Mr. Biden left no doubt about American satisfaction over Mr. al-Assad’s ouster. The Syrian president has been a crushing ruler of his own people, held responsible for the deaths of more than 500,000 people and the displacement of millions more during a civil war he waged to hold on to power. He has used chemical weapons on his own people and been a source of major instability in the region. As far back as 2011, President Barack Obama called on Mr. al-Assad to go and later drew a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons that he did not enforce.
“At long last, the Assad regime has fallen,” Mr. Biden said in his televised remarks from the Roosevelt Room. “This regime brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians. The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice. It’s a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud county. It’s also a moment of risk and uncertainty.”
Indeed, as U.S. policymakers have learned through painful experience in other places in the past couple of decades, places like Libya, Egypt, Iraq and Afghanistan, the demise of a loathsome dictator does not necessarily lead to a friendlier, more democratic, more stable government in his place.
The rebel groups have united under the leadership of Hyatt Tahrir al-Sham. Once seen as one of the rebellion’s most powerful extremist factions, the group later tried to play down its radical aspects and focused on building something like a civilian government — albeit an authoritarian and extremist one — in the patch of territory that it has controlled.
U.S. intelligence agencies and top officials in the Biden administration are still in the process of evaluating the group and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who is eager for legitimacy and has mounted what one senior U.S. official characterized as a “charm offensive” aimed at allaying concerns about the organization’s intentions and past affiliations.
The way the official put it, “A charm offensive might mean that people are turning over a new leaf and they think differently than they used to, so you should hear them out. On the other hand, you should be cautious because charm offensives can sometimes be misleading.”
U.S. officials said that the Biden administration was allowed to talk to Hyatt Tahrir al-Sham and its leader even though they are on the terrorist list, but that it could not provide them with material support.
While the Biden administration has so far stopped short of directly talking to the group, it has been working closely and directly with the U.S. military’s main counterterrorism partner in Syria, a Kurdish-led militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.
According to U.S. officials, the administration encouraged and provided intelligence support to the Kurds for its operations to take control of Syrian territory in eastern Syria, including the cities Deir al-Zour and Abu Kamal.
The officials said the operations were meant to ensure that the Islamic State could not take advantage of the situation and seize the areas as Syrian government forces withdrew. According to a U.S. official, the message that the United States sent to the Kurds was, “If the regime vacates territory, it’s going to go to somebody, so you should fill the vacuum yourself rather than let ISIS fill into that vacuum.”
Mr. Biden said he was sending officials to the Middle East and would personally speak with leaders from the region in the coming days. He expressed commitment to helping Israel, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon as they cope with the possible spillover effects of the turmoil in Syria.
While Mr. al-Assad is reported to have now fled to Moscow, where he is being given asylum, Mr. Biden said the deposed Syrian leader should not be allowed impunity after years of crimes. “Assad should be held accountable,” he said.
In his remarks, Mr. Biden mentioned Austin Tice, the American journalist who has been held in Syria for a dozen years. Asked by reporters about Mr. Tice’s fate after turning from his microphone, Mr. Biden paused before walking out to say: “We believe he’s alive. We think we can get him back.”
After years of trying to manage foreign crises that cost his party in last month’s election, won by Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden sought to take a share of credit for Mr. al-Assad’s downfall.
He said the victory of the rebel forces over Mr. al-Assad’s government was made possible by the collapse of his support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, all of which the United States had a hand in. He noted that U.S. military aid and diplomatic support for Ukraine and Israel had bogged down Russian forces in Europe, helped destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon and thwarted two attacks by Iran on Israel. As a result, none could help Mr. al-Assad survive.
“Over the last week, their support collapsed, all three of them, because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office,” Mr. Biden said.
“The upshot of this is for the first time ever, neither Russia nor Iran nor Hezbollah could defend this horrible regime in Syria,” he added. “This is a direct result of the blows” inflicted by Ukraine and Israel “with the support of the United States.”
. . .
What to Know: How Rebels Toppled the Syrian Government and Deposed Assad
President Bashar al-Assad fled the country as rebels claimed the capital, Damascus.
