Israeli Defence Forces map of the region of southern Lebanon it is occupying since the onset of the current war, and the region of southern Syria, beyond the occupied Golan Heights, it has newly occupied since December 2024. Both part of the new borders of Greater Israel.
By Michael Karadjis
Asked about Syria’s view of the current war against Iran at the recent Antalya Diplomacy Forum, president Ahmed al-Sharaa began that for Syria this is a somewhat complex question, because
“Syria has had a negative experience with Iranian aggression over the past 14 years and its involvement in supporting the former regime in its confrontation with the Syrian people. However, despite all these past circumstances, we were not a party to any conflict against Iran during the current war … we were pushing for this war not to break out in the first place, because Iran is a country with a population of 85 million people, and any harm that befalls Iran from within could affect the whole region. We are pushing for a stable region and for its problems to be resolved with dialogue and diplomacy.”
Syria’s extremely negative experience with Iran is a simple empirical fact, but what the current government does with this fact is the issue. The feelings of many ordinary Syrians – much more than the current government – leave Syria open to pressure by the US to take part in some kind of action, whether against Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the reward of being granted more legitimacy, diplomatic support or funding and investment by the US.
Sharaa’s clear statement here against the war, despite past experience, plus Syria’s clear condemnation of Israel’s attack on Lebanon despite its negative experience with Hezbollah, Sharaa’s statement in London during his recent visit that “we do not have a problem with Iran in Tehran, we had a problem with Iran in Damascus,” but now we aim for reconstruction and economic development and “we have been patient in regard to the relationship with Iran,” whereas as soon as Assad was overthrown, “Israel dealt with Syria negatively by bombing locations, making incursions into Syrian territories, and violating the 1974 agreement,” all point to the fact that the Syrian government resolutely rejects the kind of role some US and Israeli circles might like Syria to play.
This Syrian stance is only partly motivated by the fact that Syria, and Syrians, also have an extremely negative experience of Israel, widely view it as an enemy that occupies their land, and are very strongly supportive of Palestine, as the recent massive pro-Palestine protest wave demonstrated. Just as importantly, having just emerged from the 14-year Assadist apocalypse, during which, again according to Sharaa in London, “Syria suffered from the same thing that the Gazan people have suffered from,” Syria now can only focus on reconstruction, on the recovery of the Syrian people. “The Syrian people empathize with the people of Gaza and are affected by the bombing there,” said Sharaa, but Syria is too exhausted to enter into any new conflicts – hence it has refused to allow 17 months of Israeli aggression in southern Syria provoke it into a major fightback which would lead to Israel flattening Damascus; and for exactly the same reason, it refuses to be drawn into US or Zionist schemes to go to war with Hezbollah – an invitation that they know well is aimed at encouraging fratricide among Israel’s enemies to exhaust them both and leave them open to Greater Israel’s aim of establishing new borders in both countries.
Did US or Israeli circles encourage Syria to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon?
Shortly after the onset of the current US-Israel aggression against Iran, the war spread to Lebanon, with Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel to avenge the killing of Khamenei and Israel launching its massive attack which has uprooted over a million people and looks like resulting in Israel’s effective annexation of the region south of the Litani. One of Israel’s key aims in launching this war on Iran was to create a regional conflagration under the cover of which the borders of Greater Israel could be expanded, while the strangulation of Gaza and the West Bank could be intensified.
Soon after, rumours began to circulate that the US (or in some versions, “the US and Israel”) were pressuring the new Syrian government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa to send troops into Lebanon to “help disarm Hezbollah.” A Reuters report on March 17 launched the speculation, citing alleged “anonymous sources.” These rumours are far from confirmed, but from the outset the Syrian government completely rejected any such action.
First, did it even happen? Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey who doubles as envoy to Syria and has played an outsized role in US political interventions in the region, claimed “reporting regarding the United States encouraging Syria to send forces into Lebanon is false and inaccurate.” Close Syria watcher Gregory Waters notes that “Reuters [which spread the story] has struggled with framing a lot of things they hear from peripheral sources when it comes to Syria which has resulted in not outright lies but misrepresentation.” Similarly, Syria watcher Charles Lister claims to have been “told by multiple sources that this story is false & no such messages have been conveyed to Syria. It makes no sense anyway, and runs against everything else the USG has invested in stabilizing Syria over the past year+.” The excellent Verify Syria platform also showed that “reports” of such a statement attributed to the US president were false.
Indeed, given Barrack’s large role in US moves in the Turkey-Syria-Lebanon region, the rumour seems unlikely given his known views, which have enraged Israeli leaders. According to Barrack, “We need a path with Hezbollah, and the path has to be not killing Hezbollah.” While the US and Israel have pressured the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah by force and have criticised it for not doing so, Barrack by contrast said the troops in the Lebanese Armed Forces “are not going to go shoot their cousins.” He also claimed that he always gets in trouble “because Hezbollah, in American parlance, and most of the West, is a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” but “Hezbollah, in Lebanon, is also a political organization.” He also questioned the current ceasefire, because he claimed “both sides” (ie, Israel and Hezbollah) were “equally untrustworthy,” stating “It says we have a cease-fire except if we, Israel, in our own determination, think we’re being attacked. Is that a cease-fire?” This did not make him popular with a lot of US Republicans. “Everybody is in atrophy over this idiotic war,” he said. That is, the idiotic war launched by his government and Israel.
That said, as Barrack is a loose cannon, it is not out of the question that some other US government agency may have attempted to use the Syrian government against Hezbollah, to try to force the Syrian government to show its “anti-terrorist” value to the US, beyond fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda remnants in Syria; though given the US has tended to reject Israel’s preference for Syria exploding and being partitioned along sectarian lines, and instead has been closer to the Saudi-Turkish position of wanting to unify and stabilise Syria for investment, it seems unlikely that it would encourage such a destabilising move. As for Israel, no doubt it would be happy for the Syrian government and Hezbollah to plunge into sectarian conflict while it seizes territory from both, but as it has no relations with Syria and treats the government with extreme hostility it also seems unlikely it would have done any formal “encouragement.”
Syria: Categorical rejection
Whatever the case, however, the main issue is that Syria rejected the ideas floating around from the outset; even the loosest anonymous “reports” at least conceded that Syria was reluctant to embark on such a mission for fear of being sucked i
Rumours began when, following the onset of the war, Syria moved troops to its borders with Lebanon and Iraq and south close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. On March 6, Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa called Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to express “his support for the Lebanese people in these difficult times” and to assure him that Syria’s military deployments were purely defensive and “only intended to ensure control of the borders and to preserve Syria’s internal security”. In fact, Israel condemned the movement of Syrian troops in the direction of the Israeli occupation; amidst “intensified flights of Israeli warplanes and helicopters over southern Syria, the ‘Ultra Syria’ site reported that “officials in the occupation army’s Northern Command claimed the movements violate what they describe as long-standing ‘security understandings’ governing force levels and permitted weaponry in the buffer zone adjacent to the occupied Golan.” Israel has unilaterally declared a “buffer zone,” demanding Syrian troops keep out of the south, and as such is only referring to its own “understandings,” not common ones with Syria.
In his remarks to the UN session on the war on March 11, Syria’s UN representative, Ibrahim Olabi, condemned Israel’s aggression against Lebanon, condemned the policy of “displacing people under the threat of bombing and destruction,” and linked Israel’s actions to its ongoing attacks on Syria. Far from suggesting that Syria would intervene to disarm Hezbollah, he said that Israel’s attack “hinders” the Lebanese government’s aim of disarming Hezbollah – ie, it cannot be done precisely because Israel is attacking the country.
Another report in L’Orient-Le Jour also noted that “Syrian authorities rejected these demands, with backing from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, all of which encouraged Damascus to hold its ground. These countries also intervened with Washington to ease the pressure on Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who made it clear he does not want to get involved in Lebanon or repeat past experiences,” referring to the long-term military involvement in Lebanon by the two Assad regimes, beginning in 1976 when Hafez al-Assad, backed by the US and Israel, invaded Lebanon in support of the right-wing Christian Phalange and played a key role in the large-scale massacre of Palestinians at Tel al-Zataar.
According to a March 16 report in Al-Modon, Sharaa’s message to Lebanon’s president Aoun “was unequivocal: Syria is committed to Lebanon’s security and stability.” The report says that coordination with Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia is ongoing, aimed at “reassuring the Lebanese public” and strengthening “security cooperation” between Syria and Lebanon. The central objective is that “Syria remains in Syria and Lebanon remains in Lebanon, each sovereign and non-interfering. This is especially vital amid ongoing Israeli attempts to provoke internal strife, whether between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah or among Lebanon’s communities. The aim is to remain vigilant against any Israeli maneuver designed to ignite a localised, destructive conflict between Lebanon and Syria.” This report further claims Sharaa has been pushing a kind of renewed ‘pan-Arab’ position, as “regardless of whether Iran endures or Israel imposes its terms, only a unified Arab position can prevent states form being isolated and targeted one by one.”
All of this could not be further from any Syrian intention to intervene in Lebanon against Hezbollah, let alone when under attack by Israel. Obviously, the Syrian government’s position should be open to criticism like that of any government. The Syrian position of standing against both the Israeli and Iranian regional hegemonic projects is completely justified, but in the concrete circumstances of it being the US and Israel launching this gigantic criminal aggression against Iran, one might prefer a more forthright defence of Iran in the circumstances. However, if we are to judge Syria on the basis of its own experience – where the Iranian regime participated on the ground on a massive scale in the Assad regime’s genocidal violence against Syrians for a decade that left some 700,000 people dead, entire cities and chunks of the country destroyed, and more than half the country’s population uprooted – then the fact that it sees Israel as an equal enemy is a rather strong sign of its anti-Zionist position.
Of course, Israel occupies Syrian territory and launched a massive bombing campaign against Syria from December 8, 2024, from the moment when its preferred leader was deposed (it is a curious geopolitical fact that Israel and Iran converged in support of the Assad regime). On the ground, popular hatred of both Israel and Iran is ubiquitous in Syria, and the Syrian population is considerably more anti-Iranian than the government as a result of their horrific experiences. When discussing Israel-Iran conflict, a common Syrian reaction is to cite a popular Islamic expression, “destroy the oppressors with the oppressors,” referring to both sides. Indeed, Syria researcher Aymenn al-Tamimi cites a Syrian X account which at one moment celebrates the killing of Khamenei and the next celebrates the Iranian missiles hitting Tel Aviv, “Praise be to God, Tel Aviv is burning.” Regardless of how privileged western leftists from thousands of miles away who have not suffered under Syria’s genocidal apocalypse may view this, it is clearly a rejection by definition of any aid to Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.
Embittered Assadists
Returning to the point, despite all these clear and unequivocal reports of Syria’s rejection to of any such suggestion, the hyper-world of embittered tankies and antidelluvian Assadists filled the comments section of any article or social media post the alleged US push with 787,657,479,325 “comments” along the lines of “see, Mossad government,” “al-Qaeda to the rescue of Israel” and similar pieces of sheer brilliance, brilliant, that is, if you happen to have the brain of a jellyfish.
The point is not that the Syrian government of al-Sharaa should not be criticised for any range of issues. It most definitely can and should be. The point is that the tendency to condemn the government for things that it hasn’t done, is not doing or completely rejects doing at the drop of a hat has nothing to do with rightfully subjecting all governments to the fiercest of criticism when necessary – rather these are embittered nostalgists of the genocidal tyranny of Bashar al-Assad, embittered that the Syrian people rose up and destroyed his regime of mass murder and torture on an epic scale, as well as mechanistic western “anti-imperialists” who imagine a regime that tortured Islamist suspects for US president George Bush’s “war on terror” had some “anti-imperialist” credentials, and that the regime that Israel preferred in power and which had solid anti-Palestinian credentials for decades was a “resistance” regime, despite Netanyahu and countless Israeli leaders praising it precisely for decades of non-resistance on the Golan; these tankies for their own reasons attached themselves to it like flies to shit.
Ongoing Israeli aggression on Syria amidst wider war
Meanwhile, even though engaged in two gigantic wars against Iran and Lebanon, Israel has still managed time for its smaller scale bombing and other attacks on Syria! On March 20, Israel attacked Syrian army sites, weapons depots and military infrastructure in Daraa, including a building associated with the 40th Division in Izraa; according to the IDF, the strikes targeted a command center and weapons located in military compounds belonging to the Syrian government; local sources reported air raids hitting the Syrian army’s 12th Brigade near Izraa and explosions in the vicinity of the 89th Regiment headquarters near Jabab.
Israel claimed to be “protecting Druze citizens in Suweida.” This referred to a military clash on the Suweida-Daraa border the previous day where the government claims to have foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons by members of the pro-Israel Suweida National Guard. The National Guard, by contrast, claim Syrian forces had carried out attacks against civilians. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated “we will not allow the Syrian regime to exploit our war against Iran and Hezbollah to harm the Druze. If necessary, we will attack with greater force.” Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Arab League condemned the attacks as a “blatant violation” of Syria’s sovereignty aimed at dragging the region into broader confrontation.
Apart from this major attack, Israel has kept up a series of smaller-scale attacks throughout this period. The well-documented Syria Weekly report lists the IDF attacks in southern Syria just in the March 17-24 period when this attack occurred alone:
Israeli military forces fired at least two artillery shells into agricultural areas outside Tel Ahmar al-Sharqi in southern Quneitra on March 20, causing no casualties.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion towards the al-Mantara Dam in Quneitra on March 20.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion into the Wadi al-Raqad in western rural Daraa on March 20.
Israeli military forces launched ground two simultaneous incursions into the Tel Kroum and into an area located between the villages of al-Samdaniya al-Sharqiya and Khan Arnabeh in Quneitra on March 21.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion towards the al-Ruwayhina Dam in Quneitra on March 23. Later that day, 3 young men were detained by Israeli forces during an incursion near the al-Mantara Dam in Quneitra; while another incursion was launched into the Wadi al-Ruqad area in western Daraa. Late that night, Israeli forces launched a ground incursion towards Beit Jinn in Rif Dimashq, establishing a pop-up checkpoint near the Druze village of Harfah.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion into the Jubata al-Khashab area of northern Quneitra on March 24.
This week is chosen randomly; each subsequent weekly report has a similar catalogue, and this has also been the case every week since December 2024, except in some weeks much worse, involving large scale air strikes. The Syrian government has no interest in helping the occupation regime to its south in any way whatsoever.
Meanwhile, on April 17, Israel announced plans to fund 3000 new settler families to colonise the occupied Golan to create the region’s “first city,” which Human Rights Watch has described as a “war crime;” while al-Sharaa at the Antalya conference yet again reiterates what he, the Syrian foreign ministry, Syria’s UN ambassador Ibrahim al-Olabi have continually stressed since overthrowing Assad, that the Golan is Syrian and must be returned: “any state’s recognition of Israel’s claim over the occupied Syrian Golan – as happened when president Trump recognised the occupied Golan as Israeli – is invalid, because this is a right belonging to the Syrian people,” also noting that just last November, 134 countries “affirmed that the Golan is Syrian land and is occupied by Israel.”
Below is perhaps one of the clearest enunciations of what appears to be both the Syrian government view and the majority Syrian popular view, by a Syrian member of parliament in Homs and former rebel fighter in the Ahrar al-Sham movement:
I fought Hezbollah in Homs. Seeking revenge in Lebanon is wrong
By Kinan al-Nahhas, Member of Parliament for the city of Homs
Scarred by the siege of Homs and mindful of the regional war, Syria faces a dangerous temptation: to settle old scores in Lebanon. But intervention now risks entangling a fragile state in Israel’s war.
The fiercest battles I witnessed came in late 2013, when we – rebels besieged in Homs – faced the advancing forces of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. By then, the militia had already seized al-Qusayr and its surroundings, emptying the southwestern countryside of Homs of its Sunni inhabitants. The fighting intensified in the Qusour district of the city, where we, under siege, clashed with regime forces spearheaded by Hezbollah’s elite units.
The defining confrontation unfolded in a residential complex we came to call the “Nahhas block”. There, our fighters killed dozens from Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, even as many of Homs’ own sons fell as martyrs. Despite the ferocity and duration of the battle, neither Hezbollah nor the Syrian army managed to advance.
This was not the Lebanese group’s first intervention in Syria, but it was among the most brutal. It would be followed by the deployment to Syria of more than 70,000 Shia militiamen from across the region – forces tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and coordinated with Hezbollah’s leadership.
Deep scars
To grasp the scale of Hezbollah’s betrayal of Syrians, one need only compare the Syrian response to Hezbollah in 2006 with Hezbollah’s conduct during the revolution. Syrians opened their homes to displaced Lebanese. In return, after 2011 Hezbollah’s fighters turned their guns on Syrian civilians. Among the first were snipers sent to dominate roads and shoot demonstrators in Homs and other rebellious cities.
This, then, is the neat version of events: Syrian hospitality repaid with violence and complicity in tyranny, ending – at least in theory – with victory unmarred by sectarian revenge.
The truth is more complicated. The wounds run deep, and while many Syrians have taken grim solace in seeing Hezbollah’s leadership fall and its supporters displaced, justice has been neither clean nor complete. Innocents, as ever, have paid the price.
Among the most harrowing episodes that I witnessed was the massacre in the orchards of Haswiya in early 2013. More than a hundred civilians – women, children and men – were slaughtered, many with knives, some of their bodies burned. It was violence steeped in sectarian revenge.
History does not write the future
Now, reports circulate that the Syrian army may enter Lebanon. The justification? To hold Hezbollah accountable for its crimes and eliminate the threat it poses to Syria. Some go further, suggesting such a move would defend Lebanon’s Sunnis.
Despite everything recounted above, this must be firmly rejected.
No Syrian should endorse military intervention in Lebanon under the banner of retribution or moral duty – whether framed as “justice for crimes” or “protection of Sunnis”. Lofty slogans often conceal darker motives, and decisions that seem righteous in one moment can prove catastrophic in another.
Lebanon’s own memory of Syrian intervention in the 1970s and 1980s is instructive. It was not a noble endeavour but a functional one: to serve regional and international interests. It helped neutralise Palestinian armed groups seen as a threat to Israel, while simultaneously entrenching Hafez al-Assad’s rule at home and projecting his power abroad.
Nor does the argument for justice withstand scrutiny. Syria has yet to hold its own perpetrators accountable, let alone foreign militias or occupying powers. How, then, can it plausibly pursue justice beyond its borders when it has not begun to deliver it within them?
Betrayal of the Palestinians
Timing, too, is critical. Syria, still fragile and only beginning to recover, cannot afford entanglement in a wider regional confrontation – particularly one intertwined with the Palestinian question.
As this crisis unfolds, Al-Aqsa Mosque has been closed to worshippers during the holiest month, under the guise of “temporary security measures”. Many see this as part of a broader, more troubling trajectory within Netanyahu’s government, influenced by religious extremists who view the present moment as an opportunity to reshape Jerusalem irrevocably. Meanwhile, fringe Jewish groups affiliated with the so-called Temple movement openly speak of rebuilding Solomon’s Temple and ending the Palestinian cause.
