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Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Thirteen years after children scrawled anti-regime slogans in the southern city of Deraa, sparking the Syrian revolution, Bashar al-Assad and his kleptocratic family have fallen. The end of a dynasty that has brutalized and plundered one of the Arab world’s most important countries for more than five decades will be celebrated by hundreds of thousands of families of those killed, maimed, imprisoned and forced to disappear by Assad. The extraordinary collapse of the regime also marks a turning point in the Middle East: Syria was both Russia’s and Iran’s most important ally in the region. The end of Assad confirms the change in the regional balance of power. Tehran and its proxies were further undermined, and Russia’s influence weakened.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the old certainties throughout the region have been shuffled, the political cards shuffled. A Middle East emerging from the ruins of the past year conflict and the carnage still is still uncertain. Much will depend on who rules Syria after Assad. The only clear winner since Assad’s ouster has been Turkey, for a long time main supporter Syrian rebels. The Sunni Arab states of the Gulf recently re-embraced the Syrian dictator, bringing him back into the Arab fold. For them, as for Israel, the possibility of an Islamist government in Damascus will not be welcome.
The long-forgotten war in Syria was awakened by a combination of factors: Assad prevailed over a set of rebel factions only because the support of Russia and Lebanese Hezbollah. It was the Russian air force and Hezbollah’s fighters on the ground that turned the war in their favor. With Moscow distracted by the invasion of Ukraine and Hezbollah devastated in recent months by the conflict with Israel, the rebels found an opportune moment to strike. The Syrian army was so beaten that within a day Jihadist HTS, the most armed and motivated of the rebel factions, has captured government-held towns and reached the capital, Damascus. There have probably been a few deals, a sign that the Assad regime is broken.
For many Syrians, this is a a moment of joy. Rebels have opened prisons, reuniting families with loved ones long lost in Assad’s torture dungeons. Among the more than 5 million Syrian refugees who have fled the war, many now hope to be able to return to homes they despaired of ever seeing again.
But what happens next will depend on HTS. The group tried to present itself as a reformed jihadist organization, its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolaniwho was once part of Isis and al-Qaeda, styling himself as a statesman. He promised to treat Syria’s Christian and Kurdish minorities with dignity, and even the Alawite minority from which the Assad family originates. Many will continue to fear that Islamists will incite retaliation or impose their own religious dictatorship. For now, HTS has talked about protecting state institutions, suggesting that it wants an orderly transition.
Syria now faces two possible paths. The first is the resumption of civil war, which will lead the country down the path of Yemen and Libya, long since failed and broken. The second is stabilization, a chance for healing and the return home of millions of refugees scattered around the world. To seize the opportunity of a more hopeful Syria, those who can influence Jolani – Turkey and perhaps Qatar – must ensure that he leaves the running of the country to a civilian administration that reflects Syria’s myriad religious communities. This should allow Arab and Western governments that have designated HTS as a terrorist organization to contact the government. The world has failed Syria, time and time again, even when Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. Now he also has a chance to help the country get back on its feet.