Listen to this article · 11:56 min Learn more
By The New York Times
Dec. 8, 2024, 3:28 p.m. ET
Syrian rebel forces have taken Damascus in a lightning offensive and President Bashar al-Assad has fled the country, in a stunning turn of events after 13 years of civil war.
The rebels swept through the country in less than 10 days, after more than decade in which various factions had tried to unseat Mr. al-Assad.
The Syrian civil war began during the Arab Spring and escalated into a bloody, multifaceted conflict involving domestic opposition groups, extremist factions and international powers, including the United States, Iran and Russia. More than 500,000 Syrians have died, and millions more have fled their homes.
Here’s a guide to understanding how the rebels unseated Mr. al-Assad, and what may come next.
Here’s what you need to know:
- What is the situation on the ground?
- Where is Bashar al-Assad?
- Who are the rebels?
- Who is the rebel leader?
- Who else is fighting in Syria?
- What’s next for Syria?
- An enduring conflict
What is the situation on the ground?
Qamishli
Turkish-backed
opposition
TURKEY
Al Hassakah
Aleppo
Kurds
Raqqa
Main rebel
coalition
Latakia
IRAQ
Hama
Deir al-Zour
SYRIA
Homs
Palmyra
Al Bukamal
Former gov’t
control
LEBANON
Rebel fighters stormed
into Damascus
on Sunday
50 MILES
ISRAEL
Other opposition
groups
JORDAN
Note: Areas of control are as of 10 p.m. local time on Saturday night, before rebels stormed into Damascus Sunday morning. The main rebel coalition is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Sources: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
By Samuel Granados
In just over a week, Syrian rebel forces seized much of Syria’s northwest. First, the rebels captured Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, then Hama and Homs. On Sunday, they entered Syria’s capital, Damascus, taking the city without a fight as government forces fled.
Videos shared on social media and verified by The New York Times show Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who spearheaded the lightning offensive, entering the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, as crowds gathered around him.
Where is Bashar al-Assad?
Syria’s president fled to Russia, according to Russian state media outlets and two Iranian officials. The reports could not be immediately confirmed, and there was no comment from Mr. al-Assad. His former prime minister, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, stayed behind and said he was ready to cooperate with the rebels.
Mr. al-Assad’s government kept rebel forces at bay for more than a decade with Iranian and Russian military support. But it collapsed with astonishing speed over the last week, culminating with rebels taking control of Damascus on Sunday morning.
Mr. al-Assad was central to the protracted and devastating civil war that began in 2011. His family — who are Alawites, a minority sect that is an offshoot of Shiite Islam — had run Syria since a 1970 coup.
Mr. al-Assad initially portrayed himself as a modern reformist, but he responded to peaceful protests during the Arab Spring with brutal crackdowns, sparking a nationwide uprising.
His family’s dynasty bombed and detained thousands of opponents, building fearsome internal security agencies to quash unrest. As the rebels advanced this weekend, they took over many of the notorious prisons where the Assad regime had for decades imprisoned, tortured and executed political prisoners.
Who are the rebels?
The main rebel group behind Assad’s ouster is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant. It began to come together at the beginning of Syria’s civil war, when jihadists formed the Nusra Front to fight pro-Assad forces with hundreds of insurgent and suicide attacks.
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The group had early links to the Islamic State, and then to Al Qaeda. But by mid-2016, the Nusra Front was trying to shed its extremist roots, banding together with several other factions to establish Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The United States and other Western countries still consider it a terrorist group.
The group’s leader, Mr. al-Jolani, told The New York Times his primary goal was to “liberate Syria from this oppressive regime.” He has tried to gain legitimacy by providing services to residents in his stronghold of Idlib.
Who is the rebel leader?
Mr. al-Jolani, 42, was born Ahmed Hussein al-Shara in Saudi Arabia, the child of Syrian exiles, according to Arab media reports. In the late 1980s, his family moved back to Syria, and in 2003, he went to neighboring Iraq to join Al Qaeda and fight the U.S. occupation.
He spent several years in an American prison in Iraq, according to the Arab media reports and U.S. officials. He later emerged in Syria around the start of the civil war and formed the Nusra Front, which eventually evolved into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. At some point, he took on the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.
