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Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Syria-When Hope Came To Town

When Hope Came to Town Syria World leaders assumed Syrian President Bashar Assad enjoyed the upper hand in the bloody civil war that erupted in 2011, and continued in fits and starts until settling into a deep freeze. After all, with Russian and Iranian help, the Syrian regime seemed to control most of the country. But as the world saw over the weekend, it was all an illusion, an image projected and then shattered as the curtain was pulled back. And that feat only took 11 days. On Nov. 27, rebel fighters led by former al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began their offensive to defeat Assad’s troops, capturing Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, then Hama, and then Homs. They faced half-hearted Russian airstrikes and some Iranian proxies – Hezbollah sent fighters no longer battling Israel. But it wasn’t enough. HTS entered the capital Damascus facing little resistance over the weekend as government soldiers melted away along with Assad’s allies. The intransigent, brutal leader was, in a last humiliation, forced to flee to Russia. And just like that, everything changed. Syrians poured into the streets of Syria crying and exclaiming, “Freedom,” while hoping for a new day. After all they had gone through for the past six decades of Assad family rule and its legacy of brutality and destruction, many still couldn’t process what happened, literally overnight. “I feel as if I am in a dream,” Fatimeh, from the opposition bastion of Idlib, told the Guardian as she made her way to Damascus. “I haven’t slept and I can’t absorb what’s happened.” Like Fatimeh, Syrians in Lebanon and elsewhere began crossing the border to return home after years in camps and diaspora communities – about 7 million fled Syria after 2011. Other forced transplants, in Kuala Lumpur, Berlin, Cairo, and elsewhere around the globe, poured out into the streets in joyous celebrations. In Damascus, after prison doors were shot open, videos showed freed prisoners, exhausted and stunned, stagger out into the night, unsure of what happened or what to do now. At the same time, family members began looking for their lost loved ones, the 100,000 people forcibly disappeared, some jailed for years or even decades, accused of crossing the regime. Mayasa Marie, 40, said she was looking for her husband, Mohammed, arrested for his anti-government activism 12 years ago. “My son and his uncle went to Sednaya (prison) immediately … but still they didn’t find anything,” she told the Washington Post. “We are finally free but I need my husband with us again.” Meanwhile, Iranian officials said that Assad was equally “stunned” at how his regime melted away. He shouldn’t have been, defense analyst Michael Clarke told Sky News, because “the army (was) in a complete state of collapse.” However, the signs of the regime’s deterioration were there, wrote World Politics Review. The country was barely holding on. Since 2011, more than 7 million Syrians were forced to flee their homes but remained in Syria, eking out an existence in cities and villages that have been reduced to rubble, even as the violence continued – from rebel groups, militants, and the regime. The country’s economy has plummeted since the revolution, crippled by sanctions and war, but it worsened over the past four years, Foreign Policy wrote. Inflation has been catastrophic for families while basic necessities often became scarce. More than 90 percent of Syrians now live in poverty. Assad, his family, and members of his regime, however, have been earning an estimated $2.4 billion annually from selling a synthetic stimulant, fenethylline, under the name captagon. And they bragged about their lavish lifestyles on social media. Meanwhile, as many Syrians rejoiced, world leaders looked on dazed, wondering what’s to come. The US struck at Islamic State targets in Syria over the weekend, worried that the militant group might take advantage of the power vacuum to try to take over large swathes of the country again, as it started to do in 2014. Israel, worried about its security, ordered the military to seize the buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria. In the Middle East, officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates who had mended fences with Assad wondered, “What now?” as they met on Sunday to discuss the ramifications of Assad’s fall. That’s because the rebels’ success added “a new layer of unpredictability” to the civil war, the New York Times wrote. Much of that has to do with the HTS’s past connections to al Qaeda, which have raised concerns about the group’s plans for the country’s future, France 24 said. HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani is a former member of the Islamic State in Iraq, founded the ruthless Nusra Front rebel force in 2012, and pledged allegiance to al Qaeda in 2013 before breaking with the terrorist organization in 2016. The US has designated the group as terrorists. Now, many wonder if they will create yet another version of Islamic State in the country. Golani, however, has promised elections and freedom and inclusivity for all Syrians – Alawite, Sunni, Shiite, and Christian. For now, many Syrians want to believe him. Others are not so sure. “What kind of fresh start will (Syrians) get,” the Economist wondered. “Much depends on whether Syria’s multi-pronged opposition, suddenly bereft of its common enemy, will band together to form a pluralist, federal civilian government over all of Syria, or descend into infighting that plunges the country into a new civil war.” After all, the magazine added, “Things in Syria have a habit of getting complicated.” Still, the HTS is already trying to create order – instituting a curfew, beseeching police to remain in their posts, and begging Syrians to refrain from vigilante retribution. But Syria’s new victors face obstacles far stronger than Assad’s base: The country has over the years been partitioned into fiefdoms that include the Turkish-backed Sunni HTS rebels in the northwest, Kurds in the north and east, Jordanian-backed rebels in the south, and the Alawites in the west, all of whom have their own forces and interests. Meanwhile, the Iranians and Russians, the big losers in this equation, are shut out for now. Russia may lose its only naval base on the Mediterranean that had allowed it a powerful hand in the region, noted Deutsche Welle. Iran, meanwhile, lost its hub to transfer aid to its proxies, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and with that much of its influence in the region. Analysts now wonder if it will regroup and rebuild. It’s clear there is much to unpack from the dazzling events of the weekend and many questions that only time will answer, commentators say. But for a few days after this momentous change, “one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations,” as Reuters called it, it’s hope that prevails on the streets of Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo and elsewhere in the country and among Syrians around the world. “We are exhausted, but happy,” one resident of the northern town of Qamishli, on the border with Turkey, told El PaĆ­s as drivers honked and crowds cheered Assad’s departure. “We are very happy, we are free.” Share this story

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