The dramatic fall of the Syrian government in Damascus, ruled with an iron fist by the same family, the Al-Assad family, father and son, for over fifty years is long overdue. Hafez Al-Assad, from a minority Alawite (moderate Shia Islamic) community in the northwest of the country, first came to power in 1970 amidst a period of shocking turmoil in Syria in which there were military coups against the various Sunni Presidents in the 1960’s and having a shrewd politician from a minority group seemed to the military at the time as the most plausible method of obtaining security in Syria after deep unrest. The majority Sunni population of Syria (which is an ethnically diverse country, including Kurds, Shia Muslims, Christians, Sunnis and Turkmen groups) could not seem to agree upon a single leader and the country had scant traditions of democracy and power sharing. So an Alawite would rule the country and bring stability.
Al-Assad was a tyrant and no friend of the West, introducing socialist economic policies and following the lead of the USSR in the development of Syria. For that reason Syria was shunned for decades by the West and very few people went there. I was in Syria during the reign of Hafez Al-Assad and it was an underdeveloped police state. You could travel around freely enough but there were very few western tourists (it was hard to get a visa) and you were liable to be followed around a lot. All businesses were controlled by the Secret Police, of which there were an amazing 17 different branches. The only hotel you were allowed to stay in in Damascus as a western foreigner was also run by the Secret Police. Al-Assad’s statue stood in every square and his photo in every public building, restaurant, shop and hotel lobby. It was all a bit surreal and reminiscent of totalitarianism at its worst in the Soviet Union, when there were photographs of Lenin everywhere you went.
Anyway in 2000 Hafez Al-Assad died and his second son came to power, Bashar Al-Assad, in an unusual arrangement in which there was a plebiscite that he overwhelmingly won. Hafez’s first son was a man of ladies and drinking, and he had died behind the wheel of a car some years earlier. Bashar was a softly spoken ophthalmologist who came to power at the age of 34 and promised openness and reforms. Syria underwent a brief period of openness to the West and its values between 2000 and 2011, when tourism was encouraged, private businesses were permitted to operate and Bashar Al-Assad and his glamorous wife were courted by western leaders. Some (moderate) criticism of the government was permitted but later curtailed when the regime found it could not control or tolerate total freedom of the press. All of this moderation came to an end in 2011 during the “Arab Spring” period which began with a democratic revolution in Tunisia. It spread to various other countries and when it reached Syria demonstrations were responded to with violent crackdowns. Whereas his father had been an excellent dictator, Bashar Al-Assad proved not to be so effective and the angry crowds (mostly Sunni) turned into rebel forces that Russia had to repel in the Syrian civil war. Russia’s ongoing interest in all this was that their only naval maritime port in the Mediterranean Sea was in Syria and they did not want to lose that.
After an extended civil war in which all sorts of parties got involved, including the Islamic State, the United States, the Kurds, the Turks, the Iranians and the Russians, Russia finally put the war to bed with air power and Russian troops on the ground in 2018 and the country had a few years of peace with an area in the northeast occupied by Kurds and in the northwest occupied by Turkmens but otherwise control was exercised from Damascus with the Alawite minority regime still in power. This was an ethnic civil conflict in which the Russians propped up a minority group to advance their own strategic interests.
Now in December 2024 the Al-Assad dynasty has come to an end. Turkish-backed Sunni rebels advanced rapidly from the northwest to the capital in a matter of days and met little resistance. Al-Assad has fled the country, likely heading to the United Arab Emirates where his family have substantial investments. The government has not changed at the time of writing; the Prime Minister says he will be going into the office tomorrow.
What does all this mean for Russia and Ukraine? A number of things follow. Firstly, the ties between Ankara and Moscow are frayed more than we might have imagined in order that Turkey would let such events detrimental to Moscow’s interests take place. Secondly, Russia plainly does not have the capacity to fight two wars at once. She is bogged down in Ukraine and she has not been able urgently to come to the aid of her ally in Syria. Syria will likely now fall into the western orbit, which is terrible news for Moscow that will likely lose its military base on the Mediterranean coast. On the other hand, with no functional aircraft carrier and barely any navy left after Ukraine's obliteration of Russia’s Black Sea fleet during the second Russian invasion of Ukraine, there seems little strategic reason anymore to have a Mediterranean port. Next, the Wagner Group, Russia’s foreign mercenaries now subsumed into the Russian Armed Forces after a typically Russian mysterious death of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, will no longer be able to rely on a ceaseless stream of Syrian mercenaries, used in particular in Wagner Group’s African adventures.
In summary, this is a demonstration of Russian weakness on the global stage. Although Israel insists it had nothing to do with the Sunni rebel takeover of Damascus, that is not quite right. Israel destroyed the Iranian-back Hamas and Hezbollah groups that were running arms through Syria to Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah; many of those weapons were ultimately getting into the Gaza Strip as well which led to the October 7, 2023 attacks. So Israel’s devastation of Iran’s proxies in the region, that might have stepped in with Russia's support to defend the Al-Assad regime in Damascus, rendered Iran impotent in the sudden revolution that has taken place in Syria.
What happens next is important. The West must step in, in coordination with Turkey, to ensure a smooth democratic transition even if some of the successful rebels have histories as Islamist radicals. Murky compromises and forgotten memories might be needed. All Russian influences in Syria must be driven out, as Syria had essentially become a Russian satellite state. The country must be moved into the western orbit with all our might. This is also excellent news for Israel, as the supply of arms to Hezbollah is now cut off as it was running from Iran and Iraq through southwestern Syria. So Israel emerges from these events much stronger, and in a geopolitical stance opposed to Moscow, which is enormously helpful in securing Israeli support (and hence US support) for a stronger peace in Ukraine.