Since breaking ties with Al Qaeda, Mr. al-Jolani and his group have tried to gain international legitimacy by eschewing global jihadist ambitions and focusing on organized governance in Syria.
Questions have emerged about what kind of government Mr. al-Jolani would support and whether Syrians would accept it. In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has espoused a government guided by a conservative and at times hard-line Sunni Islamist ideology.
Since the rebel offensive began, Mr. al-Jolani has sought to reassure minority communities from other sects and religions. Some analysts say he now faces the test of his life: whether he can unite Syrians.
Who else is fighting in Syria?
Kurdish forces
Forces from Syria’s Kurdish ethnic minority became the United States’ main local partner in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces. After the extremist group was largely defeated, the Kurdish-led forces consolidated control over towns in the northeast, expanding an autonomous region they had built there. But Kurdish fighters still had to contend with their longtime enemy, Turkey, which regards them as linked to a Kurdish separatist insurgency.
Turkey
Since the beginning of the civil war, the Turkish military has launched several military interventions across the border into Syria, mostly against the Syrian Kurdish-led forces. Turkey now effectively controls a zone along Syria’s northern border.
Turkey also supports factions such as the Syrian National Army, a coalition of armed Syrian opposition groups. Analysts say it probably gave tacit approval to the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey expressed support for the rebel advance as it rolled through Syria.
On Saturday, he said, according to Reuters: “There is now a new reality in Syria, politically and diplomatically. And Syria belongs to Syrians with all its ethnic, sectarian and religious elements. The people of Syria are the ones who will decide the future of their own country.”
Russia
Throughout Syria’s civil war, Russia was one of Mr. Assad’s most loyal foreign backers, sending troops to support his forces and jets to bomb his enemies. It maintained a strategic military presence in Syria with air and naval bases, which it uses to support military operations in the region.
Because of the war of attrition in Ukraine, analysts say, Russia was unable to support Syria’s government as forcefully as it had in the past, suffering one of its biggest geopolitical setbacks in the quarter-century rule of President Vladimir V. Putin.
The future of Russia’s military presence in Syria is now in doubt.
Iran and Hezbollah
Syria has played a core role in Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a network of countries and groups that includes Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen that hopes to destroy Israel and reduce American influence in the Middle East.
Iran smuggled weapons to Hezbollah across Iraq and Syria — a supply route that has now been destroyed. Iran and Hezbollah repaid the favor by sending thousands of militants to fight on Mr. al-Assad’s side during the civil war.
On Friday, Iran began to evacuate its military commanders and personnel from Syria, according to regional officials and three Iranian officials.
United States
The United States maintains a force of about 900 troops in Syria, centered in Kurdish-controlled oil drilling areas in the northeast and a garrison in the southeast.
The U.S. role in the Syrian civil war has shifted several times. The Obama administration initially supported opposition groups in their uprising against the government, providing weapons and training, with limited effect.
After the rise of the Islamic State in 2014, U.S. forces fought the terrorist group with airstrikes and assistance to Kurdish forces, and then stayed in northeastern Syria to prevent a resurgence. President Donald J. Trump withdrew many of those forces in 2019.
Israel
The Israeli military said on Sunday its troops had entered an internationally monitored buffer zone in the Golan Heights and ordered a curfew on Syrian villages there. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said Israel was deploying there temporarily for defensive purposes.
Israel’s military activities in Syria have been mostly focused on airstrikes against Hezbollah and Iranian targets, especially senior military personnel, weapons production facilities and the transport corridor that Iran uses to send weapons to Hezbollah.
What’s next for Syria?
There are many more questions than answers after the government’s rapid demise, starting with an uncertain future for the nation’s governance, security and economy.
Rebels will try secure the capital and prevent a chaotic power vacuum. But it is unclear how far and how fast the coalition will extend its control over the whole country, and whether rebels can unite after ousting the Syrian leader.
In an interview last week, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the group’s leader, said that even before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched its offensive, the group was thinking about its next steps. There are some hints of what’s to come in Aleppo, where the group won a pivotal victory just over a week ago.
