Outside the Beltway

Fighting to Control Syria

The fall of the Assad regime is the end of the beginning.

James Joyner · Wednesday, December 11, 2024 · 10 comments

The rebel faction in control of Demasus thinks it’s in charge. Other rebel forces, Israel, Turkey, and the United States have other ideas.

WaPo (“Syrian rebel forces fight to consolidate control; Israel expands strikes“):

The Syrian rebel coalition that ousted Bashar al-Assad, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), said Wednesday that it had further consolidated control over the country’s east as it seeks to build a new political order in the country.

Mohammed al-Bashir, who previously led the HTS-backed governing body in Syria’s Idlib province, said he will serve as Syria’s caretaker prime minister until March, with the backing of the rebel coalition. Bashir told Al Jazeera it was time for “stability and calm.”

Rebel forces claimed Wednesday that they had taken control of Deir al-Zour, the largest city in Syria’s east. The Washington Post could not immediately verify the claim. Rebels have since Sunday controlled the capital, Damascus, where they now seek to bring a sense of stability to rattled residents.

Israel expanded aerial attacks across Syria after Assad’s fall, saying Tuesday that it had launched 350 airstrikes on the country since Sunday, destroying missiles and weapons sites, and effectively eliminating the Syrian navy.

Israeli officials have described the strikes as a measure to prevent Syrian weapons from falling into the wrong hands and to protect Israel from a future attack, rather than responding to an immediate threat.

NYT (“In Aleppo, Rebels Give a Sense of What May Come in Syria“):

The rebels who are now Syria’s de facto rulers have started to make their mark on the country’s government.

They took control of Aleppo just two weeks ago, but already police officers are in the streets sporting new uniforms, administrators are busy in the halls of government and there are posters on lampposts with QR codes directing people to updates on government policy.

Gone are the ubiquitous photos of President Bashar al-Assad, whose visage, like that of his father before him, had dominated the city. The Assad regime controlled the country for decades, then crumbled in a matter of days.

It has been replaced by an array of rebel factions led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that has tried to gain international legitimacy while also being criticized for its authoritarian tactics. The group, which has controlled most of the northwestern province of Idlib for years, supports a conservative and at times hard-line Sunni Islamist ideology.

With all eyes on the rebels’ plans for the future, Aleppo offers early hints on how the group might approach governance — at least in the immediate future. In a country that has been deeply divided by 13 years of civil war, the group is vowing to maintain security and continuity, aiming to avoid the kind of power vacuum that has followed other Arab revolutions or regime changes.

[…]

The rebels took over much of the city on Nov. 27, the first in a series of fast-falling dominoes that led to the takeover of Damascus, the capital, on Sunday. After capturing Aleppo, the fighters moved on, leaving the city in the hands of its bureaucrats to preserve government institutions, said Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, until recently known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

In a sign of rebel efforts to show the country that it is in capable hands, the interim government on Tuesday appointed Mohammed al-Bashir as the new prime minister. Mr. al-Bashir previously served as the head of the rebel-run administration in northwestern Syria.

In Aleppo, new billboards have quickly appeared. On one, the new Syrian justice minister, Shadi Muhammad al-Waisi, proclaimed that the era of oppression was over. Once Syria’s commercial hub, Aleppo’s factories and businesses were largely damaged or destroyed during the civil war. “Justice and equality are the rulers after today,” the billboard read.

Another billboard featured the finance minister: “Be assured people of Aleppo,” the banner reads, “your property and your money are protected.”

Reuters (“Israel says its air strikes destroyed most of Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles“):

Israel aims to impose a “sterile defence zone” in southern Syria that would be enforced without a permanent troop presence, Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday, as the military said a wave of air strikes had destroyed the bulk of Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles.

Over the past 48 hours, following the collapse of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the military said jets had conducted more than 350 strikes on targets including anti-aircraft batteries, military airfields, weapons production sites, combat aircraft and missiles.

[…]

Israel, which has just agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon following weeks of fighting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, calls the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure to ensure border security.

