What's with Syria"
A rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has taken Aleppo, Hamas and is now on the outskirts of Homs. It seems this group had previously had connections with Al Qaeda but has disavowed any current relationship. The American supported Kurds have also taken Deir Ezzor in the eastern desert.
It seems the Syrian army is demoralized and not putting up a fight. I think the Russians have a military base outside of Homs. That may be threatened
In the past, Assad has had support from Hezbollah, Russia and Iran, but Israel has decimated Hezbollah, and apparently weakened Iran. Russia has given some air support, but it also cannot fight two wars simultaneously.
Who is supporting HTS?
Will Assad fall?
Will we have another theocracy to contend with, if the HTS is successful?
It seems the Syrian army is demoralized and not putting up a fight. I think the Russians have a military base outside of Homs. That may be threatened
In the past, Assad has had support from Hezbollah, Russia and Iran, but Israel has decimated Hezbollah, and apparently weakened Iran. Russia has given some air support, but it also cannot fight two wars simultaneously.
Who is supporting HTS?
Will Assad fall?
Will we have another theocracy to contend with, if the HTS is successful?
Comments
Two Syrian bishops were captured early in the civil war and not been heard of since. Various monks and nuns were also taken prisoner and are presumed dead.
Assad is a dictator and a bad egg but has enjoyed Christian support because he has been relatively tolerant in matters of religion. The Al Queda links/origins of the main rebel group has been reported and although the rebels are playing that down, I don't see any evidence that they'll act any differently if they succeed in toppling Assad.
Russia has backed Assad of course, and very brutally too. It looks like they are sending more drones and munitions but are not really in a position to deploy additional troops.
Syrian Christians and other religious minorities are very, very worried indeed.
It's always been messy. It could get messier yet.
BBC
Russia better do something or it will lose its only Mediterranean port.
This presages a massive tilt to Sunni Islam in the Middle East, driven by global warming.
Probably. His family is reportedly already in Russia. [ paywall ] The Russians are reportedly moving their ships out of their naval base at Tartus. Various commanders in Iran's Quds Force have been evacuated from Syria. [ also paywall ] It's starting to have a rats fleeing a sinking ship feeling.
You don’t have to be a close and attentive fan of the works of John Le Carre to come up with about 17 mutually contradictory answers to that…
Which is good for Israel of course...
Agreed. Can the factions form a parliament, if that's what one can call a gathering of unelected leaders? A council. What kind of urban local government does Syria have?
After however many years of nasty civil war who knows (though I’d suggest that where the Assad regime’s writ still ran until this week it was probably pretty functional).
Syria, like Iraq, were completely functioning states - keep your head down, don’t criticise the regime, try not to end up in one of their police stations or prisons and you’d have a pretty normal western style life.
None of that is an endorsement of dictatorship obviously but Syria was by regional standards a pretty western style (albeit non-democratic) state*
So urban local government was IIRC up to the war present, self-sustaining and effective.
Having worked alongside a lot of people from various Middle Eastern states in the 2000s if forced to actually live in the Middle East - again not endorsing the regime or the brutality below the surface - Syria would have been pretty high up my list of choices.
Ahead of Saudi, below Jordan.
Well I’m not sure your final sentence follows from your question (at all)…
Syria was (probably still is even now) streets ahead of Libya. Think more Zimbabwe as a comparison. Dreadful regime, very much functioning state.
But all that as I say was before the war started.
13 years ago, yes. Sharia: How actually socially conservative are the faction leaders? Global warming drove reactionary peasants off the land in to the cities back then. Their freedom is like libertarians. Only for them.
Regardless, a functional Syrian Sunni Arab state cannot be good news for Israel. Apart from cutting off an Iranian proxy.
In the short term this boots the Russians and the Iranians out of Syria.
Israel are probably quite happy (though wondering what comes next).
Depends whose creature the rebels are. If this has got Turkey behind it then who knows - historically Israel and Turkey have been very close, more recently much less so. But from Israel’s pov a Turkish backed regime would at least have the value of them knowing what they’re dealing with
They are unlikely to want a strong Syrian state of any stripe. Even a democratic state will - rightly - demand the Golan Heights back - and there's the small matter of their recent invasion to create a 'buffer zone'.
Talking to female refugees, one of the issues they have is hijab as they have to wear it here. Pre-war, girls wore hijab to school, much as we would wear a coat. Once inside their all-female school they took it off. I've seen photos of one of our refugees with her friends at school, teenage girls in skinny jeans, short skirts, pretty tops, sparkly sandals. Schools here are mixed sex so teenage girls wear hijab all day.
Generally speaking, the Syrian refugees here who have navigated the UNHCR scheme are well-educated and able to navigate bureaucracy, so possibly not "average" Syrians. But the photos I have seen, and indeed the ease with which they have integrated, suggests that they had what betjemaniac describes as "a pretty normal western style life."
There is a report that a Syrian plane has disappeared over Hom. It took off from Damascus just as the rebels entered the city. It was headed toward the coast, then did an abrupt turn and disappeared later. There is no way of knowing if Assad was on that plane at this time.
That's not to say, of course, that their fears will be realised but as the BBC's Jeremy Bowen said on Radio 4, if a dictator keeps a heel on a nation's throat for long enough, all sorts of things can kick-off once the boot has been removed.
There are plenty of competing factions and so lots of scope for this to go horribly, horribly wrong. We need to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
The best case scenario is that the rebels really have disavowed their very radical Islamist/Al Qaeda roots and see the need for pluralism - or that returning refugees and those who remained throughout the hellish civil war, the Syrian people are very resilient - will create the conditions for that.
The worst is that the whole things descends into further chaos as rival factions jostle for position, or that Islamist extremists start rounding up Alawites, Christians and other minorities.
To go back to this; possibly, but it's equally likely that this was the result of some three way dealing between Russia, Iran and Turkey (HTS is relatively small, and its notable that the iranian backed PMUs were nowhere to be seen - as they have been previously).
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Regime collapse, like Hemmingway's statement on bankruptcy, usually happens two ways: gradually, then suddenly. This may have been a cascade of one party deciding not to put more resources into what they finally decided was a failing enterprise, which led to others making the same decision, with everyone eventually scrambling for the exits.
I have not seen the BBC report about Assad being in Russia. I have seen reports the Russian media is saying he is in Russia. Until he appears on video, we will not know for sure.
Apparently, Russia is also saying Assad made a deal that their basis would be safe and he allowed for the peaceful transition of his government.
Something tells me they are trying to save face.
Trump may not want us to be there, but we are at least for the next few weeks.
Sunni majority Ahmed al-Sharaa has to be all things to all men and will have more success than his former Iraqi Sunni minority boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The Syrian people?
One can hope, but it's far from certain.
Air travel in Russia is notoriously accident prone. And of course there is that ongoing defenestration epidemic.
If part of the price for Russia maintaining that base is the return of Assad to face trial in Syria I doubt his claim for asylum would mean very much to Putin. But, until things settle down in Syria and that issue comes onto the table Putin will probably see the value in keeping a bargaining chip alive. So, he's probably safe to stand near windows for the time being.
From The Economist: "Some prisoners, now freed by the victorious rebels, are so traumatised they have forgotten their own names".
All depends on how many billions he managed to deposit in Sberbank.
Not sure what Ukraine’s ability to project power into hostile third countries out of domestic theatre is like at the moment TBH