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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 way of a ransacked presidential palace, taking footage. Assad and his household have fled to Moscow, the place they’ve been granted asylum, based on 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 conflict, which has been ongoing since 2011.
Till now, Syria had been a part of “a casual 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 folks’s loyalty to Assad eroded steadily, then , Anne explains: Doubts grew after Assad’s Russian backers started to switch troops and gear 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 effectively,” she writes.
Autocratic regimes use brutality to get rid of any hope their populace could have for a distinct 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 kin that suffer, cousins and associates who expertise political repression and the consequences of financial collapse. They, too, have doubts, they usually, too, can turn out to be insecure. In Syria, we have now simply seen the end result.”
“The turning level was the give up of Aleppo with virtually no resistance,” Anne advised me after we spoke on the telephone immediately. “It was virtually just like the regime melted away as folks noticed that nobody’s combating for it, nobody’s going to help 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 immediately: “The current conduct of the rebels who’ve simply conquered Syria seems reassuringly civilized,” he acknowledges. “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group most instantly accountable 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 observe tolerance and equal rights for ladies, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, and different teams, then they’ll deserve apologies from all who delayed their victory, together with Western politicians.”
Nonetheless, 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 pictures of Syrian residents on social media “present hope and solidarity. To this point Syria has had 50 years of fascism and someday of its reverse. If it will 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?
“Take a look at the peacefulness of cities,” Anne advised me. “Will there be out-of-control panic, looting, and riots? Or will folks be staying at dwelling to look at what occurs?” Observers must also “take 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 operate. It’s not a really efficient or well-run state, however there’s an electrical energy system and visitors legal guidelines. There are people who find themselves implementing these issues. Whether or not these folks keep and proceed to do their jobs in some form of organized style provides you with a sign of whether or not there will likely be a peaceable transition.”
The third factor to observe, Anne advised 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 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 very good signal. And in the event that they don’t do 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, nevertheless it has a comparatively weak army. It has invested closely in proxy warfare with notable success, together with towards 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 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 must determine whether or not to name within the heavy bombers and forestall that transfer, which might set off a landslide of nuclear proliferation effectively past the Persian Gulf,” he writes. “It’d face that call very early on.”
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