Syria’s Uncertain Future

The world watched Sunday as Bashar al-Assad, the brutal leader who ruled over Syria for 24 years, was driven out by rebel forces. The Syrian people, who persevered through a civil war lasting longer than a decade, celebrated in the streets at the news of al-Assad’s fall. This is obviously a positive development for the Syrian people who have been fighting for a more democratic government for decades. Bashar al-Assad ran a repressive regime that arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and killed his own people, and his Brutality was put on full display the past decade through the methods he used to militarily crush opposition forces. No one will miss Bashar al-Assad, and watching Syrian celebrate his fall feels long overdue. However, it is important to temper our expectations with the reality that post-conflict states face serious challenges and risks, and al-Assad’s fall leaves a vacuum which is likely going to be met with conflicting interests that threaten the prospects for a stable and democratic Syria.

Syria broke out in civil war in 2011 during the Arab Spring, a moment in history characterized by a series of popular uprising across Africa and the Middle East. Several countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya experienced strong anti-government protests that often led to military conflict and/or overturned the government. Unlike other governments who buckled under the pressure of protests, the al-Assad regime hung on to power. The U.S. and other western countries intervened in support of rebel groups like the Free Syrian Army in order to shift the balance of power. However, al-Assad maintained his grip on power through his allied support with Russia and Iran. Additionally, western support for the rebels began to fade as the rise of ISIS shifted America’s focus more towards preventing the threat of terror in the region. As al-Assad clung on to power throughout the war, it seemed that al-Assad won.

However, the balance of power quickly shifted as Syria’s allies found themselves embroiled in other conflicts. Resources and support from Russia began to dry up as it became preoccupied with its incursion into Ukraine. Recognizing how dependent al-Assad was on Russia, Russian agents even told al-Assad to leave the country and offered asylum. At the same time, Syria dependence on Iran and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon began to wane as Israel intensified its military campaign after Oct 7^th 2023. In fact, Iran and Israel have been fighting a shadow war for over a decade, and Israel’s recent assassinations of Iranian generals has weakened the country. Compounding the situation was the Syrian army’s low morale due to economic decline and a lack of trust in institutions. In fact, large portions of the military began to defect to Iraq when fighting started again. These conditions shifted the balance of power and created the conditions for rebel groups to drive al-Assad out of office on dec 8^th.

The Challenge of Stability in Post-conflict Countries

The question as to what happens in a post-al-Assad Syria has no clear answers, but it is important to approach such questions recognizing that the fall of a strong-man leader in the region rarely leads to democratic stability. One has only to recall how the Arab Spring driven by democratic aspirations generally failed to produce new stable democracies (even the democratic nature of Tunisia raises questions). For example, consider the Egyptian revolution against Hosni Mubarak that began in January of 2011. Mubarak’s thirty-year rule over Egypt was marked by corruption and a paranoid police state. Massive protests, with the backing of Egypt’s military, were able to oust Mubarak in February the same year. However, the same parts of the military that supported the uprising – and led by army General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – launched a coup against the next government and suspended the constitution. Al-Sisi still controls Egypt today.

The Yemen pro-democracy protests in 2011 serve as another example. Protesters received backing from the military shortly after they started. Violence broke out during the conflict and injured President Ali Abdullah Saleh. He left the country but returned only four months later. Upon his return, he signed an agreement to a transfer power to vice president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. As the only candidate during the presidential election of 2012, Hadi was unable to gain the popularity needed to govern and faced civil war in 2014. Since then, the country has been embroiled in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Some may argue that American support may provide the aid necessary to ensure stability. However, western interventions tend to exacerbate the problem they aim to address. Consider the pro-democracy protests that broke out in Libya against Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011. Like other countries during the Arab Spring, this quickly escalated into armed conflict. NATO intervention led by France and the U.S. shifted the balance of power to the rebels who eventually captured and killed Qaddafi. However, removing him from power did not end the conflict. Rather it evolved into an extra-territorial battlefield where foreign powers vie for control. To make matters worse, among the din of fighting as been an explosion of fundamentalist groups each pursuing their own political agenda.

Other Challenges Facing Syria

One of the factors that makes Syria so complex is its diverse population which, due to the civil war, has become more fragmented along the lines of different loyalties to rivalry groups. Changes in power dynamics may exacerbate hostilities and threaten the prospect of stability. For instance, Alawites comprised a minority in Syria but still held more power in the military than the Sunni majority. Tensions towards them may increase as Islamist military groups gain more control. Making things more complicated is how foreign powers have often exploited sectarian divisions for their own political purposes. Groups fighting for power in Syria include Iranian-backed Shia militants, U.S. supported Kurdish forces, Turky’s trained Sunni militants, etc. These existing sectarian divisions provide the very conditions that extremist groups exploit, and they may do just that to capitalize off of al-Assad’s fall. This is essentially what happened in 2014 when ISIS took control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq due to political and ethnic differences in these countries.

Adding to the uncertainty is the unknown intentions of the groups on the rise. Many of the groups that drove al-Assad out are not the same groups the US has supported such as the Free Syrian Army. In fact, the FSA was never really as politically united as we assumed. The only thing uniting them was their opposition to al-Assad, but we at least knew they had no unified religious mission. However, the enduring nature of this protracted conflict has given rise to more radical forces, such as the Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The HTS is a coalition of Islamist militant groups born from Jabhat al-Nusrah, a branch of militants affiliated with al-Qaeda. In fact, the ISIS leader Abu Baqar al-Baghdadi sent fighters into Syria in 2014 including al-Jolani, the current leader of HTS. Back then Jolani formed Nusra Front, which originally identified as the ISIS front in Syria, through which ISIS formed the “caliphate” stretching across Iraq and Syria. Jolani pledges to be a moderate, but history tells another story.

Complicating matters is the fact that Syria has always played a strategic position in international affairs, and foreign players will try exploit the situation in Syria for their own gain. The clearest example of this is Israel which has already carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria and seized large portions of the Golan Heights. On another front, Turkey is likely to become more involved in Syria, especially if the HTS becomes more politically powerful. While they consider the HTS a terrorist organization, they are more likely to turn their focus on Kurdish fighters in the north, which the HTS may likely target as well. Of course, the bigger picture situates the history of Syria in a larger post-Cold War strategy. Syria played a crucial role in Russian backed regimes in the middle east. It is likely that the U.S. will involve itself more in the politics of Syria’s rebuilding which will likely fuel rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Those tensions turned Syria into a proxy war between the two global powers in the past. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.

Looking Forward

There is a lot that can go wrong, but this does not mean that Syria’s uncertain future will result in failure. What we do know is that the ability of post-conflict states to democratize depends on both domestic and foreign power players. On one level, Syria will need to restore its territorial integrity, and this requires regional powers to sacrifice their own nationalist aims and cooperate to establish Syrian autonomy. Additionally, rival groups in Syria will need to put aside their own agenda and work together and include the Syrian people in drawing up a new social contract that provides security, democracy, and economic opportunity.

It is important to remember that most of the hard-work needs to be done by the Syrians themselves. This is an especially important point for western forces to remember. There are already calls for the U.S. to play a major role in the rebuilding of Syria. Some are even framing the necessity of U.S. intervention in terms of how it will serve American interests. This is a recipe for disaster, and western countries should remember their failures at nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade. Given the delicate web of interests in the region, Western countries should limit their part to playing a strictly supportive role. Only the Syrians know their politics well enough to rebuilt their country.