In a matter of days, the fate of Syria was transformed. Bashar Al-Assad, who presided over an authoritarian dynasty that ruled with iron fists for more than five decades, had fallen.
Before his demise, statues of his father and portraits of his own were shaken to the ground and shredded, marking a new day for the nation sanctioned from outside and silenced from within.
The glee that erupted was not merely political. It was deeply emotional. Al-Assad contributed to inhuman suppression campaigns that led to the slaughter of 600,000 Syrians, the displacement of 15 million internally and more than 4 million pushed into refuge and statelessness beyond Syrian borders.
The war crimes of the recent past were hardly forgotten. Instead, they fed the real-time support for the elements of change that stormed across Syria, then swiftly unseated the dictator.
The catharsis that poured out the cries from mothers and the songs of Syria’s scattered sons and daughters were celebrated globally, as the war criminal’s plane departed toward Moscow while the fate of the nation moved in the opposite direction.
Syria would start anew. But at the fore of transformative change on December 8, 2024, and the frontier of new possibilities, sobering developments were already unfolding in parallel.
Syria was, for better or for worse, always more than just about Syria. This is the unfortunate fate of so many nations in the Arab world, and beyond its bounds, countries that sit atop fractious lines of imperial interests and latitudes of regional competition.
Syrians, like any people, deserve the right to self-determination. Even more, a people aggrieved by unimaginable slaughter and compounding grievances are entitled to more than just removal, but justice. Al-Assad is, at best, a war criminal. And at worst, a murderous tyrant who leveraged the strategic regional and geopolitical importance of Syria to safeguard himself from those hands of justice.
The domestic blurred with the transnational, and for Syria, the former dictated by the changing winds of the latter.
Genocide came crashing down on Gaza. The Iranian axis stretching into Lebanon stilted the status quo in Syria upward, seemingly securing Al-Assad and his regime for the short term. Iranian interests proved cover, again, until political reforms in Tehran and significant blows to Hezbollah shifted those interests. The allies to the west in Lebanon and east in Iran would not join the fight, this time, in Syria, leaving Al-Assad on an island.
An island where the United States, Turkey, Arab Gulf States and Israel smelled vulnerability, and plotted then pounced swiftly to fill the vacuum left by Iran and Russia. Deals were certainly broken as the shadowy Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) made breakneck gains from the north, into the Homs, before finally storming into Damascus on Sunday. The group received a makeover from Washington, DC, and its leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani reclassified from terrorist to “moderate rebel” by American state and media gates of power, virtually overnight.
This brought absurd new meaning to the proverb: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” For the CIA and the State Department, it conveniently readapted its terrorist into its chosen freedom fighter, securing him primetime CNN features and glowing Washington Post headlines.
What seemed to be an organic rebellion smelled like an orchestrated play. Imperial and regional powers, from the United States to Russia, Israel and Turkey, converged upon Syria to deal and trade, with each gaining skin from a game that opened the door into Damascus for the Trojan Horse marching from Homs. Some would cure their domestic immigration problems, others would have access to annexing new lands, while all would benefit from dismantling an Iranian sphere of influence that marred their respective interest in the Arab world.
State soldiers defected while others fled, and there was no serious fight to be had for HTS in Damascus. The regime was a paper tiger, likely defanged by agreements signed in anonymity that sealed Syria’s new fate.
Al-Assad’s Syria was no more.
The celebrations that swelled across Syria were sublime, as were the images of fractured families rejoining and freed captives rejoicing. Acknowledging the poignantly human theatre unfolding upon Syrian squares and digital platforms should not take a back seat to any political analysis. However, realpolitik stormed in as celebrations unfolded, with Israel storming across the southern border to seize territory, issue curfew orders in several border villages, and bomb strategic sites in the newly liberated capital city.
These immediate acts of aggression, only minutes after Assad fell and simultaneous with the celebratory rallies, were bellwethers. They manifested a sign of what would descend into Syria, alongside the retrenchment of Iranian influence and incursions of renewed American imperial designs on a coveted plot of Arab land that stood at the center of resistance to Israel, and rebelling against the regional trend of normalizing relations with it.
None of this was the fault of the Syrian people. Populations are born into the political constrictions and geopolitical crossroads, and in authoritarian nations, inherit leaders instead of electing them. Therefore, anybody committed to the principle of self-determination must laud a people’s longing for it, particularly against a bona fide war criminal. But, thinking people must also examine what the cost of that self-determination means, and what value it holds for imperial and regional interests conspiring in the shadows, more than willing to invest in it for their gain – not the gain of the Syrian people.
Syria is not Iraq.
Syria is not Libya.
Syria is Syria.
This is an undeniable truth. But modern history and neocolonial case studies from adjacent lands with the identical antagonists provide wisdom that should not be flippantly cast aside.
Especially within a shifting landscape where Israel is poised to claim more land and carve out a new landscape in the region.
Yet, while interlocked between that paradox of seeking liberation and not falling into the new trapdoors of new tyrants, truth reveals that politics are not romance novels. Particularly within the genre of Arab politics, where the marching prose of rising perils reopen the wounds of old poems.
“Our enemies did not cross our borders, they crept through our weaknesses like ants.” - Nizzar Qabbani
Khaled A. Beydoun is a law professor and author. He publishes his daily insights on his social media platforms at @khaledbeydoun.
