10 days in Syria that shook the Middle East

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked about recasting the Middle East and he’s done much to do so, through the humiliation of Hezbollah and the uprooting of Hamas.

But arguably the biggest factor reshaping the troubled region has come over the past 10 days with a stunning rebel offensive in Syria that’s ended the Assad family’s half-century-long rule.

The rapid sweep by a coalition of armed opposition groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al Qaeda breakaway designated a terror group by the United States, saw rebels at first burst out of an enclave in northwest Syria on Nov. 27.

Then there was the capture in quick succession of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, Hama and then Homs, which in 2012 saw an epic battle between rebels and government forces.

By Saturday, the rebels were in Damascus and Bashar Assad had fled, concluding the 10 days that shook the Middle East.

All the more surprising — some might argue suspicious — is the ease with which the offensive unfolded and the absence of any serious government resistance.

It wasn’t entirely a bloodless campaign and shots were fired — monitoring groups say 820 people have been killed since the start of the HTS-led offensive — but the lightning rapidity and ease of the offensive and the melting away of government forces raise questions, as does the failure of Assad’s allies Russia and Iran to do much to disrupt the rebels and save him.

The questions include whether there was any rebel coordination with elements inside the Assad regime.

Despite claims by Mohammad Khaled al-Rahmoun, Syria’s interior minister, that the Assad regime had built “a very strong security and military cordon,” rebel fighters arrived in Damascus on Saturday facing little if any opposition.

And as thousands of people gathered in squares in the capital to celebrate the end of Assad’s rule, there was an almost scripted trading of announcements.

The country’s prime minister, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, said in a video message posted online that he remained at home and was prepared to cooperate with the transfer of power to “any leadership chosen by the Syrian people.” Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the 42-year-old leader of HTS, said Syria’s official institutions would remain under the control of the prime minister until they were in due course handed over.

Or was the astonishing implosion of the Syrian regime exclusively the result of its rottenness and a sudden realization by Assad’s supporters that nothing could be done to save his corrupt and shabby government, whose main source of funding was from sales of the Captagon drug?

Al-Jolani himself pointed to the rottenness of the regime to explain Assad’s speedy ouster.

Just the day before Damascus fell, he sat down with CNN and argued “the seeds of the regime’s defeat have always been within it.” He added: “The Iranians attempted to revive the regime, buying it time, and later the Russians also tried to prop it up. But the truth remains: This regime is dead.”

As the offensive unfolded others agreed with al-Jolani, who has seemingly now dropped his nom de guerre and is using his birth name Ahmed al-Sharaa. They noted how fragile the regime appeared.

“The Syrian Arab Army is a hollowed-out shell, far weaker than its ostensible numbers and weapons would indicate,” said former U.S. diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez. “Syria is an economic basket case. Officers supplement their meager salaries by taking bribes for soldiers to take extended leave and work at other jobs back home. Some units seem to have broken and fled after losing their officers.”

Nonetheless, al-Jolani’s role in the 10-day offensive shouldn’t be downplayed.

His assembling of more than a dozen frequently fractious rebel factions, his securing of an apparent buy-in by the rebels’ patron Turkey, and the campaign’s effective execution speak volumes to his own formidable skills as military commander and political leader, which were also on display when he managed to engineer a formal split from al Qaeda in 2016 without violent consequences. At the time, he said the break had to be made because he didn’t want to give a “pretext” for the United States and Russia to conduct airstrikes against the wider rebel movement.

Success indeed has many fathers and so too with this copy-book rebel advance. Turkey’s role should be seen as crucial. As the offensive unfolded, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his aides denied having any hand in it, with the Turkish leader coyly presenting himself as a spectator.

But by Friday, as the rebels bore down on the Syrian capital, the tune changed and Erdoğan openly endorsed the rebel offensive, saying he wanted it to continue without incident. “Idlib, Hama, Homs, and the target, of course, is Damascus. The opposition’s march continues,” he told reporters, adding: “We made a call to Assad. We said: ‘Come, let’s determine the future of Syria together.’ Unfortunately, we did not receive a positive response to this.”

Few observers believe the offensive could have gone ahead without Ankara’s knowledge and approval. According to Hadi al-Bahra, the head of a Syrian rebel opposition group recognized by the international community, preparations for the offensive had been in the making since last year — preparations that involved HTS, as well as more than a dozen militias in the Turkey-sponsored Syrian National Army, which has been mainly focused on fighting the Syrian Kurds alongside tens of thousands of Turkish troops encamped in northern Syria.

And according to an intelligence briefing released by the Soufan Center, a research group founded by former U.S. and U.K. intelligence officers and diplomats, “the Aleppo offensive … was delayed when Turkey intervened, altering the timing.”

The Turkish president and Assad were once allies, but Erdoğan backed the rebellion against the Syrian autocrat when it began in 2011. Since then, he has seized a strip of land along the border and has even toyed at times with annexing part of northern Syria, tauntingly suggesting publicly that Turkey has historical rights to do so.

The final nails in Assad’s political coffin were hammered in not by foes but his allies — Iran and Russia. Their inaction eased the rebels’ advance, according to Syrian Kurdish leaders. “The size of the Russian response, will determine the course of developments,” said Syrian Kurdish activist Idris Nassan, as the offensive gathered steam.

U.S. officials agreed that the collapse of Assad’s frontlines had much to do with the absence of any serious Iranian or Russian action — whether from inability or unwillingness because of Ukraine and Lebanon remains unclear. Amos Hochstein, U.S. envoy to the Middle East, noted at a regional conference in Qatar that Iran appeared to be “pulling out of Syria to some degree.” 

And over the weekend, Russia appeared to be doing the same thing with reports that it was in the process of relocating warships from its naval base at Tartus.