Across Syria, the rebel group sought to reassure residents that it would safeguard public property and institutions. After taking much of Aleppo, its fighters moved on to the next front line, leaving the city to technocrats who came to preserve government institutions, Mr. al-Jolani said. His group said that public institutions would remain under the oversight of the country’s prime minister until there was a transition.
An enduring conflict
The Syrian war began in 2011 with a peaceful uprising against the government and spiraled into a complex conflict involving armed rebels, extremists and others.
The origins: The conflict started when Syrians rose up peacefully against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The protests were met with a violent crackdown, while communities took up arms to defend themselves. Civil war ensued.
Other groups became involved. Amid the chaos, Syria’s ethnic Kurdish minority took up arms and gradually took territory it saw as its own. The Islamic State seized parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014and declared that territory its “caliphate,” further destabilizing the region.
Foreign interventions. Al-Assad has received vital support from Iran and Russia, as well as the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The rebels were backed by the United States and oil-rich Arab states like Saudi Arabia. Turkey also intervened to stop the advance of Kurdish militias.
The toll. The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Forces loyal to al-Assad have committed by far the most atrocities. The regime has turned to chemical weapons, barrel bombs and starvation to force Syrians into submission.
Reporting by Neil MacFarquhar, Farnaz Fassihi, Vivian Yee, Samuel Granados Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Raja Abdulrahim, Adam Rasgon and Thomas Fuller
Dec. 8, 2024, 3:25 p.m. ETDec. 8, 2024
Opinion Columnist
Five Quick Takes on Regime Change in Syria
For the past few weeks, I have been arguing that Israel has inflicted the equivalent of a Six Day War-level defeat on Iran and its resistance network, and this would have vast consequences. Well, irony of ironies, the Assad family in Syria took power in 1971, in part because of Syria’s devastating defeat in the 1967 war. What goes around comes around.
Hold on to your hats, though; you haven’t seen anything yet. Here are five quick observations.
Funniest statement by any world leader so far: That award goes to … President-elect Donald Trump for his social media post: “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” Attention Mr. Trump: Syria is the keystone of the entire Middle East. It just collapsed like a blown-up bridge, creating vast new dangers and opportunities that everyone in the region will seize upon and react to. Staying out of this is not on the menu, especially when we have several hundred U.S. troops stationed in Eastern Syria. We need to figure out our interests and use the events in Syria to drive them, because everyone else will be doing just that.
Biggest U.S. interest: This is also a no-brainer. It’s that this uprising in Syria in the long run triggers a pro-democracy uprising in Iran. In the short run, it is sure to trigger a power struggle between the moderates there — President Masoud Pezeshkian and his vice president, former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif — and the Revolutionary Guards hard-liners. We need to shape that struggle. The events in Syria, on top of Iran’s military defeat by Israel, have left Tehran naked. This means that Iran’s leaders will now have to choose — quickly — between rushing for a nuclear bomb to save their regime or getting rid of the bomb in a deal with Trump, if he takes regime change off the table. That is why, Mr. Trump, to put it in your typeface: WE CAN’T HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.
Biggest known unknown: Who are the rebels who took over Syria and what do they really want? A pluralistic democracy, or an Islamic state? History tells us that in these movements the hard-line Islamists usually win out. But I am watching and hoping it will be otherwise.
My biggest worry expressed in a single headline: That goes to Haaretz in Israel: “Post-Assad Syria Is in Danger of Being Run by Out-of-control Militias.” We are at a moment in the history of the Middle East where there are many countries that I would describe as “too late for imperialism, but they failed at self-government.” I am talking about Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. That is, no foreign power is going to come in and stabilize them, but they have failed at being able to manage their own pluralism and forge social contracts to create stability and growth. We have never been here before in the post-World War II era — a moment when so many countries have descended into this Hobbesian state of nature, but in a much more connected world.
This is why, having just spent the past week in Beijing and Shanghai, I repeatedly told my Chinese interlocutors: “You think we are enemies. You are wrong. We have a common enemy: Disorder. How we collaborate to shrink the World of Disorder and grow The World of Order is what history will judge us both for.” (Not sure they got it, but they will.)
