Tag Archive for: Syria

France is prominent in efforts to shape Syria’s future, again

As Syria and international partners negotiate the country’s future, France has sought to be a convening power. While France has a history of influence in the Middle East, it will have to balance competing Syrian and international interests.

After the fall of Damascus on 8 December 2024, Paris moved rapidly to personalise ties with factions in Syria that it wants to see accepted and engaged in Syria’s national reunification and reconstruction.

On 11 December, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot held talks outside Syria with the Syrian Negotiation Commission. The commission was set up in 2015 by Syrian opponents to Bashar al-Assad’s regime and was recognised by the United Nations as the official opposition and responsible for negotiating a political resolution in Syria, but it has since been largely sidelined.

On 17 December Paris followed up with a diplomatic mission to Damascus to meet the real figures of power in Syria: senior Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leaders, notably former al-Qaeda operative and jihadist Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, president of the interim government, who now goes by the name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. This French delegation was the first in 12 years to visit Syria.

Then on 13 February France convened an international conference to discuss Syria’s situation and outlook. Representatives of 20 countries, the European Union, the UN, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council attended.

Previously, France sought to shape the situation in Syria through its firm support through UN General Assembly Resolution A/71/248 for the 2016 creation of the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism. This mechanism supports justice by collecting evidence of war crimes and during the Syrian civil war was assisted by 28 Syrian civil-society organisations. It has been supported by funding from the UN and 32 countries.

France’s interest in the Levant dates back to its historical competition with Britain over access to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and overland trade from Antakya on today’s Turkish coast to Baghdad, Basra and the Indian Ocean. France tussled with Britain over the status of Antakya until Turkey annexed the region in 1939, generating a flight of Christians and local Alawites into Syria.

France also considers protection of Christians as part of its residual influence in the region. This is especially true in Lebanon, but francophone Christianity extends into Syria and remains a social and economic current with subsurface political links.

So, Paris convening of the 13 February summit is no surprise, as there’s currently no other high-level international activity on Syria other than by the UN Security Council.

But with several countries and international groups pushing their interests in Syria, France faces an uphill battle to set the agenda.

EU states are concerned that the potential loss of Kurdish control of foreign-funded camps housing thousands of Islamic State (ISIS) adherents may allow detainees to walk free and spread their destructive ideology across Europe and the Middle East. There are 800 Swedish citizens in detention as ISIS supporters, 6000 ISIS family members from 51 countries in al-Hol camp and 10,000 ISIS combatants in 28 prisons in northeast Syria.

Such detainment centres are controlled by the US-backed Syrian Defence Force, so the EU can’t suppress ISIS without full cooperation, if not leadership, from Washington.

The EU has some ability to influence the Syrian interim government led by al-Sharaa. The EU can use its sanctions-lifting power and aid delivery as tools to shape Syria’s approach to governance and the facilitate the return of Syrian refugees. Given the opportunities available in Europe and continuing instability in Syria, few Syrian refugees will rush to return. So, the EU must not lift sanctions without a significant deal with the new government.

Turkey wants to limit Kurdish organisations and military formations. Skirmishes continue between Ankara and the largely Kurdish Syrian Defence Force. Ankara sees the force as a cover for the Kurdistan Workers Party, which the EU, Turkey and the US consider a terrorist organisation. Limiting Kurdish power would grant Turkey full control along and inside Syria’s northern border. Al-Sharaa has agreed with Turkey, his major backer, that Kurdish separatism has no place in the new HTS-run Syria.

The United States supports Kurdish forces, whom it pays to keep ISIS-linked families and others in camps and to control captured Syrian territory. US bases such as al-Tanf in eastern Syria have acted as tripwires against Iranian efforts to supply weapons to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But US President Donald Trump may withdraw US troops. This would reduce US influence, strengthening Turkey’s position.

Religion plays a deep and unavoidable role in Syria. The EU has partially linked sanctions relief to al-Sharaa’s promise of freedom of worship for minority religions. The EU has also promoted the importance of women’s rights, freedom of expression and due legal process. Delayed lifting of sanctions and aid delivery threaten domestic upset, so HTS is under pressure to meet Western expectations.

Lifting sanctions too quickly may disincentivise HTS from maintaining engagement with international partners and instead allow it to suppress religious expression, squash political debate, shut down human rights organisations and reduce regime transparency.

However, Washington’s early easing of sanctions against certain HTS leaders made diplomatic talks possible.

It’s clear that few Syrian representatives reflect the kaleidoscope of interests in the country. The Turkish-backed National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, a cluster of players who aimed to rid Syria of Assad, is no longer visible; nor are its members. Turkey may back the new HTS regime at the cost of dialogue and the risk of reigniting civil war.

The fight for Syria

The collapse of Syria’s al-Assad dynasty, which had ruled for more than a half-century, was always going to represent a daunting challenge for the country and its neighbours. But the escalating conflict over Syria’s future between Turkey and Israel compounds the risks considerably.

In Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s view, Syria could not have emerged from its ‘dark era’ had he not lent support to the militias that brought down Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Now, Erdogan sees himself as the patron of Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), and he is eager to shape the new ‘bright’ Syria in Turkey’s image—and promote Turkey’s interests along the way.

For Erdogan, one of those interests is to repatriate the three million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey. Another key priority is preventing Kurdish nationalism from spilling over in Turkey, even if that means taking military action against Kurdish forces in Syria. Moreover, Erdogan is reportedly negotiating a defence pact with Sharaa, which would allow Turkey to establish air bases in Syria and provide training to Syria’s military. As Iranian and most Russian military forces are pulling out, Turkey’s are moving in.

But Israel believes that it, too, deserves credit for Assad’s fall, which probably would not have happened if Israeli military action had not weakened Iran—including by degrading its air-defense capabilities—and devastated its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah. So, why should Turkey be permitted to use the regime change to become the Levant’s new hegemon and attack Israel’s and the United States’ traditional Kurdish allies in northern Syria?

Already, Israeli forces have seized territory in Syria’s south, supposedly to secure the area temporarily. Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has pledged to ‘reach out and strengthen our ties’ with the Kurds. And the Committee for the Evaluation of the Defense Establishment Budget and the Balance of Power has recommended that Israel prepare for a possible military confrontation with Turkey in the Kurdish regions of Syria’s north, where Turkey has long supported local armed groups.

