Hunger, sanctions, and navy disintegration broke the previous chief’s maintain on Syria – however nobody was paying consideration
By Vitaly Ryumshin, Gazeta.ru political analyst
Till a couple of weeks in the past, the skies over Syria appeared deceptively cloudless. That phantasm shattered on 27 November when the armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian Nationwide Military (SNA) launched a sudden offensive on Aleppo.
By final Monday, they’d seized town. Three days later, the official Syrian military deserted the strategic metropolis of Hama. Within the south and southeast, dormant insurgent cells rose up, hanging a remaining blow towards Assad’s hollowed-out regime. On Sunday, opposition forces stormed Damascus from a number of instructions. Bashar al-Assad, whose regime withstood over a decade of civil conflict, lastly fell from energy.
The velocity of the collapse invitations parallels with Afghanistan three years in the past, when Ashraf Ghani’s US-backed authorities crumbled like a home of playing cards. However in contrast to Ghani, whose weak point was apparent, Assad was nonetheless extensively perceived as Syria’s dominant pressure – making his sudden downfall all of the extra staggering.
So what went improper? The whole lot.
Assad’s Syria had been rotting from inside for years. The nation was locked in a perpetual humanitarian and financial disaster, with 90% of Syrians dwelling in poverty and widespread malnutrition. Determined households took out loans simply to purchase meals however couldn’t pay them again. Energy outages crippled even Damascus, typically leaving the capital darkish for 20 hours a day. Electrical energy costs soared by as much as 585% within the spring of 2024 alone, pushing an already destitute inhabitants deeper into despair.
The Assad authorities supplied no options – solely mounting repression. Underneath crushing sanctions, Damascus couldn’t safe international loans, and with its oil fields underneath US-Kurdish management, there was nothing left to commerce. Even Syria’s illicit drug commerce, as soon as a lifeline, couldn’t plug the gaping holes in state funds. Income disappeared into the pockets of warlords and traffickers, not the state treasury.
In the meantime, Assad’s underpaid, demoralized military, bled dry by years of civil conflict, continued to disintegrate. For a time, Iranian proxies like Hezbollah propped up his forces, however by 2024, they’d shifted their consideration to combating Israel. Makes an attempt to attract Russia additional into Syria’s quagmire fell flat. Moscow, busy elsewhere, had little interest in bailing Assad out.
So when the ultimate disaster hit, Assad discovered himself alone. His allies stayed away, his military scattered, and an enraged, ravenous populace turned on the federal government. There was nobody left to guard him.
What occurs subsequent?
Assad’s fall leaves Syria’s future dangerously unsure. HTS has already staked its declare for energy, probably aiming for a Taliban-style takeover backed by its patron in Ankara.
However Syria will not be Afghanistan. The nation is a mosaic of hostile factions, many with longstanding grudges. The SNA and HTS themselves as soon as battled for dominance in Idlib, regardless of each being pro-Turkish. There are additionally the Kurds within the northeast, the Alawites on the coast, the Druze within the south, and numerous US-backed factions within the southeast. Then there’s ISIS, nonetheless lurking within the desert, prepared to take advantage of the chaos.
Syria appears destined to comply with Libya’s post-Gaddafi trajectory: a failed state fractured into zones of affect, dominated by warlords and international proxies. This is able to be a catastrophe not just for Syrians however for the Center East as an entire.
However that may be a topic for an additional dialog.
This text was first revealed by the net newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT workforce
The statements, views and opinions expressed on this column are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially characterize these of RT.
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