Mirna Fahmy-Diplomatic Inside

Is the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime a curse or a breakthrough for Syria?

The end of the Assad state in Syria has finally happened after more than 54 years of absolute one-man rule on December 8, 2024.

Since the revolvement of the rebels that are mainly known as “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,” which are officially supported by Türkiye, many international and Israeli news agencies have been reporting the departure of Assad from Damascus to Moscow once and to Tehran once until it was officially declared his abdication from power by high-official sources to Reuters.

Hours later, Russian news agency TASS said, citing a Kremlin source, that Assad and his family are in Russia’s capital, Moscow, and they are granted asylum for their stay in the country based on humanitarian considerations. It is reported that he is in Belarus. When asked if Russia will hand Assad to the International Court for his crimes, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told NBC NEWS on Tuesday that “Russia is not a party to the agreement that established the International Criminal Court.”

“No matter what attempts and initiatives, the current regime in Damascus fell, died, and was buried with honour,” Mohamad Ali El Husseini, the Saudi-Lebanese Shiite Islamic researcher and cleric, posted on his X account. “Syria deserves life.”

It was later revealed by Bloomberg reports that Assad has made an offer to the US to cut all involvement with Iran-backed militant groups, such as Hezbollah, but the offer went in vain. The Wall Street Journal newspaper stated that Egyptian officials urged the Syrian president to leave the country and form a government in exile, but Egypt denied this in a formal statement confirming that this information is completely baseless.

This has come after the Doha meeting between Türkiye, Russia, and Iran has ended.”. In the meeting, Russia and Iran called on Türkiye to pressure the opposition to stop the war in exchange for Assad implementing Security Council Resolution 2254, which was unanimously voted on. By forming a transitional government between the opposition and the government and preparing for an election period under international auspices.

Since the news, happiness and cheers were swirling in the Syrian streets and many streets outside in the world where Syrians are sheltering temporarily because of the civil war. There were photos of a new flag of Syria that is green, white, and black with three red stars instead of red, white, and black with two green stars in the middle. People have even started breaking into the Syrian Central Bank in Damascus and seizing its contents, and others started burgling into Assad’s own properties and robbing them all.

Prisons have been opened, especially the underground network bases, releasing many prisoners of different nationalities, including Syrians, Arabs, Lebanese, Palestinians and even western nationalities like Americans. The most famous prison is Saydnaya prison. This prison has been described by Syrians as “human slaughterhouses” and is known as the red ward or the death ward. The Syrian Civil Defence has offered a financial reward for anyone who provides information about secret prison locations. 

After 40 years of his disappearance, the Lebanese Claude Hanna Lisha Al-Khoury from the town of Deir Al-Ahmar appears in a Syrian hospital after being released from Sednaya prison. Al-Khoury was a soldier in the Lebanese army in the seventies and appeared with signs of torture on his face.

Israel’s intervention in Syria:

Israel’s foreign minister said his country is not interfering in what is happening in Syria. However, on the same day of Assad’s departure from Damascus, Israeli airstrikes hit the capital of Syria, Damascus. Israel destroyed Syrian warships in Latakia and air defence systems and missile stores in Latakia and Qamishli. According to the Israeli Army Radio, more than 250 military targets in Syria were targeted in one of the largest operations in the history of the Air Force.

“This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus, offers great opportunity but also is fraught with significant dangers,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video posted on his X account. He reinstated that Israel is stretching a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria: to the Druze, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel.

Hebrew Channel 12 reported that the Israeli army completely took control of Mount Hermon in the Syrian Golan Heights. Netanyahu commented on the events by saying that the 1974 agreement collapsed because the Syrian soldiers abandoned their positions.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry urged the international community to condemn Israeli violations in Syria and must confirm that the Golan is occupied Syrian Arab land. ​​The Egyptian government has also strongly denounced Israel’s seizure of the buffer zone with Syria and adjacent command sites.

Stance of the armed forces in Syria:

Reuters quoted two informed sources as saying that the Syrian armed factions informed Türkiye six months ago of their plans to launch a major attack on Syrian cities belonging to the former regime.

The two sources indicated that these factions felt they had implicit approval from Türkiye to launch the attack.

In turn, a US official said that Washington was not aware that Türkiye had “implicitly approved” the Syrian armed factions’ plans to attack Aleppo in northern Syria.

