Chaos wins again in the Middle East.
Sometimes revolutions and uprisings play out as extended battles. Other times the collapse is near instantaneous because the army simply won’t fight. That’s what happened during the original ISIS onslaught, the fall of Afghanistan and now the fall of Syria.
Regime loyalists insist that the Syrian army was bought off. Perhaps the Turks and whatever other interests were behind this ‘uprising’ spread some money around.
But more likely there wasn’t much of a Syrian army left.
The Syrian army had been notorious for its cruelty and ruthlessness. While the Egyptians had larger troop numbers and the Jordanians had better professionalism, Israeli soldiers of a certain era tended to remember the viciousness of the Syrians. The Assad family had withstood multiple Sunni Islamist rebellions through sheer brutality. But by 2024, there was not much of that army left.
The Syrian Civil War had turned Syria into a puppet regime controlled by Iran and Russia. Neither side wanted much of a Syrian military. Assad Jr was, like many nepo baby dictators in the region, a weak leader with no real idea of how to rebuild Syria. Hezbollah and the Russians had saved him during the civil war. But it took a lot of bleeding to do it. And after Hezbollah’s war with Israel, it lacked the momentum or manpower to do it. Iran seemed hesitant and indecisive. And the Russians tried to bring some airpower in but not enough to make a significant difference.
Trump may have been the X factor hanging over this as well. While he indicated that he didn’t want America involved in the civil war, some of the pro-Assad players may have hesitated to get involved in a long-term conflict with an unpredictable administration coming into office.
Either way, the Assad family seems to be done. What happens to Syria may however prove more complicated. Post-fall, Syria is likely to follow demographic trends and that means the Alawite minority isn’t likely to run the place ever again. But there will be multiple factions in play.
Turkey would love to dominate Syria, but right now every state in the region is likely to back different factions and Istanbul is more obsessed with wiping out the Kurds than trying to herd all the goats.
Some sort of coalition may form or it may devolve into a full-on civil war or quite possibly some combination of the two. The one thing the Middle East isn’t known for is stability.
Chaos is the one thing you can bet on in the Middle East.
rick says
Correct about the brutality of the Syrian army. But the Assad regimes were brutal to their own army as well. In the 1967 war, Israel captured the Golan Heights long a Syrian target practice location on Israelis below. The IDF had to climb up the rock walls of Golan and attack the Syrians inside their fortified gun firing caves. What do you think Israeli troops discovered while doing that? Assad had chained Syrian troops to their weapons so they had to fight and could not run away. What army chains its soldiers to their tanks and artillery? Syria did. There could be others but we had the proof from Israeli soldiers who braved the assault on these chained Syrian soldiers.
Kosh's Shadow says
Chaos is the result when tribal boundaries are ignored when creating colonial countries. Picot-Sykes strikes again.
PMK says
The Syrian people may be happy to see Assad go, but what will life be like under the ‘rebels’. They are Islamists with roots in al Qaeda and their leader praised 9/11. Like Iran after the Shah, will the Syrian cure be worse than the disease?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Better comparisons: Iraq after Saddam, Libya after Gadaffi, Egypt after Mubarak
ConcernedReader says
Syria was not able to access its most crucial resource regarding finances. A way to rebuild the country. Their oil fields.
Because those oil fields are occupied by US troops. Since at least 2019/2020.
I have no clue why but this very important thing is left out from almost every article that writes about the Syrian islamist takeover. Even when they mention all the different groups there, for some reason the oil fields being occupied and controlled by the US is left out. Completely.
Which can be considered a war crime or pillage. Also not sure if the US and Syria are officially engaged in a war. As the US just intervened, just like it enacted the famously well went Arab Spring initiative.
I am no fan of the Assad regime, however it is a bit strange to expect a “dictator” to rebuild his armies, his country, when his arms are tied behind his back. His most precious source of income taken away by foreign powers, which he could have used to rebuild the army and the country and to pay the army. Strange is it not?
One source, but you can check multiple ones: Baldor, Lolita (6 November 2019). “Trump OKs wider Syria oil mission, raising legal questions”. AP News.
So what happened here, was that Assad and his regime was bled dry, and the islamists were given the A-Ok to attack, after being prepared/trained for months and supplied by weapons.
And most likely by most of those folks who are currently “observing the situtation”.
(I would say we can safely assume that most of this was staged by the CIA and turkish similar agencies, most likely also Israel’s involvement, though i think the latter was more in a cannot be left out if the other two already push the go button. Better to be among the shapers than those that have to follow.)
What I am expecting though is, that the CIA as usual managed to make things worse. Because they never focus on mid or long term consequences only on short term.
So what will happen is likely we get another non-functional country, of which certain parts slowly get annexed by the neighbours, the rest become terrorist nests, and constant warring among themselves. The usual ethnical, religious cleansing that happened during ISIS, and eventually one big terrorist organization taking control.
Gotta also love all those braindead eurocrats congratulating the islamists taking over a previously secular dictatorship. It always worked out so well. Welcome to Sunni “Iran”.
Tony says
No, Daniel, not chaos. This is a characteristic of treacherous Islam and its murderous Muslims. Islam requires totalitarian power and control to maintain some order in a society. Islam is a deceitful, totalitarian, terrorist, pedophilic Criminal Gang Enterprise against all Non-Muslims by using discrimination, deceit, rape, hatred, and violence to gain ultimate power and control as taught in Islamic Law and in Islam’s Quran. Moreover, Islam’s supremacist-genocidal Ideology, its tyrannical Muslims, its propaganda Schools, its foreign terrorist Organizations, and its ‘Convert-or-Die’ Mosques fund, teach, inspire, and promote ‘Threats and Incitement of Violence’ as well as never-ending terrorism, loathing, and segregation against women, children, and all Non-Muslims(eg. Quran 2:191-3; 4:89,100; 5:82; 8:65; 9:5,14-15,29; 33:26; 47:4; 65:4; 98:6-7 and more).
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Yeah, Syria has become a battlefield. The shi’a forces may have lost – the Iranians have filed and Hizbullah is busy getting destroyed in Lebanon, but now, it’s a Turkish attempt to take over, vs local Arabs. This is Turkey’s next step at regaining their Ottoman empire
It will be fascinating to see how this one evolves. Maybe Turkey can import fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to do its bidding