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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.
13 years after kids scribbled anti-regime slogans within the southern metropolis of Deraa, sparking the Syrian revolution, Bashar al-Assad and his kleptocratic household have fallen. The top of a dynasty that has brutalised and pillaged one of many Arab world’s most necessary nations for greater than 5 a long time might be celebrated by the a whole bunch of 1000’s of households of these the Assads killed, maimed, imprisoned and made to vanish. The extraordinary collapse of the regime additionally marks a watershed second within the Center East: Syria was each Russia and Iran’s most necessary ally within the area. The top of Assad confirms the shift within the regional stability of energy. Tehran and its proxies are additional undermined and Russia’s affect weakened.
Since Hamas’s October 7 2023 assault on Israel, outdated certainties throughout the area have been scrambled, the political playing cards shuffled. The Center East that emerges from the wreckage of the previous 12 months of battle and carnage, nevertheless, remains to be unsure. A lot will rely upon who guidelines Syria after Assad. The one apparent winner from Assad’s ouster is Turkey, lengthy the principle backer of Syria’s rebels. The Sunni Arab states of the Gulf had just lately re-embraced the Syrian dictator, bringing him again into the Arab fold. For them, as for Israel, the prospect of an Islamist-led authorities in Damascus is not going to be welcomed.
Syria’s lengthy forgotten conflict was woke up by a confluence of things: Assad had solely prevailed over a set of insurgent factions due to the help of Russia and Lebanon’s Hizbollah. It was Russia’s air drive and Hizbollah’s fighters on the bottom that turned the conflict to his benefit. With Moscow distracted by the invasion of Ukraine and Hizbollah devastated in latest months by the battle with Israel, the rebels discovered a propitious second to strike. So battered was the Syrian military that inside days the jihadi HTS, probably the most well-armed and motivated of the insurgent factions, over-ran government-held cities and reached the capital Damascus. There have been most likely just a few offers, an indication of how the Assad system was damaged.
For a lot of Syrians, this can be a second of pleasure. The rebels have opened prisons, reuniting households with family members lengthy misplaced in Assad’s torture dungeons. Among the many greater than 5mn Syrian refugees who fled the conflict many now hope they may return to houses that they had despaired of ever seeing once more.
However what occurs subsequent will rely upon HTS. The group has sought to painting itself as a reformed jihadi organisation, its chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who was as soon as a part of Isis and al-Qaeda, styling himself as a statesman. He has promised to deal with with dignity Syria’s Christian and Kurdish minorities, and even the Alawi minority from which the Assad household hails. Many will nonetheless concern the Islamists will instigate reprisals or impose their very own non secular dictatorship. For now, HTS has spoken of defending state establishments, suggesting it desires an orderly transition.
Syria now faces two potential paths. The primary is the reignition of the civil conflict, which is able to take the nation the way in which of Yemen and Libya, lengthy failed and damaged. The second is a stabilisation, an opportunity to heal, and to carry house tens of millions of refugees scattered the world over. To grab the chance of a extra hopeful Syria, those that can affect Jolani — Turkey and maybe additionally Qatar — should make sure that he leaves the governing of the nation to a civilian administration that displays Syria’s myriad of spiritual communities. That ought to permit Arab and western governments that designate HTS as a terrorist organisation to interact with the federal government. The world let Syria down, again and again, even when Assad used chemical weapons towards his folks. It, too, now has a possibility to assist the nation get again on its ft.
