What accounts for the speed of the Syrian revolution?

On Nov. 30, the forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been associated with al-Qaeda, rapidly took control of Aleppo in Syria. Hama fell to them on Dec. 5; on Dec. 6, Daraa fell; and on Dec. 7, it was Homs, with the residents eagerly toppling a statue of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. By Sunday morning, Dec. 8, the capital, Damascus, was overtaken by the rebel forces. After decades of control by the Assad family, Syria is free of their suffocating grip.

What accounts for the lightning speed of the Syrian revolution?

The answer lies in a tremendous amount of justifiable, internecine hatred.

Get The Jewish Chronicle Weekly Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

For over 50 years, the iron fist of the Assad family has ruled Syria. Hafez al-Assad of the Syrian nationalist Ba’ath party hailed from an Alawite branch, beginning his rule in 1971. He was known for his 1982 brutal massacre of approximately 20,000 Sunni Muslim rebel forces in the city of Hama, leading to the term “Hama rules.” Translation: mercilessly putting down and crushing one’s opposition. The reins of power were supposed to have been passed to Bashar’s older brother, Basil, who was tasked with crushing Hama. However, Basil was killed in an auto accident, and the family’s rule was reluctantly passed into the hands of Bashir, a Western trained ophthalmologist. His father, Hafez, did not feel Bashir had the stomach to maintain his ruthless style of governance over Syria.

However, after the Syrian uprising of 2011, with approximately 500,000 people murdered and nearly 13 million people internally or externally displaced — causing a major refugee crisis in Europe — Bashar proved his father exceedingly wrong. With the help of Iran and Russia, the younger Assad maintained the regime’s iron grip over Syria, until Dec. 8, 2024.

The hatred of the approximately 74% of the Sunni Syrian population of the Assad regime continues unabated. Why is this?

In early March 2011, a group of children scrawled on the walls of Daraa, in southern Syria, “Assad must go.” These children were hunted down and tortured by the regime. Their parents were told that if they ever wanted to see their children again, the mothers must sleep with the regime’s commanders. Cans of dog food were sent to their families, with a note, “Herein lies the remnants of your children.”

On Aug. 20, 2012, President Barack Obama issued his famous “red line,” concerning the implementation of chemical weapons during the Syrian civil war, saying, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to the other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus.”

Exactly one year and one day later, on Aug. 21, 2013, we saw images on our televisions of scores of young children writhing, convulsing, trembling, and frothing at the mouth, many suffocating to death, because of their exposure to sarin nerve gas, at the hands of Bashar al-Assad.
Fifty years of ironclad rule at the hands of the Assad family has rapidly and abruptly come to an end.

There are many individuals who have been tortured by the Assad regime, who are now celebrating. Friends, such as Ahed al Hendi, said, “I left Syria in 2007 after a political arrest that turned my life upside down at the age of 20. It was an experience that cost me friends, a homeland, and led me to live in exile. Today, after 17 years of separation from my city, Damascus, we can finally return. Congratulations to all Syrians! True, the change didn’t come at the hands of those we dreamed of as liberators, but the Assad era has ended, cast into the trash heap of history. Congratulations to all of us, the survivors of decades of conscription and brainwashing, and congratulations to Syria, which now begins a new chapter of its history, written by its own people, free from tyranny.”

Yet, we have no idea who is involved in this uprising. There are many elements within the rebel forces. Some may be innocent Sunni Muslims and Christians, whose family members or friends have long been tortured by the Assad dynasty. However, we must bear in mind that the HTS is listed on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations and that elements of these groups have sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda and ISIS. Who might the rebel forces release from the prisons? Bearing in mind that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan-controlled Turkey has supported HTS, and Erdoğan has particular antipathy toward the Kurds, what is going to happen to them as people who have been extremely loyal to the United States?

And what does this mean for Israel and for U.S. interests in the region?

On the positive side, the corridor from Iran through Syria, a major gateway from Tehran to Hezbollah forces inside Lebanon, has been cut off. Iran has been described by Israel as “the head of the octopus,” the most destabilizing power in the region, controlling its terror proxies throughout the Middle East. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force who was killed in a U.S. drone strike, had been credited with creating the Iranian “ring of fire” strategy around Israel. However, the decisive moves the Israel Defense Forces has made on Hezbollah in Lebanon, on Hamas in Gaza, and with the IDF’s Oct. 26 attack on Iranian military targets and nuclear research facilities, much of the Iranian “ring of fire” has been neutered.

Moreover, the Israelis have painfully learned from Oct. 7 that territory is destiny. The brilliant, strategic move of the IDF’s conquest of the Syrian part of Mount Hermon on Dec. 8 during this “fog of war” will give the Israelis a border and some necessary strategic depth.

Or, as my dear friend Mosab Hassan Yousef puts it, “This might just be another country in the establishment of a worldwide Islamist caliphate.”
And this will be sitting on the borders of Israel. President-elect Donald Trump has said he does not want to send more troops there, nor does President Joe Biden. It seems — as always — that it will be left up to Israel to remain vigilant. PJC

Sarah N. Stern is the founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a think tank that specializes in the Middle East. This piece originally ran on the Endowment for Middle East Truth’s website.