In the wake of Assad’s ouster, Israel clearly sees Turkey’s rising regional clout as a threat. But whether Israel likes it or not, Turkey is better positioned to dominate in Syria. And if it succeeds, the implications will reverberate well beyond both countries’ borders.

Napoleon said that a state’s policy ‘lies in its geography’. For Erdogan, this means historical geography: his foreign policy has Turkey straddling the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Balkans, which were once largely under Ottoman rule. After the June 2011 parliamentary election, Erdogan boasted, ‘Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul. Beirut won as much as Izmir. Damascus won as much as Ankara.’

Now, Erdogan has a chance to realise his long-standing dream of using Turkey’s model of Islamic democracy as a vehicle for diplomatic outreach across the region and positioning the country as a key intermediary between East and West. But he is likely to take a calibrated approach in pursuing his neo-Ottoman ambitions, not least because they have historically drawn bitter opposition from other Sunni powers in the region, especially Egypt.

For Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, containing the Muslim Brotherhood—which led the government that Sisi ousted in 2013—is a matter of existential importance. It was differences over the Muslim Brotherhood that drove him to collaborate with Cyprus, Greece and Israel in 2019 to exclude Turkey from the East Mediterranean Gas Forum. So, Sisi was hardly pleased to witness Assad’s fall, fearing that it might open the door for the Muslim Brotherhood’s resurgence in Egypt.

Rather than jeopardise the nascent thaw in bilateral relations, Erdogan met with Sisi in December to underscore his commitment to supporting Syria’s reconstruction and reconciliation, while allowing Syrians to decide their own future. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was even more explicit, noting that the new Syria should be pluralistic, with all ethnic and religious groups—including Alawites, Christians, and Kurdish minorities—represented.

This is what Sharaa is apparently trying to build. Seeking to position himself as a moderate leader of a multiethnic country, he has severed all ties with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and declared that all rebel groups that fought against Assad would be dissolved and integrated into state institutions. This vision cannot work without the Kurds. Even if it could, Sharaa, who has been working hard to amplify his international legitimacy, would not want to target US allies who played a decisive role in the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Overcoming the legacy of centuries-long colonial rule, decades of brutal dictatorship, a civil war and the risk of state failure would be a daunting challenge for Syria’s new rulers even under ideal conditions. But the geopolitical ambitions of Syria’s neighbours risk making a difficult task impossible. Adding to the list of regional powers with such ambitions, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, representing two irreconcilable political visions, also aspire to influence the outcome.

In any case, Syria’s stability is in Turkey’s best interest. The Syrian state’s collapse would mean a new influx of refugees and the emergence of a Kurdish proto-state along the Turkish border, with the likely backing of Israel and the US. Turkey could not tolerate a Kurd-controlled statelet in northern Syria, but it could live with a semi-autonomous Kurdish region fully integrated into a unified Syrian state.

A stable Syria is also in Israel’s best interest. In lieu of a Western-style democracy—which is not in the offing anywhere in the Arab world—an Islamist regime whose leader has announced the disbanding of 18 armed militias and called for peace with Israel is about the best outcome Israel could hope for. Instead of encroaching on Syrian territory and cultivating potentially self-fulfilling prophecies about war with Turkey, it should be doing everything it can to support this outcome.

The way forward in Syria

The collapse of Syria’s Assad regime—with President Bashar al-Assad not even informing his closest associates before fleeing to Moscow—has left regional and international players scrambling to stabilise the country.

Of course, there have been numerous attempts to restore stability to Syria ever since the start of its civil war in 2011, after Assad brutally repressed peaceful Arab Spring demonstrations. Despite the many failures, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254, adopted unanimously in December 2015, remains the cornerstone of international diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict. It provides a clear roadmap for a Syrian-led political transition under a new constitution, with UN-supervised elections and measures to ensure inclusive governance.

True, there has been little progress on any of these fronts. The Constitutional Committee, the body charged with implementing Resolution 2254, exemplifies both the potential and the limitations of the UN process. Comprising representatives of the Assad regime, the opposition, and civil society, it was supposed to draft a new constitution that could serve as the foundation for a political settlement. But the committee has achieved little of substance after numerous rounds of meetings in Geneva, owing to obstruction by the regime’s delegation.

The regime faced no consequences for derailing the process, because the UN Security Council itself was deeply divided. Russia’s status as a permanent, veto-wielding member allowed it to shield Assad from more forceful international action, and its 2015 military intervention saved his regime and fundamentally altered the balance of power on the ground. While UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen tried to break the impasse by enticing the regime with the prospect of sanctions relief, such proposals had no effect.

Now, suddenly, everything is different. While the first foreign dignitary to travel to Damascus after the fall of the regime was Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin, the second (from what we know) was Pedersen. Moreover, many governments say they are in contact with the lead rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and its interim government. The fact that the United States, the United Kingdom, and others still officially designate HTS as a terrorist organisation has not been an issue.

Although much is up in the air, the 2015 UN roadmap remains the best option for ensuring inclusive governance, which is a precondition for stability in Syria. The question, however, is whether all domestic and regional players will go along with the process.

Israel has not hesitated to advance its forces beyond the Golan Heights, throwing out an arrangement that had prevailed since the 1973 Yom Kippur War (when even the minimal gains that it made in the area inflamed passions across the Arab world). It has also been carrying out preemptive air strikes against what is left of Syria’s military hardware and weapons facilities.

For Turkey, the biggest question is whether it can accept a Syrian governance framework that includes the Kurds. The Turkish government’s priority is to marginalise any elements associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it regards as a terrorist group (as do the US and the European Union). Ideally, a new settlement in Syria could even help to defuse the Kurdish issue in Turkey itself.

One obvious risk is that remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS) will exploit the new uncertainty to strengthen their own position. But both HTS and various Kurdish groups have fought ISIS for years, and they will now be even more determined to resist it. A key strength of the UN process is the absence of favourable alternatives; were it to collapse, the outcome would be catastrophic for all concerned. The victorious rebels’ focus on building and maintaining state institutions shows that they are well aware of the dangers.

To succeed, the process must be carried out by Syrians for Syrians, but with external assistance. The humanitarian situation is dreadful and requires immediate attention. The EU and the US should make it clear to all relevant actors that they are ready to lift the economic sanctions on Syria in support of a political transition.

The stakes are especially high for Europe, whose politics are still haunted by the 2015 refugee crisis. Repeating that episode would be a nightmare. And Turkey, of course, has a vital interest in stability on its border. It has long hosted millions of Syrian refugees whom it would love to return home, and many are now expressing a readiness to go.

The process that lies ahead will be long and complicated, though. Syrian governance has never been a simple affair. If any of the key players starts pursuing their own agenda unilaterally, conditions could deteriorate rapidly. Nonetheless, the UN process represents the best way forward, giving the organisation a chance to show the world that it remains indispensable for situations such as these.

Syria’s house of cards

Some 54 years after Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria, rebels overthrew the dynasty his son Bashar squandered. Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was made possible partly by the fact that his Iranian and Russian patrons were distracted by their own existential problems. But it was Assad’s own shortcomings that hastened the regime’s collapse. Hemmed in by a parasitic economy and an ossified political system that brooked no dissent, Assad lacked the strength to reform much of anything.

Bashar was never groomed to lead Syria. His elder brother, Bassel, was their father’s heir apparent. But after Bassel’s untimely death in 1994, Bashar was summoned home from his ophthalmology residency in London.

When Hafez died in 2000, he bequeathed his son a strong and stable state. Syria’s days as a pariah were over. It no longer clashed with America by shooting down navy pilots. After Hafez pledged troops to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, he became a partner in the quest for peace, developing a close rapport with US President Bill Clinton.

Many hoped Bashar’s exposure to the West, which his father lacked, would help him moderate the ruling Ba’ath Party in power since 1963. Initially, Bashar seemed to embrace the role of reformer, releasing political prisoners and allowing intellectual salons to flourish.

But he abruptly changed tack, stifling dissent and allowing corruption to run rampant. To compensate, he diverted Syrians’ frustrations by demonising foreign bogeymen. He blamed Jews for betraying Jesus. He opened his country to foreign jihadists, facilitating their travel to Iraq to fight Americans. And he proved willing to emulate his father’s violent proclivities. When Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri refused to toe the line, Bashar threatened to ‘break Lebanon’ and conspired with Hezbollah to assassinate him.

Bashar was shackled to the Ba’ath regime his father cobbled together from minorities to rule over the Arab Sunnis, who comprise around 64 percent of the Syrian population. The Ba’ath also appealed to provincial Sunnis who had long faced discrimination by urban elites. Any reform would jeopardise the supremacy of Assad’s Alawi sect, a Shia offshoot accounting for around 12 percent of the population.

By 2006, even Syria’s most fervent Western supporters had broken with Assad. French President Jacques Chirac, an ally of Hafez, confessed that Bashar ‘seemed to me incompatible with security and peace.’ Some nicknamed him the ‘blind eye doctor’. Others dubbed him ‘Fredo’, after Don Corleone’s blundering middle son in The Godfather.

So, when revolts erupted throughout the Arab world in 2011, it was logical to believe the contagion would reach Syria. But Bashar was either oblivious to Syrians’ grievances or chose to ignore them. Weeks before they took to the streets, he told the Wall Street Journal, ‘we are outside of this’, and that Syria was stable because he was ‘closely linked to the beliefs of the people’.

But when the regime’s rural base turned on it, protests erupted. To blunt the rebellion, Assad leaned on urban elites, who disdained the bumpkins, and on the working class, who never identified with rural grievances.

This did not suffice to save Bashar, however, and he was compelled to turn to the Russians for air support and Iran-backed militias, especially Hezbollah. After several years of fighting, Bashar was able to claw back control of most territory comprising the spine of the country, from Aleppo in the north to Damascus in the south, where most Syrians live.

Like his father, Bashar was afforded a second chance; unlike his father, he frittered it away. Unable to secure political reform, his supporters now clamoured for economic change, homing in on the distribution of resources and reconstruction. But a regime with so many similarities to the Sopranos could never concede its coveted rents, even if doing so would have brought social harmony. Like the fictional mafia family, Assad’s regime relied on kickbacks from wealthy business owners and shaking down foreigners. When the World Food Program neglected to pay bribes at Syrian ports, its rice shipment rotted in storage. Similarly, Bashar’s uncle once intimated to an American diplomat that Syria would purchase Boeing planes if he was appointed the sales agent.

With sufficient revenue streams, the regime forged a trickle-down economic model, placating society with subsidised commodities while enriching itself with ill-gotten gains. But the civil war shrank the revenue base from which to extract domestic rents, and there were no more foreigners to extort. Today, Syria earns almost twice as much from illicit exports of the amphetamine Captagon as it does from legal trade. With the economy contracting and cuts to subsidies making everyday staples unaffordable for the average wage earner, around 70 percent of Syrian households say they cannot meet their basic needs.

Nor are the poor the only ones who suffered under Assad. A regime built on capturing resources eventually turned on the entrepreneurs and business leaders whose legitimate companies sustained it.

Consider the case of Samer al-Dibs, a scion of the pre-Ba’ath elite who ruled Syria from 1860–1963. His family is active in industries ranging from paper manufacturing to banking. He never supported the protests in 2011 and was even willing to represent the regime at international conferences. But in parliamentary elections this past July, the regime deprived him of the seat he had held for 17 years, denying him the prerogatives that he and others leveraged to expand their businesses.

So, when the rebels launched their blitzkrieg 12 days ago, such figures refused to support the regime. And, consumed with more pressing conflicts against Israel and Ukraine, Bashar’s Iranian and Russian patrons lacked the resources to rescue him again. But it was his hubris and refusal to embrace economic and political reform which ultimately doomed his rule.

Chaos in Syria will complicate an already complicated world

The Assad family’s half-century rule has come to a seemingly unexpected demise in the span of just 11 days. There is little doubt the end of the 13 years of murderous repression and civil fighting which has fragmented Syria is welcomed. But the need to avoid the establishment of a new Islamic State-style regime or the further implosion of the Syrian state into little fiefdoms requires us to pause any celebration.