But the scale of the Israeli strikes echoed a similar wave of attacks in southern Lebanon in September that destroyed a significant quantity of Hezbollah’s missile stocks.

According to the Israeli military the strikes hit most of the strategic weapons stockpiles in Syria as well as production sites in the cities of Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia and Palmyra. Scud and cruise missiles as well as sea-to-sea missiles, drones, launchers and firing positions were destroyed, it said in a statement.

Strikes against military airfields and bases also destroyed Syrian military attack helicopters, fighter jets and tanks.

WSJ (“Israeli Strikes Hit Syria’s Navy, Military Arsenals“):

Israel has targeted hundreds of Syria’s naval and other military assets in the past two days as part of its campaign to destroy weapons left behind by the country’s military following the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli missile ships destroyed naval vessels belonging to Assad’s forces that held dozens of sea-to-sea missiles with heavy payloads capable of striking up to 120 miles, Israel’s military said. The strikes happened in the port area of Latakia and El Beida bay, and were intended to prevent the weapons from falling into the hands of rebels who could eventually use them against Israel, it said.

The military said it had struck about 500 Syrian military targets in the past two days and destroyed most of the Assad regime’s stockpiles of missiles and other strategic weapons.

“I authorized the Air Force to bomb strategic military capabilities left behind by the Syrian army, so that they would not fall into the hands of the jihadists,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

Netanyahu said Israel wants to establish a relationship with Syria’s new rulers, but also issued a warning against taking actions that Israel would regard as a threat.

“We want relations with the new regime in Syria,” he said. “But if this regime allows Iran to re-establish itself in Syria, or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to Hezbollah, or attacks us—we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price from it.”

[…]

Israel has said that it isn’t intervening in Syria’s internal power struggle, but instead is focusing its efforts on eliminating threats to its security. Netanyahu has said that the 1974 Israel-Syria agreement establishing the buffer zone collapsed after Syria’s military abandoned its posts and new forces that might not recognize the agreement took control of the country.

John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, said Israel’s strikes were aimed at neutralizing what it views as security threats. “We certainly recognize that they live in a tough neighborhood and that they have, as always, the right to defend themselves,” he told reporters Tuesday.

[…]

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the assault against the Assad regime and is now working to set up an interim government, hasn’t publicly commented on Israel’s strikes on Syrian military assets or the presence of Israeli troops in the buffer zone within the Golan heights.

It is unclear whether new forces controlling Syria will accept Israeli control of the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau Israel took from Syria in a 1967 war. Israel has since settled it with civilian communities. Syria used the high ground of the Golan to shell Israeli communities before Israel took control of the territory.

In a press conference on Monday, Netanyahu vowed that Israel wouldn’t relinquish its control of the territory.

“Our control on the Golan Heights ensures our security; it ensures our sovereignty,” Netanyahu said. “The Golan Heights will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever.”

Israel annexed its part of the Golan Heights in 1981, but the move hasn’t been recognized by most of the international community. President Trump recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019 and the Biden administration hasn’t changed from that position.

NYT (“With Syria in Flux, Turkish Forces Attack U.S.-Backed Forces“):

The Turkish military fired on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria this weekend, a war monitoring group and a spokesman for the Kurdish group said on Sunday, illuminating the tangle of competing interests and alliances in Syria in the wake of the government’s collapse.

Fighting erupted on Saturday in Manbij, a Kurdish-controlled city near Syria’s border with Turkey, between rebel groups, one backed by the United States and the other by Turkey. At least 22 members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in and around Manbij, and 40 others were wounded, according to the Kurdish group.

The clashes preceded a call on Sunday between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Yasar Guler.

The other fighters, the Syrian National Army, were supported in their assault of Manbij by Turkish air power, including warplanes, according to a spokesmen for the Syrian Democratic Forces. And a Turkish “kamikaze drone” exploded at a Kurdish military base on Saturday, according to the monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

[…]

In their call on Sunday, Mr. Austin and Mr. Guler agreed that coordination was necessary “to prevent further escalation of an already volatile situation, as well as to avoid any risk to U.S. forces and partners,” according a readout of the conversation released by the Pentagon. The United States also acknowledged Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns.”

The Kurds have been instrumental partners for the United States in fighting the Islamic State, an Islamist terrorist group that rose to power early in Syria’s civil war, more than a decade ago.

The Kurds now control much of Syria’s northeast under an autonomous civil administration. About 900 U.S. troops are deployed to Syria to support the Kurdish forces. American forces have patrolled around Manbij with Turkey in the past, but it was not immediately clear if any U.S. troops were in the city this weekend during the Turkish bombardment.

On Sunday, the United States announced it had conducted one of the largest strikes against Islamic State targets in months.

Turkey views armed Kurds so close to its border as a threat. For decades Turkey has fought Kurdish separatists, who seek to carve out an independent country.

Turkey has backed several rebel groups in Syria, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group of seemingly reformed Al Qaeda members whose lightning-fast push to Damascus toppled the authoritarian government on Sunday. Turkey also has backed the Syrian National Army, a ragtag force made up of mercenaries and criminals, to help maintain a buffer zone along its border with Syria to guard against the activities of Kurdish militants.

Turkey and its proxies in the S.N.A. “are looking to utilize the current chaos to rewrite the map in Turkey’s favor,” said Devorah Margolin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They are using the distraction of Damascus to continue to grab power during this time of chaos and to undermine the S.D.F., ensuring its negotiating power is weakened.”

The power vacuum created by the fall of Damascus presents an opportunity for Turkey to increase its power and influence in Syria generally but particularly along its border, said Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Economist (“As Syria’s regime collapses, Erdogan eyes victory over the Kurds“):

FOR ALMOST a decade, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having given up hope of regime change in Syria, focused instead on keeping the country’s Kurdish minority in check. Over and over, he asked America to break with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the predominantly Kurdish militia that helped America defeat Islamic State (IS), withdraw American troops from Syria’s north-east, and outsource security in the region to Turkey and its proxies. Turkey’s leader will probably make Donald Trump, the incoming American president, a similar offer. But the collapse of Syria’s regime means he may also present Mr Trump with a fait accompli.

Like most Syrians, the Kurds are celebrating the end of Bashar al-Assad’s murderous reign. But their dream of autonomy is starting to fade, and fast. Already, the SDF has come under attack by the rebel Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish proxy (and an enemy of Mr Assad and his government). On December 1st the SNA seized Tel Rifaat, a town close to the Turkish border, which had been under Kurdish control. A week later, its fighters took Manbij, another SDF stronghold. They now appear to be marching on Kobane, which the Kurds saved from an IS onslaught in 2015. Mr Erdogan had previously warned of a new Turkish offensive against the Kurds, designed to broaden the “safe zone” his troops have carved out in Syria. Through the SNA, he appears to have launched one already.

The offensive by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists and SNA fighters  against regime forces in northern Aleppo probably went ahead with Turkey’s approval. But Turkey could not have expected what would happen next, or hoped for a better outcome. Syria’s future is uncertain. More chaos, or even a new war, could be around the corner. But for now Mr Erdogan’s hand in Syria is stronger than ever.

For years, Turkey’s policy in Syria was hostage to Russia, whose control over swathes of Syria’s airspace gave it an effective veto over Turkish operations south of the border. Policymakers in Ankara dreaded the prospect of a Russian and regime offensive against Idlib, the province where HTS had been holed up since 2017. Such an attack would probably have propelled hundreds of thousands of Syrians, accompanied by armed radicals, into Turkey. That danger is now gone. Russia’s grip over Turkey has loosened as a result.

Princeton’s Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former high-level Iranian diplomat(“Syria after Assad: The winners for now are Turkey and the West“):

In the short term, Iran, Russia, Iraq and the Axis of Resistance will be the main losers from Assad’s downfall.

The collapse of the Assad government will be a major blow to the axis, weakening Iran’s geopolitical influence in the region.

Syria has been the only land route for the supply and transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, and cutting off this route not only creates a strategic challenge for Hezbollah but also weakens Iran’s leverage in the Palestinian issue.

Moreover, the potential spread of insecurity to Iraq and Iran – and the weakening of Iran’s diplomatic support – are significant consequences for Iran and the axis.

The fall of the Syrian government could also pose threats to Iraq’s security, both in terms of the Kurdish region and from the aspirations of extremist groups for Sunni-majority areas in the country, as well as the potential activation of IS sleeper cells.

In the short term, Israel might find an opportunity to further weaken Hezbollah and the axis in the entire region.

However, the activities of new Islamist armed groups at its borders, the rise of Islamist movements and the potential impact on Syria’s future stance on the Palestinian issue and the occupied Golan Heights could increase long-term national security threats for Israel.

In the short term, the US and the West will be winners because the fall of Assad will significantly reduce Russian and Iranian influence in the region.

However, the Islamist group that seized Damascus and toppled Assad, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was proscribed as a terror organisation by the UK in 2017 and the US in 2018 because of its links to al-Qaeda. HTS is led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (real name Ahmed al-Sharaa), who was designated a terrorist by the US in 2013.

It is uncertain how the collapse of Syria’s secular government and the rise of Islamists will impact the US’s long-term interests, with the differing perspectives between the US and Turkey on the Kurdish issue, the ambiguity surrounding the future actions of the opposition and the prospect of increasing instability in the region.

Turkey is the main winner. Ankara may hope to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey, exert more effective control over the Kurds and strengthen its role in the Palestinian issue, as well as cement alliances with like-minded groups in the region.

While Arab countries are also pleased with the reduction of Iran’s influence in Syria, the military operations of HTS and other militant groups were managed and organised by Turkey, all of which have an affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Several Arab countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, are opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideology. Therefore, Turkey’s power projection in the region and the Brotherhood’s potential future dominance in Syria could be perceived as a new threat by some Arab countries.

Regarding the political future of Syria, two scenarios can be imagined: a peaceful transition to a new system; or a Libyan and Sudanese-style outcome.

A peaceful transition could be achieved if the opposition continues with its moderate rhetoric and actions. However, it is composed of diverse and fragmented groups that have united solely to eliminate a common enemy.

Once this shared enemy is removed and the process of shaping the future begins, their differences will surface, and it remains uncertain how reconcilable these differences will be.

Even if there are no internal disagreements among the opposition, their conflicts with the Kurds and Turkey’s stance on this issue alone pose a major obstacle to establishing a consensus-based order. This could keep Syria in a prolonged political and security crisis, similar to Libya and Sudan.

Gonul Tol, director of the Turkish Program at the Middle East Institute, goes further (“How Turkey Won the Syrian Civil War“):

In most capitals across the Middle East, the news of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fall sparked immense anxiety. Ankara is not one of them. Rather than worrying about Syria’s prospects after more than a decade of conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees opportunity in a post-Assad future. His optimism is well founded: out of all the region’s major players, Ankara has the strongest channels of communication and history of working with the Islamist group now in charge in Damascus, positioning it to reap the benefits of the Assad regime’s demise.

Chief among the rebel forces that ended Assad’s rule on Sunday is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Muslim group that was previously affiliated with al Qaeda and is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the United Nations. Despite those designations, Turkey has provided indirect assistance to HTS. The Turkish military presence in the northwestern Syrian town of Idlib largely shielded the group from attacks by Syrian government forces, allowing it to run the province undisturbed for years. Turkey managed the flow of international aid into HTS-run areas, which increased the group’s legitimacy among locals. Trade across the Turkish border has provided HTS economic support, too.

[…]

Now, Assad is out of the picture altogether, and Erdogan is getting ready to cash in on his years-long investment in the Syrian opposition. Iran and Russia—Turkey’s main rivals in Syria—are chastened; a friendly government could soon be set up in Damascus, ready to welcome back refugees; and Assad’s departure could even open a window for remaining U.S. troops to depart, fulfilling a long-sought goal of Ankara’s. If it can avoid the potential dangers ahead, Turkey could end up a clear winner in Syria’s civil war.

Erdogan’s path to influence in Syria has been rocky. After the uprising in the country began in 2011, Ankara became a fervent supporter of the anti-Assad opposition, providing financial and military aid to rebel groups and even allowing them to use Turkish territory to organize and launch attacks. Ankara hoped that with an Islamist-run government in Damascus, Turkey’s regional clout would expand. But as the Syrian civil war dragged on, it created problems for Turkey. Ankara’s efforts to induce regime change strained its previously friendly ties with regional autocrats. It fell out with Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as with Assad’s most powerful backers, Iran and Russia. Such isolation led Ibrahim Kalin, at the time Erdogan’s chief policy adviser, to refer in 2013 to Turkey’s commitment to the Syrian opposition and the Islamist cause as a foreign policy of “precious loneliness.”

Critically, the Syrian conflict also turned Turkey’s already fraught relations with the United States into a strategic nightmare. The U.S. decision in 2014 to airdrop weapons to the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)—a group Ankara considers a terrorist organization—was a turning point in bilateral relations. From the United States’ perspective, support for the YPG became a strategic imperative after months of failed efforts to convince Turkey to do more to subdue the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). Washington, increasingly frustrated over Turkey’s seeming indifference to ISIS activities within its borders, saw no better option. Ankara, for its part, felt betrayed by its ally’s decision to arm its enemy.

[…]

Today, with Assad gone, this balance of power has rapidly shifted in Erdogan’s favor. Not only does Russia’s loss give Turkey freer rein in Syria, but it will also damage Moscow’s standing in other places where the two countries compete for influence. Africa is one such region. The intervention in Syria had helped Putin project an image of Russia as a great power and a reliable backer. He leveraged that reputation to cultivate close ties with African autocrats, particularly in the Sahel, while Turkey sought to position itself an alternative to Moscow. Assad’s collapse will tarnish Russia’s image and threaten its partnerships. And without a military footprint in Syria, Russia’s logistical support for its operations in Africa, particularly in Libya, will be compromised, potentially leaving a void that Turkey can fill.

Assad’s collapse will strengthen Turkey’s hand in relations with Iran, as well. The two countries have long been regional rivals. In Syria, Iranian-backed forces coordinated with the YPG in fighting ISIS, thus sidelining Turkish-backed forces in some areas. Iran-backed militias within the Popular Mobilization Forces, Iraq’s state-sponsored paramilitary units, have also complicated Turkey’s fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed separatist group active in Turkey that both Ankara and Washington have designated a terrorist organization, in northern Iraq. And in the South Caucasus, Ankara and Tehran have pursued conflicting agendas: Turkey has tightened its cooperation with Azerbaijan in ways that Iran sees as a threat, and Iran maintains friendly ties with Armenia, which has a contentious relationship with Turkey.

Mousavian’s dystopian Libya-like scenario strikes me as the most plausible.

Israel has taken reasonable (if entirely illegal) steps to reduce the risks of a powerful, Islamist threat on its border. The Syrian military has been largely taken off the board now, with its command and control facilities decimated and its navy and air force essentially destroyed. And, certainly, they’re unlikely to give up the Golan Heights.

Turkey has also certainly bolstered its position regionally. Not only are Russia and Iran seriously weakened but a hostile regime is now gone. But there are all manner of rebel groups still standing that have no love lost for the Islamist faction that now controls the capitol.

The incoming Trump administration is a wild card but we supported the PKK during his first term; it’s not obvious why they’d change course now.

All of this means that, while Assad is gone, I strongly suspect that the civil war is far from over. It just now takes on an entirely different shape since there is no powerful government with a well-armed military and backing by regional powers.