It's over. Bashar al-Assad flees Syria after jihadist rebels take Damascus.

 

Syrians in Damascus celebrate the fall of the Assad Regime. AP. 

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has fled the country after a shocking offensive came to the capital of Damascus. AP. Led by the former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS), formerly al-Nusra, the 10 day offensive showed stunting success for the rebels and little resistance from the Syrian military. 10 days ago the offensive started and the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs all fell before the rebels entered Damascus itself. Assad is said to have fled the country to an undisclosed location. The country's Prime Minster, Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, said that he was ready to turn over the government to the rebels on a provisional basis and asked that Syrians not destroy government property. The defeat is a blow to the allies of Syria in the region, including Iran and Russia. Both countries and their proxies had bigger problems on their plate and were unable too offer much help to Assad as the rebels stormed the country. It is unclear what will happen to Syria or President Assad, though President Elect Donald Trump voiced skepticism of further involvement in Syria and called for peace in the Ukraine conflict. 

My Comment:

It's been an absolutely absurd 10 days in Syria. To think that most folks considered the war to be essentially over with the Syrian government and the remaining rebels in an essential state of peace. But it only took 10 days for HTS and their allies to take the Syrian Government. It's a very impressive accomplishment to be sure. But is it a good thing?

To be sure, Bashar al-Assad is not a nice man. Though I tend to think his worst crimes are either exaggerated or even made up out of whole cloth, he is still a pretty brutal dictator and he ruled with an iron fist. There is no questions that even before the war there was a reason why folks opposed him. And he didn't exactly use kid gloves on the rebels during the war.

But the folks that just took Syria? They are worse. Way worse. HTS has tried to rebrand themselves as a more secular group that is paying lip service to respecting Syria's many minorities, but they are literally al-Qaeda. Sure, they cut ties, but they remain al-Nusra front. If it hadn't been for ISIS they would have been the most brutal and horrible faction in Syria. And now they have control of much of the country. This does not bode well even if they turn out to not be as bad as ISIS was. At best they will be a new Taliban, a major regional problem, but hopefully not a international one. 

So why did the government fall? I am thinking the soldiers just lost the will to fight. They were so shocked by the Aleppo offensive that they were never able to recover. The panic spread not just to the regular soldiers but to the officers and generals as well. Had they made even a single stand at Aleppo, Hama or even Homs, things might have gone differently, but they didn't and that was all she wrote. 

Part of it must have been that they knew that nobody was coming to save them at this point. In the past they had help from thousands of Hezbollah fighters, Russian soldiers, Iran backed militias and even on occasions during their fights with ISIS, support from Turkey and the United States. But with Hezbollah decapitated in their war with Israel and Russia distracted with their war in Ukraine, they couldn't count on help getting their in time, and it absolutely did not. 

We shouldn't expect this to be the end of the war. The regime has fallen but Syria is still a mess of competing factions, ethnicities, religions and foreign influence. Indeed, this could end up being a new, even bloodier phase of the war as the fighting will come to areas that were formally peaceful, like the coast. 

It's even possible that the country of Syria could no longer exist with it breaking into separate states. Perhaps one for the Alawites on the coast, one of the rebels in the center, one for the Kurds in the North and whatever the hell is going to be the territory we have control of with 900 American soldiers stationed in Syria. It's simply too soon to tell at this point. 

I also expect other countries to take some of Syria's territory. Supposedly Israel made a move already, but I fully expect that Turkey will make a move against the Kurds. They hate the Kurds and there are Kurdish terror groups active in the North of Syria. There simply isn't anything left to protect the Kurds as there isn't really a sovereign state at the moment. I would be shocked if Turkey doesn't send some major forces in to Syria to take territory, de facto like they already have, or de jure. 

What does America get out of this mess? Nothing but headaches, though at least we won't be the ones dealing with the refugee crisis this will cause, though perhaps some will also head home. Like I said, we have 900 troops chilling out in the desert looking out for ISIS, which are also making a comeback now. Do we keep them there to counter ISIS? Are they even safe with HTS now apparently being in charge? Can we even pull them out safely? All questions to be asked in the coming days and weeks. 

My one hope is that we can somehow avoid the trap we have fallen into with regime change in Islamic countries. The government of Iraq was taken out and we were stuck there for years and then ISIS came and made war on the world. Libya was no better, and the less said about Afghanistan the better. My real fear is that both HTS and ISIS will end up being global terror threats and we will be drawn into yet another pointless war in the Middle East, as if there hasn't been enough of those already. Maybe I am wrong and things will somehow work out this time, but I don't think so. The folks celebrating the fall of Assad are fools...