While the apparent blow to Iran and Russia’s grip on the region consumes immediate oxygen, the chaos that is likely to follow is the greater strategic concern. As Bruce Hoffman reminds us, the fall of the Shah of Iran was heralded as a positive development as Ayatollah Khomeini triumphantly swept into Tehran. It was the same with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

The prospect of chaos in Syria further complicates an international scene that is already challenging Western countries and their allies—from terrorism to dealing with China and Russia. It heightens the need for them to work together.

The commentator Richard Haass is correct in his observation that the one thing that brought the opposition together is now gone, meaning  we should expect fracturing. The expected power vacuum will make the Middle East less stable and fuel a more combustible mix of internecine rivalries. This will embolden regional and global terrorist actors, such as ISIS or al-Qaeda affiliates, to exploit the chaos, increasing the terrorist threat against Western countries and their allies. A more lethal and fatalistic reincarnation of Jabhat al Nusra, one of the groups in cahoots with ISIS, is also a distinct possibility.

As the founder of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Julani has for almost a decade tried to create an ‘Islamic republic’. While al-Julani has since walked back from previous allegiance to al-Qaeda, purportedly in favour of domestic nationalist ambitions, we should beware his skill in being all things to all people.

Assad’s departure is likely to prompt a new surge in refugees to Europe and calls from European leaders for the (premature) return of Syrian refugees. This in turn will intensify already heated debates about the political, social and economic challenges facing Europe and how it should respond.

But the biggest humanitarian impact lies in Turkey. It hosts nearly three million Syrian refugees. As the country sponsoring the forces that brought down Assad, Turkey is now in the driver’s seat. Turkey has at its disposal the umbrella group of Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army and a relationship of sorts with HTS. Turkey’s response more than any other country’s will shape what happens next.

Russia and Iran, still reeling from the effect of Assad’s fall on their influence, will try harder to protect their strategic interests. Russia could lose its naval base at Tartus in Syria. Iran no longer has a route across Syria for supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Israel is working to ensure the chaos does not pose further threats to its borders. Saying the 1974 border agreement with Syria had collapsed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli army to seize the buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights.

The world is already dealing with overlapping conflicts, crises and tensions—including the emergence of hybrid threats—challenging the West’s ability to respond.

US president-elect Donald Trump has said the United States should ‘have nothing to do with’ the situation in Syria. While most Americans will agree with Trump, his defence and security advisers will probably recognise the need to ensure terror groups (ISIS in particular) cannot use this uncertain time to rebuild—meaning the US will still have security interests even if they decide they have no Syria domestic interests.

Only a day before the surprise and successful offensive by Syria’s opposition, the chief of MI5, unprompted by developments in Syria, said the British security agency would need to ‘pare back’ its counter-terrorism focus and make ‘uncomfortable choices’ because of the growing threat from Russia, China, Iran and other hostile states.

We should not be surprised. The challenges of prioritisation are not new. Finite resources and capacity require tough choices—especially where it requires investing in new approaches to counter the pre-eminent pacing threat of our times—China, and manifestations of Beijing’s malign influence.

China and Russia’s ‘no limits’ partnership, along with a broader network of autocratic countries—like Iran and its terrorist proxies as well as North Korea—highlights how partnerships built around a shared interest in trashing global rules, wreaking havoc and disrupting and dividing democratic societies are exploiting this turbulence and disruption.

In the same way, it will only be through partnerships and coalitions—new and old—that Western allies will be able to respond.

Sharing the burden of responding to chaos means we will all still have a price to pay (in addition to already heavy current demands), but it will mean a far lesser cost than if we allow the chaos to metastasize as we have done elsewhere before.

Just look at the lights: Assad’s territory was growing poorer as opposition’s economy advanced

Explanation is in illumination. To understand why the regime of Bashar al-Assad fell so suddenly in Syria in the past week, just note how night-time lights faded in cities it controlled.

Lighting is an indicator of prosperity, and in the years before the collapse it progressively dimmed in the regime’s cities and brightened in those controlled by the opposition. The opposition governed better, so its people were better off and could afford to turn on the lights.

A population shift is further evidence of the economic imbalance that helps explain the opposition’s success, alongside the important factor of loss of foreign air support.

After five years of relative stagnation, the battle lines in Syria saw seismic shifts, upending the entire history of the revolution and war. Within two weeks of a surprise offensive, Damascus had fallen, Bashar al-Assad had fled, and Russian bases along the country’s Mediterranean coast were hurriedly withdrawing. Over 20,000 days of continuous Assad totalitarian rule came crashing down in barely more than 10.

 

The situation across northern Syria on 6 December. Damascus fell to the opposition on the morning of 8 December.

 

The groups mounting this offensive would hardly have considered this level of success. The offensive was initially launched to push back regime lines from civilian areas, where a concerted and systematic campaign of attacks on civilians by artillery and drones had created an unbearable burden of violence on many of the frontline communities. Instead, the regime retreated and didn’t stop. The 12 million Syrians who had been displaced from their homes by violence and fighting are now welcome to return home.

The crucial question is why and how did the regime’s lines collapse so quickly? Why was its command and control so poor? Why did it cede so much territory, captured during more than a decade and at the cost of tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives, to opposition forces within days without a fight?

 

Ratios of captured and destroyed military vehicles and equipment, comparing Russia in the Ukraine War and the Syrian Army in Syria in the first week of the opposition’s offensive.

 

 

One crucial element is a distinct lack of support by foreign backers—Russia, Iran and Hezbollah—each of which was embroiled in its own fight and unable to offer the high level of support that proved critical to the regime over the previous 10 years. Another element has been establishment of good governance by the Syrian Salvation Government and the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which maintains firm control over much of this area. Here, establishment of a responsive, civilian-led technocratic government has allowed for material improvements in the lives of civilians living in opposition-controlled areas. This is especially prominent following broad ceasefires that froze the front lines in Syria since 2020 and gave space for civilian institutions to re-emerge and grow despite regular attacks by regime forces.

That allowed the military factions of the opposition to rapidly professionalise, consolidate command structures and make major strides in developing new tactics and weapons (the role of drones and night-vision in the first week of this offensive was crucial in preventing Assad’s forces from regrouping and mounting counterattacks).

