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.
{Reposted from FrontPageMag}