Best Russian aphorism to sum up the challenge that regional and global powers now face in fixing Syria: “It is easier to turn an aquarium into fish soup, then to turn fish soup into an aquarium.”
Dec. 8, 2024, 1:38 p.m. ETDec. 8, 2024
Opinion Columnist
The Winners and Losers Following the Fall of al-Assad
The stunning collapse of the brutal Assad regime in Syria, a family business since the 1970s, is a geopolitical earthquake creating winners and losers around the world. First, the losers:
- Iran is a big loser; Syria has been a close ally and a vital overland transport link to Lebanon and Hezbollah. Iran supported Syria as President Bashar al-Assad fought to remain in power during the country’s horrifying civil war, and it used Syria to project power around the region. Iran has already been badly weakened in recent months, and this adds to the sense that Iran’s regime is possibly vulnerable and certainly a lesser power.One question is whether all this adds to the arguments within Iran’s leadership to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
- Russia likewise loses an important ally and it will presumably also lose its valuable military bases in Syria. In 2015, Moscow intervened militarily to back the Assad regime in the civil war, dropping bombs on civilian targets and adding to its unpopularity among citizens.Russia particularly values its naval base at Tartus, which allows it to support warships in the Mediterranean Sea.
- Hezbollah backed al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, and it depended on weapons shipped from Iran through Syria to Lebanon. The Assad regime for decades interfered violently in Lebanese politics. That said, Hezbollah remains a significant force in Lebanon, even if weakened.
- The Alawite sect in Syria, an offshoot of Shiite Islam amounting to perhaps 10 percent or more of Syrians, will now be at risk. The al-Assads were Alawites, and Alawites were resented for the privileges they enjoyed. I would be terrified if I were an Alawite in Syria today.I worry that Syrian Christians, who had to some degree been protected by the al-Assads, may also be targeted and harassed, and that women will lose rights. The triumphant forces aren’t the Taliban, but they are a step in that direction. That said, the civil war in Syria hurt everyone, including women and Christians.
So who are the winners as Syria changes hands?
- Sunni Muslim Islamists have been savagely suppressed in Syria for decades, and they are finally in charge. The new leadership includes forces that had been involved in Islamic State and Al Qaeda, although they have disavowed that extremism. We’ll see. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m wary.
- Israel gains, at least for a time, by the weakening of enemies like Iran and Hezbollah, not to mention the Assad regime itself. But having a hard-line Islamist regime next door, if that’s the direction Syria goes, may not be great for the long term.
- Turkey wins influence next door. It may use that influence to try to rein in Kurds around the region.
- The United States may also gain in the sense that Russia and Iran are clear losers, but much depends on what comes next. I’m hopeful that Austin Tice, an American journalist believed imprisoned in Syria since 2012, may be freed and allowed home. Releasing him would be a way for Syria’s new leadership to show its bona fides.
Anyone who values human rights has to feel relief at the departure of the Assad regime. But we’ve also seen how hard-line Islamists can rule in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and I fear revenge attacks in Syria. So two cheers for the overthrow of al-Assad, but be vigilant about what comes next. One hard lesson I’ve learned from covering the world: Sometimes what follows a terrible regime is just as bad, or even worse.
. . .
“The Syrian Regime Collapsed Gradually—And Then Suddenly”
The Atlantic, December 8, 2024
Assad’s fall offers the possibility of change.
As Hemingway once wrote of bankruptcy, the collapse of autocratic regimes tends to happen gradually and then suddenly—slowly, and then all at once. This is not just a literary metaphor. A tyrant’s followers remain loyal to him only as long as he can offer them protection from their compatriots’ wrath. In Syria, doubts about President Bashar al-Assad surely grew slowly, after his Russian backers began to transfer men and equipment to Ukraine, starting in 2022. The more recent Israeli attack on Hezbollah’s leadership hampered Iran, Assad’s other ally, from helping him as well.
Then, after a well-organized, highly motivated set of armed opponents took the city of Aleppo on November 29, many of the regime’s defenders abruptly stopped fighting. Assad vanished. The scenes that followed today in Damascus—the toppling of statues, the people taking selfies at the dictator’s palace—are the same ones that will unfold in Caracas, Tehran, or Moscow on the day the soldiers of those regimes lose their faith in the leadership, and the public loses their fear of those soldiers too.