Those two factors explain why the regime lacked the overwhelming firepower it was once able to bring to the battlefield with allies’ help; they also explain how the opposition could seize the initiative and continue to push beyond their initial goals. However, they don’t address one critical issue that has proven decisive in battles since the offensive began: Why was the regime so unwilling to fight?

 

A schematic showing the key factors for the regime’s lack of combat effectiveness over the past 10 days

 

Detailed analysis of satellite imagery captured over the past decade begins to answer this question. Areas under regime control, despite the massive burden on loyalist communities to re-establish government control over much of Syria, have languished economically over the past six years. Demographic effects of more than a decade of war and the disproportionate degree of manpower coming from traditionally loyalist and Alawite communities have sucked opportunity from those areas. Widespread economic mismanagement and lingering effects of aggressive sanctions have forced the economy in regime areas to contract.

In short, for loyalist communities around Syria, 14 years of deep sacrifice and burden has only resulted in their communities going backwards. As HTS and allied militias began to shatter the thin veil of stability and security built up over the previous five years when the battle lines had been largely frozen, loyalist communities decided that the sacrifice was no longer worthwhile—especially in maintaining firm control over the large, Sunni-majority regions of Syria. The implicit social contract in which loyalist sacrifices were rewarded with patronage and preferential development had languished and then shattered under the pressure of an armed assault.

 

 

Urban illumination is widely considered to be a proxy for economic activity. Since 2018, the level of night-time illumination in major regime-controlled cities across Syria has roughly halved whereas key towns in opposition-controlled territory have increased their night-time lights by a factor of 10. This demonstrates that, despite an unending campaign of aerial bombing and economic pressure, opposition-controlled territories, since around 2018, were able to begin to reverse the years of acute destruction and see meaningful reconstruction and revitalisation.

Meanwhile, regime-controlled communities followed a different path. Reconstruction was essentially non-existent, neighbourhoods that revolted were demolished rather than rebuilt, and even loyalist communities saw drastic reductions in livelihoods and economic opportunities.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) territory grew at a similar rate to opposition areas following the defeat of ISIS before stagnating under Turkish airstrikes, which systematically targeted power infrastructure.

 

The observed trend in night-time light intensity between 2020 and 2024, with blue showing increases and red showing decreases.

 

The contrast is also clear in population estimates. The percentage of Syrians in Syria living in opposition-governed territory grew between 2020 and 2023, according to analysis by the Jusoor Center for Studies, from 24 percent to 26 percent, despite systematic bombardment and violence by the Assad regime.

Likewise, the effects of economic mismanagement and sanctions in government-controlled Syrian territory are clear in shortages of basic goods over the past four years, sweeping cutting of government subsidies and dramatic devaluation of the Syrian pound. For example, since 2020 there have been acute fuel shortages across government-held territory, which have worsened in recent months. Over that same period, the value of the Syrian pound has fallen from 2000 per US dollar to less than 15,000 per US dollar. The price of bread and other staple goods has drastically risen. Meanwhile, key figures within the regime were living lavishly: the Washington Post writes that, in recent years, they ran the country as their own ‘personal piggy bank’.

The battlefield effects of those dynamics were clear as soon as this shock offensive was launched. Frontline units melted away; for example, the fortified but undermanned 46th Regiment headquarters fell to opposition fighters in the first day of the offensive. As early as 28 November, there were widespread reports of soldiers from the loyalist coastal communities deserting the Aleppo, Idlib and Hama front lines to go home.

As the opposition offensive swept through Aleppo and kept pushing south, fighters came up against the Hama ‘minority-wall’. This is a collection of Christian and Alawite villages in Hama and Homs that had previously been mobilised by the Syrian Army to effectively defend the front lines in that area from opposition assaults. While some of those villages—with help from Syrian Army reinforcements—fiercely defended particular localities to the north of Hama, most of the villages were captured without fighting and often with local agreements. Such agreements saw the non-violent capture of both the Ismaili city of Salamiyah and the Christian town of Muhrahda on the outskirts of Hama by the opposition. That experience contrasts sharply with previous attempts at opposition outreach in those areas. It demonstrates both the increased local confidence in opposition governance and the languishing conditions in regime territory—not to mention the changing reality of the war. This has now occurred even in Assad’s home town.

In the days following the fall of Assad’s government, there was an outpouring of grievances and complaints about the final years of his rule, even from outright regime cheerleaders, who now felt comfortable discussing deep problems of Assad’s rule. Bashar al-Assad’s sister-in-law posted a picture of the revolutionary Syrian flag on Instagram.

While the rest of the world saw Syria as a frozen conflict, Assad and his regime’s poor governance were hollowing out state capacity and institutions and building resentment, and the lives of its people were only getting materially worse. Under the threat of a competent and concerted opposition offensive and without the support of foreign militaries to help the regime fight back more easily, Syrians pushed through that shell and emerged under a revolutionary flag.

Syria’s multi-purpose election

On 26 May, Syria held its second presidential election since the 2011 revolution. What was described by most observers as a sham yielded an unsurprising result—the re-election of Bashar Al-Assad for a fourth consecutive term with 95.1% of the vote. His obscure opponents, Mahmoud Marei and Abdullah Abdullah, managed to garner just 3.3% and 1.5%, respectively, with official voter turnout reported to be 78.6%.

While the election was neither free nor fair, it served three important purposes: to symbolise Assad’s authority domestically, to facilitate re-engagement with Arab states and to attempt to project legitimacy abroad. Elections in authoritarian states often signal to domestic and international audiences that a ‘mandate has been renewed’ and that the establishment is united behind the president.

Assad’s re-election is particularly important to the regime’s narrowing supporter base. The Syrian pound lost 57% of its value in the past year alone, while prices for basic commodities increased by 313%. Breadlines and kilometre-long queues for fuel have become a regular sight for those living in coastal regime strongholds like Latakia. While some Syrians have seen the regime as an anchor for stability, most are facing unparalleled levels of poverty and a decline in living standards not witnessed even at the height of the country’s civil war. The regime, incapable of effectively addressing the economic situation, opted to deploy the best available tools at its disposal: coercion and fraud.

Government employees and university students were forced to participate in the election and attend rallies or risk being dismissed or detained. Widespread evidence of voter fraud both in Syria and in diplomatic missions abroad—as was the case in Syria’s honorary consulate in Sydney—was also a common sight. Fraudulent results help portray the regime as more popular than it actually is, thereby making revolutions seem impossible.

There were also significant inconsistencies in election results. With 95.1% percent ‘voting’ for Assad, the regime gave up the pretence of presenting ‘realistic’ numbers as it tried to do in 2014, when Assad won with ‘only’ 88.7% of the vote. Damascus has claimed that more than 14 million Syrians voted, despite the fact that the total population in regime-controlled areas is roughly 13.9 million.

The election was also intended to send a direct message to the opposition and revolutionaries who rose up against the regime a decade ago. Assad cast his vote in Douma, a city that was under a brutal five-year-long siege and the main site of the infamous 2018 chemical attack. It signalled to opponents that resistance was futile and that the regime was here to stay. During his televised victory speech, Assad said that, through the election result, voters had ‘redefined nationalism and that also means automatically redefining treason’, a message aimed at labelling all those who continue to oppose the regime as traitors.

Regionally, the election was aimed at encouraging Arab states to mend ties with the regime. Although members of the G7 indicated that the time was not right for ‘any form of normalization’ with Damascus, that sentiment may not resonate with Syria’s neighbours. Arab states continue to flirt with the idea of rehabilitating ties with Assad, as has been seen with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman in recent years. There are reports that Saudi Arabia is set to be next in line. Syria’s return to the Arab League after a 10-year suspension also seems to be just a matter of time. Now that the election formalities have been concluded, Gulf states have begun to lobby the US to ease its sanctions on the regime.

On the international front, the regime used the election as a tool to demonstrate that state institutions were functioning and that the country was safe for refugees to return to—a notion directed towards European states to provide an incentive for the regime’s gradual rehabilitation in the eyes of the international community.

Contrary to Assad’s expectations, the chances of that happening remain close to zero. The foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France and the United States issued a joint statement denouncing the election as a sham. Germany took further measures by banning the conduct of electoral procedures at the Syrian embassy in Berlin.

The election will also have a minimal impact on Syria’s political peace process. The United Nations special envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, indicated that the election falls outside internationally agreed frameworks on resolving the conflict, meaning that any political settlement is unlikely to be obstructed by the outcome of the election.

While prospects for resolving the conflict peacefully in line with UN Security Council resolution 2254 remain bleak, it is not impossible. The resumption of nuclear talks with Iran could provide the next opportunity to revive Syria’s political peace process. Negotiations could potentially result in notable concessions by Tehran, such as the withdrawal of its proxies in Syrian territories. Russia has said that it will not rule out early elections should the regime and opposition agree on a new constitution, indicating that the recent elections don’t hold much political value in Moscow’s view.

Given that the regime has consented to the mandate given by the UN-sponsored constitutional committee, and that this new term is the last Assad can contest according to the current constitution, the regime may be forced to sit down at the negotiating table. This could offer another avenue to achieve a much-needed political breakthrough. For now, however, Western powers are more inclined to maintain the status quo and follow a wait-and-see approach to the conflict. Whether we will witness a change in this strategy is dependent on how each of the targeted audiences interprets—and responds to—Assad’s re-election.

Playing with fire in Idlib

The twists and turns of the Syrian conflict over the past eight years are already legendary, but the latest lurch into chaos has been described by the normally measured UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, as ‘one of the most alarming moments across the [confict’s] duration’. Perhaps, however, the most surprising aspect of the current flare-up is why it didn’t happen sooner.

As part of the ‘reconciliation’ deals reached with the Syrian regime, through Russian facilitation, rebels who had held out in Aleppo, Homs and southern Syria agreed to accept consignment to Idlib province in the country’s northwest corner. There, the accumulation of largely Islamist forces mixed in with and largely began to dominate more secular elements. Under a ‘memorandum on stabilisation’ signed at Sochi in Russia in September 2018, Turkey assumed the role of keeping order through a system of 12 ‘observation posts’ encircling the province.

The rules the Turkish ‘observers’ were meant to be preserving were never clear; the means to enforce the ceasefire were even less so, beyond enhancing an existing ‘Joint Iranian–Russian–Turkish Coordination Centre’. The Sochi agreement was freely interpreted by Turkey as giving it the right to provide a protective screen for the armed opponents of the Syrian regime: a role ill-fitted with Russia’s interest in aiding the restoration of government control in the area.

As the ceasefire steadily unravelled, Turkey felt sufficiently emboldened not only to protect the rebel elements from action by regime forces but also to deploy its own armed forces in support of operations to counter the forces of the Syrian government. Attempts by Russia to smooth over the tensions, all the while deploying its own air force to back the Syrian army, added further to the imbroglio. High-level discussions between Turkish and Russian leaders simply prolonged the muddle.

Meanwhile Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embarked on another of the lurches of policy which have become the hallmark of his administration. Turkish forces became active participants with the rebels, scaling up the rebels’ anti-tank artillery and deploying Turkish heavy weaponry and main-force units in anti-Syrian operations.

At that point Russia seems to have accepted that the Sochi game plan was unworkable and decided it was time to show who really was going to call the shots in restoring government control to Syria. In a spectacular show of force on 27 February, Russian (or possibly Russian and Syrian) aircraft were sent in to attack a military battalion arriving in convoy from Turkey. Massive bombing resulted in the deaths of more than 30 Turkish soldiers.

It’s tempting to see the attack on a Turkish convoy as a blunt gesture by Russian President Vladimir Putin to inform Erdogan that his forces went too far in deploying sizeable fighting units rather than observers and in conducting operations the previous week that had resulted in Russian casualties. The message was, ‘Back off.’

Turkey responded by ignoring Russia’s warning and openly boasting of its massive build-up across the frontier meant to reverse the regime’s recent recovery of territory around Saraqeb and in southern Idlib province. Turkey has also played its humanitarian card, inviting many of the pool of Syrian refugees in Turkey to test the EU’s barriers against a further wave of refugees.

In the face of a new onslaught which has seen civilians fleeing from one part of Idlib province to another, the international community is struggling to raise funds to alleviate a new peak of suffering. The UN relief program’s chief has understandably asked why the Security Council is ‘unable to stop the carnage amongst a civilian population trapped in a war zone’. Not only are Security Council members looking away, but heavy donor fatigue and anaemic whispers about ‘peace processes’ barely register in the outside world.

In effect, rightful outrage from the international community at the conflict has for some time been a factor delaying a conclusion. For Western countries, sanctions against the Syrian regime remain the moral salve applied whenever a new atrocity emerges. Moral outrage alone, however, was never likely to hasten an end to the conflict; now it is more likely to prolong it. After almost nine years, Syria’s rulers and their backers have weathered every storm and are unlikely to bend to another puff of wind. Moreover, those who run a country cut off from normal economic links simply end up profiting from its isolation by diverting informal trade and financial channels to their own advantage—expanding opportunities for corruption that partly motivated the conflict in the first place.

Some external Arab players seem anxious to get the trade and investment flowing again, but the US’s massive power to reinforce sanctions against Syria brings ever more petty restrictions. The aim of ensuring other countries don’t step out of line is bolstered by secondary restrictive mechanisms through US financial channels which reduce Syria’s capacity even to contemplate externally funded programs of rebuilding. Average Syrians must simply see this as the last strand of hope being snatched from them.

Hopefully this policy will soon run its course, as it does nothing to salvage at least some of the assets that Syria has long provided the Middle East. If this multiethnic and multi-confessional state can survive as a viable entity, divisive forces that have begun to shift like tectonic plates across the region might be averted.

What can be salvaged from this pitiless conflict? The real antidote to Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda offshoots in Idlib is a Syria that returns to its secular traditions and provides a state for all its citizens—a rare commodity these days in the Middle East. Allowing the war to grind on because outsiders don’t feel 100% of their objectives have been achieved will enable endemic conflict to perpetuate divisions the rebels have exploited. The longer an outcome is delayed, the less there will be of Syria worth reviving.

A policy of letting Syria perish throws away an important key to allowing the Middle East a viable future. Syrians have shown extraordinary resilience in the face of a savage conflict. Their capacity to regenerate the economy through agriculture and industrial development is potentially unlimited. While the world wrings its hands over who will fund Syria’s rebuilding, most Syrians probably suspect that they will have to, and in some areas a few are quietly getting on with it where they can. Prospects of a ‘rebuilding’ funded by outsiders has been presented as a lure. But the lure has almost no value. The course of the war has shown that the sympathies of outsiders have never been good for much and that supporting an unwinnable struggle was the ultimate disservice Westerners could offer.

‘In Syria, you can no longer distinguish between right and wrong’, one Syrian woman told the New York Times last week. ‘They say the regime is bad and the rebels are good. Sometimes they say the regime is good and the rebels are bad. I can’t tell anymore. They’ve both ruined my life.’

Turkey’s dam-building program could generate fresh conflict in the Middle East

Countries across the Middle East are facing a bleak future of declining rainfall, diminishing surface- and groundwater supplies, and increasing desertification.

Since 1998, the region has faced the worst drought conditions in 900 years; it is home to 10 of the 17 countries that are currently facing ‘extremely high’ water stress. Soaring temperatures across the region—average summer temperatures are predicted to rise by 4°C by 2050 even if global rises are limited to 2°C—are increasing evaporation of surface water, forcing an over-reliance on aquifers and groundwater supplies that are already at risk of over-exploitation.

Between 2003 and 2010, parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 144 cubic kilometres of total stored freshwater; 60% of that loss was attributed to the pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs.

Given this backdrop, it’s alarming that the impact of the Middle East’s climatic conditions on water supplies is being exacerbated by dam projects that will worsen the already acute water stress and land degradation that is jeopardising agriculture across the region.

Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project is one of the largest and most controversial dam-building programs globally. Twenty-two dams are slated to be constructed along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers near Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq. The project has attracted the ire of countries across the Middle East since its inception because of the impact it will have on critical water supplies in Turkey’s southern neighbours. In recent months Ankara has commenced filling the Ilisu Dam, the largest dam in the proposed network, further focusing attention on its actions and inflaming already tense relations with its neighbours.

Turkey’s dam and hydropower constructions on the Tigris and Euphrates are estimated to have cut water to Iraq by 80% since 1975, jeopardising agriculture and natural habitats. Iraq has also been adversely affected by dam projects and agricultural developments in Iran. As a result of declining water, desertification, salination and mismanagement, Iraq is currently losing an estimated 25,000 hectares of arable land annually, mostly in the south of the country.

Syria has also been directly impacted by Ankara’s dam-building projects, which have reduced water flows to Syria by an estimated 40%. This has been particularly problematic for Damascus, as water scarcity is more severe in Syria than in either Turkey or Iraq. The long drought that started in 2006 devastated Syria’s agriculture and forced large numbers of people into cities. It has also been linked to the social upheaval and unrest that led to the civil war in Syria. By 2011, Syria’s total annual water withdrawal as a percentage of internal renewable water resources had reached 160%, compared with 80% in Iraq and 20% in Turkey.

Iran has also criticised Turkey’s dam-building program, claiming that the Ilisu Dam poses ‘a serious environmental threat to Iraq and eventually Iran by reducing the entry of Tigris water to Iraqi territory by 56%’. Iran is facing a broader crisis in its water supplies—12 of its 31 provinces are expected to have exhausted their groundwater reserves within the next 50 years. Tehran has also predicted a decline in surface-water runoff from rainfall and snow melt of 25% by 2030. These trends make the water supplied by the Tigris even more critical to the functioning of Iran’s agriculture.

Clearly, the Middle East is facing a broad range of climatic and environmental issues, which collectively pose potentially existential challenges for the countries of the region. But the most critical problem is water security, and the transboundary Tigris–Euphrates river system is a central component of that. Turkey holds almost all of the cards on this issue: it controls 90% and 44%, respectively, of the waterflows of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Over the past 20 years or so, however, Ankara has been dismissive of demands from its neighbours for a formal water-sharing agreement to regulate the flows in the Tigris–Euphrates system.

