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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; folks trampled on burning photographs of ousted President Bashar al-Assad; households strolled by 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 in the course of the Syrian civil warfare, 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 for 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 the US.
Why did the Assad regime fall now, after 54 years?
The Syrian folks’s loyalty to Assad eroded regularly, then suddenly, Anne explains: Doubts grew after Assad’s Russian backers started to switch troops and gear from Syria to Ukraine in 2022, and “the more moderen Israeli assault on Hezbollah’s management hampered Iran, Assad’s different ally, from serving to him as nicely,” she writes.
Autocratic regimes use brutality to get rid of any hope their populace could have for a special future, Anne notes: “Our chief perpetually” 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 kin who are suffering, cousins and mates who expertise political repression and the results of financial collapse. They, too, have doubts, they usually, too, can grow to be insecure. In Syria, we’ve simply seen the end result.”
“The turning level was the give up of Aleppo with virtually no resistance,” Anne informed me once we spoke on the telephone at the moment. “It was virtually just like the regime melted away as folks noticed that nobody’s preventing for it, nobody’s going to assist it. Why ought to we combat for it?”
What comes subsequent for the Syrian folks?
The case for optimism exists, my colleague Graeme Wooden famous at the moment: “The current habits of the rebels who’ve simply conquered Syria appears to be like reassuringly civilized,” he acknowledges. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group most instantly accountable for Assad’s overthrow, has introduced that victory is just not a license to wreck the establishments of the state … If the rebels maintain this merciful starting, and enshrine in regulation and follow tolerance and equal rights for girls, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, and different teams, then they are going to 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. Thus far Syria has had 50 years of fascism and sooner or later of its reverse. If it may string collectively extra such days—maybe a month, and dare one hope for even a yr—the earlier decade of resistance can have been price it.”
Within the coming days, observers could begin to get a clearer image of what Syria’s future appears to be like like. What ought to we be careful for?
“Take a look at the peacefulness of cities,” Anne informed me. “Will there be out-of-control panic, looting, and riots? Or will folks be staying at dwelling to observe what occurs?” Observers also needs to “take a look at what the establishments and the federal government does,” she mentioned. “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 imposing these issues. Whether or not these folks keep and proceed to do their jobs in some form of organized style will provide you with a sign of whether or not there shall be a peaceable transition.”
The third factor to observe, Anne informed me, is how the assorted armed teams in Syria work together with each other. “A few of them have been utilizing very open language, and making an attempt 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 form of council or transitional authorities, one thing that brings all of them collectively, that’s a superb 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 current article: “Iran is a powerful state, within the sense that its persons 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 towards the US 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 need to depart the Center East, Eliot notes. And it faces an much more pressing downside: “If Iran does certainly select to dash for nuclear weapons, Trump’s White Home should resolve whether or not to name within the heavy bombers and forestall that transfer, which might set off a landslide of nuclear proliferation nicely past the Persian Gulf,” he writes. “It’d face that call very early on.”
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