As terrorist forces overthrow Syrian government, Israel invades and U.S. holds onto oil

Many Syrians are celebrating the fall of the al-Assad government, but instability awaits and there are questions about how social and religious minorities will fare now that the secular state is gone and Islamist rebels take charge. | Ugur Yildirim / Dia Photo via AP

On Sunday, Dec. 8 – after over a week of intense fighting between the Syrian government and the terrorist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allied factions, who gained control over key cities in the country – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled Syria. The news was announced by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which also informed that with his resignation al-Assad instructed his prime minister to stay in charge of the state to oversee a peaceful transition of power to opposition forces. 

The development happens 14 months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza and weeks after Benjamin Netanyahu signed a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Below are reflections from Vijay Prashad regarding the takeover and key elements to understand it.

1. The Syrian state that fell this weekend had been devastated – first by the civil war which began 2011 and then by the sanctions placed on the country by the United States and its allies in the years since. The Syrian Arab Army (the official state army) never fully recovered in the aftermath of the major fighting of that earlier period and was incapable of ever taking back the main cities of Hama, Homs, and Aleppo.
2. The continued Israeli bombardment of Syrian military facilities over a long period further weakened the Syrian armed forces’ logistical and ordinance capabilities. These attacks were sustained and painful for the Syrian armed forces.

   

3. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah over the last several months weakened the ability of Hezbollah to operate even within Lebanon’s south, which forced the recent “ceasefire” agreement with Israel. This demonstrated that Hezbollah was not in any position to enter Syria again to defend the Syrian government against any armed incursion on the Hama to Damascus road (Highway M5).
4. The attacks on Iranian supply depots and military facilities in Syria as well as the attacks by Israel on Iran prevented any build-up of Iranian forces to defend the Syrian government. The weakening of Hezbollah also in turn meant a weakening of Iran’s role in the region.
5. The nearly three years of conflict in Ukraine denied Syria the ability to call upon further assistance from Russia – which has been providing military aid to the al-Assad government for years – to protect either Damascus or the Russian naval base in Latakia.
6. Therefore, Syria’s government no longer had its Iranian and Russian military allies for assistance against the reinforced rebels.
7. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formed in 2017 out of existing al-Qaeda terrorist formations, drew together various military forces, ranging from Turkey to the Uyghurs – with a large number of other al-Qaeda-influenced fighters – and built up its forces in Idlib over the past decade. HTS has received aid and support from Turkey but also covertly from Israel, according to a highly-placed intelligence official in Turkey.
8. Now that the secular al-Assad government is gone, what will the new HTS-led Islamist government do regarding the many social and religious minorities in Syria? What will the new HTS-led government do regarding Syria’s Golan Heights region, which Israel invaded and occupied Sunday? How will the new government do regarding the Israeli military incursion in Quneitra?

   

9. This story is not over yet. There will be much further unrest in the country led by ISIS as well as the Kurdish groups in the north; already Turkish-backed groups are in combat against the Kurdish YPG (People’s Defense Units) and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) forces in Manbij.

U.S. forces are already stationed in eastern Syria, where they say that they will remain as a “buffer” against ISIS – and importantly, will therefore retain control of much of Syria’s oil.

Israel, meanwhile, now has its troops in control of the buffer zone in Syria’s Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. There will be tension between the governments of Turkey and the U.S. regarding what the new HTS-led government must, and must not do.

10. I hope very much that the statements made by the HTS Islamist leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, that retribution must not be the new culture, will come true. The real fear remains, however, as to how whatever new government emerges will treat the minority populations. There is also no word yet if the militia groups in Iraq will enter Syria. Much of this depends on what happens to places such as the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Damascus.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi).