Syria’s upheaval presents perils – and opportunities – for the West: Sercan Canbolat for Inside Policy
In a shockingly swift turn of events, a coalition of armed opposition groups has overthrown the Assad dynasty that ruled Syria more for than a half-century. It took less than two weeks for the armed groups, led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to oust the Russian-backed Assad regime and send President Bashar al-Assad fleeing into exile.
Since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2015, between 300,000 and 620,000 people have died, making it the second-deadliest conflict of the 21st century after the Second Congo War. Thanks to nearly a decade of conflict, around 7 million Syrians are internally displaced and more than 5 million are living as refugees in more than 20 host countries around the world, including Canada, which hosts around 60,000 Syrian refugees.
The abrupt end to the stalemate of a war in Syria will have reverberations around the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and beyond. Amidst a cascade of developments in Syria since the fall of the Baath regime, it is important to distinguish “signals from noise.” What happens next in Syria will be of paramount importance to Canada and other host countries, as well as to the Syrian refugees who wish to someday return to their homeland. However, to outside observers, many questions arise: who exactly are these victorious armed groups? Will Syria choose democracy – or succumb to hardline Islamism? What are the short- and longer-term implications? Here’s what you need to know.
The roots of the conflict
In 2011, a series of Arab uprisings swept the Middle East, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, but also in Syria. However, the Syrian protest movement was swiftly beaten down by the Assad regime. Assad’s iron-fisted response, which included the use of deadly force, sparked wider protests throughout country and the formation of various Islamist armed groups backed by regional and international powers including Türkiye, Qatar, and the United States. As the opposition forces threatened the Assad regime’s survival in 2015, Syria’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, stepped up their support, and Russia intervened in Syria militarily. Meanwhile, with the increasing involvement of al-Qaeda in Syria’s civil war and the rise of Daesh (ISIS) in neighbouring Iraq, the Syrian opposition jettisoned its more moderate actors – replacing them with more powerful al-Qaeda-laced organizations including Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) and Daesh.
By 2014, Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra had emerged as arguably the strongest Syrian opposition actors seeking to defeat the secular Baath regime and establish an Islamic state in Syria. At the same time, the fear and threat of ever-expanding ISIS rule in Iraq and Syria forced the creation of a global coalition led by the US to combat ISIS in the region. The international coalition, along with its partners, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), soundly defeated ISIS, reclaiming 95 per cent of ISIS’s territory in Syria in 2017. Following this success, the SDF – backed by US air cover and around 2,000 American soldiers on the ground – became an important player in northeastern Syria.
Several peace plans to resolve the Syrian civil war notwithstanding, Astana talks initiated in 2016 by Russia, Türkiye, and Iran had been more decisive in determining the trajectory and main actors of the conflict. The Astana process from 2016 to 2020 produced temporary ceasefires and led to the establishment of a security corridor with joint Turkish and Russian patrols among three zones of influence, the HTS-ruled Northwest, the SDF-led Northeast and the Assad regime in the rest of the country, barring the American al-Tanf garrison on the Jordanian border. The status quo had been largely maintained as Russia and Türkiye declared a ceasefire in Idlib in 2020, the last enclave of Islamist opposition led by HTS in the country. However, the prospects for the termination of the civil war and permanent peace proved stillborn during the Astana process, plunging Syria into a stalemate until a final showdown. This face-off transpired in December 2024 when several opposition groups formed a new coalition called the “Military Operations Command” and launched the “Deterrence of Aggression” operation against all the government forces in the country. This operation culminated in the ouster of President al-Assad on December 8, 2024.
Dr. Sercan Canbolat is and ASMEA member and the inaugural director of Abrahamic Programs and adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut.
The opinions expressed here are his own.
Read the original post on the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) website.