The similarities among these places are real, because Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and, until now, Syria all belong to an informal network of autocracies. Russian troops and mercenaries have spent the past decade fighting in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Africa. Russian political and information operations actively seek to undermine, dominate, or overthrow democratic governments in Moldova, Georgia, and most recently Romania. Starting in 2015, Russian troops propped up Assad in partnership with Iran and Iran’s proxy Hezbollah. In Ukraine, Russia’s war is made possible by drones from Iran, soldiers and ammunition from North Korea, and covert help from China. Russia, Iran, Cuba, and China collaborate to keep in power a regime in Venezuela that has catastrophically failed its people too.
Read: The folly of ignoring Syria this long
Many of these are military conflicts, but Russian President Vladimir Putin also believes that he is fighting a war of ideas, and he has persuaded others to follow him. In both Syria and occupied Ukraine, Russia has deliberately backed or created regimes that have not merely sought to repress opponents but have also gone out of their way to demonstrate flagrant disregard for human rights and the rule of law, ideas that Putin claims belong to the past. When Putin talks about a new world order or a “multipolar world,” as he did again last month, this is what he means: He wants to build a world in which his cruelty cannot be limited, in which he and his fellow dictators enjoy impunity, and in which no universal values exist, not even as aspirations.
The results are stark. Since 2011, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented more than 112,000 disappearances—men, women, and children arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned with no formal or legal justification. The regime has tortured tens of thousands of people in brutal prisons, keeping them in the dark, forbidding them any contact with the outside world. Infamously, Assad used poison gas against his own people and then lied about it. Joint Russian and Syrian-government air strikes deliberately targeted hospitals and practiced “double tap” strikes, bombing a civilian target and then hitting the same location soon afterward to kill rescue workers.
The Russian war against Ukraine has been equally cruel and equally lawless, in many instances copying tactics used in Syria. In occupied Ukraine, thousands of mayors, local leaders, teachers, and cultural figures have also disappeared into invisible custody. The former mayor of Kherson, abducted in June 2022, is reportedly being held in an illegal prison in Crimea; the mayor of Dniprorudne recently died in custody. In the rest of Ukraine, Russia deliberately targets hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, just as Russian and Syrian government planes did in Syria. Double-tap strikes are common in Ukraine too.
Read: Syria’s new Assad statues send a sinister message: ‘We are back’
This kind of cold, deliberate, well-planned cruelty has a logic to it: Brutality is meant to inspire hopelessness. Ludicrous lies and cynical propaganda campaigns are meant to create apathy and nihilism. Random arrests have driven millions of Syrians, Ukrainians, and Venezuelans abroad, creating large, destabilizing waves of refugees and leaving those who remain in despair. The despair, again, is part of the plan. These regimes want to rob people of any ability to plan for a different future, to convince people that their dictatorships are eternal. “Our leader forever” was the Assad dynasty’s slogan.
But all such “eternal” regimes have one fatal flaw: Soldiers and police officers are members of the public too. They have relatives who suffer, cousins and friends who experience political repression and the effects of economic collapse. They, too, have doubts, and they, too, can become insecure. In Syria, we have just seen the result.
Read: When justice is out of reach
I don’t know whether today’s events will bring peace and stability to Syria, let alone freedom and democracy. A group calling itself the National Transitional Government has reportedly issued a statement asking Syrians to “unite and stand together,” to “rebuild the state and its institutions,” and to begin a “comprehensive national reconciliation,” including the return of all refugees. The leaders of the rebel armies include Islamic extremists; in an interview with CNN, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the largest group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, described his past affiliation with al-Qaeda as a kind of youthful mistake. This might be tactical language, or propaganda, or unimportant. As I am writing, Syrians in Damascus are looting the presidential palace.
Nevertheless, the end of the Assad regime creates something new, and not only in Syria. There is nothing worse than hopelessness, nothing more soul-destroying than pessimism, grief, and despair. The fall of a Russian- and Iranian-backed regime offers, suddenly, the possibility of change. The future might be different. And that possibility will inspire hope all around the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic.