The dethroned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had all the makings of a ‘reformer’ when he took over power at the age of 34 in 2000, after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, head of the Syrian Baath Party, who ruled Syria for nearly three decades in a classic dictatorial mode. When the latter died, Assad became president by referendum, running unopposed.
Assad was studying ophthalmology in London. But Assad had to quit his studies and return to Syria when his older brother Bassel, who was being groomed to inherit power, died in a road accident in 1994. While studying in London, Assad had met his wife Asma, a British-Syrian and Sunni Muslim who worked for financial services firm JP Morgan.
The young dynast with western education, Assad was initially seen by Syrians pining for freedoms as a reformer who could do away with years of repression and introduce economic liberalisation. In the early days, Assad would be seen driving his own car or having dinner at restaurants with his wife.
‘Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. When the Arab Spring reached Syria in March 2011, peaceful demonstrations broke out calling for change. These peaceful demonstrations for a democratic change, brought out a tyrant out of Assad. His initial image as a reformer quickly evaporated as authorities arrested and jailed academics, intellectuals and other members of what was then known as the Damascus Spring movement. And a civil war ensued soon after.
An Amnesty report estimated that 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya, the most notorious prison often referred to as a “human slaughterhouse”, between September 2011 and December 2015. According to a 2021 report by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, over 1 lakh people have been executed or have died in prisons of the Assad regime. Assad was even accused of having used chemical weapons to suppress the civilian unrest that had kept his government on the brink for over a decade. More than 12 million people — half the population of the country — have been forced from their homes during the decade long civil war.
The most prominent and formidable one of the Syrian rebel groups is Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), also known as the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant. HTS was founded by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a military commander who gained experience as a young fighter for al Qaeda against the United States in Iraq during the US invasion, before his capture and imprisonment in Iraq. Upon his release, he travelled to Syria in 2011 and formed HTS. Despite Jolani’s effort to distance his new group from al Qaeda and ISIS, the United States and other Western countries designated the HTS as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2018.
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia at some point in the 1970s. His parents are native to Syria’s Golan Heights, from which they were forced to flee by the Israeli invasion and occupation of the Syrian territory in 1967 and the Jolani’s family moved back to Syria in 1989.
From his base in the northwestern corner of Syria, Jolani and his organization HTS have fought against Assad’s forces, Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies, and Jolani’s own former allies in ISIS and Al Qaeda. In a bid to gain wider acceptance, Jolani has been adopting a more moderate posture, promising security to the minorities like Christians and no harm to civilians etc. He had also earlier proclaimed that should Assad be defeated, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority that the president’s clan stems from. “He is a pragmatic radical,” Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam, told an international publication.
In January 2017, Jolani imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwest Syria, thereby claiming control of swathes of Idlib province that had fallen out of government hands. In areas under its grip, HTS developed a civilian government and established a semblance of a state in Idlib province. However, throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent, which the UN has classed as war crimes.
In a lightning rebel offensive, in just 12 days, the rebel forces have taken control of the Syrian capital after storming through the country. According to reports, Bashar al Assad has fled Damascus on a plane headed to an unknown destination, ending his 24-year rule. The rebel coalition included rebels under the banner of the Syrian National Army, backed by Turkey, but the offensive has mostly been led by HTS. Al-Assad’s downfall was accelerated, due to withdrawal of support by his allies Russia and Iran, which are ingrained in their own geopolitical conflicts. “Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer” US President-elect Trump said in a post.
Israeli forces have also been launching air strikes on Syria for months, killing Iranian and its proxies’ commanders, while bombing facilities linked to Iran and Hezbollah. The end of the Assad family’s five-decade rule will reshape the balance of power in the region. Iran is seeing its influence suffer a significant blow. Syria under Assad was part of the connection between the Iranians and Hezbollah. It is a jubilation time for Israel.
But the massive outpouring of jubilation over the dictator’s fall will be tempered by wariness about what comes next for Syria. An orderly transition is an immediate concern. If the Jolani’s HTS does not succeed in its ambition to rule, that will create conundrums for western powers. HTS is only one of numerous opposition groups that are the remnants of the original rebellion. And the real test lies in establishing a durable, democratic, neutral and secular government.
[Photo by kremlin.ru, via Wikimedia Commons]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
The author is an alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad and a retired senior corporate professional.
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