In this context, weakening Hezbollah today may inadvertently serve Israeli ambitions to dominate the region, which is a prospect openly entertained by some Israeli and American politicians. The old maxim rings true: the most effective weapon against an enemy is another enemy. Netanyahu himself has suggested as much: when adversaries fight, one should weaken both.
Syria has no stake in choosing sides in such a struggle. It would be folly to intervene at a moment when two adversaries are already engaged, particularly when one continues to oppress Palestinians and destabilise the region.
Between fate and caution
Hezbollah has not escaped what many Syrians see as the curse of Homs. Its leaders have been killed, its ranks shattered. Some see this as divine justice for its role in Syria.
But caution must guide what comes next. Syrians must ensure they do not, in turn, become the authors of injustice. They must not invite the curse of the oppressed – least of all Palestinians, who, even now, find hope in the setbacks suffered by their own occupiers. Nor should Syria’s revolution, so vast in its promise, be reduced to yet another “functional state”: a pawn serving the interests of regional and global powers
You can tell how bad things have become in the Mideast when it was an Arab government, Lebanon, begging for direct negotiations with Israel, and Israel rejecting the idea for weeks, until apparently pressured into it by the US. ‘Bad, you say? But it looks like Iran has defeated the US’. While I think that is simplistic and I wouldn’t paint a devastated Iran as exactly a victor, I’d agree it has humiliated US imperial power. While there are no absolute winners and losers in this war, or in war, it is quite possible for the US to be one of the relative losers and Israel one of the relative winners, at least for now.
For decades, Arab governments rejected direct negotiations, let alone peace agreements, with Israel due to the Palestine issue; solve that, or, at least, withdraw to the 1967 borders and allow a sovereign Palestinian mini-state, and then we can talk about peace. Those who stepped out of line, namely Egypt under Sadat with Camp David in 1979, were ostracised by the rest of the Arab world; those who did so more recently – United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco – with the 2020 Abraham Accords were no longer ostracised, but neither did anyone else join them. Israel was always the one that wanted direct “peace” talks with Arab states to normalise its occupation of Palestine, while Arab states rejected this.
Why then has this been now reversed in Lebanon? For Lebanon, quite simply, it is question of survival; the Israeli aggression is simply of an extraordinarily brutal level, as we saw with the killing of some 350 people in 10 minutes with over 100 strikes on Beirut on ‘Black Wednesday’, and the full-scale destruction of entire border towns and villages in the south to depopulate the entire region. Lebanon cannot fight this with its ramshackle armed forces. For Israel, on the other hand, any brokered agreement with Lebanon, even with direct negotiations, and even if they result in agreement to fully disarm Hezbollah, is now a problem: because this would entail withdrawal to the international border. However, Israel’s aim today is Greater Israel, including a new border at the Litani River. So the traditional pattern is reversed; direct negotiations or peace agreements imply recognition of Lebanon’s borders.
Officially, Israel demands the Lebanese government disarm Hezbollah; yet ever since the ceasefire in late 2024 following the Israel-Hezbollah war in that year, which required Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and Hezbollah’s withdrawal north of the Litani, and its eventual disarmament, Israel has continued to occupy five small regions and to bomb Lebanon every day in violation of the “ceasefire.” Hezbollah logically responded that it will not disarm until Israel fully ends its occupation and its attacks; and the Lebanese government has great difficulty arguing with that logic.
Even though the Lebanese government has declared its aim of disarming Hezbollah anyway (presumably believing that this would have removed Israel’s excuses for its aggression), it knows that it is not physically able to disarm Hezbollah by force, and any attempt to do so risks throwing Lebanon into civil war. Therefore, this can only happen in a negotiated way, whereby Hezbollah agrees to integrate its forces into the Lebanese army. But Hezbollah cannot agree to that without the end of Israeli occupation, aggression and ethnic cleansing, because this takes place in the south, which is populated mostly by Lebanese Shia, Hezbollah’s constituency.
After Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel following the US-Israel attack on Iran and the killing of Khamenei, Israel launched its current full-scale war of aggression, slaughter and dispossession. Naturally, this makes it even less possible for Lebanon to do anything about integrating Hezbollah, let alone trying to forcibly disarm them at present, which would amount to national treachery. Yet Israel demands this. Israeli leaders do not demand this of Lebanon because they naively believe it is possible; they know very well it is not. But if they could push and cajole the Lebanese government to attempt this, the result – violently ripping Lebanon apart – would be a desirable outcome for Israel. Perfect conditions to consolidate the occupation and unofficial annexation of the region south of the Litani.
It is now clear that Israel was pressured by the US to accept the first round of direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel in decades, because Iran was insisting that Lebanon be part of the ceasefire before it attended the first ceasefire talks with the US in Pakistan, and Pakistani leaders also stressed that Lebanon was part of the deal. However, this talk of US pressure is slightly confusing, because both Trump and Vance initially took Israel’s position, and just flat out lied that Lebanon was not part of the agreement and had nothing to do with US-Iran ceasefire talks, and that Israel could continue to wage war there. In fact, on this, Iran simply capitulated – the first round of US-Iran talks began while Israel was still bombing.
However, once talks began, Israel went further and launched its genocidal 10 minutes on Beirut – clearly aimed at destroying the entire ceasefire process, because Israel wants nothing less than a ‘legitimising’ meeting of the US vice-president with the regime Israel needs to project as the ‘Great Satan’ to justify Zionist expansionism. This was the highest-level US-Iran meeting in half a century, more than anything under Obama even when he signed the Iran nuclear agreement (the JCPOA). It seems Trump and Vance told Israel to “tone it down” for appearance’s sake at least until the negotiations get going, and to agree to negotiations with Lebanon with US mediation, and Israel yielded.
Lebanon insisted that Israel at least cease fire before the talks start, but once again, it simply capitulated on this and went to talks anyway. The talks, of course, produced nothing tangible; Israel is still warring on Lebanon, Lebanon again insisted it wanted to disarm Hezbollah, but all sides know that is impossible to do via a declaration, and it cannot be done while Israel wages war.
Despite the US “pressure” on Israel to tone it down to allow the ceasefire talks, it seems Trump decided he was not ready to do a deal with Iran with only one round of talks, that might look too much like a US defeat, he still needed more theatrics. Netanyahu rang Vance during the US-Iran negotiations, and Vance actually picked up the phone – I mean, who the hell is Netanyahu for the US vice-president to answer to during a high-level negotiation with another country – and no doubt told Vance he didn’t like what was happening. According to Iranian negotiators, talks were going quite well until then, but after this everything became about Israel and its “security,” and Vance collapsed the talks with a ridiculously ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ statement demanding full Iranian capitulation to US terms, a very different tone to how he began the talks.
But now indications are strong that there will be a second US-Iran round in Pakistan shortly. For what it’s worth – and with Trump, that’s obviously not much – Trump is playing it up, claiming “I think you’re going to be watching an amazing two days ahead … They really do have a different regime now. No matter what, we took out the radicals,” and so on, while Vance now claims last round didn’t succeed because Trump wants to do a “grand bargain” with Iran.
We’ll see about that of course. It was obvious that Trump’s blockade of the Iranian blockade of the Strait was just a negotiation tactic, but it is not out of the question that he still may try some stunt like seizing Kharg Island, or sending in commandos to extract the enriched uranium stockpiles, a completely insane idea, but since they tried that some weeks ago and flopped completely (the “soldier rescue” story) this seems unlikely.
Other than Israel and it seems its UAE ally, the world wants this to stop. Europe still insists it will do nothing about the Strait unless the war ends. China has been actively pushing for an agreement, FM Wang Yi “held 26 phone calls with his counterparts in Iran, Israel, Russia and Gulf countries” to get the first ceasefire and is continuing, in close alignment with its Pakistani ally. Pakistan’s leader specifically thanked China, Saudi Arabia and Turkey for their “invaluable support” over the ceasefire. Saudi Arabia is pressuring Trump to end his blockade and return to negotiations. Pakistan’s military chief made a high-level visit to the Iranian leadership, while the president is in Saudi Arabia. Much is in motion, all towards ending this disaster.
While Trump showing he is a genocidal maniac who has no problem with rivers of blood has handily exposed all the nonsense, which also came from many leftists, that he was something more of a pacifist or “isolationist” than other US leaders, that he was the relative “peace candidate” in the last elections, that does not mean this entirely defines his “brand.” He still likes to see himself as a “peace-maker”, with the meaning that he goes all out for “American interests,” shows he is not restrained by “woke values” such as any semblance of international human rights law or international law in any sense, he is ready to bomb a people to “the Stone Ages” because that’s “where they belong,” but then after demonstrating this “peace through strength” he still likes to see himself at some grand “peace” conference with a former enemy that he alone was able to bring about by not holding back. In other words, he’d still like to preside over a deal with the mullahs; his continual insistence that he has carried out “regime change” and the new rulers are so “reasonable” and the like is not all for nothing.
We’ll see about that – with Trump it seems pointless to make many predictions. But what that will mean for Lebanon is unclear. Both Trump and US imperialism more generally remain totally committed to Israel. However, US imperialism has wider interests in stabilising capitalism and other reactionary regimes in the region, and most of this does not sit well with the highly destabilising Greater Israel project. Trump’s own proclivities are extremely pro-Israel, but he also maintains strong personal relations with leaders of other regimes (eg MBS in Saudi Arabia, Erdogan in Turkey) who are at odds with the Greater Israel project and who want the war to end. While Trump has offered Israel everything within its “own sphere,” he sometimes goes against Israel’s preferences in the wider region, if only half-heartedly.
No doubt Trump would prefer to see more Israel-Lebanon talks leading to “normalisation” and to Lebanon joining the failed Abraham Accords with a peace treaty with Israel crowned by Trump the Great Peacemaker. But for Israel, that would actually be a harder choice than many assume, because it would mean permanently giving up on its new border at the Litani. In contrast, Lebanon would prefer Israel to withdraw from its country without necessarily going as far as a full peace treaty, because many Lebanese – not only Hezbollah supporters by any means – would reject a peace treaty with the genocidal entity without some solution on Palestine. But if Israel is not to at least get the spectacle of a full-blown Abraham Accords agreement with Lebanon, demonstrating the normalisation of its Palestine genocide, then Greater Israel wins hands down against some half-peace agreement with Lebanon.
But in any case there can be any agreement, let alone peace treaty, without the issue of Hezbollah’s disarmament being dealt with. And that’s where we get back to the dilemma of how this can be done. For Lebanon, it can only be done following full Israeli withdrawal and end of aggression, guaranteed by the US and perhaps France, via a political process that gradually integrates Hezbollah. But Israel will not end its aggression, and its excuse is the existence of an armed Hezbollah. And I say “excuse” quite deliberately. Israel knows well that as long as it occupies the south and launches attacks, Hezbollah will exist to resist it.
And while it is good to see Hezbollah giving back Israel some of what it deserves, the presence of an armed militia based on only one of Lebanon’s confessional groups within Lebanon’s sectarian system is not a long-term solution. In my opinion, it can mainly hold Israel up and ensure its aggression does not have full impunity – and it is indeed holding Israel up, making its attempt to take the south much more difficult than it had envisaged – but a divided Lebanon, Lebanon a mess, very much suits Israel, or at least the current crop of Greater Israel extremists.
Heading towards the possible second round of US-Iran talks in Pakistan, Iran again demanded that ceasefire apply to Lebanon as well. For whatever reason, this time Trump put his foot down harder, and on April 16 “announced” a 10-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, which still allowed some Israeli bombing if allegedly in “self-defence.” But the next day he went harder: “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!”
This makes it seem that Trump is extremely serious about the next round of negotiations with Iran. However, when Iran responded by reopening the Strait, Trump stated that the US blockade of Iranian oil ships outside the Strait would continue, which would suggest he aimed to destroy the negotiations.
Whatever the case, the fact that Iran insisted on a Lebanon ceasefire to get the talks going again and that Trump then ordered it has been interpreted as a great victory for Iranian diplomacy, and above all for Hezbollah’s resistance. While both are valid points within limits, some of the exaggerated optimism is entirely misplaced. First of all it is worth remembering that even as Israel ceases fire, it remains in occupation of an area in southern Lebanon approximately the size of Gaza, which it did not have before this war began. At this point, that is not a victory against Israel.
Yes, Hezbollah’s resistance to date has surprised Israel, and just how Hezbollah has rearmed (or perhaps had maintained more than was assumed) is an interesting story in itself. But one difference between now and when Hezbollah-led resistance drove out the 22-year Israeli occupation in 2000, or when Hezbollah defeated Israeli occupation forces briefly attempting a comeback in 2006, is that in those cases, Israel confronted a ground-based people’s resistance. Now Israel is using the Gaza method – completely destroy and depopulate the region before you move in your troops. Some 1.2 million people have been uprooted, one fifth of Lebanon’s population, including 820,000 from the south (south of the Zahrani), a region of around a million people. It would be good to think Hezbollah is able to again impose a defeat in its stronghold in Bint J’Beil and other regions not yet taken and force Israel to retreat. But it will be more difficult as time goes on with an empty region and completely destroyed towns, as these images show:
If it ultimately can’t defeat Israel in the south, then resistance will remain only rockets from afar, which Israel then uses to justify staying forever. Sure, that’s contradictory for Israel, plenty of Catch-22’s all round, but if the goal is Greater Israel, it may just have to wear it for a while. Meanwhile, a whole other dynamic opens if the US decided to bring in Iran from the cold, as Obama once tried (and dozens of US capitalists were ready to jump into the Iranian market before Trump ripped it up) – at a certain point, that would mean Iran no longer needs an armed Hezbollah, which after all was, from Iran’s perspective, a tool of forward defence.
In Lebanon its aim is a new border at the Litani River. In Syria it is beyond the already occupied Golan, in Mount Hermon and a chunk of Quneitra governate. In Gaza still occupying 58 percent of the strip, based on Trump’s ‘peace plan’. In the West Bank, Israel has just announced 34 new settlements, said to be “the biggest land grab ever,” and at the same time it is building a new wall along the entire length of the Jordan valley in the east, to cut the West Bank off from Jordan and its people off from the main agricultural land. All this happening amidst the regional conflagration so desired by Israel for so long.
While it will be a balancing act for Trump regionally, I won’t be holding my breath for the “peacemaker” to put pressure on Israel over any of these expansionist projects. Who knows, maybe retaking the Sinai an controlling the Suez Canal may not be too far from the minds of the crazed maniacs now running Israel.
In early April, thousands of Syrians across the country took to the streets expressing solidarity with Palestine, condemning the new Israeli apartheid law to execute Palestinian prisoners/hostages and the ongoing closure of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The law does not apply to Jews, but is a direct threat to the lives of over 10,000 Palestinian detainees in illegal prisons in the occupied West Bank, where military “courts” have a 96 percent “conviction” rate. Demonstrations have erupted in Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Daraa, Quneitra, Latakia, Idlib and in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp. Look at videos of these two extraordinary demonstrations:
Long time Egyptian activist in solidarity with the Syrian people, Omar Sabbour, wrote:
“I don’t think there’s been any mass mobilisation in support of Palestine as geographically diverse in the region [and without exaggeration, possibly the world? Italy comes to mind] in recent history as what’s happened the last few days in Syria. Dar’a, Damascus, Aleppo, Idlib, Homs, Daraya and countless other towns and villages. Such an honour to have witnessed it.”
Around the country
At the University of Aleppo, thousands of students raised Palestinian and Syrian flags and banners reading, “Palestinian prisoners are not numbers” and “Executing prisoners is a crime against humanity,” chanting “With our souls, with our blood, we will redeem you, Palestine.” Video:
In Damascus, people gathered at the historic Umayyad Mosque after Friday prayers to protest Israel’s new apartheid execution law. Carrying Palestinian and Syrian revolution flags, protestors called for the liberation of al‑Aqsa and displayed solidarity with Palestinian detainees. Video:
More videos from the protest at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus:
In the south, especially Daraa and Quneitra, this solidarity with Palestine was combined with anger over Israel’s ongoing occupation of part of Quneitra beyond the already occupied Golan Heights, and Israel’s incessant attacks on these two provinces, including attacks on farmland, seizure of water sources, raids on towns and villages, kidnapping of ‘suspects’ and airstrikes, which has continued since the overthrow of Assad, Israel’s preferred leader, in December 2024, which brought to power a government Israel sees as an enemy.
In the video below from Daraa, demonstrators say “We will sacrifice our blood for them these are our Palestinian brothers,” “we stand with Palestine, the hostages and the Palestinian cause,” “with Gaza to the death,” demonstrators condemned the new Israeli law. They reached the “border” with Syria’s Israeli-occupied territories.
Some marchers in Quneitra attempted to cross the Israeli occupation lines in the Golan. Security forces had little choice but to prevent them from getting slaughtered; as we see in the video, one security member says “I hate Israel as much as you do, but are you going to fight them with your flip-flops? You don’t even have a gun.”
Rallies outside United Arab Emirates embassy
Some pro-Palestine demonstrators broke off from a main rally in Damascus to protest outside the embassy of the UAE. Protestors chanted “Zionist embassy” and hung Palestinian flags on it, expressing their rejection of the UAE’s close relations with Israel.
A separate but related protest took place outside the same embassy, chanting “Damn your soul, Bin Zayed” (referring to UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, MBZ), protesting the detention of former rebel commander, then Syrian Arab Army commander after the revolution, Issam Bouidani for more than a year after he visited relatives in the UAE. Indeed, his arrest was apparently a deliberate affront to Syrian president Sharaa, as it took place just as he was leaving the UAE after his first state visit.
However, some protesters attempted to break into the embassy, but were prevented by Syrian public security. The Syrian government stressed its “firm and unwavering stance” against attacks on any embassies, while reiterating that this in no way impinges on the right to protest.
The UAE condemned alleged “riots, acts of vandalism, and assaults” outside its embassy and demanded Syrian authorities “protect diplomatic missions, investigate the incident, and hold those responsible accountable.” Meanwhile, unofficial UAE spokespeople were harsher, for example “Abraham Accords enthusiast” Loay Alshareef, who warned that “the Syrian president must understand that what happened today will not go unpunished, and that sanctions on Syria are not fully lifted, and they shouldn’t. If Syria wants to be another Hamas, it should face the fate of Hamas.”
There is background here. Apart from Egypt’s al-Sisi regime which declared support for Assad straight after his (UAE-backed) coup against April Spring president Morsi in 2013, the UAE was the first Arab state to restore full diplomatic relations with the Assad regime in 2018, followed closely by its close ally Bahrain. These were also the first two states (again, apart from Egypt) to restore relations with Israel in 2020 in the Abraham Accords. The common thread for MBZ’s consistently counterrevolutionary regime is extreme hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam more generally, as well as anything related to the Arab Spring. Even as Assad’s regime was collapsing, the UAE (and Egypt) continued to declare its strong support for the regime, and many former regime members are in exile in the UAE. While the UAE, after some hesitation, eventually took a pragmatic position towards the new government, because it could see no alternative, it remains suspicious and these protests reflect what many Syrian people think of its relations with both Assad and Israel.
Palestine rallies: Pro-revolution – but why now? What is government’s attitude?
Some commentators (including some pro-revolution Syrians living abroad, but also some enemies of the revolution) claimed these rallies were being pushed by shadowy pro-Iranian or pro-Hezbollah forces, aimed at embarrassing the Syrian government or pushing it into premature, suicidal armed confrontation with the Israeli occupation. But there is zero evidence for this, and almost zero of any residual pro-Iranian forces anywhere in Syria.
Rather, though the protests were not explicitly government-sponsored, they were explicitly pro-revolution, indeed we may say, part and parcel of the revolution. Slogans such as “We brought down Assad — now it’s Israel’s turn” (or “we brought down the rule of the barrel bombs, and now it’s Israel’s turn”) were common; everywhere, they waved Palestinian and Syrian revolution flags together; state media reported favourably on the actions; and public security or troops from the new Syrian army took part in the protests in some areas.
For example, in Aleppo, the 60th Division of the Syrian Arab Army – closely tied to the Syrian leadership – carried out their own march chanting “Gaza, Gaza… Gaza is our motto We are coming for you, O enemy, we are coming.” See video here.
Likewise, in the historic revolution town Al-Zabadani in Rif Damascus, joint demonstrations took place between the local residents and the internal security forces:
In Daraa, a group of spokespeople for the movement stated “We, the people of Daraa province, we renew our loyalty to our brother, the Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa” and go on to say “We say to the aggressive British-Zionist settler entity that is expanding daily toward our lands that we will not remain silent, and we will resist with full force.”
Still, some might ask, “why now?” In fact, there have been pro-Palestine rallies Syria throughout the last year since the revolution, and there was even another country-wide wave exactly one year ago, likewise with the same pro-revolution flavour and reported on favourably by state media; but none quite as wide-reaching as this wave.
It is important to note that these were the only pro-Palestine demonstrations in Syria at the time, because they were banned in regions controlled by the Assad regime; Palestinians were arrested for attempting to hold rallies in solidarity with Gaza under Assad. Moreover, this current wave also exposes the rest of the region; the site ‘Warfare Analysis’ cited “an Arab from another country commenting on protests across Syria in support of Palestinian captives: “Lucky them, they can express themselves,” to which “a Syrian replied: “This did not come easily, we sacrificed everything for it.” Such pro-Palestine rallies are banned in many, if not most, Arab countries, as they were under Assad; whatever one’s view on the current Syrian government, it is important to remember that the Syrian revolution is not about a government, but about democratic rights and freedoms, which are greatly expanded now, despite many issues remaining.
Some claim that while the Syrian government’s toleration of these rallies reflects the more democratic atmosphere post-Assad, it is privately not happy, as it is concerned these rallies may embarrass it as it strives to gain US and other international funding for reconstruction. This seems misplaced, given favourable media reports, the long-term record of the leadership as described above, and the sheer massiveness of the rallies and their obvious pro-revolution character. The government’s relatively hands-off approach does reflect its completely correct focus on relations with other governments due to Syria’s extremely dire reconstruction needs following the Assadist apocalypse; this does not mean opposition to the movement, but rather different roles.
Indeed still others claim the opposite, that the government is behind the rallies, in order to demonstrate to Israel that it can mobilise if it needs to, as a ‘weapon’ for whenever the next round of US-mediated talks take place, aimed (on Syria’s side) at getting Israel to withdraw from the territory it has taken since December 2024, back to the 1974 disengagement lines which Assad and Israel stuck to for 50 years (the Syrian government also continually demands the full return of the Golan Heights, occupied since 1967, but after 50 years of complete passivity under Assad, dealing with that will have to wait for some recovery of the Syrian nation). But it may be an exaggeration to imply the government is consciously leading the movement; more likely, it is being led by elements closely connected to the ruling group among broader Syria revolution circles, and the government is happy to allow it to play this role.
It is also probably no coincidence that this takes place as Israel is confronting both Iran and Hezbollah; for the Syrian people, both sides are enemies; they find it hard to sympathise with Iran and Hezbollah after they actively participated in Assad’s genocidal war against the Syrian people for a decade, up to taking lead roles in starvation sieges of revolution-held towns. But Israel also backed the Assad regime (one thing Israel and Iran ironically converged on), and has been the main enemy of the new Syria since December 2024 and is the occupier of their land. By strongly raising the issue of Palestine in the context of this war, Syria demonstrates its hostility to Israel without speaking in defence of Iran and Hezbollah (though Syria has strongly condemned Israel’s attack on Lebanon).
Notably, Palestine is an issue which has been overshadowed by this war – while Iran rightly insisted that ceasefire should not be separated from the issue of Israel’s terror in Lebanon, there has been not a peek regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the radically stepped up settler terrorism and massive land grabs in the West Bank under the cover of this war. In this sense, the Syrian uprising for Palestine has played a small but important role of bringing the issue back to light, even if that was not the conscious aim.
Still others claim it is not pro-Iranian forces trying to embarrass the government and push it into a suicidal clash with the occupation, but hard-line Sunni jihadist forces opposed to al-Sharaa’s outward pragmatism. While there is no more solid evidence for this than the former claim, at least this touches on a reality inside Syria at the fringes. However, it is more likely that actions such as the attempts to cross the Golan occupation line were simply genuine Syrian anger, rather than reflecting such fringes.
Where the jihadi fringe did raise its head, however, was the presence of some chants of a distinctly anti-Jewish character in some demonstrations. For example, in this video from Idlib, we see protestors undoubtedly angry about the law allowing execution of Palestinian captives, chanting “’Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” This is a historical reference to a 7th century battle against a Jewish region in Medina (which has also been used at times in some Hamas actions).
Israel’s genocidal outrages in Palestine are obviously one of the sparks of antisemitism, which of course does not justify it. This reflects prejudices within some of the harder jihadist elements which were a support base of the current former HTS rulers.
However, while such ideas must be fought, it would be wrong to tarnish the entire movement with such phenomena; the movement as a whole has been focused on Israel’s crimes and solidarity with Palestine which runs deep.
During Israel’s bloody attack on the southern Damascus town of Beit Jinn in late November, the IOF killed 13 civilians, after the townspeople had resisted and injured six troops. Israel had alternatively accused those who resisted of being Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Jamaat al-Islamiya (a Lebanon-based Sunni Islamist militia) and cadres of “Jolani’s regime” (ie, the Sharaa government). When Syria researcher Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi interviewed locals about this, one response was “We are honoured to be among Hamas’ soldiers.”
There is a specific context for this. Assad Senior had suppressed all independent Palestinian organisations in Syria the 1980s, extending its war on the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) into Lebanon. Therefore, most of the allowed Palestinian organisations existing when the revolution arrived in 2011 – such as the misnamed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC – not to be confused with the actual PFLP) were regime stooges who policed the Palestinian camps for the regime, which included sending Palestinians to Sednaya and other Baathist torture gulags and death camps. Thousands of Palestinians were murdered and disappeared by the regime, often brought in by these snoops. In 2011, PFLP-GC militia even shot dead Palestinian protestors in Yarmouk.
However, in its attempt to subvert the main Palestinian organisation, al-Fatah, the regime had taken in Hamas in the late 1990s. Whatever one thought of Hamas, its independence is not in question. Once the revolution broke out, Hamas gave support to the people against the regime (and to similar Arab Spring uprisings in the region), and as a result they left Syria and their offices were ransacked by regime thugs. When Sednaya was opened in December 2024, it was confirmed the Assad regime had executed 94 imprisoned Hamas activists, while 67 surviving Hamas cadres were released by the new authorities. Countless thousands of other Palestinians, estimated to be equivalent to 5.6% of the total Palestinians in Syria – were also killed or disappeared in the regime’s gulag. Hamas hailed the overthrow of the regime.
Response from Gaza
Abu Obaida, spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas in Gaza, responded on April 2: “From Gaza and from Jerusalem, we salute the noble people of Syria, and their masses who came out chanting for the resistance and in support of Al-Aqsa and the prisoners. We say to them: We have heard your voice, and we are proud of you.” [The well-known Abu Obaida was killed in Gaza last year, but his replacement took the same nom de guerre].
Other prominent Palestinians in Gaza made similar tributes. Gaza-based journalist Motasem A Dalloul posted in his X account that “Syria is our real depth.”
Ongoing Israeli attacks
In the midst of these protests, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacked a car in Quneitra region, killing a teenager. The Syrian foreign ministry condemned this “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law” and demanded international action against Israel’s repeated attacks.
However, this was only one of the daily attacks Syria has been subjected to ever since the overthrow of Assad. Even though engaged in two gigantic wars against Iran and Lebanon, Israel has still managed time for its smaller scale bombing and other attacks on Syria! On March 20, Israel attacked Syrian army sites, weapons depots and military infrastructure in Daraa, including a building associated with the 40th Division in Izraa; according to the IOF, the strikes targeted a command center and weapons located in military compounds belonging to the Syrian government; local sources reported air raids hitting the Syrian army’s 12th Brigade near Izraa and explosions in the vicinity of the 89th Regiment headquarters.
A report by SARI Global documented 897 “incidents attributed to Israeli activity in southern Syria.” This included 123 in March 2026 alone, compared to 91 incidents in January and 97 in February. Three times in January, Israeli aircraft sprayed large areas of Quneitra with herbicides, “killing crops, devastating farmers and damaging trees.”
Israel clearly remains committed to maintaining its new “borders” in Syria and its project of destroying new Syria, its government, and if possible the Syrian state as a whole. The recent demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine by Syrians reinforce for Israeli leaders their relentless hostility to post-revolution Syria.
Other photos and videos
I’ll finish off with an array of other photos and videos:
Protests broke out this week across several Syrian cities and towns, with strong demonstrations in southern areas including Daraa and Quneitra, against Israel's Knesset approval of a law permitting the execution of Palestinian prisoners.
Between February 13-15, a very strange Syrian delegation attended the Munich Security Conference – along with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani were Commander-in-Chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Mazloum Abdi, and co-chair of the Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), Ilham Ahmad. The joint delegation met with European and American leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while the two Kurdish leaders also had their own meetings with French, German and other European leaders, and with a US Congressional delegation led by right-wing senator Lindsay Graham, author of the ‘Save the Kurds’ Act in Congress. Reportedly, Rubio had told Shaibani that there would be no meeting at all unless the SDF representatives were present as well.
Video of Syria’s delegation to the Munich Security Conference: SDF and DAANES leaders Mazloum Abdi and Ilham Ahmad with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Shaibani.
Now, the Munich Security Conference is an imperialist ‘security’ fest that offers security to only a select few powerful states, and certainly not to people like Palestinians, or to Iranians right now being bombed to bits by the government of this very Rubio. But for small and struggling nations who are invited, bereft of good choices in today’s awful world, it is a forum where they can attempt to push their diplomatic needs between the varying interests of the “great” powers.
The presence of Mazloum Abdi and Ilhan Ahmed at this high-level event presents a radically different picture to wild stories of the Kurds being subjected to “genocide” or grotesque lies about “thousands” of Kurds killed in the January conflict between the Syrian government and the SDF. In fact, almost all the reduction in size of the outsized Kurdish-led DAANES (‘Rojava’) statelet was due to an uprising of the 2 million Arabs it ruled over uninvited in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and southern Hasakah.
While at a certain point, it did look possible that a Syrian regime drunk on such easy victory might then try to overrun the Kurdish heartlands, this did not happen; instead, the January 30 integration agreement is widely seen as, in the circumstances, a just, if imperfect, compromise, that includes an SDF leader appointed governor of Hasakah, an SDF commander appointed assistant Defence Minister, alongside a number of other high positions (there is even speculation about Ilhan Ahmed in the foreign ministry), a new military division set up for the SDF, Kurds running their own security and other aspects. This reality, and the video and images above, present a difficult image to supporters of both sides who had insisted the other side were either “jihadi terrorists” (or “ISIS regime”) or “PKK terrorists,” both borrowing from the lexicon of the US “war on terror;” are jihadi and PKK “terrorists” now good mates, and are “PKK terrorists” now taking up positions in an “ISIS regime”?
By recognising the futility of holding onto the Arab regions while mobilising regional Kurdish populations to defend their own regions, leading to an effective partnership, the team around Abdi and Ahmed have bolstered their stature on the world stage, despite the shrinkage of their statelet. While much commentary speaks of western states “changing their position” to mean “abandoning” the Kurds, in an interview after Munich Abdi used the phrase “changing their position” to mean the exact opposite: this is the first time they have been invited to a high level conference in Europe as political leaders, rather than just meeting US military leaders in the field fighting ISIS. Indeed, Turkey’s foreign and defence ministers skipped the conference in objection to the inclusion of the SDF representatives.
Introduction
Until mid-January 2026, some 30 percent of Syrian territory was controlled by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), popularly called ‘Rojava’, whose army was the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Roughly two-thirds of its area and population – the governates of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and southern Hasakah – was populated by Syrian Arabs; the other two parts of the statelet were the northern and eastern parts of Hasakah governate, where regions of Kurdish majority combined with mixed regions of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and others, and the Kurdish town of Kobani (iconic for its resistance to the genocidal ISIS onslaught in 2014), part of Aleppo province situated north of Raqqa.
The entire project outside these Kurdish or mixed heartlands collapsed in 24-48 hours in mid-January, and with it, much of the Rojava mythos, though it maintains significant support in these heartland regions.
Two opposing roads had been posed for ending this unsustainable division of Syrian territory: either the process of negotiated integration ongoing since the March 10 agreement between the government and the SDF, or a ‘military solution’ whereby the Syrian army, possibly backed by Turkey, would reconquer the territory, a ‘solution’ long rejected by the Syrian government, one which would have resulted in great bloodshed and long-term hatred.
In the event, however, the collapse of the negotiated integration process led not to ‘military solution’ as such (except the original move into two armed Kurdish enclaves in Aleppo city); yes, the Syrian army began to nudge its way into DAANES territory to test the waters, but the minute it did so it led to an uprising of the vast Arab majority of the Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and southern Hasakah regions deciding simply to shrug off a decade of rule by a Kurdish-led party and army, which they had experienced as an oppressive foreign occupation. While the issue of Kurdish self-determination has long been a key issue in the region, the occupation of non-Kurdish territory by a Kurdish-led party flipped the script: what just took place was the assertion of self-determination by the Arab population.
Whatever the claims of Rojava supporters – some of them certainly valid and others highly questionable – that their revolutionary project was politically more advanced than the revolution elsewhere in Syria, it is clear that it failed outright to impact the lives or political consciousness of the Arab majority, despite the claims of its leadership to be implementing multi-ethnic ‘democratic confederalism’ and to have gone beyond a purely Kurdish struggle for autonomy. Supporters of the Rojava project need to do some hard analysis.
That does not necessarily mean the ‘Rojava revolution’ failed as a whole; leaving aside romanticised hype, it appears by all accounts to have more reality in the Kurdish-majority and some mixed regions, and defending its gains, and more generally, the rights of the Syrian Kurdish population to a degree of self-rule, remains a valid and important struggle.
The loss of most of its territory to the Arab uprising returned the issue from defence of an expanded imaginary ‘multi-ethnic Rojava’ to defending the Kurdish heartlands. While the threat of these regions being overrun in a bloody ‘military solution’ was avoided, the issue then became the degree of Kurdish self-rule that could be negotiated within the framework of integration into the Syrian state. Many criticise the lack of an officially ‘autonomous’ or ‘federal’ unit within the January 30 agreement. However, once the issue of Kurdish self-rule returns to the fore, a ‘new old’ problem arises: how to define ‘autonomy’ or ‘self-determination’ given the demographic reality of ‘Syrian Kurdistan’: despite much popular imagination, “the Kurds” is not the name of a geographic region, but rather an ethnic group which occupies no contiguous territory in Syria; Kurds are scattered in three small unconnected concentrations, living interspersed with other Syrians, as I have analysed here.
This long essay takes a comprehensive look at the developments in January and February; it is well-titled so sections can be read separately:
It begins with background to the issues;
looks at the integration agreement and discussions throughout 2025;
goes into the three stages of the January conflict – the initial Aleppo conflict, the SDF’s loss of its vast Arab possessions, and the threat that the Syrian army may enter the Kurdish regions and how that was averted;
analyses the January 30 agreement, notes a number of positive and negative developments in its wake, and discusses a number of main issues still to be negotiated;
and ends up with four broader thematic issues around these developments – the rise of pan-Kurdish solidarity, the question of whether the DAANES project was a radical democracy or a police state, and why the Arabs revolted, the discourse of “US betrayal of the Kurds,” and what this means for the ongoing Israeli aggression and occupation in the south and the Golan.
Background and lead-up to the conflict
a.Background: Kurds, Rojava project, PYD, YPG, SDF
The three ‘Rojava’ (West Kurdistan) cantons of Afrin, Kobani and Jazeera (northern and eastern Hasakah) arose in 2012 in the context of the revolution against the Assad regime, its genocidal counterrevolutionary war, and subsequent division of Syrian territory as various rebel formations defended territory liberated from the regime. Not surprisingly, the long-oppressed Kurdish minority began to assert itself in this context. Throughout 2011-2012, Kurds across the north took part in joint demonstrations against Assad alongside their Arab neighbours. Many of these Kurds supported the pro-revolution Syrian National Council (ENKS), consisting of eleven Kurdish organisations. However, the three ‘Rojava’ cantons were established by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD, the Syrian branch of the Turkey-based Kurdish Workers Party, PKK), which was not part of ENKS and was either ambivalent, if not hostile, towards the uprising, declaring itself a third force allied with neither regime nor opposition.
Setting up these cantons arguably cut the Kurds off from the joint democratic struggle, and this often involved well-documented PYD violence against Kurdish anti-Assad demonstrators. On the other hand however, the drift towards armed separation must also factor in a hostile Turkish influence on parts of the Syrian opposition, and the rise of jihadist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra which launched armed attacks on the Kurdish cantons. It is a complex issue, and while the PYD does not represent all Syrian Kurds, it does represent a significant portion of them; and as long as these three armed cantons roughly corresponded to the three Kurdish regions, they were not doing much drastically different to rebel formations running their own armed regions to defend their peoples against the regime.
However, as the US airforce adopted the YPG (which later became the leading force in the SDF coalition along with several non-Kurdish allies) as its preferred partner to fight ISIS in northeastern Syria from September 2014 onwards, things began to change. The US/SDF victories smashed ISIS in Syria between 2014 and 2019. In 2017, they took the ISIS ‘capital’ Raqqa (the claims by Assadists that the Assad regime and its backers defeated ISIS are laughable ‘parallel universe’ nonsense); though in doing so, the US airforce completely destroyed Raqqa. The SDF then found itself overextended, in occupation of a vast region that was not Kurdish and had not chosen to be part of their project.
In an era when the only alternatives to SDF rule in eastern Syria (the theatre of the SDF-ISIS war) were the Assad regime and ISIS, accepting SDF rule by these Arabs was a no-brainer. But this changed once the regime was overthrown. The SDF should have recognised reality and began a serious process of negotiated handover of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor; and even before this, it should have handed over serious authority to the local Arab populations within their statelet. Negotiating in 2025 as if this 30 percent of Syria (which happened to include most of Syria’s oil wealth) was all “theirs” was a huge error of judgement.
b.No military solutions to Syria’s disunity – and the question of who is ‘legitimate’
A negotiated integration process between the Syrian government and the SDF was the only possible way forward to solve this massive division of Syrian territory. This is also the case with the smaller division with Druze-dominated Suweida in the south, which like DAANES has its own autonomous armed forces derived from Druze ‘armed neutrality’ during the revolution years, and the effective division with alienated Alawites on the coast, who have no armed forces since they were the backbone of the military-security apparatus of the collapsed regime, which allowed no other.
Which particular governments, autonomous entities, military formations or political currents represent these different components of Syrian society is not neat, but rather, is a very messy inheritance from the Assadist catastrophe, and therefore cannot be judged on purely ‘formal’ categories. For example, many government supporters say the Sharaa government is ‘legitimate’ because it has global recognition, so minorities should simply bow down, accept centralised rule by this government on the basis of one-person one-vote, and all will be fine; many opponents claim it has no legitimacy because it has not yet faced elections, or that it is nothing but “an assemblage of terrorists;” then government supporters respond that many Kurds oppose the SDF so it has no legitimacy to speak on behalf of Kurds, and so on.
In reality, the current Damascus government and its army does appear to have wide legitimacy (as opposed to enthusiastic support) among the majority of Syrians, and therefore can be considered legitimate in that sense. Its legitimacy derives from the enormous act of overthrowing the genocidal regime which destroyed the country; its global recognition derives from the fact that there is currently no possible alternative (unlike in Egypt after the 2011 revolution, for example, the military-security apparatus of the ancient regime in Syria were smashed, so no ‘al-Sisi coup’ is currently possible).
However, it does not adequately represent all components in Syria; rather, its main legitimacy derives from the Sunni Arab majority in Syria. This component is represented, ‘for better or worse’, by the government and its Sunni-dominated armed forces which emanated from what was left of the largely Sunni-based rebel movement after much of it had been earlier destroyed by Assad – whether one views that as the government’s ‘intention’ or rather an inheritance to be overcome. It is largely an inheritance from the Baathist catastrophe – under Baathist rule, control of the military-security apparatus was solidly in the hands of the Alawite minority, constructing a powerful sectarian dynamic, and a major dimension of its violent counterrevolution after 2011 was a war of sectarian genocide against the Sunni majority which formed the main – but not exclusive – base of the revolution. This utterly destroyed the social fabric of Syrian society, and parts of these Sunni-dominated armed forces today naturally reflect impacts of this regime-sponsored sectarianism. Some claim the new government is making slow attempts to overcome this; others claim the new ruling elite seeks to utilise Sunni sectarianism as its ideological prop in the reestablishment of a soft-authoritarian capitalist rule. While this issue cannot be dealt with here, the widely-noted ‘one-colour’ nature of the state, despite some improvement throughout the year, means that it requires maximum democratic change to become a genuinely inclusive polity.
Therefore, Syria’s unity can only come about via real negotiations and accommodations between the various Syrian components to bring about democratic integration, for other components to also see the government as legitimate. Once again, ‘for better or worse’, a large part of the Kurdish component is represented at present by the SDF; not all of it, to be sure, as the Kurdish National Council also represents significant Syrian Kurds, but given the SDF’s monopoly on arms in most Kurdish majority regions, specific political advances in those regions which the Kurds are proud of, and understandable mistrust of government armed forces in a post-revolution situation where people’s security is fundamental, the SDF and DAANES must play a key role in any negotiated integration.
Likewise Alawite and Druze components need to represent themselves, with whatever leaderships, again ‘for better or worse’, they actually have, in any process of reconciliation and integration. In both cases, actions by government-led forces had catastrophic results in 2025, though the cases were different. The March 6 attempt by Assadist holdouts on the Alawite-dominated coast to impose their military solution via a murderous insurgency that ambushed and killed hundreds of public security and Sunni civilians led to the government necessarily confronting it, but in the process massively losing control to revenge-seeking and hateful sectarian forces – both in and out of uniform – who massacred over 1000 Alawite civilians. While trials have just begun for some of the 298 charged as perpetrators (something that never happened in Assad’s time!), the basic structural problems remain; above all, the glaring need to get local Alawites into the security forces to patrol their regions, and to be recruited to local military divisions, has only just begun towards the end of 2025. This has been partly due to the government’s centralising tendencies, which till recently was not responsive to ideas of balance via local decentralised governance, but specifically due to mistrust of Alawites in uniform due to the Assadist past.
If the Alawite disaster was provoked by the Assadist insurgency, the government was more directly responsible for the Druze disaster in July, and not only because it was the second time, it had not been preceded by an insurgency, and the Druze till then had been pro-revolution and the majority of its leadership – except a specific sheikh – had been pro-government and pro-integration. While there was a conflict between Druze and Bedouin which the government claimed to be trying to stop when it intervened, in reality this was a botched attempt by the government to impose a military solution on Suweida, frustrated by the ongoing negotiations over the degree of administrative and security decentralisation Suweida should be allowed while reintegrating into new Syria. In practice government forces took the side of the aggrieved Bedouin, leading to a gruesome massacre of hundreds of Druze by undisciplined, sectarian elements of the government’s armed forces and Bedouin militia, a smaller-scale massacre of local Bedouin by extremist Druze, Israel bombing Damascus to “protect the Druze,” and the effective loss of Suweida for now.
The Suweida disaster weighed heavily over how the government approached the SDF integration issue in the later part of the year. On one hand, its centralising tendencies were often apparent in contrast to the ‘federalist’ position of the SDF/DAANES; on the other hand, its chastening due to Suweida was apparent in large concessions it was ready to make (see below), though its powerful neighbour Turkey tended to push the former tendency. While much western commentary tends to analyse the January conflict as a victory for the government’s centralising tendencies, the outcome is in fact a clear compromise, and the chain of events far more complex than such analysis is useful for.
c.Background to the Aleppo ‘SDF’
The easy and dramatic collapse of DAANES in its vast Arab-populated regions tended to take the spotlight away from how the January conflict began, which was not in Arab Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, but rather in two Kurdish-populated suburbs inside Aleppo city, Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsud. Before describing this conflict, it is important to look at the background to these suburbs, as it is markedly different to that of the rest of the SDF/DAANES region.
These two suburbs had long been controlled by the YPG (which in Aleppo was simply renamed SDF when the SDF was set up in the northeast) since 2013 as armed camps completely surrounded on all sides by the rest of Aleppo, which was controlled either by the Assad regime or the armed opposition, with no connection to the main DAANES region of the northeast. Only the YPG-controlled Afrin region further west was somewhat close, but there was still no geographic link. While the Assad regime crushed the Aleppo rebels in 2016, it allowed the YPG to maintain control of these neighbourhoods, due to reasons specific to Aleppo
While in the Kobani region, the YPG found allies in the Free Syrian Army’s 11th Brigade, the Raqqa Revolutionaries Front, and other non- or anti-regime forces, in their confrontation with ISIS in the east, the Aleppo situation was different – ISIS had been driven out of the entire northwest by a massive joint rebel offensive in 2014, and the region was largely dominated by a wide array of rebel groups. In this situation, the YPG’s neutrality between regime and rebels was seen as betrayal by the rebels, and a potential asset by the regime (however opportunistically, since Assad always promised to crush Kurdish autonomy when he regained control). Combined with this was a new aggressiveness of the YPG – its confidence buoyed by the US intervention from 2014 onwards on their behalf – aiming to conquer an irredendist ‘Rojava’ state across the entire north of Syria, joining Afrin to Kobani, regardless of the vast Arab and Turkmen majority in between. It was rebel-controlled (not Assad- or ISIS-controlled) regions in their way.
The onset of Russia’s horrific air war in support of the Assad regime in September 2015 was welcomed by the YPG and was to be their tool. The Afrin and Sheikh Maqsud YPG launched a large-scale attack on the rebel-held, Arab majority Tel Rifaat and surrounding region north of Aleppo in January 2016, backed by heavy bombing by the Russian airforce. Seizing the region uprooted some 100,000 Arabs and Turkmen, who ended up in camps in Aziz on the Turkish border. Meanwhile, the AKP-PKK negotiations track in Turkey, which had been proceeding for a number of years, and which had corresponded with attempts to bridge the gap between rebels and YPG, collapsed in late 2015, leading to a shift by Turkish-backed rebel groups in the region to a more anti-YPG stance; in April 2016, a number of pro-Turkey groups launched murderous attacks on Sheikh Maqsud. While the YPG’s aim was to advance its irredentist project rather than to aid Assad as such, this put its Aleppo wing in alliance with Assad – made clearer when they actually aided Assad’s reconquest of rebel-held eastern Aleppo later in 2016.
When the Assad regime was overthrown in December 2024, the new authorities also allowed the SDF to maintain control of these two suburbs. Despite the history of bad blood in Aleppo itself, al-Sharaa’s HTS had begun to build bridges with the Kurds and the SDF, due to HTS’s own tensions with Turkey and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), at one point even proposing a joint civilian administration between HTS and the SDF if HTS could gain control of areas currently held by the SNA! HTS had also intervened in Afrin at times in defence of local Kurds against the SNA, which it continued to do after December 8. The SDF officially welcomed the overthrow of Assad, and HTS issued a statement stressing that its fight was against Assad, not the SDF, promising to ensure the safety of Aleppo’s Kurds, and describing the Kurds as “an integral part of the diverse Syrian identity” who “have full rights to live in dignity and freedom,” calling on them to remain in Aleppo Therefore, there was a degree of convergence, even though the SNA, backed by Turkey, launched an offensive to seize (Arab-majority) Tel Rifaat and Manbij from the SDF.
With Assad gone, and with the SDF nationally announcing its support for a process of gradual integration into the new Syria, it was clear that the Aleppo situation would not last. Two aspects were very specific about the Aleppo SDF compared with the much larger issue in northeast Syria: first, the particularly bad blood between the rebels and the Aleppo SDF as discussed above; and secondly, while control over significant territory in the east could be considered some basis for autonomy discussions, an armed presence outside the state in suburbs inside a city, with no geographic connection to the rest of DAANES, was a much less sustainable situation – and especially given Aleppo’s status as northern Syria’s commercial capital, such armed division could not last.
The bad blood was not helped by the tendency of SDF fighters there to fire on Aleppo security forces or civilians; according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, sniping from these neighbourhoods killed 65 Aleppo residents just in December 2024-January 2025. Presumably this was a suicidally deluded form of pressure to get as good a deal as possible in the bigger integration negotiations; it is also possible that some of this was carried out by ex-regime forces who took refuge there. The SDF rejects this data, and, with some logic, claims it would not be in the interests of a surrounded group to act this way; nevertheless, reports of such acts throughout 2025 are legion, and have been expressed by a wide range of ordinary Syrians and pro-revolution activists, including many hostile to the new government.
There have also been claims that the local ‘SDF’ leadership in Aleppo were out of synch with the more pragmatic national leadership around Mazloum Abdi; Syrian activist Safi Ghazal claims “the elements in Sheikh Maqsoud today do not directly follow Qasad [SDF], and they were not present when Qasad was formed in the east of Al-Furat (Euphrates) … they are the most extreme element and do not declare their affiliation either to Syria or even to the SDF.” This makes some sense, given the particular history of this group. It also makes sense, jumping forward, given that after the national SDF agreed to peacefully withdraw from the two suburbs towards DAANES territory early in the January 2026 conflict to avoid bloodshed, a hard-line grouping within the Aleppo Asayish leadership rejected this decision and decided to “fight to the death.”
d. The March 10 and April 1 integration agreements
Whatever the case, the March 10 agreement between the Syrian government and the SDF signed by al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi formalised the process of integration, to take place via negotiation throughout 2025, with a view to completion by the end of the year. There is much to suggest a genuineness about this by both the government and the SDF, and actual warmth between the two leaders, Sharaa and Abdi, who despite opposing ideologies, had fought for years for their people. It is generally understood that Turkey, on one side, was not thrilled, preferring a military solution, but nevertheless went along with it, often pressuring the Syrian government to take harder stances; that Israel was not thrilled, from the completely opposite perspective, as its strategic outlook is for Syria to be partitioned and it preferred a Kurdish-led entity to remain in perpetuity; while the US supported the process (indeed Abdi arrived in Damascus in a US military helicopter), partly ending up with a better position than either Israel or Turkey by default, by playing the middle ground between their opposing positions, but also due to Trump’s aim of withdrawing from Syria: to do so, the US wanted to leave its war on ISIS in the hands of a unified bloc, not two forces in conflict with each other. In addition the US position reflects the Gulf’s desire to invest and make money in Syria, which requires some kind of integration, rather than a huge split down the middle that could erupt at any time.
Given Aleppo’s peculiar situation, the first step forward was made there with the separate April 1 agreement. In this agreement, the SDF military was to withdraw from the two suburbs, and leave behind only its internal security forces, the Asayish, which would be complemented by the entry of Syrian government internal security, and joint patrols would be established. The state would extend services, but the local Kurds would continue to run their municipalities. Prisoners were also exchanged. Initially, this was seen as a model for how a decentralised approach to integration might work.
It is unclear from afar how this hopeful model collapsed. Syrian government supporters claim that the SDF never fully left, but left behind some cadres and weaponry. Moreover, even if it was mainly Asayish, there never seems to have been any entry of state internal security to partner with them as agreed, but the reasons are unclear. They also charge that the remaining SDF or Asayish continued to snipe on Aleppo security or civilians. Rojava supporters reject this, claiming there was no SDF remaining, and instead charge that the Syrian government imposed a blockade on the two suburbs for many months before January. There is good reason to accept parts of both stories. For example, following the Suweida crisis in July, despite government troops withdrawing, and allowing in aid convoys, the government cut off electricity and internet from the region; and carried out a similar siege on Kobani in January, for weeks after the government and SDF had signed a ceasefire agreement. Thus using collective punishment as a pressure tactic has undeniably been used by this government. Meanwhile, the death of Asayish commander Ziyad Halab in the January 2026 conflict highlighted the opacity of the line between SDF and Asayish, since until then he had been known as an SDF commander.
Getting back to the bigger picture, despite some flare-ups between the two sides in Aleppo, negotiations got back on track in October, with US mediation. The main stumbling block had been that the government wanted the SDF to integrate into the Syrian army “in an ‘individual’ capacity,” as opposed to “as a bloc” as the SDF insisted. Integrating “as a bloc” was important so that the SDF, as part of the Syrian army, would still be placed primarily in Kurdish regions, where they have the people’s confidence; however, it also assumed a continuation of an autonomous SDF command structure. In October, the government and SDF agreed on a compromise whereby the Defence Ministry would set up three new divisions and two new brigades in the northeast for the SDF units to join. While it could still officially be called “individual” integration (SDF cadre would have to join the new divisions, rather than the SDF units simply changing their names), they would remain together in their region, thus more “collective” than either purely “individual” or “bloc” integration. One of the two ‘brigades’ (smaller units than ‘divisions’) was to be for the SDF’s Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the other a specialised anti-ISIS brigade. High political and military positions were offered to SDF personnel, with rumours of Abdi being appointed Chief of Staff of the defence forces.
This extraordinarily arrangement indicated that neither the SDF nor even the Syrian government yet realised how shaky was the SDF’s hold on the Arab regions. The three divisions were assumed to mean one for each of Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Hasakah governates, as if the current Arab SDF troops in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor would remain loyal to the project. Despite this, it seems the SDF still tragically refused to sign on, instead making more unrealistic demands; for example, the SDF allegedly demanded that Defence Ministry personnel not be allowed to enter the northeast (the whole DAANES, not only the Kurdish regions) without permission from the future ex-SDF military divisions! This extraordinary demand showed that they still imagined this was somehow all “theirs.”
Proposals that the SDF give up Arab-populated Deir Ezzor to the government – especially important given its oil and gas wealth which are the property of Syria as a whole, and the history of uprisings against SDF rule there – as a goodwill gesture, as a concession to build trust, were resisted by the SDF.
Nonetheless, when the end of year deadline had passed and the government and SDF again met on January 4, with the presence of US mediators, they came close to agreement; all these October proposals were still on the table. What happened next is largely based on conjecture or anonymous “sources,” and it is unclear whether the SDF persisted in its unreasonable demands. According to a common story, while positions were edging closer, Syrian foreign minister Shaibani entered the negotiations room at some point and declared the discussion over. According to SDF spokespeople, this was due to “international intervention,” meaning Turkish pressure. Perhaps Turkey demanded from the Syrian government that the Aleppo situation be resolved as an example, to demonstrate to the SDF what they were potentially bargaining with. Whatever the case, the government then decided to apply the ‘military solution’ to the very specific, troublesome case of the isolated Aleppo enclaves.
The three stages of the January conflict
a. Stage 1 – The Aleppo conflict
Despite the Aleppo YPG leadership’s history of collaboration with Assad and the untenable situation, nevertheless the government’s decision in early January to launch a military solution to the two Aleppo neighbourhoods in principle still violated the necessary process of negotiated integration; that is, by most accounts, the YPG had legitimacy among the Kurdish populations in the two neighbourhoods, and had good reasons to fear for their safety if overrun militarily by the Syrian army (even more so given the coast and Suweida events).
The shelling of the al-Midan neighbourhood in Aleppo on January 6, which killed three civilians, was blamed by the government on the SDF/Asayish – who denied responsibility – and used as the pretext to begin the offensive.
It is true, on the one hand, that nothing even remotely similar happened in the Aleppo conflict as what took place on the coast and Suweida; first, the government created humanitarian exits which allowed 148,000 residents (the vast majority) to escape before military action was taken; these residents were sheltered and provided food and services elsewhere in Aleppo or in Afrin by government and non-government agencies, schools and mosques; and following the end of the conflict, the vast majority have returned, facilitated by public security forces, and ‘reenge’ attacks have been avoided. There were even some defectionsfrom the SDF, but not that many. The January 15 announcement of the graduation of 130 new Aleppo public security officers, 20 percent of them Kurds, suggests government security forces replacing the Asayish can be largely Kurdish (in addition to those who defected). Compared to the coast and Suweida, this was a highly professional operation.
However, the fact that the kinds of mass atrocities of the coast and Suweida did not take place is an excessively low bar; that should simply be considered normal, rather than laudable. Despite the humanitarian corridors, not all could escape; according to Human Rights Watch, some residents said “the passages were attacked by snipers and affected by shelling from both sides” and “one resident said that the Asayish and SDF blocked people from using the humanitarian corridor due to renewed fighting.” The nature of the military action itself – tanks and artillery against built-up areas – still led to 47 civilian casualties, according to SDF data (and 23 civilians in government-held Aleppo), among those who did not or could not leave; many civilians returned to destroyed homes or other civilian infrastructure; and while there were no massacres, there were violations of dead bodies (including the widely seen throwing of the corpse of a female fighter from a balcony), and sectarian insults used against captured groups of Kurds. If the April 1 agreement included entry of government security forces to work alongside the Asayish, why didn’t the government push to make that happen? As Syrian revolution activist Taha Bali states, the answer to “the question of an alternative solution to military work” is “negotiations and more negotiations.” Military action deepens division, destroys trust.
b. Stage 2 – East Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor: The Arab revolt
But then something completely different happened. After the SDF sent drones against targets in Aleppo (including a municipal government building) from a strip of Arab-populated, SDF-ruled land in rural eastern Aleppo (around the town of Deir Haffer), the government demanded they leave that region as well. This was considered easy, not only because it was Arab populated, but because it is a small strip on the west bank of the Euphrates River (all the rest of the SDF/AANES statelet was east of the river) which the SDF had only taken after the fall of Assad; it was not long-term part of ‘their’ territory. Seeing this reality, the SDF agreed to withdraw to the east of the Euphrates. To the Americans, the SDF’s long-term backers, the idea of consolidating behind a more defensible line east of the Euphrates also made sense.
But when the SDF withdrew, the Syrian army was confronted with scenes of wild jubilation as they entered. The Arab population there understandably viewed this as liberation. But suddenly this indicated that the entire DAANES statelet was built on sand, since the vast majority of the population of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor governates, and even the southern part of Hasakah governate, were Syrian Arabs. The SDF/Rojava mythos was that their project was not simply about Kurdish rights and autonomy, but about building a new multi-ethnic model called “democratic confederalism,” based on ideas developed by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan when he rejected his previous nationalist quest for an independent Kurdish state. And in my frank opinion, these are very valid ideas that deserve study in relation to the national question, especially where populations live interspersed. But if these ideas had become a reality in the 8-9 years the SDF ruled over them, and the Rojava political project had proven its democratic and emancipatory credentials, then the Arab majority of the region could have fought to remain in Rojava’s superior political set-up which they would be invested in as equals.
Instead the Arabs reacted like any peoples throwing off an oppressor regime. So, while the Euphrates worked as a physical boundary, it was no ethnic or political boundary. The Arab masses basically threw off SDF rule themselves, and the 50,000-strong Arab SDF force made no attempt to fight, instead defecting in its entirety. The mass celebrations as the Syrian army entered these regions are unmistakable (and here and here and so many more); actually what we saw was an uprising,
Heading north along the river into Raqqa governate, the town of Tabqa fell like another domino, and once again the Syrian army was greeted with wild celebrations. Meanwhile, further east in Deir Ezzor, Arab ‘tribes’ (using media language) rose up against the SDF; they have previously done so on several occasions. They rapidly liberated vast tracts of the countryside with zero Syrian troops involved. Soon they took over the Conoco gasfield. One after another the major ‘tribal’ federations which had been officially loyal to the SDF declared their loyalty to the Syrian government. The first were the Shaitit in Deir Ezzor, who had fiercely resisted the ISIS conquest in 2014, resulting in ISIS slaughtering 900 Shaitit.
Back to Raqqa governate, all the Syrian army had to do was nudge forward across the Euphrates, and the city of Raqqa itself was liberated, the SDF fleeing without a fight, once again to wild celebrations, and to viral scenes of opening the doors of a women’s prison, with jubilant women and children streaming out. While some SDF supporters claimed the Syrian army was thereby releasing ‘ISIS’ prisoners, this report cites released woman, Haja Umm Mahmoud, who “had spent over a year and a half in SDF detention for communicating with her sons, who were part of the Syrian opposition forces, and for receiving money transfers from them. Umm Mahmoud revealed that the prison housed a large number of women and children with various charges—some criminal, others linked to the work of relatives or children of the detainees within the Syrian opposition forces. Some detentions were reportedly based on false reports or participation in celebrations marking the fall of the ousted regime. Regarding the children, she explained that some women were detained with their children because they had no caretaker outside the prison. Some of these children spent years in detention centers without sufficient care or education.”
Arthur Quesnay, writing in OrientXXI, describes the “intifada” that took place in Raqqa:
“However, the whole of this device collapses on the night of January 17 to 18 when the Syrian army takes the city of Tabqa, south of the Euphrates, and says it is ready to advance on Raqqa. … the Kurdish authorities of the AANES had to face a popular uprising that began on the morning of January 18 and that amplified as the Syrian army deployed. … In Raqqa, for example, civilians took to the streets in 8 a.m. The rallies were initially hesitant because of the shootings by snipers that left 22 dead and about 100 wounded, according to the city’s hospitals. However, as early as noon, Kurdish forces retreated in the face of a massive mobilization. The Syrian army’s entry around 5 p.m. was more a security operation to protect civilians from the latest snipers still active.”
Raqqa had been the first city liberated from Assad in 2013, but it was later conquered by ISIS, then later liberated by the SDF (if ‘liberation’ can properly describe the total destruction of the city by the US airforce), but then kept imprisoned by the same SDF – for the people of Raqqa this was a return to their own revolution. It is important to remember this when much lazy discourse describes the collapse of SDF rule over Arab regions as due to ‘tribal defections from one ruler to another’ – yes, as described, there was actions by ‘tribes’, but this was only one aspect of the liberation – the city populations of Raqqa and Tabqa are not ‘tribes’. Even in Deir Ezzor, the reason we now saw tribal action was because the city population of Deir Ezzor – again with its own history of liberating the city from both Assad and ISIS before that latter reconquered the city in July 2014 with the aid of the Assad regime – had already rejected SDF rule straight after the ouster of Assad, and the SDF had been sensible enough to defer to their wishes to join the new government then.
Indeed, Quesnay stresses that “the driving force behind the revolt lies not in tribal networks, but in former Free Syrian Army fighters or local executives who took refuge in Idlib during the civil war. Numerous interviews reveal that they were the ones who formed the first groups of insurgents on the night of January 17 to 18, 2026.”
c. Stage 3: Potential attack on Kurdish regions
The point about the above is that, after the relatively small-scale Aleppo events, the massive loss of SDF/DAANES territory that followed was not an “attack on the Kurds” or on “Kurdish autonomy” or even on “Rojava” in the original and more correct meaning of the term (“western Kurdistan”, ie, regions where Kurds live in Syria). Rather, it was a completely justified uprising of the two million plus Arab population in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and southern and western Hasakah against decade-long, uninvited, oppressive rule over them by a Kurdish party and army. It does not require any support for or illusions in the current Syrian government to recognise that. It was an act of Arab self-determination. And given that most of Syria’s sovereign oil wealth was in that (Arab-majority) region, the government also had every right to gain control of it from the perspective of Syrian sovereignty and self-determination.
However, while most supporters of Rojava were shocked and simply not willing to admit this, nevertheless their discourse about this being an attack on the Kurds or on Rojava was not without foundation, in the sense that they saw it as a stepping stone by the government to militarily assert control over the actual Kurdish-majority regions, the original Rojava heartland, which was all that remained of the DAANES state – Kobani, nestled between Aleppo and Raqqa governates, and the northern and eastern part of Hasakah governate, the main Kurdish region in Syria (though itself very ethnically mixed). As it turns out, these regions were never overrun; the red-line of forcible violation of Kurdish self-determination was not crossed; but momentarily this appeared to be a danger.
So let’s be clear: based on the same principle that the Arab populations have experienced a liberation by feeing themselves from imposed Kurdish-led SDF (actually PYD) oppression, if the Syrian army had got drunk on victory and pressed into the Kurdish regions, this would have been an act of violation of the right of the Kurdish people (and perhaps other non-Arab peoples in the mixed region) to self-determination, and, given the given the actual nature of the various armed forces in post-Assad Syria as discussed above, this would almost certainly have resulted in widespread violations and massacres in practice. Once again, it does not require any support for or illusions in the SDF/DAANES leadership to recognise that. Nor does it require one to accept that “the Kurds” – a dispersed group of people in Syria rather than the name of a geographic region – could express their self-determination by remaining perpetually outside the Syrian state, just that integration can only take a negotiated approach based on genuine partnership.
Following the collapse of SDF rule over the Arab-populated two-thirds of its territory in mid-January, a ceasefire agreement was signed on January 18 between the two sides. But the defeats suffered by the SDF meant that negotiations were now on an entirely new basis, where the SDF’s bargaining position had now crashed, and this was reflected in the agreement’s terms.
This agreement called for the complete handover, “administratively and militarily,” of Arab-majority Raqqa and Deir Ezzor governates to the Syrian government, the handover of border posts and oil and gas fields, and expulsion of non-Syrian PKK members from Syria.
More positively, the agreement called for the SDF to nominate a list of commanders to “occupy senior military, security and civil positions in the framework of the central state, thereby ensuring national partnership” (this was understood to include deputy defence minister and governor of Hasakah), facilitating the return of uprooted Kurdish civilians to Afrin and Sheikh Maqsud in Aleppo, and support for Sharaa’s decree on Kurdish rights.
However, there were also some vague items. Hasakah governate was treated separately, lacking the “complete handover” language, but calling for “merging all civil institutions in Hasakah province within the Syrian state’s institutions and their administrative frameworks.” This could either meant the same thing – abolition of ‘Rojava’s’ institutions – or the softer language and reference elsewhere in the agreement to “the special needs of Kurdish regions” could mean room for negotiation whereby formal integration into state institutions could preserve much of their own structure.
Similarly, it called for appointing “a candidate to become governor of Hasakah, as a guarantee for political participation and local representation.” While this could mean nothing remarkable, it became apparent that Mazloum Abdi was seen as the likely candidate.
While calling for Kobani to be “emptied of all heavy weaponry,” it said that “a security force is to be formed from the town’s inhabitants, together with the preservation of a local police force affiliated administratively with the Syrian Interior Ministry.” This means the SDF-linked Asayish internal security would integrate into state structures, with Kurds running their own security. Left unsaid, on one hand, were the administrative structures in Kobani, and on the other, why similar language about security was not used for Hasakah.
Even the clearest defeat for the SDF position in the agreement – that the basis for SDF integration into the Syrian military would be “individual” – nevertheless, the absence of any reference to new divisions as previously proposed did not necessarily rule it out; they would still have to “individually” integrate into some military division, so it seemed rational that at least one new division could be set up for Hasakah for Kurdish SDF personnel to join.
These vague points suggested room for negotiation about how “integration” proceeded, leaving open the possibility of aspects of Kurdish or ‘Rojavan’ autonomy being preserved.
However, when Abdi met Sharaa the next day (January 19), Sharaa had adopted the most uncompromising interpretation of all these issues possible, demanding the complete and immediate handover of Hasakah governate, the complete dissolution of the SDF and autonomous administration at the outset, with “individual” integration coming after, and he gave Abdi only a few hours to consult and make a decision. When Abdi rejected this ultimatum, both sides mobilised to continue the battle. Syrian government troops approached both Kobani and Hasakah; for a moment it appeared that the Syrian government had decided on a ‘military solution’ and a bloody showdown by invading Kurdish majority regions and the Rojava heartland.
d. How the danger of war and bloody showdown was averted
Yet on January 20 the news was different – instead of four hours, the SDF was given four days to consult and to come up with a detailed plan for a practical mechanism of how they would integrate the civil institutions and the SDF. The entire tone had changed. Military integration of the SDF also required more “discussions on the detailed integration mechanism.” The SDF was asked to propose a candidate for deputy minister of defence, for governor of Hasakah, and names of representatives for the Syrian People’s Council from Hasakah and Kobani, whose places had remained vacant after the 2025 indirect ‘election’.
This ceasefire was then extended to 15 days on January 24, with US officials stating that the ceasefire must continue and “escalation” avoided no matter what. The Syrian government stressed it would not enter Hasakah or Qamishli city centres as long as agreement could be reached – though this ominously suggested they would if agreement were not reached – and stressed that no government forces would enter Kurdish villages, that only security forces consisting of local people would be present.
This was followed by a series of meetings between the Syrian government, SDF and DAANES leaders, US and French officials, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership (which hosted meetings in Erbil), with input also from PKK leader Ocalan, and from the non-PYD Syrian Kurdish parties gathered in the Syrian National Council (ENKS), which hashed out precisely the unclear issues in the initial ceasefire agreement. Following a meeting between Mazloum Abdi and US envoy Tom Barrack in Erbil, a Rudaw report claimed a “new framework” for SDF integration had been discussed, which indicated flexibility on these issues.
This led to the January 29 agreement, a comprehensive agreement that replaced that of January 18, and that included a permanent ceasefire, and which brought this “new framework” into being. Before going into its terms and what it means for the future, let’s first look at the factors that led to the rather dramatic change of tone between Sharaa’s uncompromising ultimatum on January 19, with the drift to war, and the new truce on January 20 leading to the January 29 agreement which all sides are now committed to. I think there are a number of factors:
First, the tremendous mobilisation of Kurdish communities inside these regions in Syria, in neighbouring Iraq, Turkey and Iran (“south, north and east Kurdistan”), and around the world. Regardless of one’s view of the politics involved, the global ‘save Rojava’ campaign, together with the arming of the population in the Rojava heartlands and the entry of Kurdish forces from Iraq were all crucial in raising the potential political and military price for the Syrian government if it were to launch an invasion. In fact, the threat brought about an enormous demonstration of cross-border Kurdish unity, precisely the things that all four regional governments would probably have wanted to avoid.
Second, the US red-line. Despite the discourse of “US betrayal” (to be discussed below) as the Arab masses shrugged of SDF rule, it was clear that the US saw the Kurdish-majority regions as a red-line. US officials were heavily involved in the ceasefire and getting better terms for the Kurds and SDF. Right-wing senator Lindsay Graham, closely tied to Israel, continued a strong campaign in support of the SDF which he began while in Israel when the Aleppo offensive began; at this point – January 18 – he promised that sanctions would be re-imposed and made “even more bone-crushing” than previously, warning that there was huge interest in Congress. On January 19, Trump phoned Sharaa and told him to “halt government army advances” and “to be more flexible” in the negotiations. Then as intermittent clashes continued and negotiations for an agreement proceeded, Graham’s January 27 ‘Save the Kurds Act’ threatened devastating sanctions on Syria and anyone supporting Syria, and on the same day Trump again called Sharaa and told him that the US “has interests in the Middle East and that this war does not align with their interests” and the offensive must end. Of course, this was all influenced by the first point.
Third, the pragmatic instincts of the same Sharaa government which has also shown itself capable of quite opposite instincts – these two sides of the government’s inclinations have been in conflict throughout the last year, in a government still finding its bearings. It is unlikely that Sharaa really wanted a bloody showdown, which his government had pledged to avoid all year, especially after the Suweida debacle (Suweida after all remains beyond government control, despite hundreds of government troops killed in battle by Druze militia). It seems likely that Sharaa’s intransigent position and the military moves towards the Kurdish regions on January 19 were intended as a form of pressure on the SDF, combined perhaps with a theatrical show for Turkish regime consumption; having shown teeth, he then returned to a more rational position. Once again of course, this was also influenced by both points above.
Finally, a specific point intervened: the process of the US moving 7000 ISIS prisoners from Syria to Iraq demanded calm conditions, and the US would have demanded a longer ceasefire if for this reason alone. It appears that the Sharaa government saw this as a convenient rationale for pulling back from its intransigent speech, a face-saver for in fact moving back to a more rational position. Arguably, this US operation signalled another thing: a US vote of no-confidence in the Syrian government’s ability to control the ISIS prisons, especially given the killing of US miliary personnel by a jihadist soldier in the Syrian army several weeks earlier.
The January 29 ceasefire and integration agreement
a. Analysis of the January 29 agreement
The January 29 agreement between the Syrian government and the SDF brings about the integration of the SDF and DAANES into the Syrian state’s institutions, but also includes aspects which allow a degree of continued self-rule in the Kurdish regions:
On the main issue which had divided the two sides since the March 10 agreement – whether the SDF military would integrate into the Syrian army on an “individual” basis or as a “bloc” – the outcome comes closer to the latter even if formally the former, in that a new army division, consisting of three brigades, will be created for the SDF to collectively ‘integrate into’ in Hasakah governate, and a new brigade added to the Aleppo military division for the SDF in Kobani.
The Kurdish Asayish internal security forces will be re-badged as part of Syrian public security, and continue to patrol Kobani and Kurdish regions in Hasakah.
The Syrian army will not enter any “Kurdish areas,” or any “cities and towns”.
The SDF is to appoint the governor of Hasakah governate, the deputy Defence Minister and a number of other high posts, as well as select representatives from Hasakah and Kobani for the People’s Assembly, which had been left vacant last year. The SDF’s candidate for Hasakah governor, long-time SDF leader Nour al-Din Ahmad, has been formally accepted by the Syrian government and has begun his duties; the SDF has put forward another 10 names for other high positions.
While the civilian institutions of DAANES will be integrated into Syrian institutions, a number of provisions also imply some degree of ‘re-badging’ with the possibility of maintaining some essential aspects of the ‘autonomous administration’:
“settlement and certification of all school, university, and institute certificates issued by the Autonomous Administration”
“licensing of all local and cultural organizations and media institutions” (in accordance with relevant laws)
“working with the Ministry of Education to discuss the educational pathway of the Kurdish community and to take educational particularities into account.”
Together with references to “protecting the particular character of Kurdish areas” in the earlier January 18 agreement, these items suggest that the degree of effective local decision-making, including the retention of the more progressive aspects of the Rojava project, could be questions of interpretation and negotiation, rather than a flat suppression as more negative readings could suggest.
The agreement also calls for facilitating the return of all displaced Kurds to Afrin and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain). While a positive statement, this is currently made difficult in Afrin, and impossible in Sere Kaniye, by the presence of re-badged former Syrian National Army (SNA) brigades who committed atrocities against Kurds and plundered their properties when they took part in the Turkish invasions of 2018 and 2019 respectively (when hundreds of thousands of Kurds were driven out), as well as some remaining Turkish troops.
While Afrin Kurds still suffer harassment by ex-SNA brigades, the situation has improved significantly since the new government came to power and began pushing these brigades aside and working towards restitution of the Kurds’ property; some 70,000 Kurds returned to Afrin in the first months after the revolution, though many more still languish elsewhere in camps, and while return has begun, clearly the Turkish and SNA presence needs to be resolved. Meanwhile, all three Afrin positions for the People’s Council were won by Kurds, “including Dr. Rankin Abdo, a female doctor and activist whose public views on Ahmed al-Sharaa are far from positive.” And on February 13, the Afrin district government announced the appointment of 19 mayors for the region’s main towns, and “most if not all of these appointees are local Kurds.”
To all this must be added the January 16 presidential decree on Kurdish rights, which declared the Kurds an essential component of Syria, declared Kurdish to be a “national language” that can be taught in public and private schools where Kurds form a significant part of the population, made the Kurdish Newroz festival a national holiday, banned hate-speech against Kurds, and annulled the results of the botched 1962 census which had stripped some 20 percent of Syrian Kurds of their citizenship; hundreds of thousands of Kurds were at a stroke granted citizenship. While arguably some parts could be strengthened and will be subject to negotiation and elaboration, and as many Kurds have argued, this should be in the constitution rather than just a decree (Sharaa has now stressed his commitment to guaranteeing Kurdish rights within the constitution), this was clearly a huge and sweeping reform, leading to Kurdish celebrations in Damascus and Afrin among other places.
Meanwhile, at the Damascus International Book Fair, which took place February 5-16, Kurdish books were available for the first time; see this short video. Many Kurdish writers, unable to present their books previously, were present for the first time, for example well-known Syrian Kurdish novelist Jan Dost, who returned to Syria for the event for the first time in 26 years. “I am at the Damascus Book Fair for books, writing, Kurdish culture, and the Kurdish struggle. … for 26 years I was deprived of the land and people of Kurdistan. Now I am seeing my readers up close and we are having discussions.” He did not hold back his desire to see a united Kurdistan at some time.
Taken as a whole, all the above represents a picture that is so comprehensively superior to anything during the 60-year Baathist dictatorship or before regarding the Syrian Kurdish issue that it is simply night and day. This at least should be conceded by critics before moving on; getting this far is an accomplishment that would have been impossible without the Syrian revolution, in the broadest sense of the term.
b. Developments since the agreement – positive and negative
In the aftermath of the agreement, most developments have been strikingly positive in terms of the spirit of the agreement, of creating a new partnership whereby, on the one hand, the Syrian state has sovereign control over its territory with ‘one government, one army’, while on the other hand, Kurdish and SDF leaders become partners in the state and a significant degree of self-rule applies in the Kurdish regions. Here are a number of developments:
The government accepted the SDF’s nomination of long-time SDF leader Nour al-Din Ahmad as Governor of Hasakah governate; for the significance of this, it is important to remember that Hasakah is only 30 percent Kurdish. Originally jailed by the Assad regime for early anti-Assad activity, he also had a son killed fighting for the SDF against ISIS. He has played an important political role in the DAANES. When he first returned from Damascus after being accepted, the SDF welcomed him with a sea of Kurdish flags and no Syrian flags, which may have been reassuring for Kurds but not for the Arab majority of Hasakah. This was reversed in his subsequent inauguration in the presence of the government-appointed Hasakah internal security chief; the SDF has also appointed the deputy head of security for the governate, Asayish commander Mahmoud Khalil (Siyamend Afrin).
More recently, the government accepted the SDF’s nomination of long-time SDF (and before that YPG) commander, Sipan Hamo, as Assistant to the Minister of Defence for the eastern region.
On February 4 Sharaa met with a delegation from the (non-PYD) Kurdish National Council in Syria (ENKS) in Damascus, thus broadening the engagement with Kurdish political leaders beyond the SDF.
When Colonel Mohammad Abdul Ghani, commander of Internal Security in Aleppo Governorate, visited Kobani to prepare for the entry of security forces to begin integrating the SDF’s Asayish forces, who will continue to be the (re-badged) local security force, he used the name “Kobani” rather than its Arabic name, Ain al-Arab.
The entry of internal security into Hasakah and Qamishli for the same purposes proceeded smoothly; the joint statement by the Asayish and MoI leaderships, led off by a female YPJ cadre, has a genuine feeling to it; Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba thanked the local Kurds for their “warm welcome” and “love and gratitude.” Both the Syrian army and SDF had moved away from the cities, as agreed.
The first 400 families of Kurds displaced in northwest Syria have begun their return to Afrin, with hundreds more families expected to return in coming weeks, based on agreement between the SDF and the government in which the latter ledged to ensure their safety. According to the pro-SDF ANF site on February 16, “the issue of displaced citizens will be addressed in the coming days, and preparations for their safe return will begin. In the event that no problems arise and a joint plan is established, around 450,000 people displaced from Afrin, Shehba, Aleppo, Girê Spî (Tal Abyad), and Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain) will be able to return to their homes.” Very importantly, a joint internal security team including Asayish personnel, led by Asayish commander Mahmoud Khalil (Siyamend Afrin), visited Afrin to assess the necessary arrangements for the return of displaced residents, here he is paying homage to his homeland he had been displaced from. Following this, he and the joint team then visited Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafieh.
More recently, it was reported that Turkish civil administrators have begun leaving Sere Kaniye (Ras al‑Ain), a Turkish coordination office in the city has been closed, some SNA military factions have started withdrawing from the area, and Asayish forces are likely to enter.
The Ministry of Local Administration and the Environment issued a formal decree on February 15 formalizing administrative decentralization in Syria based on the pre-existing Law 107, by delegating significant authorities and ministerial powers to Governors, as well as some extra powers to mayors. Given that Sharaa has regularly stated that Kurdish, Alawite and Druze calls for decentralisation or federalism “do[es] not differ in substance from the local administration framework in force in Syria, particularly Law No. 107 issued more than ten years ago, which in practice already incorporates many of the concepts being proposed today, with the possibility of introducing amendments to it,” this seems a positive step in relation to SDF and Kurdish calls for self-rule within the integrated framework.
On this, Abdi stated on February 17, on his return from the Munich conference, that “the main Kurdish demand in northeastern Syria is “decentralized local governance under any name” and as such the disagreement with the Syrian government is only terminological rather than of political substance. This was in response to Syrian Foreign Minister Shibani’s denial that the Kurds are demanding autonomy – Abdi stated that the term “autonomy” is not a condition of the Kurdish proposal, but rather, the goal is to empower residents of northeastern Syria to manage their administrative, service, and security affairs themselves, in a way that preserves the region’s ethnic and social particularities.
Oil and gas facilities, the Qamishli airport and border crossings have returned to government control, as seems appropriate; only the Semalka border crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan required some negotiation, but it is understood that official government control will be combined with the same Kurdish staff continuing to work there.
Not all developments have been positive, however:
Despite these agreements and meetings, the government has maintained an effective siege of Kobani for weeks afterwards, which appears to be a means of collective pressure – even though this seems to make little sense in the circumstances. The food, water, power, fuel and medical needs of Kobani are further exacerbated by the presence of tens of thousands of Kurds displaced from elsewhere in recent weeks. While a number of large aid convoys have gone into Kobani, the main problem was that electricity was cut off to the region, which also meant water pumps couldn’t run. The government denied that it was blocking electricity, claiming instead that damage to the network during the fighting had caused the cut-off; if so, there seemed to be little urgency about fixing it. Power was finally restored to Kobani (intermittent as in most of Syria) on February 9, leading to water being pumped. However, while this is slowly improving, the conditions for normal trade of goods in and out of Kobani – as opposed to protected aid convoys – remains severely hampered by the presence of SNA or other “dangerous factions that are most likely not committed to the agreement” – according to the Kurdish Red Crescent – on the outskirts of this isolated enclave. A number of deaths have been reported due to siege conditions. This is simply criminal and the government is fully responsible and needs to act to end this situation immediately.
Despite the overall positive atmosphere of the meetings as internal security entered Hasakah and Qamishli, they were marred by the SDF arresting dozens of Hasakah locals for coming out to welcome the entry of state security forces, a reminder of the authoritarian practices behind the ‘radical democracy’ of Rojava.
A recent report claimed that residents of Arab-majority neighborhoods in Hasakah reported increasingly harsh ‘security’ measures by the SDF including security raids, street sweeps, temporary checkpoints, phone searches and so on. Meanwhile, leaders of virtually all the Arab ‘tribal’ groups of northeast Syria issued a joint statement on February 15 calling on Damascus to restore full state authority in the region, deployment of the Syrian army and security across the governate, and dismantling of the Autonomous Administration, accusing the SDF of entering Arab areas, imposing restrictions on local security forces, and of carrying out arrests and raids. The issue here appears to be some unclarity in the agreement: while it was agreed that the SDF’s Asayish internal security would be re-badged to continue patrolling Kurdish regions, the Asayish had previously deployed all over Hasakah; naturally the Arab majority do not want re-badged Kurdish Asayish patrolling them (though this fear seems unfounded). This coincides with demonstrations by Arab communities previously ruled by the SDF in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Hasakah condemning SDF “violations” and calling for release of prisoners.
In mirror image to these protests, there have been demonstrations in Kurdish towns demanding the release of Kurdish and/or SDF detainees being held by the Syrian government; up to 1000 are reportedly unaccounted for.
The escape of significant numbers of ISIS cadre, or families, during the handover, which both blame each other for, has likely led to some of them joining up with ISIS which has now launched a number of new attacks on Syrian government forces. By contrast, arguably the escape of many women and children represents the end of a decade-long injustice, of people incarcerated with no charges or trials or prospects, including children born there.
c. Main ongoing issues for negotiation
There are a number of key issues – either Kurdish-specific or Rojava-policy – still to be resolved in the ongoing process of negotiation over the implementation of the agreement.
First, the very important question of Kurdish education. While Sharaa’s decree on Kurdish rights included the hugely important clause that Kurdish was considered a national language that can be taught in public and private schools, this is also one of its weak points. Because the initial understanding is that Kurdish will be taught two periods a week as an elective course; while this may be very good in some areas, for regions that are predominantly Kurdish and where Kurdish is mother-tongue, the issue raised is Kurdish as the language of instruction, rather than a mere elective. As cited above, Ilham Ahmed claims that “education will be reorganized in a way that preserves Kurdish as an official language of instruction,” and Fawza Youssef likewise claims that Kurdish schools “will retain their specific character” and that joint committees will be formed to discuss the continuity of the educational process “including curricula and languages of instruction.” It remains unclear whether these are their opinions or there have been understandings with the government on this. Of course, the agreement explicitly states that “all school, university, and institute certificates issued by the Autonomous Administration” will be certified, implying the continuation of these institutions taught in the Kurdish language; but that could be interpreted as “up until now.” The agreement also states that in discussing the “educational pathway of the Kurdish community, the Education Ministry must take into account their “educational particularities.”
Second, there is the more general question of how much of the legislative framework of the former Rojava will continue in Kurdish regions, or for that matter in non-Kurdish regions, within the parameters of the administrative decentralisation that, as shown above, the government now appears to recognise; as noted above, Abdi claims the institutions of the Autonomous Administration” will basically remain as they are. This above all concerns the radically more progressive gender equality policy framework of Rojava; if this was rolled back, this would indeed represent societal regression. Of course, since the agreement states that all DAANES employees would continue in their jobs as the administration is integrated, this of course includes the high levels of gender equality in employment and management, but the question is how much control decentralisation will give them over the policy framework that promotes this. One example is the Co-Chair system, which as cited above, Ilham Ahmed claims will continue. But this concerns more general issues as well, for example the institution of civil marriage and other significant reforms. The agreement calls for the “licensing of all local and cultural organizations and media institutions,” which would therefore include a range of ‘Rojava’ civil society initiatives that are not present elsewhere.
Third, there is the question of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). In both the October and December 4 proposals, one of the new brigades (separate from the three new divisions) would be specifically for the YPJ; yet once the balance of forces turned decisively in its favour, the government dropped this from the January 18 and January 29 agreements. As cited above, Ilham Ahmed claimed that the YPJ will be included in the new brigades formed for the SDF, though elsewhere she has stated the issue is still being negotiated. According to Ibrahim Hamidi writing in Al-Majalla, a Defence Ministry official stated that each of the four new SDF-based brigades “includes a battalion of the Women’s Protection Units.” For their part, YPJ spokespeople insist there is no way they are disarming. While no other brigades of the Syrian army include women, one important development was the November 2025 announcement that the Interior Ministry’s internal security and police forces would be open to women; in March, the first Women’s Police Institute was inaugurated in Damascus. It has also allowed female Asayish members to integrate on the same terms as their male counterparts.
Fourth, in relation to the military integration, an issue has arisen regarding troop sizesof the new division and new brigades. Following the more or less total defection of the SDF’s Arab components, it is estimated there are some 25-30,000 SDF troops. The well-informed Al-Majallah, citing an official “closely acquainted with the talks,” the new Hasakah division would comprise 16,000 troops, plus 6000 for the Kobani brigade, this encompassing most current fighters; yet another official speaking to the same Al-Majallasuggested much smaller numbers, “between one thousand and 1300 fighters per brigade,” meaning the new Hasakah division (consisting of three new brigades) would only have some 4000 troops, and the Kobani brigade only 1300. Therefore, it is unclear what is actually on the table. However, this may become an issue simply because, according to research by the Institute for the Study of War, the 23 divisions in the current Syrian army each have an average of only 2400-3600 troops, an average brigade size in other countries, meaning the higher figure above would be much larger than average.
Next there is the question of return of displaced Kurds to Afrin, Sere Kaniye and elsewhere, as specified in the agreement, and which has begun. But Abdi added “any solutions applied in Qamishli and Kobani should also include those regions.” This raises the larger question of who provides security in Kurdish regions like Afrin and Sheikh Maqsud in Aleppo, and those with large Kurdish minorities like Sere Kaniye. By “solutions” does Abdi only mean return, or similar administrative decentralisation given the “special needs of the Kurdish areas,” and that Kurdish security and police from the local populations should patrol these areas? Obviously this would be logical, but as there has been no Asayish in Afrin or Sere Kaniye for many years, and they were forced out of Sheikh Maqsud in January, these Kurds will not be re-badged Asayish. Since Afrin and the Sere Kaniye region were invaded by Turkey in 2018 and 2019, the main security forces have been violently anti-Kurdish militia, previously part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), and though things have improved somewhat since the new government took over more functions in Afrin at least, the ongoing presence of the SNA and even Turkish troops needs to be resolved. While the excuse for Turkish troops to remain is now diminished since the excuse of the “threat” of the SDF has gone (and Turkish troops have withdrawn from Afrin city), well-informed Syria watcher Charles Lister claims that former SNA fighters in Ras al-Ayn and Afrin “will be replaced by other MOD units.” But these MOD units (ie military) and security will need a large injection of local Kurds; the January 15 announcement of the graduation of 130 new Aleppo public security officers, 20 percent of them Kurds, is obviously positive news in this respect.
Four more general questions
This long essay will wind up with four general issues of interest which did not fit neatly into the largely chronological frame of the piece without blowing out certain sections. They are all essential for a rounded understanding of the issues.
a. The rise of pan-Kurdish solidarity.
Despite historical bad blood, the PYD/YPG/SDF current which has run DAANES, and the other major Kurdish grouping, the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), consisting of some eleven Kurdish parties, including the Kurdish Democratic Party-Syria (KDP-S), have drawn closer over the last year. Last April, the Kurdish Unity Conference took place, involving all main Kurdish groups, and came up with a joint platform for the transition. Demands such as for education in the Kurdish language are common to all Kurdish parties; likewise, ENKS has demanded lifting the siege of SDF-run Kobani. Now that the three quarters of the DAANES state that were Arab colonies have broken away, and it became a question of defending the actual Kurdish regions and some degree of Kurdish autonomy, the SDF leadership itself is currently giving more emphasis to Kurdish rights and pan-Kurdish solidarity than to its previous emphasis on being a ‘multi-ethnic’ statelet with better politics than elsewhere in Syria. While it may still reference multi-ethnic policies in its Kurdish-majority heartlands, it became clear that it needs the rest of the Kurdish nation now. The fact that the Barzani family and Kurdish Democratic Party (aligned to the KDP-S) running the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous statelet – that is, a political force traditionally hostile to the PKK – became a major backer of the SDF’s position in the negotiations that led to the final agreement, and allowed Kurdish militia to cross the border, further strengthened this dynamic. Meanwhile, the fact that from a different angle, Ocalan also played an important firm but pragmatic role in the settlement – emphasising that the municipal decentralisation in ‘democratic confederalism’ “has nothing to do with federal autonomy” – also strengthened this convergence.
The irony of the SDF previously downplayed Kurdish nationalism while attempting to defend an autonomous territorial unit on the basis of a multi-ethnic project, while the ENKS were always more accommodating with the new Syrian government, is that it is in fact ENKS – like the Iraqi Kurdish KDP – that advocates a specifically ethnic Kurdish autonomy. And the huge pan-Kurdish mobilisation from all four parts of Kurdistan and in the diaspora to defend Rojava has a dynamic more in tune with the traditional Kurdish nationalism of the KDP than with Ocalan thought. On the positive side, this demonstrated that Kurdish unity could be a powerful factor in regional politics which can be mobilised against any of the four governments when Kurdish rights are threatened. On the other, long-time ‘Rojava’ supporter Matt Broomfield, while noting that “both the new flag of the Syrian Arab Republic and the DAANES’ complex, multilingual insignia are being eschewed in favour of the tricolor Kurdish nationalist flag,” points to the other side of this dynamic, claiming that “few Kurds [now] have a good word to say for the “brotherhood of peoples”, instead chanting “long live the unity of the Kurdish people” at funerals and marches.”
Barzani’s statement that the Iraqi Kurdish experience cannot be replicated in Syria was not a repudiation of this, but rather a recognition of the reality of Kurdish demography in Syria, as I have explored here. Through a different route this is also now a point of convergence with what Ocalan is saying as cited above. Ultimately, there can only be locally-based ‘autonomy’ for a dispersed population like the Syrian Kurds, which fits well with ‘administrative decentralisation’, which in turn will hopefully allow the SDF forces to protect not only enhanced Kurdish rights, but also progressive ‘Rojavan’ policies which are not specifically Kurdish, such as gender equality.
One issue raised by some Kurds opposed to the PYD, however, is that the agreement at state level between the government and SDF may privilege the PYD-led tendency over other Kurdish forces, and leave unresolved the issue of the democratic rights of Kurdish oppositionists in the SDF-controlled region; ‘Rojava’ authorities have regularly engaged in repression against Kurdish political opponents. Hopefully the amnesty announced by Abdi and the new climate of cooperation will resolve these issues.
b. Radical grassroots democracy or authoritarian police-state? Why the Arabs threw of Kurdish rule and rejected the DAANES project.
If many Kurdish oppositionists faced repression at times in the DAANES statelet, for the vast Arab majority that recently threw of Kurdish rule, things were worse: they felt np connection to the project. Yet both ideas – that the SDF ran an authoritarian regime, and that their state was Kurdish-run and oppressed non-Kurds – totally contradict the entire Rojava mythos, according to which this was a semi-anarchist authority based on radical grassroots democracy, and that Kurdish nationalism had been jettisoned in favour of a ‘democratic confederalist’ entity involving the radical cooperation of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and other minorities in the region. While supporters an opponent of the project tended to be highly polarised, with extreme romanticisation and uncritical adulation on one hand, versus outright demonisation on the other, as in many cases, the reality may be a lot more complex.
There is much literature on democratic procedures at the local level, which in ethnically mixed regions involve equal participation of people of different ethnicities and not only Kurds. But what is abundantly clear is that, whatever may have happened in municipalities, real power remained concentrated in an effective one-party state, that one party being the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the PKK, and its militia the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), the main component of the SDF. All major decisions were made by leading cadres of this Kurdish party. One does not necessarily completely negate the other. That one party may push a progressive social platform, and where it has a real base among the population, it may bring much of this about; yet they may do this while still cracking down on dissent, not allowing genuine opposition parties and media, and not holding elections.
Looking back at much of the literature extolling the Rojava revolution from its early days, it is striking that most of comes from the Kurdish heartlands, and from some of the very mixed regions in the Hasakah heartland, where smaller ethnic groups (Assyrians/Syriacs, Armenians) participated. This long-time ethnic coexistence as perhaps easily translatable into a democratic confederalist polity. In contrast, the fact that the revolution completely failed to have any impact or gain any support in the vast Arab-populated lands of Raqqa, Deir Ezzor or even southern Hasakah – essentially the Arab colonies – was demonstrated without any doubt by the way they shrugged off SDF rule in a day or so.
Some embittered ‘Rojava’ supporters turned to a primitive and very ‘non-Rojavan’ explanation, claiming the Arabs just were not prepared to accept progressive ideas like gender equality that DAANES was so generously offering so they threw off its rule so they could keep oppressing women. As if Kurdish society were innately progressive. Or just that “tribes” are fickly like that, as if the whole Arab population of one third of Syria were just “tribes.”