Regional instability and political tensions arising from Turkey’s incursions into northern Syria in recent weeks make the prospect of a negotiated water-sharing agreement between Turkey and its southern neighbours remote. There’s also a risk that Ankara will ‘weaponise’ water in future disputes with its neighbours, using its control over riverine water supplies as a lever.

Turkey has been accused of ‘manipulating the present regional instability to further its agenda in the crisis-ridden Middle East, including by pursuing its ambitious plans to be a regional “water superpower” that could give it main control over the region’s waters’.

The US intelligence community’s now-dated 2012 global water security assessment noted that while water-related state-on-state conflict was unlikely within the decade to 2022, the use of water as a weapon would become more likely beyond that time frame. It also noted that ‘water problems—when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions—contribute to social disruptions that can result in state failure’.

All of those ingredients are already apparent across the Middle East, and Turkey’s dam-building program will create further water stress, inflaming an already fragile situation. Water has featured throughout the region’s history as both a weapon of war and a trigger of conflict. In the past 60 years alone, there have been at least 25 instances in which water has been a trigger for conflict between communities and between states.

Fortunately, the last case of an actual war between states over water occurred over 4,500 years ago. But given the current environmental and climatic context and the lack of space for political and diplomatic solutions to water disputes, the Southeastern Anatolian Project may prove to be a game-changing factor.

It not only increases the risk of water-related state failure similar to what occurred in Syria, but also heightens the risk that the Middle East could move from tensions over water to actual war.

Time to bite the bullet in Syria

Recent events in Syria have naturally raised two questions: Who lost the country? And where might the international community go from here?

The first one is easier to answer. Looking back, Syria has probably been lost since the popular uprising in 2011. When President Bashar al-Assad’s regime stubbornly refused any effort to resolve the matter peacefully, no outside power proved willing to intervene. Instead, everyone hoped that a mix of sanctions, United Nations–led diplomacy and half-hearted attempts to support a ‘moderate’ opposition would eventually bring down the regime.

It didn’t work. Fundamentalist forces gained political ground and territory, and others, including Iranian-backed militias and the Russian military after the northern autumn of 2015, rushed to Assad’s defence. Although the regime had long deprived the Kurds in northern Syria of most of their rights, it started making concessions to them when it came under pressure. As a result, Kurdish militias abstained from challenging Assad, which led much of the broader Syrian opposition to shun them.

After Islamic State established its ‘caliphate’ in the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014—enabling it to strike even Baghdad—there was an understandable rush to confront the terrorist threat. In Iraq, that task fell largely to Iranian-aligned Shia militias. In Syria, the situation was more complicated. The United States had no intention of sending in its own combat forces, but it also knew that the Syrian opposition groups that it (and Turkey) had been arming were not up to the challenge. In any case, those groups were focused on toppling Assad, which had ceased to be a high priority for Western policymakers.

Given these constraints, the US threw its support behind the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The US has long recognised the YPG as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it, along with the European Union and Turkey, classifies as a terrorist organisation. But even if the decision didn’t fit with any long-term strategy, it satisfied short-term tactical needs, and supporting the YPG ultimately proved successful in depriving IS of its territory (though the group will remain a long-term threat).

The uprooting of IS would have been a good time to launch a political process to resolve the broader conflict. In fact, there were at least two options on the table. The first was to establish a Kurdish/YPG-governed entity in northern and northeastern Syria. But that would have raised the ire of Turkey, which was not ready to tolerate any PKK presence on its border. In addition to requiring an open-ended US military presence, this scenario would have resulted in Kurds ruling over substantial swathes of non-Kurdish territory.

The other option was to pursue a broader political settlement, with the goal of creating an inclusive governance structure acceptable to the regime in Damascus. Over time, this process could have led to an arrangement similar to that in northern Iraq, where the Kurdistan Regional Government now cooperates closely with Turkey.

But that didn’t happen. As the US position evolved, Washington rejected the first option and then actively discouraged the second, making a crisis inevitable. The trigger was a telephone call in which US President Donald Trump gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a green light to send forces into Syria. Trump ordered the US military to abandon the area immediately, and added insult to injury by announcing it all on Twitter, shocking both the Kurds and many of his own advisers.

Since then, everything has come crashing down. With their credibility in tatters, US officials have desperately sought to create some kind of policy out of the ruins created by the presidential tweets. The president has threatened to destroy Turkey’s economy if it does what he enabled it to do. With Kurds—most of them civilians—fleeing Turkish bombs, the UN Security Council stayed typically silent, while the Europeans condemned everything and everyone involved.

As foreign-policy disasters go, this is one for the record books. But the seeds for this larger conflagration were sown long before the now-infamous Trump–Erdogan call. Absent any coherent policy, the conditions were ripe for a crisis. The question now is whether there’s any constructive way to proceed.

For now, the US has agreed with Turkey on establishing the wide security zone in northern Syria it sought. Russia, meanwhile, has evidently brokered some sort of arrangement between the YPG and the Assad regime. With Russian and Syrian government forces now entering some of the areas vacated by the US, the Trump administration is left trying to manage its relations with Turkey. As for the EU, there’s little to be done. Having already cut off all high-level political contacts with Turkey, it is impotent in the face of this latest crisis.

Logic dictates that all of the relevant parties in the region should now sit down and try to come to some kind of agreement. In addition to the Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq and other Arab countries, there need to be places at the table for Turkey, Iran and the Syrian government. Yes, the Assad regime is associated with a wide range of horrors and atrocities—but there’s simply no other way forward.

Regional talks certainly won’t come easy. Many parties will have to swallow hard and face difficult realities. Unfortunately, the prospect of a democratic Syria was lost years ago. The top priority now must be to restore stability and prevent further catastrophes. There are no longer any good options, if, in fact, there ever were.

Tag Archive for: Syria

What’s happening in Syria, with Aaron Zelin

Syria has been front and centre in the news in recent days, with international agencies saying that hundreds and perhaps thousands have been killed – many of them civilians – in the coastal regions of the country.

In today’s podcast, David Wroe speaks to Aaron Zelin, the Gloria and Ken Levy Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, about developments in Syria since the fall of the Assad dynasty in December. They discuss the political and security situation in Syria, including leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and the basis of his power. They consider life for ordinary Syrians, the question of justice for victims of the former regime, how the various factions fit together and Syria’s relations with the region and the world.