Video | Everything is changing in relation to this

Jamie Allinson of Salvage discusses the dynamics of the fall of Assad and what next for Syria

Transcript

I am an academic, a political scientist who works on the Middle East and part of which of my work is on Syria. But I’m also going to talk about it from the point of view of the left in this country and what perspectives might be, particularly because it’s a very disorienting moment for many. Given that the regime that’s just fallen in Syria is often perceived as a kind of ally or supporter of the Palestinian cause at a time when Palestinians are undergoing a genocidal war. So, it’s important to have clarity I think in this complicated but also exhilarating situation.

I would say… I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve been studying and working with and going to the Middle East for decades.  And we really don’t know.  Anyone who very confidently asserts that they do know what’s going to happen, that they have some kind of geopolitical prediction – I wouldn’t trust!

This is as big a moment in the region as 1967, maybe even going right back to the end of the First World War.

The fall of Assad is an unintended consequence of the 7th of October.  And we don’t know what the unintended consequences of that unintended consequence will be. It’s an incredibly fluid situation and one in which, as we can see, Israel is trying to shape the moment with extreme violence as is its want.

I don’t know how much people know so I’m going to start from what has happened and who the players are – Syrian – regional – international level. And then maybe if people need to know things, they can ask questions or have disagreements or want to clarify things, we can do that together. So, if I say stuff you don’t understand, or I’m referring to things you’re not familiar with then ask.

As most people will know, about two weeks ago a group called Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which means Committee for the Liberation of the Levant, launched an offensive, a military operation, in collaboration with several other groups from the area of Idlib in northwestern Syria.

Idlib is on the border with Turkey. It is a kind of pocket that was left under the control of HTS after an agreement with Turkey, Russia and Iran to essentially partition Syria into different zones of influence.  This is different to – and I think this is important because some people are writing, I’m thinking here of Tariq Ali – some people are writing articles that confuse two different things. The Idlib area – which was where HTS were in power or basically ruling with a government, a civilian administration, called the Syrian Salvation government. That’s where most of the Syrian internally displaced people were sent. So, there were more refugees, there were more refugees in camps in Idlib than there are in Gaza.

That’s different to the areas which Turkish proxy militias called the Syrian National Army took from the Kurdish forces in 2020. Those areas are smaller. They’re directly contiguous with the Turkish border. They’re ruled by something called the Syrian Interim government.

So, the Syrian Interim government and the Syrian National Army are different to the Syrian Salvation government, the head of which is now the interim prime minister of Syria and HTS and its associated allies.

That’s important because the Syrian Interim government and the Syrian National Army, you reasonably could describe as Turkish proxies.  HTS, not really. I mean, allies, maybe. They probably were given the green light for their operation by Turkey, but they’re not controlled or funded, or an arm of Turkey, and certainly not of the United States, which still lists them as a terrorist group.

Their victory was really stunning. And I was shocked, genuinely shocked. I never thought this would happen, that this day would come to be honest. And I kept on waiting for the regime to seriously fight back. There were pockets of fighting in Hama, a bit around Homs. But Damascus essentially fell without a shot. Something like 900 people were killed across the whole operation. I mean, that’s bad enough but almost 500,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war.

So, this shows that what happened is that the regime forces just melted away. It just disappeared. And the reason that they disappeared is that their foreign or outside backers, Hezbollah and Iran have been taking huge blows from Israel, that’s true. And Russia had removed all of its air force to Ukraine. Still, everyone was kind of shocked. 

And it’s important also to understand that this is not just a militia. This is not just fighting. As soon as the cities and villages started to fall, people started to come out and protest again. And that’s what happened in Damascus. And happened in Homs. Particularly interestingly, places that were not traditional opposition areas or were Druze areas (a smaller religious sect in the south) were very heavily involved and many non-Islamist militias from the south were actually the ones that took Damascus or came into Damascus from the south.

So, it renewed some of the sense, some of the mobilization of 2011 in Syria. And I think it’s reasonable to describe it as the culmination of that moment in a complicated way.

It is complicated. HTS are an Islamist militia that come out of a group associated with al-Qaeda called Jabhat al-Nusra which in 2017 cut its ties with al-Qaeda and under the leadership of the now familiar Ahmed al-Sharaa kind of nationalized itself, made itself more of a Syrian national group, rather than a global jihadist group. That’s how they came to rule in Idlib. They were the ones who were left and who were forced into Idlib, and all of the other armed groups were forced there who were left from Assad. They transform themselves in a sense into both a governing authority and they tried to, or they’ve tried to, not on a democratic sense, not in a secular way certainly, but to build a hegemony with the society that they operate in.

So, one of the things that people want to know is have these guys really changed? And I was worried, certainly. I thought, right, well, it’s difficult to see Assad going. It’s difficult to see the regime toppling without massacres somewhere. There’s been such bloodshed, such hatred. It’s not happened. Members of religious minorities have come out and celebrated the fall of Assad. We’ve seen churches ringing their bells in Aleppo.

The HTS have made it quite clear that they want to respect the religious diversity of Syria now, and even the ethnic diversity of Syria, referring to the Kurds. The question people ask is how serious can that be? How sincere can that be?

