The fall of Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria marks the end of a political cycle lasting more than 50 years and represents a paradigm shift for the entire geopolitics of the Middle East. However, the consequences and ultimate causes of this transformation are still far from being known, nor is it known whether it will bring peace, war or freedom, analysts said.
The many external and internal factors, tensions and distensions, alliances and counter-alliances that kept the Syrian government in a weak position have been dismantled, and few predictions can be made except that Israel is the main strategic beneficiary, that Turkey is gaining a great deal of influence in the country, and that Iran is the big loser in this game.
But questions now remain about what role will be played by the Levant Liberation Organization (Hayat Tahrir al Sham, HTS), a direct descendant of al-Qaeda which, while it has tried to reform its image towards more moderate positions under leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who preached tolerance during the 12-day offensive that ended the Damascus government, still has much to prove.
It also remains to be seen what will happen with the Syrian Kurds, enemies of Türkiye, allies of the United States and whose relative independence of action could be a thorn in the side of any regional arrangement.
Major event
“The collapse of the Assad regime is a major event for the region and especially for the Syrian people (…) but its outcome will depend on what regime is built now. Ordinary Syrians have little appetite for a centralist despotic government, so it will have to be a system that accepts the political aspirations of various sectors of Syrian society,” Sean Lee, professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, summed up.
Lee, whose work focuses on the plight of minorities in the Middle East, stressed that the task now to achieve such an outcome will have to take into account “not only the core of the opposition support” that has toppled Assad – ostensibly the Islamists of HTS, the Kurds of the northeast, the Alawite supporters of Assad on the coast or the Druze of Al Sueida.
“It will take a long time for Syria to regain some sovereignty after more than a decade of war, and there will be a continuous give-and-take for influence in fragmented Syria. Only time will tell if HTS and its allies really live up to their claims about building a free Syria,” he reasoned.
Something more than a stampede
Luciano Zaccara, a research professor at the Center for Gulf Studies at Qatar University in Doha, said that until it is known “what has been negotiated, because it has obviously been negotiated,” it is not possible to predict what will happen, except that there will be a period of “greater instability.”
For Zaccara, "the Syrian army's disbandment, and the fact that neither Iran nor Russia have done everything they could to prevent it... perhaps even with the arrival of Trump (Donald, to the US presidency) something has been negotiated with Iran to guarantee something in exchange for this fall...", make one think that something was negotiated between regional and global powers.
What is clear to the analyst is that “the Assad regime was very weakened, for many years,” supported only by Russia and Iran with an agreement in 2020 “to maintain the status quo and avoid further bloodshed.”
“But the regime was weaker than expected and, given the situation that is developing throughout the Middle East, there were not many other options to stay in power. Al Assad's strength was his allies, but they are all very weakened, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah… There were no resources,” he said.
And without outside resources, the downfall was evident even to Assad himself, leading to his flight from the country.
Lee also supports this position, since “in reality, the offensive only pushed open an already open door” of the “empty shell of a State.”
“Ankara may gain a regional advantage in this new Syria, but everything depends on what is built,” he insisted. EFE