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This previous weekend, Syrian rebels prompted the downfall of a greater than 50-year fascist regime. Yesterday, rebels freed detained prisoners; individuals trampled on burning photos of ousted President Bashar al-Assad; households strolled via a ransacked presidential palace, taking photos. Assad and his household have fled to Moscow, the place they’ve been granted asylum, in accordance with Russian state media. Some Syrian refugees are ready at border crossings to reenter the nation they’d fled through the Syrian civil conflict, which has been ongoing since 2011.
Till now, Syria had been a part of “an off-the-cuff community of autocracies,” my colleague Anne Applebaum wrote yesterday. The downfall of its chief represents the potential of change, not simply in Syria however within the different members of this community. Under are 5 questions, answered by Atlantic writers, about what comes subsequent for Syria, its allies, and america.
Why did the Assad regime fall now, after 54 years?
The Syrian individuals’s loyalty to Assad eroded steadily, then unexpectedly, Anne explains: Doubts grew after Assad’s Russian backers started to switch troops and tools from Syria to Ukraine in 2022, and “the newer Israeli assault on Hezbollah’s management hampered Iran, Assad’s different ally, from serving to him as properly,” she writes.
Autocratic regimes use brutality to remove any hope their populace could have for a special future, Anne notes: “Our chief without end” was the slogan of the Assad dynasty. “However all such ‘everlasting’ regimes have one deadly flaw,” she writes. “Troopers and cops are members of the general public too. They’ve kinfolk who are suffering, cousins and mates who expertise political repression and the results of financial collapse. They, too, have doubts, they usually, too, can turn out to be insecure. In Syria, now we have simply seen the end result.”
“The turning level was the give up of Aleppo with nearly no resistance,” Anne informed me after we spoke on the telephone right now. “It was nearly just like the regime melted away as individuals noticed that nobody’s preventing for it, nobody’s going to assist it. Why ought to we struggle for it?”
What comes subsequent for the Syrian individuals?
The case for optimism exists, my colleague Graeme Wooden famous right now: “The latest habits of the rebels who’ve simply conquered Syria seems reassuringly civilized,” he acknowledges. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group most instantly liable for Assad’s overthrow, has introduced that victory isn’t a license to wreck the establishments of the state … If the rebels maintain this merciful starting, and enshrine in regulation and apply tolerance and equal rights for girls, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, and different teams, then they’ll deserve apologies from all who delayed their victory, together with Western politicians.”
Nevertheless, Graeme notes, “there are good causes to doubt that the brand new Syria will resemble this gumdrops-and-ponies utopia.” Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s chief is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who previously led Jabhat al-Nusra—“the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda that functioned as a barely less-evil twin of ISIS,” as Graeme places it. Nonetheless, Graeme acknowledges, the photographs of Syrian residents on social media “present hope and solidarity. To date Syria has had 50 years of fascism and at some point of its reverse. If it may possibly string collectively extra such days—maybe a month, and dare one hope for even a yr—the earlier decade of resistance could have been value it.”
Within the coming days, observers could begin to get a clearer image of what Syria’s future seems like. What ought to we be careful for?
“Have a look at the peacefulness of cities,” Anne informed me. “Will there be out-of-control panic, looting, and riots? Or will individuals be staying at dwelling to observe what occurs?” Observers also needs to “have a look at what the establishments and the federal government does,” she stated. “There are lots of people in Syria who make completely different items of the state perform. It’s not a really efficient or well-run state, however there’s an electrical energy system and site visitors legal guidelines. There are people who find themselves implementing these issues. Whether or not these individuals keep and proceed to do their jobs in some sort of organized vogue offers you a sign of whether or not there can be a peaceable transition.”
The third factor to observe, Anne informed me, is how the varied armed teams in Syria work together with each other. “A few of them have been utilizing very open language, and attempting to talk for the entire nation,” she famous. “They’ve completely different backgrounds and completely different origins. A few of them come from the Islamist world. A few of them come from the Syrian opposition. A few of them are Kurds. In the event that they create some sort of council or transitional authorities, one thing that brings all of them collectively, that’s a very good signal. And in the event that they don’t try this, it’s a foul signal.”
What does the autumn of the Assad regime imply for Iran and Russia, two longtime backers of Syria?
Iran has misplaced one other of its regional proxy forces, Eliot A. Cohen explains in a latest article: “Iran is a powerful state, within the sense that its individuals are deeply rooted in a shared historical past and tradition, however it has a comparatively weak army. It has invested closely in proxy warfare with notable success, together with in opposition to america in Iraq. However with the defeats of Hamas and Hezbollah, and with the collapse of the Assad regime, Iran has suffered irrecoverable losses.” Russia additionally “has been humiliated by its consumer’s collapse,” Eliot writes, “and it, too, now faces a permanent hostility from a Syrian inhabitants that it helped suppress.”
What does the autumn of the regime imply for the U.S.?
America has been thwarted as soon as once more in its want to depart the Center East, Eliot notes. And it faces an much more pressing drawback: “If Iran does certainly select to dash for nuclear weapons, Trump’s White Home must resolve whether or not to name within the heavy bombers and forestall that transfer, which might set off a landslide of nuclear proliferation properly past the Persian Gulf,” he writes. “It would face that call very early on.”
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Stephanie Bai contributed to this article.
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