You can’t really answer that question. But what you can look at is why would they make that change? What is it that has forced them to do this? And I would say it’s the society itself has moderated them. Syria is a multi-confessional, multi-ethnic place. And the people who made the revolution were part of that. So HTS rather than doing what Daesh did, or ISIS, sorry, did… forcibly Islamizing the society has on the contrary been on the contrary modified by that society. Which even though this is not necessarily a democratic group. I mean, if you look at the way that they’ve behaved in Idlib. They have repressed people. It gives you grounds for hope because there’s something beyond them. This is not just HTS, they know that and they’re clearly operating in a way and with the rhetoric and with policies. I mean, for example not pursuing conscripts in the army. Signing agreements with the Alawite (that’s the sect that Bashar al-Assad belongs to) leaders in Assad’s own hometown, or guaranteeing, making statements that there should be no imposition of dress codes on women. These kinds of things, they are there because of the way Syrian society is and the way the Syrian revolution was.

You know, there are 60,000 fighters in HTS, that’s a lot. But there are 20 million Syrians. So, I think there are grounds to think this is a sliver of hope. And increasingly over the past few days, it’s felt like more than that. Actually, as you look at the reaction of Syrians and others.

That’s not to say that things are easy. Certainly not. I mean, one thing is the country is awash with weapons. Who is going to control that? Where is this going to end up?

There’s a massive question of what will happen in relationship with the Kurdish autonomous areas? Which are mainly currently being fought against by the Syrian National Army. That is an unresolved question. And of course, as I’m going to get onto, there’s the fact that Israel is attacking the new Syria.

Which leads me on to the regional aspect. It’s probably an instinctive response for people to look at the fall of Assad, who’s seen as an opponent of Israel and think, well, this is part of Israel’s new Middle East. Israel has achieved that objective. Netanyahu said that. He said, this is our doing, more or less. That doesn’t mean it’s true. But there is a grain of truth to it, which is that, as I said, the defeats of Hezbollah and Iran meant that there was no backing for the Assad regime. Plus, the withdrawal of Russian air forces. Which shows you that there was nothing independent there to start with, that actually what is lost by the fall of this regime is tissue, dust.

You can tell that this is different, that this isn’t a case of Israel or America or Turkey installing a coup or forcing a coup on a Middle Eastern country so they will accept Zionism by the fact of Israel’s behaviour. In the past 24 hours, Israel has launched 310 strikes on Damascus, completely destroyed the naval fleet in Latakia and it has seized a new portion of land at the Golan Heights and built a trench along it. Why would they do this if their guys were now in charge? You build a trench to keep your enemies on the other side of you, not your friends.

Notice Israel never did this to Assad. Because the Assad regime, father and son, did not fire a single bullet to retrieve the Golan Heights illegally occupied and annexed by Israel.

 Israel knows. Demonstrates by its actions that it knows. That a government that represents the views of the Syrian people more closely will be hostile to Israel and its genocide and be supportive of the Palestinian cause.

That is why they are doing everything they can to destroy it at the moment. That is why they are trying to remove from it any real sovereignty or military power. Compare that to the long history of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah’s logistical routes in Syria, which, Assad never stopped. He couldn’t, because there was an agreement, not a tacit agreement, a signed actually existing memo between Russia and Israel that Israel could hit Hezbollah wherever it wanted, and Russia would not strike back. And therefore, Assad would not strike back.

So that’s gone.

What this shows is that the kind of geopolitical posturing about the meaning of this event is wrong. Not just that but at a popular level you can’t describe, as one article in the New Left Review yesterday – the fall of Assad is comparable to the loss of the 1967 war. And I’ll tell you why. Palestinians did not celebrate the loss of the 1967 war. But they are celebrating the fall of Assad. And if you watch some of the streams of videos coming out about this, there’s one from Gaza, just of a young girl expressing her sympathy, gratitude and hope on the basis of what the Syrians have achieved.

If Syrians can be free, so can Palestinians.

That’s also reciprocated amongst the Syrian fighters even. But it’s not just…  you know, emotional… people making videos on TikTok. Let’s take a look at some organizations, which I think we can say know the Palestinian scene pretty well.

So, for example, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which, by the way, supported or did not take sides against Assad has said. ‘The Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine views the changes that have occurred in Syria as an internal Syrian matter pertaining to the choices of the brotherly Syrian people. Syria will continue to be a true supporter and ally of the Palestinian people and their just cause as it has always been.’

Or take a look at what Hamas has had to say. Hamas’s official statement on the fall of Assad. ‘The Islamic resistance movement Hamas congratulate the brotherly Syrian people on their success in achieving their aspirations for freedom and justice. We call in all segments of the Syrian people to unite, strengthen national solidarity and rise above the pains of the past.’

It’s a strange thing if Hamas can congratulate the brotherly Syrian people on their achievement and the western left cannot. If there’s a conspiracy to overthrow Assad by Israel, America, and Turkey it’s got to go pretty deep if it’s got Hamas on side.

So, this whole way of thinking that the freedom of the Palestinians and the end to the genocide that’s being committed against them is dependent upon the unfreedom of the people of the surrounding states. It’s over. It’s over. Even people who might believe that or think that that is what has happened, even though there’s no factual evidence for it, it’s gone. All of the political forces, including people like the Syrian Social Nationalist Party who are a kind of quasi-fascist group (hey were the most hardcore supporters of Assad) are now revising their position. Everyone is. Everyone is changing in relation to this. And in the broader anti-war movement, the left in Britain, people have got to catch up. It’s gone that strategic option even if you agreed with it.

It’s gone. That’s a positive step, not just in the sense of seeing the fall of this dictator. Seeing the triumph of a revolutionary movement, however complicated. It’s because it means there’s no longer an axis that runs through anti-war activity outside, so anti-imperialists here in the West, in Europe It’s just the case that Israel, with its actions, is now attacking Syria in a way it never attacked Syria under Assad. And that means that every munition that we can stop going to Israel, it’s not just helping to slow down, hopefully to prevent more of the genocide, it’s also helping to defend a free Syria. That’s it.