The End of the Assad Regime

While we encourage you to watch or listen to the episode (and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!), these are Ivo's top takeaways from today's discussion:

• After 13 years of brutal civil war, rebel forces marched on Damascus last week to topple the Assad regime in 13 days. Euphoria sprung out across Syria and the large diaspora and refugee communities throughout the world. One of the most brutal dictatorships had been vanquished. But what comes next for Syria? Catherine explained that while Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel forces that led Assad’s ouster, seemed to be in control, there are many factions and outside powers vying to exert influence over the country’s future. After all, the Syrian state was always riven by tribal and factional differences—until Hafez al-Assad took power and ruled through oppression and brutality. Assad is now gone; but the factions remain. The Kurds in the Northeast adopted the Free Syria flag of the HTS, but certainly want to retain influence over the country, or at least their own region (about a quarter of the country). Other Sunni and Islamist factions no doubt would like to have their share of power. Even the Alawites, long privileged under Assad’s 50-year long rule, want to retain their piece of power. Syria’s future is far from certain.
• Outside influence will no doubt play a big role in determining the country’s destiny. Israel took immediate advantage of the situation, occupying the demilitarized zone along the Golan Heights (claiming the 1974 Armistice agreement had effectively disintegrated when the Syrian army disappeared), and launched close to 500 air strikes to decimate the Syrian Navy, Air Force, chemical weapons stocks, and what remained of its Army. Meanwhile, Turkey, which had long supported rebel factions against Assad as well as the Kurds, no doubt had a hand in HTS’s advance. Its top spy was in Damascus this week to help the new leaders. President Erdogan sees an opportunity in gaining influence in Syria, allowing millions of refugees to go home, and making sure the Kurds do not reconstitute power. Iran not only withdrew its military and brought home 4,000 citizens, but it seems to have lost a major part of its “axis of resistance” with Syria now in hands of its Sunni foes. Gideon noted that the United States appeared to be particular uncertain on what to do. They had quietly banked on Assad keeping Syria under control, but now fear that ISIS will exploit the vacuum and make another attempt at seizing control. Russia, meanwhile, moved its fleet out of the Tartus navy base and began to ship out the forces on its air base. Losing Assad is a heavy blow to Moscow’s influence in the region.
• Finally, we looked at developments in Romania, where the constitutional court took the unprecedented step of annulling the presidential elections after a little-known far-right candidate had unexpectedly won the first round and was predicted to win the next round. Matt suggested we not examine this from a Romanian angle, but rather from the angle of what this means for democracy. Take any European country that held a presidential election where an unexpected first-round winner emerged. And a parliamentary election at the same time returned the center-left to power. Now imagine that government claiming Russian interference in the presidential (but not the parliamentary elections), releasing intelligence information showing Russian-backed TikTok accounts posting large numbers of videos favoring the far-right candidate. And the constitutional court then steps in to annul the presidential, but not the parliamentary, elections, even though there is no evidence of the votes that were case having been counted inaccurately . Would any other democracy stand for that? And, yet, the silence from Brussels and Washington has been deafening. Of course, Russian interference in elections is very real — but is the answer to deny their outcome or to combat the interference?

Tarnished democracies and crumbling dictatorships — that seems to be how 2024 is ending. Hopefully the latter will continue and the former can recover in 2025! That’s it for Ivo's quick takes of this week’s episode. To get the full flavor, please watch or listen to the episode.