When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initiated their offensive to substantially degrade the Iran-backed Shia militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon on 1 October 2024, they surely must not have realised that those operations, combined with the diversion of the Russian military’s focus toward the conflict in Ukraine, would precipitate the fall of the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
That, however, was the result, and on the morning of 8 December the entire Middle East region was presented with a new reality: Syrian rebels led by the once Al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had taken the Syrian capital, Damascus, and Assad had fled to a cold asylum in Moscow.
It is fair to say that the speed of the Assad regime’s collapse took all international observers by surprise. After launching its first attack on 27 November, HTS first took Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city in the north of Syria, by 30 November, immediately putting the Assad regime on the back foot. The rebels then moved south to take control of Hama, strategically located at a key crossroads in western-central Syria, on 5 December and on the following day seized the city of Daraa: the birthplace of the 2011 uprising against Assad that brought about the Syrian Civil War. On 7 December Homs, half way south to Damascus, fell to the HTS-led rebels, while south of the Syrian capital other rebel groups moved north to pressure the Syrian regime. By the early morning of 8 December, despite Syrian regime claims of an impregnable military cordon around the Syrian capital, Damascus had fallen, just 11 days after the rebel offensive began.
The resultant prevailing climate in Syria, however, is not peace, but uncertainty – even for the Syrians who cheered the rebel advance through their newly liberated cities. Most obviously, the array of rebel forces in Syria – and, indeed, the Syrian population as a whole – cover a very wide spectrum of beliefs and allegiances. Most of the country’s northeast is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), while northern sections of the country are controlled by Turkish and Turkish-aligned rebel forces. In central and southeastern Syria there are still pockets controlled by ISIS jihadists, while there are also around 900 US personnel still in Syria, mostly in the northeast in support of the SDF, while some are supporting the Free Syrian Army at the al-Tanf garrison in southeast Syria. Lying low at this point in Syria are the Alawites from which Assad derived his power base and who dominated the Syrian government’s armed forces.
Meanwhile, along Syria’s Mediterranean coast to the west of the HTS advance south, was where Russian forces were concentrated while still supporting the Assad regime. With the fall of Assad, Russian forces began to make a strategic withdrawal from the country and, according to CNN reporting, had requested Turkish assistance in doing so. However, the naval base at Tartus and Hmeimim air base further north up the coast are strategic locations for Moscow; losing them would be a significant blow to Moscow, ending its influence not just in Syria but the wider Middle East, but the continued presence of Russian forces that were so integral to keeping Assad in power would likely be unacceptable to the rebels now in control, who will have suffered under indiscriminate Russian attacks.
As if to emphasise that, despite the fall of Assad, peace has not come to Syria, both the IDF and the US military mounted airstrikes over the country before the dust had settled on the rebel takeover of Damascus. The IDF struck more than a dozen locations in Syria in the hours after the Assad regime fell, stating that it was targeting suspected chemical weapons and missile sites, and continued to target many Syrian Army facilities in the following days. The US Air Force, meanwhile, used B-52 bombers, F-15E Strike Eagles and A-10 ground attack aircraft on 8 December to more than 75 ISIS targets in Syria, endeavouring to prevent the jihadists from exploiting the country’s power vacuum and stunt its chances of regaining territory.
Meanwhile, HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a Sunni Muslim, is beginning to make his future stance a little clearer. He chose Damascus’s venerated Umayyad Mosque to deliver his first speech in Damascus on 8 December, but he also tellingly gave an interview to US TV network CNN in the days before he ousted Assad. Al-Jolani has sought to distance himself from his Al-Qaeda-affiliated past – even in the military fatigues in which he now dresses – but he will know that, in theory, he still has a USD 100 million bounty on his head as the leader of a currently US-proscribed terrorist organisation, although the UK government has indicated it is considering delisting HTS as a terrorist group.
In his speech as the Umayyad Mosque Al-Jolani appeared to indicate that the era of Iranian meddling in Syria’s affairs is over. “This new triumph, my brothers, marks a new chapter in the history of the region, a history fraught with dangers [that left] Syria as a playground for Iranian ambitions, spreading sectarianism, stirring corruption,” he stated.
In light of the swift HTS-led campaign that raced from Aleppo to Damascus to usher in a new era for Syria, few can doubt Al-Jolani’s strategic vision, but the extent to which he can turn the country onto a more positive trajectory remains to be seen.
