A carnival of pleasure has erupted in Syria with the autumn of the strongman Bashar al-Assad. Syrians have waited a very long time and paid a heavy value for this jubilation. 13 years in the past, the nation’s revolution started with peaceable demonstrations; since then, by one estimate, greater than 600,000 Syrians have misplaced their lives. The dictatorship’s listing of crimes is for much longer than that, encompassing peacetime abuses and stretching again 54 years, to when Assad’s father, Hafez, first assumed the throne. The Ba’ath Celebration, which as soon as sought dominion over your entire Arab world, has now misplaced its last foothold.
The reduction and pleasure over the autumn of Assad are greater than justified, however quickly they are going to give strategy to the powerful work of constructing a brand new order in a rustic battered by years of warfare and oppression. The success of this activity will rely totally on two elements: the power of Assad’s many various opponents to work collectively, and the willingness of neighboring nations, mainly Turkey, to simply accept the end result.
Inside a 12 months of its inception in 2011, Syria’s revolution devolved right into a civil warfare, and the nation’s territory has since been divided amongst a wide range of armed teams. Even now, after the autumn of Assad, a number of entities rule over completely different elements of the nation. Damascus was liberated by three teams: the Islamist outfit Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS); the Southern Operations Room, shaped just a few days in the past as a coalition of native anti-regime militias within the south; and the US–backed Syrian Free Military, a militia that has lengthy managed the realm close to the Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi triple border. Farther from the capital, two extra teams compete over the northern and japanese areas of the nation: the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by a left-wing Kurdish occasion with hyperlinks to fellow Kurds in Turkey; and its mortal opponent, the Turkish-backed Syrian Nationwide Military (SNA). Whilst Syrians celebrated the autumn of Damascus, the SDF and SNA had been clashing over management of Manbij, the one main city the SDF held west of the Euphrates.
To see what may divide these teams from each other, and set them at odds with Syria’s neighbors, just isn’t troublesome. The U.S. has designated HTS, which has roots in al-Qaeda, a terrorist group and maintains a $10 million bounty on the pinnacle of its charismatic chief, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. HTS leaders have pointed to the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan as a supply of inspiration, and the Taliban has been fast to congratulate Jolani on his group’s advances. The SDF, against this, is supported by a small contingent of U.S. forces and traces its lineage to Kurdish feminism and the late American socialist-anarchist thinker Murray Bookchin. The group is alleged to have ties to the Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration (PKK), a militia working in Turkey that can also be a U.S.-designated terror group. In consequence, Ankara considers SDF’s consolidation in northeastern Syria a national-security menace and has repeatedly run brutal operations in opposition to it, each instantly and thru its assist for the SNA.
These are simply among the teams that would want to work collectively to construct a brand new order in Syria—and to someway keep away from the destiny of post-2011 Libya or post-2003 Iraq. However as troublesome as that cooperation could also be, Syria has seen sufficient of the choice to be invested in making it succeed. Previously week or so, leaders of Syria’s ethnic and sectarian communities—the nation is about 70 % Sunni Arab, and the remainder consists largely of Kurds, Turkmen, Druze, Christians, Jews, and Alawites—have met in varied cities across the nation and pledged to work collectively.
HTS, specifically, has gone out of its strategy to guarantee minorities, resembling Christians in Aleppo and Shiites in Salamiyah, that they don’t have anything to worry. And the statelet that Jolani has run out of Idlib, in northwestern Syria, since 2017 has hardly been a brutal fundamentalist beachhead. It hasn’t been a democracy, both; and each HTS and its earlier incarnation, Jabhat al-Nusra, stand accused of suppressing dissidents and harassing the area’s Druze minority. However in recent times, Jolani has turned his power to constructing credible state establishments (these proved their mettle in the course of the coronavirus pandemic and the earthquake in northwestern Syria final 12 months) and successfully aiding the U.S. in suppressing the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Earlier right this moment, HTS introduced a brand new transitional authorities headed by Mohammed al-Bashir, an Idlib-born technocrat who has run HTS’s statelet since January. The brand new authorities is collaborating with the outgoing prime minister and cupboard ministers to make sure a clean transition. HTS additionally issued an order that “categorically prohibits forcing girls to put on explicit clothes or interfering with their proper to decide on their apparel or look.” Whether or not girls’s rights could be protected in Syria might be an enormous check of the brand new order.
That Salih Muslim, a key determine within the SDF, has expressed an curiosity in working with Jolani’s group perhaps shouldn’t be stunning: “They’re Syrians initially, and so they’ve modified their concepts from once they had been Jihadist,” Muslim instructed Al Arabiya on December 5, earlier than praising the group’s “self-discipline.” Welcoming the autumn of Assad, SDF’s navy chief, Mazloum Abdi, mentioned: “This variation presents a chance to construct a brand new Syria primarily based on democracy and justice that ensures the rights of all Syrians.”
However much more fraught than the collaboration between HTS and SDF would be the latter’s relationship with Turkey. Syria’s highly effective northern neighbor has lengthy been involved about encouraging Kurdish calls for for autonomy inside its personal borders, and these anxieties might situation how a lot autonomy it may possibly countenance for these in Syria. To make sure, Iraq now has a semiautonomous Kurdish area, and Ankara has not solely made its peace with that however established good relations with the regional authorities. However Syria’s SDF is extra radical than the Iraqi Kurdish management and has intensive ties, linguistic and in any other case, to Kurds in Turkey.
The SDF might attempt to hash out a diplomatic take care of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Failing that—particularly if President-Elect Donald Trump withdraws U.S. assist from the SDF, as he has all however promised to do—the group might discover itself imperiled. The SDF has run some of the socially liberal and enlightened entities within the Center East, and its downfall wouldn’t augur effectively for Syria’s future as an inclusive nation.
Exhausted after virtually 14 years of a murderous civil warfare, thousands and thousands of Syrians wish to put the previous behind them and construct a greater future. The residents of many different nations within the area, too, would favor to deal with financial improvement fairly than without end wars. Iran’s Axis of Resistance, a significant explanation for instability all through the Center East, has now totally collapsed; even a few of its supporters are writing its obituaries.
No one expects a flourishing liberal democracy to immediately emerge from the ashes of the Syrian civil warfare. But when Syrians are capable of put their variations apart, they may start to construct an efficient polity that may advance the welfare of its residents. That may be a win for the entire Center East.