The Syrian armed groups are varied, and they all want to bring down the Assad regime. They are the Syrian opposition or rebels and allies, Al-Qaeda and affiliates, the Islamic State (ISIS), and the originally mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which fight ISIS with US support. There is also the Syrian National Army (SNA), a coalition of various rebel groups supported by Türkiye. It was formed to counter Kurdish forces and establish a buffer zone along the Turkish border.

Rebranding themselves in 2016 to distance themselves from their extremist past, they labelled themselves Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which in Arabic means Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant and Nusra. HTS recently led a significant offensive that contributed to the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad, capturing key territories including Damascus. The group is known for providing local governance and services in Idlib Province, which it controls. Under their capture, there were videos of alcoholic shops smashed in Aleppo’s international airport.

Transformations of Abu Mohammad al-Julani. Source: Al Arabiya

In May 2018, the group was added to the State Department’s existing designation of its predecessor, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). Nusra’s leader is the same as ISIS’ and HTS’ leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani. Al-Julani abandoned the military name associated with his jihadist past and used his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in official statements issued since Thursday, before the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s rule. After wearing traditional jihadist fighter clothing and lingering his hair and beard, he has updated his image to become more “modern” in recent years, and now, while leading the attack, he wears military clothing, symbolising his role as commander of the operations room. The US State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for anyone who provides information leading to the arrest in the past years, listing him as a terrorist who committed serious crimes in Syria and Iraq for slaughtering non-Sunni Muslims.

Al-Julani has a long and strong leading presence in Syria that he even held a press conference following the devastating earthquakes that struck Syria in 2023 as if he were a political leader during Assad’s regime, though both sides are in conflict.

Who is the next ruler of Syria? 

Muhammad al-Bashir, the new Prime Minister in Syria. Source: Telegram channel of the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)

Al-Julani has appointed Muhammad al-Bashir to assume the presidency of the transitional government in Syria till March 2025, so that this step would be a turning point in light of the complex internal and external conditions that the country is going through. In a press conference, al-Bashir has revealed that he will follow the curriculum of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leader, Hassan El Banna. All the cabinet members are men, excluding females. That was a clear plan from al-Julani’s perspective since he allowed an interview with him on CNN Arabic while the female interviewer covered her head. Another flag was placed beside the new Syrian flag, which is the ISIS flag but in white, not black.

In Northern Syria, where there is a majority of Kurds’ ethnicity living in this area, they are fighting to have their independent state, Kurdistan. They have drawn their flag and are officially calling to have their independence. Their soldiers are men and women fighting the Turkish fighter, labelling them as “Jihadists” as they post on their official social media accounts. There were photos of the three flags standing together roaming the social media, which are Kurdistan, Israel, and the US. Many Kurds have posted how they are collaborating with the US army to spin off the Turkish fighter.

The Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Sa’ar, emphasised the importance of protecting minorities in Syria at a press conference. “The attacks on the Kurds, as we saw yesterday in Manbij, must stop! We are discussing this with our friends in the U.S. administration and other countries.” He added that the international community has a moral obligation toward those who fought bravely against ISIS and are also a stabilising force in Syria.

Israeli Major General Noam Tibon has announced that Israel is very interested in establishing a Kurdish state in Syria.

The New map of Syria’s division on social media

Enough to notice that Syria is getting divided based on ethnicities and religious beliefs. There has been a spanning of a map of Syria getting divided into three parts on social media by pro-Israelis, Jews, and Kurds. The Red area will shelter Shiite and Alawite states controlled by Assad. The green area is the Sunni state, and the yellow area will include the Kurd and Druze states, allies of America and Israel, bordering Iraq, Jordan, and Israel.

Al Husseini, the Shiite cleric, has urged the Shiites in Syria in the areas of Nubl, Zahraa, Al-Foua, Homs, and Damascus, to leave their places and head to the Syrian coast for many reasons. He explained that the most important thing is preserving their privacy, protection, and reassuring about their safety. “This is our advice to them. You will soon know the reasons and motives that made us give this advice.”

Netanyahu said in a recent video that “We are ready to establish relations with the new regime in Syria if the new HTS government won’t allow Iran to be in Syria to transfer weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, or else the government will have to pay a high price.”

Al Husseini, who always nails what will happen to the Middle East from changes and alterations highlighted on his X account with a verse from the Old Testament, which is the Torah, on how Damascus will be in the nearing future. It is from Isiah 17:1-8; watch this: Damascus undone as a city, a pile of dust and rubble! Her towns were emptied of people.”