The reality is much more straightforward: if the presence of the dominant party behind the scenes was a problem for real democracy in general, even for Kurds, it was even more of a problem when that party – the PYD/YPG – was an explicitly Kurdish party ruling over a vast Arab majority. Revolutionary transformation can only arise from the people themselves, it cannot be imposed from above. Therefore, it is not surprising that the regions where the ‘Rojava revolution’ mythos appears to have some solid roots is in the Kurdish regions, because it is only among Kurds that a specifically Kurdish party would have a real base. The fact that an Arab city like Raqqa was covered by posters of Ocalan, a Kurdish leader who is not even Syrian, showed the extent to which the PYD leadership was out of touch; in the uprising, people ripped them all down.
It is one thing to rule another people as an emergency measure – the SDF initially gained these Arab regions by driving ISIS out of them with the aid of the US airforce – and another to stay there a decade without ceding any real authority to the people there. In fact Arab-based organisations aligned with the SDF against ISIS, such as the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA’s) 11th division, the Raqqa Revolutionaries Front, were eventually shoved aside by the PYD. No matter how liberatory one considers their ideology to be, once the elementary basics of the right to self-determination are violated, ‘liberation’ is cancelled. There is a wealth of good first hand material about the Arab residents feeling like fourth-class civilians, about the SDF’s actual authoritarianism despite the anarchist cloak, which especially intensified in the year following the overthrow of Assad, with the SDF banning celebrations of Assad’s overthrow, imprisoning people just for raising revolution flags or even singing pro-revolution songs and so on. Of course, until 2024, the Arab masses saw the only alternatives to the SDF being the Assad regime or ISIS – naturally, the choice of SDF rule wins hands-down. But once Assad was gone, everything changed.
Even in its mixed heartlands in Hasakah, it is unclear just how deep was the attachment of the smaller ethnic groups to the Kurdish-run project; there are Syriac parties which are very much PYD allies, which have strongly participated in the democratic confederalist project, and others very much opponents. Of course they were on the same side against ISIS, and share minority fears of an over-centralised Syrian regime dominated by the Sunni Arab component. But much evidence suggests many also feel dominated by the Kurdish-led regime, and accuse it of rights violations; “SDF inclusivity and pluralism were proclaimed but never practiced,” according to one such group. DAANES’ attempts to force the Assyrian community to use the SDF curriculum rather than the Syrian government curriculum last year alienated one of its key non-Kurdish components. Now some Assyrian organisations see Sharaa’s Kurdish charter of rights making them a privileged minority, and demand the same for themselves. Fortunately, despite the rise of Kurdish nationalism, the Syrian Democratic Council (the SDF’s political wing) released a statement calling for a national charter to include explicit constitutional inclusion of all minorities and protection of their cultural and linguistic rights, alongside full political participation of women and other important policies. The decentralised framework the SDF are now pushing in the context of the January 29 integration agreement would mean Assyrian and other communities could largely run their own affairs as well, whether they see eye to eye with the Kurdish leadership or not; Abdi in particular has stressed that “all communities in Hasakah Governorate, including the Syriac-Assyrian, would jointly manage the governorate under the new structure.”
c. The discourse of ‘US betrayal’
“US betrayal of the Kurds” has been a dominant theme in discussion of these events. For over 11 years, the US and the SDF were battlefield allies; then suddenly, the story goes, the US allied itself with the Sharaa government’s goal of uniting Syria and “betrayed” its allies. By not militarily intervening in a civil conflict on one side?
It is certainly valid to make a number of general points – that the US is not the kind of power that anyone should rely on, that it looks after its own interests, that allies can become expendable and so on – general points that apply to many powerful states. It is also true that the Trump-lite real-estate agent cosplaying US envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, who understands “deals” rather than politics, can be very blunt: declaring, in the midst of the battle, that the SDF’s role in fighting ISIS “had largely expired,” now that Syria has taken over much of the northeast and joined the International Coalition to Defeat ISIS, wins no points for diplomatic flair. Barrack is perceived to be close to Erdogan, with business interests in Turkey, and is widely reviled by Israeli leaders and pro-Israel American commentators and neocons for this reason, even a Wall Street Journal editorial weighed in, and expired neocon John Bolton came out of the political grave to join the chorus.
However, these truisms tell us little. If the DAANES/Rojava project was really so dependent on a continuing US military presence and guarantee, that would not be a strong basis for a progressive revolution as heartland Rojava claims to be. But still less would it be a just basis in any sense for the SDF’s decade-long occupation of vast Arab regions where it was uninvited and unwanted. In fact, the long-term US alliance with the SDF was a factor in keeping these regions imprisoned, as the peoples there saw the US military as allied to their occupiers. It is ironic that some western supporters of Rojava oppose US intervention anywhere on Earth at all times, including in the past Syria to protect peoples being genocided by Assad, but only in northeast Syria believe the US should stay forever in order to not betray the Kurds or the Rojava project.
While much has been claimed about the US giving a “green light” to the onset of the Syrian government’s Aleppo offensive, a close look will find nothing of any substance to back this up. Even this unabashed pro-Rojava piece by Turkish-American leftist Cihan Tugal admits “The available sources do not suggest that the US directly gave the green light to Damascus’s subsequent military escalation.” But it adds “neither did it stand in the way,” which is the most that can be said when the government began putting an end to the unsustainable situation of two armed suburbs inside a city. Yet even Barrack, calling for an end to escalation on January 8, two days after the Aleppo clashes began, was clearly unhappy with the turn of events, lamenting that “just this past week, we stood on the threshold of successfully concluding the March 10, 2025integration agreement … an accord that would significantly advance security coordination, shared governance and national unity.” Likewise, Trump demanded the conflict in Aleppo be “stopped” on January 10.
In fact, when the Syrian army approached the Euphrates, the US drew a clear red-line. US CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper (ie, commander of US-led war against ISIS in Syria) clearly blamed the Syrian government for the “escalation,” demanding the army “cease any offensive actions between Aleppo and al-Tabqa,” and return to “partnership” to jointly fight ISIS. US vice president Vance called Syrian president Sharaa and told him to “work out his problems with the Kurds” or face the possibility of renewed sanctions. Right-wing, very pro-Israel US Senator Lindsey Graham launched a series of statements demanding the offensive end, warning “the Syrian government and Turkey – choose wisely.” Despite the discourse of “US betrayal,” the US message was clear.
But what happened next – when the Arab revolt in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and southern Hasakah simply threw off SDF rule – could not really have been predicted by the US, the government or the SDF; what was the US to do in order to “not betray”? Use its military against the Arab masses of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to ensure they remained under Kurdish rule? It would require a very brave “anti-imperialist” to want that!
Now, let’s say the Syrian army had continued, forced its way into the Kurdish regions of Hasakah and Kobani, and a huge massacre of the coast/Suweida type had been imposed on the Kurds, and the US did nothing to prevent it or to protect the Kurds– yes, that would certainly be a betrayal, after years of SDF partnership. But that is exactly what did not happen, at last partly thanks to the US red-line. It seems clear, from all sources, that the US played a key role in the mediation that led not only to ceasefire but to the SDF getting a reasonable deal.
The well-informed Amberin Zaman, writing in al-Monitor, claims that “in a Jan. 19 telephone call with the Syrian leader, Trump urged him to halt government army advances” and “to be more flexible” in the negotiations. According to Rubio, “Trump engaged personally, not once but twice, with al-Sharaa,” and told him ‘Stop the fighting so that we can move the ISIS prisoners that are there… so that we have more time to work on this reintegration.’” The threat was averted with the January 20 ceasefire, though intermittent clashes continued. The second call took place on January 27; according to SDF official Farhad Shami, “the secret to halting the attacks on the Western Kurdistan (Rojava)” was when Trump contacted Sharaa and “told him that the United States has interests in the Middle East and that this war does not align with their interests,” demanding the offensive end, and “exhorting the Syrian leader to grant the SDF more flexible terms. Lindsay Graham was reportedly in the room with Trump when he made the call.
In addition, a host of US Congresspeople spoke up, led by Graham; his January 27 ‘Save the Kurds Act’ threatened devastating sanctions on Syria and anyone supporting Syria, stressing they would be “even more bone-crushing” than previously. Even Martin Schutzman, a US Congressman who visited Syria before Trump lifted sanctions and strongly pressed for their lifting, now expressed deep scepticism and stressed that sanctions can return. Former Trump State Secretary and hard neocon Mike Pompeo and other neocons like Rick Santorum weighed in with similar warnings against the US “abandoning our allies” (the SDF) as it would be “setting the stage for disaster.”
Of course, the regional and global Kurdish mobilisation was an additional pressure on the US position, but the US had many good reasons of its own to draw the red-line here. Even just on the “betrayal” allegation it is doubtful the US government wanted that kind of public relations disaster. But there is far more involved than saving face.
Ever since the first Trump regime completely ended the small-scale Obama-era aid to anti-Assad civil projects and “vetted” rebels at the beginning of 2017, he has insisted the only reason for the ongoing US presence is to defeat ISIS. Therefore, the US obviously wants to avoid bloody conflict between two forces in Syria which are both engaged in war on ISIS. In fact, despite Barack’s bluntness, there is a rational essence to his statement cited above: ISIS operates throughout Syria, but especially in the central region which is now under the Syrian government; therefore the Syrian army is in fact the main force positioned to fight ISIS now.
However, where his statement goes too far is that it contradicts what many other US officials, especially military officials involved in the anti-ISIS fight, say: they want some kind of integration precisely because they have has spent a decade building the SDF and therefore they want them in the Syrian army continuing the fight against ISIS. As John Hannah, a senior fellow at the hard-right US think-tank Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) put it, “The SDF have been America’s most reliable and effective partner in fighting ISIS for more than a decade. The logic of incorporating those SDF units wholesale into al-Sharaa’s army and then unleashing them with U.S. backing on the ungoverned spaces of Syria’s central desert where ISIS has found real sanctuary is compelling.” They understand that they would not be able to continue this fight if facing a war of survival against the Syrian government, and would have little enthusiasm about it if ‘integrated’ in the form of a humiliating defeat.
Having worked closely with SDF leaders for a decade, the Pentagon sees their integration into the Syrian military as a buy-in to the regime whose Islamist credentials it remains suspicious of. Indeed, Hannah’s statement above occurred just after a wayward jihadist within the Syrian army broke ranks and killed several US troops late last year. And the fact that the US began sending 7000 ISIS captives to Iraq as soon as the Syrian army took over control of the main prison camps from the SDF is clearly an expression of lack of confidence. The fact that the new US Defence budget allocated $130 million to the anti-ISIS fight in Syria, mostly to the SDF, in November, is a strong indication that the disappearance of the SDF had not been anticipated or desired, still less “green-lighted,” by the US.
Now that the integration agreement has been made and is proceeding with many important steps, the US position on the internal discussion likewise appears conducive to the SDF interpretations. Rubio reportedly advised flexibility in the Munich discussions with the joint Syrian delegation, and Reuters cited a US official that “the American advice is to avoid taking a hard line as a gesture of goodwill, and that “a degree of autonomy for the Kurds is desirable as long as it does not threaten the basic need for a central authority in Damascus.”
Further, the US understands that a bloody showdown would also not result in Syrian “unity” in practice, but rather an aggrieved population possibly leading to an armed Kurdish resistance in northeast Syria: such a situation would hardly be conducive to the main reason the US – unlike Israel – has supported a gradual Syrian unity: to create a positive climate for US or especially Gulf and Turkish investment, the main way it believes the post-revolution atmosphere can be ‘tamed’.
One other point is important to make about the “betrayal” concept. If “betrayal” does not mean US acquiescence in the slaughter of Kurds – which the above shows the contrary – but merely that the US did not continue to defend the eternal presence of an entity separate from Syria, then the US never promised any such thing. In 2022, Zehra Bell, Director for Iraq and Syria at the US National Security Council, made it clear that the US “does not promote, support, or endorse autonomy in any part of Syria. The United States of America is deeply committed to the territorial integrity of Syria,” she stated.
Finally, in light of these developments, the US first announced its withdrawal from the al-Tanf base on the Jordanian border, then the al-Shaddadi base in southern Hasakah, and has now announced full withdrawal from Syria in the next month; at the same time, while Russia is currently keeping its air and naval bases on the Syrian coast, it also carried out a full withdrawal from the Qamishli airbase before the entry of Syrian internal security. Following the expulsion of Iranian and Iran-backed troops in December 2024, we now have the exit of US troops, the partial exit of Russian troops, and the growing exit of Turkish troops from both Afrin and Sere Kaniye – and with SDF integration, Turkey will have no excuses to remain. Surely, these are excellent developments. It seems odd that the focus has been on a non-existent massacre of Kurds, while surely Syria gradually getting rid of US and other foreign occupations – without this leaving Kurds to be massacred – should be something to be welcomed.
d. What this means for Israel’s ongoing violent occupation in the south
These growing withdrawals put the spotlight more on the occupation that is not only not ending but instead advancing – the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights and the extra occupation beyond the 1974 UN disengagement lines since December 2024. If the US position was for a soft integration within a unified Syrian state, for the reasons described above – reflecting Gulf and Turkish positions – Israel holds the opposite view: it has remained relentlessly hostile to the new Syrian government since its first day, its ministers have continually called the new government terrorist, jihadist, extremist, it has launched over 1000 air strikes and over 500 land-based attacks, and raids towns and villages, seizes civilians, destroys crop-land, seizes water resources, and recently sprayed toxic chemicals over agricultural land in Quneitra and Daraa and shelled a cemetery. It has been described as a growing “West Bank-style military administration” in parts of Quneitra governate.
Put simply – Israel sees a unified Syrian state as a threat, especially under this government, and aims to break it up into ethno-sectarian cantons. It sees the Druze, Alawites and Kurds as its means to this goal, hypocritically proclaiming its concern for minority rights. The horrific crimes carried out by government-backed troops and militia in Suweida in July enabled Israel’s attack on the Syrian capital, but this was only a more spectacular case of what Israel has been doing throughout.
At the outset of the Aleppo crisis, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar condemned the operation and “systematic and murderous repression of Syria’s various minorities” and declared the world “owes a debt of honor to the Kurds who fought bravely and successfully against ISIS … Silence on the part of the international community will lead to an escalation of the violence by the Syrian regime.” Other ministers, such as diaspora minister Amachai Chikli stated that Sharaa should be eliminated “like Nasrallah and Sinwar,” and declared “full solidarity with the Kurdish freedom fighters fighting ISIS Jolani’s rapists and killers, backed by the “sultan” Erdoğan Free Kurdistan.”
Unlike the case of the Druze, however, the geographic reality precludes the same kind of Israeli intervention (just as it didn’t intervene against Turkey’s anti-Kurdish invasions in 2018-19, despite vociferous condemnation); northeast Syria is in ‘Turkey’s zone’ geographically, and in any case the US is present there, so Israel can hardly step on US toes there; clearly the US told Israel to keep out. Barrack in fact was cited as telling Abdi that the US “will not allow an Israel-Turkey war in the northeast for you,” implying that was a possibility. Israeli leaders have continually campaigned against Turkey’s influence in new Syria; at a security conference in early 2025, Israeli leaders accused Turkey of “neo-Ottomanism,” asserting that a Syria run by Sunni Islamists allied to Erdogan could pose a greater problem for Israel than the Iran axis, especially now that Iran is weaker, a view recently repeated by Israeli leaders.
It is hardly surprising that Lindsay Graham was in Israel when the events began in Syria and his pro-SDF, anti-Sharaa campaign began, his stance strongly aligned with the anti-Syria position of the Israeli government. Lacking the ability to militarily intervene, Israel in a sense acted via its closer allies in the US Congress. That is not to say Israel did nothing – the claims that even Israel “greenlighted” the Syrian government operation due to the meaningless “de-escalation” agreement forced on Syria and Israel by Trump in early January are demonstrably false. Israel has not de-escalated but continued a steady stream of daily attacks in Quneitra and Daraa throughout the first two months, which are however less newsworthy than these large events – indeed the spraying of toxic chemicals took place in this period.
For Israel’s plans to partition Syria to have had any chance of success, the SDF’s control of 30 percent of Syria would have been required to continue. While Suweida remains out of government control – where Israel arms the local Druze militia and pays monthly salaries to several thousand militia – that can only aid Israel’s southern strategy, not partition of the whole country; it cannot replace something as large as the division of the country along the Euphrates. The end of such a major division of Syria is a huge defeat for Israel’s strategic position. The growing unification of Syrian territory – especially carried out in a way that has led to some kind of partnership with the Kurds – and growing withdrawal of foreign troops, will eventually mean only the Golan remains for Syrian unification to be complete.
In this context, Mohammed Taha al-Ahmed, Assistant Foreign Minister for Arab Affairs, rejecting claims that the laughable de-escalation agreement included any concessions to Israel, repeated the government’s line continually expressed over the last year, that “Syria will not give up territory, we didn’t agree with Israel to hand over any inch of Syrian land, we will recover every inch of Syria.”
In similar vein, on January 30, Syria’s UN representative, Ibrahim al-Albi, made Syria’s constant position very clear:
“The ceasefire line and the separation zone established by the 1974 agreement constitute a geographical area that separates the Syrian homeland, the Syrian mother, from the occupied Syrian Golan. This is not a border with Israel. The question of the occupied Syrian Golan is clear. It is not a disputed area. There is no Israeli sovereignty over this territory. Israel can think whatever it wants about the borders by building barriers or military checkpoints, but … there are questions that are not subject to negotiation. We will continue to negotiate, but that does not mean that we are abandoning the rights of the Syrian people. If that is what Israel thinks, then Israel is mistaken.”
After a week of the unprovoked, brutal, illegal US-Israeli aggression against Iran, killing over 1300 people, including ‘Supreme Leader’ Ayatollah Khamenei and a host of other top leaders, and a couple of hundred schoolgirls at two girls’ schools, the entire west Asian region is in chaos.
Iran has effectively closed the Straits of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global oil passes; Iran has sent missiles and drones to attack Israel, all the Gulf Arab states – who opposed this war but host US bases on their soil – Jordan, Iraqi Kurdistan, while Iran has denied involvement in strikes on the British base Akrotiri in Cyprus, Azerbaijan, the Saudi Aramco oil refinery, and missiles aimed at Turkey; thousands of Shia in Pakistan, Iraq, Bahrain and elsewhere have demonstrated or rioted against the killing of Khamenei – a Shiite spiritual leader as well as head of state – and Hezbollah also felt compelled, despite its drastically weakened state, to protest with rockets aimed at Israel, leading to Israel’s new horrific bombing of that country, and an order for the entire south of the Litani to evacuate, to be seized for Greater Israel; a six-party Iranian Kurdish alliance has been formed, which the US and Israel are encouraging to open a front in the ethnically Kurdish region of northwest Iran, though to date the Kurdish leadership has refused to become a tool of this imperialist assault – yet Iran has stepped up bombing their forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, and the US and Israel have been bombing Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces inside Iranian Kurdistan.
About the only thing we’re not seeing is any evidence of Iran’s majestic people’s movement against the dictatorship, not only because thousands were slaughtered by the dictatorship earlier this year, but also because people trying to survive bombs are too busy to be running around organising against a violent regime, let alone one bolstered by the ‘rally around the flag’ effect of such horrific foreign aggression, and the enhanced role of state ‘security’ forces in war conditions. Yes, there were certainly many scenes of genuine public celebration by Iranians at the news that Khamenei had been killed, and their understandable jubilation should not be dismissed; however, we should not confuse that with either the ability to organise a successful uprising, or necessarily with any joy about the US-Israeli aggression; what real people do and feel does not always fall into the neat boxes imagined by either our warmongering politicians and media on one side, or an important, but brain-dead, part of the western “anti-imperialist” left. Meanwhile, there were also many scenes of mass mourning of Khamenei as well as celebration; and in any case, thousands of Iranians are daily mourning those being slaughtered right now, like the families of hundreds of schoolgirls.
Israel’s aim: Region-wide conflagration
It is this kind of regional conflagration that Israeli leaders were angling for over the last two years (indeed, for decades) as a cover behind which to complete their destruction of Gaza and the West Bank, and possibly to advance their ‘Greater Israel’ project that some leaders have been unable to resist openly proclaiming in recent days and months. Netanyahu declared last year that he was attached to the idea of Greater Israel; his fascistic Finance Minister Smotrich has regularly stated that Israel’s borders ought to end in Damascus and northern Saudi Arabia. The US ambassador, Mike Huckabee, recently stated that he thought it was no problem for Israel to advance to ‘Biblical’ borders, and when questioned, the very ‘centrist’ – by Israeli standards – Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said that he too thought all this was a good idea.
That is why, despite Iran trying its absolute hardest to keep out of the battle as Israel carried out its Gaza genocide, Israel continually provoked it to bring it in; Iran was not provoked no matter how many of its Revolutionary Guard leaders in Syria were killed (indeed, despite much popular imagination, Iran virtually never responded to hundreds of Israeli attacks on its forces from Syria over the years, and never once initiated), but when Israel bombed its diplomatic mission there, it was compelled to respond; as it was some months after Israel killed Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh while attending a meeting in Tehran. In both cases of Iranian retaliation, however, Iran responded in a measured and highly telegraphed way, that did not bring in the US, and thus the regional catastrophe Israel desired was avoided.
Israel’s aim in unleashing regional chaos would appear to be to destroy Iran as a state, for chaos, insurgency, state fragmentation, refugee flows, and regionally, for Iranian-Arab and Sunni-Shia divides to explode, as is threatened by Iran’s retaliatory attacks around the region and the impact of killing Khamenei.
Israel’s endgame is the “total destruction of this regime, of the pillars of this regime, of everything that holds it together: the IRGC, the Basij [grassroots militia], its strategic capabilities”, according to Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies. Just how it would achieve that is unclear, but he explains that “If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn’t care less about the future . . . [or] the stability of Iran, also noting “that is a point of difference between us and the US. I think [Washington is] more concerned about nation-building and threats to their regional partners.”
The debate on whether the US or Israel leads – in general, and in this case
This last sentence indicates that Israel’s aims are not necessarily the same as those of Trump and an important part of the US ruling class. If Israel wants total destruction of the Iranian state, and couldn’t care less about “stability,” with the aim of facilitating the even more destabilising Greater Israel project, the US needs to consider the broader interests of capitalist rule in the region. Looked at this way, the course of the war so far looks much more like one waged to further Israel’s regional interests rather than what is known about US interests or Trump’s particular proclivities.
This is not an argument that, in general, uncritical US support for Israel, and actions such as this war, are caused mainly by the powerful Israeli lobby rather than US interests; in fact I have argued that on a larger structural level the opposite is the case: that Israel is a pivotal tool for US imperialist interests, and ultimately the US is in control. For the most part, the tail does not wag the dog.
However, this view should not be treated as a straightjacket either; the US ruling class and the Israeli ruling class have in some ways become effectively ‘fused’ over the years, especially in industries such as arms, security, intelligence, IT – and within both ruling classes there are a range of tactical differences regarding what to do in particular situations; within this context, Israeli leaders, think-tanks, lobbies and very Israel-connected parts of the US ruling class can indeed push particular policies, tactical decisions, timing and so on that are more amenable to greater Israeli rather than greater US interests in the region.
Interestingly, Inderjeet Parmar and Bamo Nouri, in an article in The Amargi, the main argument of which is that Israel is the proxy rather than the puppet-master, that “the overall balance of power remains decisively in Washington’s hands [as] the US holds the veto on major escalations, commands the overwhelming share of military resources, and defines the strategic calculus,” nevertheless offer this important nuance:
“Of course, subordinate allies can exert pull on a stronger patron, especially influencing timing, framing, or intensity through intelligence sharing, lobbying, or exploiting mutual threat perceptions. In the US-Israel case, deep coordination allows Israel to shape operational aspects, nudge escalations, or create faits accomplis that complicate US calculations. The pro-Israel network undeniably influences discourse, funds politics, and polices boundaries of debate.”
And the way this particular attack was carried out is in my view a clear example of this.
Again, this is also not an argument for US or Trumpian innocence in launching this attack. The US ruling class has its own historic reasons to want to humiliate Iran going back to the hostage crisis of 1979-80, the Lebanon barracks of 1983 and other early events; while “a long time ago,” and while Iranian capitalism has not for decades represented any fundamental “threat” to US imperial interests, these deeply political motives to avenge past “humiliation” cannot be underestimated – especially when a narcissist like Trump sees the opportunity to be “the only one” who “finally” does this; the US military-security industry benefits from harnessing a medium-sized ‘enemy’ state in the region, and given Iran became one in those early days, it is convenient to keep the same one, for now; Iran presents a useful test-case for the US to demonstrate that it can wage war with no restraints, as his off-leash War Secretary Pete Hegseth put it, be “no stupid rules of engagement … no politically correct wars;” and taking hold of, or at least “taming,” such a strategic territorial link between east and west within China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ may also be a motivation.
At the same time, for over 40 years, US relations with Iran have in reality swung between this known hostility and engagement, from the ‘Iran-Contra’ affair of the mid-1980s, the cooperation of the most Iran-connected part of the Iraqi Shiite hierarchy with the US occupation of that country after 2003, until the Iran nuclear agreement of 2015, which had the support of large sections of US capital, some of which were ready to jump into the Iranian market following this opening, until Trump abruptly shut it off for purely ideological and militaristic reasons in 2018. There is thus more than one “US ruling class” view and there are very good reasons to see that opening as very much in the interests of US capital. As such, I’m not convinced by arguments that the US has to attack Iran because it resists “US hegemony;” there are very few actual “puppets” in today’s world, and the relative sharpness of Iran’s “anti-imperialist” rhetoric is precisely a reaction to this shutting out rather than the reason for it.
It is clear Trump and his advisors made a very conscious decision now to once again launch an enormous war on Iran in the midst of ‘negotiations’ theatre. According to a New York Times report, the decision to begin the attack when they did was prompted by a “remarkable intelligence coup” when the CIA learned Khamenei was to be at his residential compound in Tehran on Saturday with senior Iranian leaders, so the US and Israel decided on decapitation strike. It is inconceivable that someone like Trump would not jump at the chance to be the US leader to take out Khamenei. No-one had to lead him into that.
In fact Trump is so evil and degenerate that, even if it were completely the case that he were ‘led into’ this disaster by a sneaky Netanyahu, I’m sure he would still be prepared to kill 10 or 20 times more people if that were necessary just to get some result that allowed him to save face and dig himself out of the hole he dug himself into.
Trump’s search for an ‘internal’ strategy – not irrational, but blown to bits
All that said, if we look at the way dominant US and Israeli perspectives have tactically differed in the region in recent times, this regional chaos is likely not what Trump was aiming for. We should not take seriously Trump’s meaningless call on the Iranian people to “take over” or still less his earlier talk, in January, of the US being there to help the then uprising. The last thing the US or Israel want is a people’s revolution, which would also destabilise the region, in a different way that neither wants. In fact, heading off, diverting, saddling, controlling whatever weakened people’s movement continues to exist is one of the undeclared aims of the aggression.
But for all the ferociousness of the aggression and all the chaos it is causing, and all the blood-lust emanating from the mouths of the likes of Hegseth, what the dominant wings of the US ruling class, in this case with Trump fully in tune, is by contrast a relatively conservative transition that keeps the reactionary state apparatus intact – centred on some ‘reformed’ wing of the IRGC – the ‘Revolutionary’ Guard. Because, unless Trump violates his main foreign policy promise – not sending US troops into prolonged occupations abroad – there is no other way to stabilise the situation and keep some kind of bourgeois order and the Iranian state together.
Trump, in other words, in launching this war, envisaged a bloodier, more stretched out version of his Venezuela coup: “Venezuela was so incredible because we did the attack and we kept the government totally intact. … We have the whole chain of command. … We paid for the war many times over, and we’re going to be running the oil.” That does not so easily fit Iran, yet some version of it will eventually have to – unless Israel gets its way.
In a March 6 interview, Trump makes clear that democracy is not his aim and that he is open to a “religious leader,” which in context means a different leader from the Islamic Republic hierarchy. Asked whether Iran had to be a democracy, Trump responded with a clear “No,” but the new leader has to be “fair and just” and “treat the United States and Israel well.”
From the start, Trump has been appealing to the IRGC. First he promised immunity to members of “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police” if they “lay down” their arms, promising “you will be treated fairly with total immunity,” though otherwise they would face “certain death.” Of course, this was kind of nuts. To whom were they going to surrender their arms, since they have control of Iran; and “certain death” to hundreds of thousands of troops is a large threat. The next day he said “Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves.” It is unclear who “the Iranian Patriots” are, but he is clearly calling on the repressive state apparatus to work with whoever he thinks should be in power.
One might assume this is just Trump raving. In fact, this script has been handed him by people who actually understand stuff. According to a New York Times report that detailed the lead-up to the war, a February 18 war-planning meeting where Trump met with Vance, Rubio and several other top officials who actually know stuff, looked at the likely outcome of the decapitation of Iran’s leadership. They thought a popular uprising was unlikely, as the opposition was too weak, and Khameini could be replaced by a more hard-line cleric.
But some officials “seized on a third scenario: that a faction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more pragmatic than the hard-line clerics might take power. Even though a cleric was likely to still be nominally in charge, that group of I.R.G.C. leaders would actually lead the country. … the C.I.A. analysis suggested that as long as the United States did not interfere with the economic activities of this faction, such as its influence in the oil industry, a group of officers might be conciliatory toward the United States. They might even give up Iran’s nuclear program or prevent Iran’s proxy forces from attacking the United States.”
On Day 2, Trump claimed that he had “three very good choices” for who could lead Iran, but “I won’t be revealing them now.” Did he mean Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah of Iran? Seems not, because he said that while Pahlavi “seems like a nice person,” he would prefer “somebody from within … that’s currently popular, if there’s such a person — but we have people like that.” However, he then went on to say that “Most of the people we had in mind are dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports.” This seems odd – why would you kill the people you had in mind? Unless he means they were targeted by Israel, which is not on board with Trump’s “inside” strategy. Citing a source in the US Central Command, Reuters claimed “the Israeli military was going through its target list faster than planned … Israel was also accelerating its campaign out of concern that Washington might agree with Iran’s surviving leaders to stop before Israel’s objectives were realised.” Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, assured that “every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime . . . will be an unequivocal target for elimination,” something the US has notably not said.
This piece lists six figures who have not been targeted and claims they will be the core of a new leadership that will eventually come to terms with the US, while Ali Larijani, till now Khamenei’s top advisor and now running the country, seen as a “pragmatic conservative,” is described as a “bridge between the old and the new.” Five of the six are from the IRGC, the sixth being the son of one of them. There was already wide suspicion of one of the six, Ismail Qaani, Commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, responsible for foreign operations, which may be the reason he had to then be symbolically targeted (and survived).
Trump’s list of aims of his operation on February 28 were to “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” “annihilate their navy,” ensure their “terrorist proxies can no longer destabilise the region” and “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.” “It is a very simple message,” said Trump. No regime change there. On March 3, Defence Secretary Hegseth reduced this by one and said US objectives were “to destroy Iran’s missile stocks and its capacity to produce them, destroy its navy and security infrastructure, and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.” He specifically rejected “nation-building” declaring in Trumpian tones that there would be “no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise” and stressed “this is not a so-called regime-change war.”
This gives Trump an easy “out” if he needs it with a battered Islamist regime still standing – he can say the US destroyed Iran’s ballistic missile capacity and its navy, while whatever extra hits the nuclear industry takes can be added to last year’s bombing which Trump had claimed “completely obliterated” it. As conservative Washington Post columnist Jason Willick puts it, “Under that conception of the war, Trump ought to be able to declare victory at the time of his choosing.”
Trump’s attempt to find an “internal” solution is entirely rational. The main difference with the 2003 regime-change invasion of Iraq is that that was accompanied by the deployment of hundreds of thousands of US troops, whereas Trump wants no boots on the ground (though his dilemma is highlighted by him now not ruling it out). So who will be the boots on the ground? There are 250-300,000 armed Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and Baseej, and if we include their reserves, this takes the figure up to about a million; they are heavily ideologically trained and run a huge economic empire. There is no old army waiting in the wings to launch a coup (eg like in 1953 in Iran, or more recently the al-Sisi coup in 2013 in Egypt); the old armed forces were destroyed and replaced in 1979.
Let’s say the US and Israel try to place Reza Pahlavi in power. That’s no ‘democracy’, of course, the Shah’s son represents another dictatorship. Except – even then he will not be able to exert his dictatorship in the absence of US troops. Not because “the people” will have power, but because power – which flows out of the barrel of a gun – remains in the hands of the Khomeiniite armed forces. Will the IRGC and Baseej agree to serve Pahlavi? This is clearly out of the question. Will they agree to serve a genuinely democratic government if, to let imaginations fly, one was imposed by the US? Even less likely. Or will they instead launch years of Iraq-style insurgency? And if Pahlavi were placed in power (somehow), many of the oppressed nations inside Iran will likely form their own militia and break away, because as the son of the Shah, he is even more committed to Persian chauvinism than the mullahs are. In fact, in response to the announcement of a 5-party (now 6-party) Iranian Kurdish alliance, he has already threatened to use “the full force of the Iranian army” against them – whose army though? Is he threatening them with the IRGC?
That’s why from Day 2 Trump was already stating – as if nothing had happened! – that he was now ready to ‘negotiate’ with a new team running Iran. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk,” said Trump in his fantasy world. Which Larijani, the effective leader following the death of Khamenei – had no choice but to reject – for now. Apparently Trump thought he could just suddenly start bombing Iran in the middle of negotiations, carry out massive killing and destruction, kill Khamenei and decapitate the country’s leadership, and then Iran would just slide back into ‘negotiations’!
Larijani’s rejection, and Iran’s ‘guerilla strategy’ of firing all over the region, has thus completely upended Trump’s calculations. Perhaps at some stage the IRGC and new Iranian leaders will agree to come to some kind of understanding with Trump, which both can call a victory, but the very actions of Israel and the US from the start, the way the attack was unleashed, the nature and timing of the attack, make it politically impossible right now for them to negotiate anything with Trump.
That is why the US, the Trump regime, appears the very picture of incoherence now. Trump’s flailing all over the place, from calling for working with a new leadership of the IRGC, to the war ending in a few days or a few weeks or a few months, to claiming there were a number of people in the Iranian leadership he was ready to talk to but then they had been killed, not ruling out troops which he claimed he would never do, to “agreeing” to negotiate one day, then saying “it’s too late” the next, to calling for regime change one day and dropping it the next, to saying he would be happy if Iran was left with an autocratic, religious leader, to demanding Iran’s “total surrender,” whatever that even means, but then proclaiming “we’ve already won,” playing with arming the Kurds or with “special forces,” his hiding from the media (and the virtual disappearance of his VP JD Vance) – highlights the fact that the US is bereft of strategy, or that any strategy the Trump thought he had is in tatters. Even his demand that he “have a say” in deciding who the next ruler is, despite its absurdity, remains within the “inside” strategy – he was talking about Iran’s choice of a new ‘Supreme Leader’, not about some “nice person” like Pahlavi.
Trump’s aim to find some kind of inside deal to keep the country together is rational from the perspective of US imperialism, which, unlike the fanatical settler regime in Israel, needs to take into account the broader interests of capitalist rule in the region, beyond Israel. Those broader interests prefer some kind of stability for capitalist investment, for oil and gas supplies, for trade and so on. With Trump’s aim to partially leave the region and to focus either on confronting its key rival, China, in the east Asia theatre, or to focus on dominating the American hemisphere, consistent with the Trump-tinged Monroe Doctrine in the National Defence Strategy recently released, other regions need to be left in the hands of regional powers. Trump’s blatantly pro-Putin line on Ukraine is one example; he is happy with Russia having its own ‘Monroe Doctrine’.
But to leave that role only to the Greater Israel fanatics in the Mideast region is a recipe not only for permanent instability, but also for drawing the US even more into the region, rather than partially leaving, because Greater Israel cannot be achieved by little Israel alone. Therefore, the US ruling class – and not only Trump – believe that other powerful states, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey at minimum, need some stake as guardians of the region, which goes directly against Greater Israel.
Israel – why now? Are its aims region-wide?
In contrast, Israel’s apparent commitment to “regime change” and, apparently to the Pahlavi fantasy, makes sense in that the likely results would be exactly what Israel wants – chaos and destruction, a weak regime either with no armed forces, or the armed forces of an American occupation, facing large-scale insurgency from the hundreds of thousands of IRGC, Baseej etc, Iran fragmenting as a state along ethnic lines, falling to bits, national, ethnic and sectarian conflict throughout the region between Arab and Persian, Sunni and Shia, massive refugee flows in various directions, a region where no-one – not just an already drastically weakened Iran – can challenge Israel’s hegemony, and instead Israel’s role as the region’s saviour for western imperialism amid chaos and destruction enhanced.
Indeed, given that Iran was already drastically weakened, having been battered by the Israel and the US in last year’s 12-day war, with Hezbollah largely crippled in Lebanon, much of its leadership and missiles destroyed, and forced to move north from the Israeli border, with the collapse of the Assad regime as a conduit, what was so necessary about destroying Iran now? Perhaps it could simply be explained that it can finish off Iran precisely because it is now weak. But that only seems to make sense if it could be done relatively easily. I would argue that in trying to destroy Iran as a state and create region-wide chaos, Israel’s aims are region-wide rather than Iran-specific.
With an Iran drastically weakened, Israel loses one of its key propaganda devices – the forever “threat” of a powerful and perhaps nuclear Iran. Eventually a new one would be needed. Meanwhile, for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, a weakened Iran is seen as far less of a problem than a greatly emboldened Israel. In their quest for security for business across the region, a radical extremist Israel, destroying Gaza and the West Bank, extinguishing the possibility of a Palestinian mini-state, continually attacking both Lebanon since the ceasefire and Syria since the overthrow of Israel’s preferred leader, and lashing out all over the region, looked more and more the greater destabiliser. Even more so following Israel’s brazen attack on Hamas officials in Qatar last year.
The geopolitical angle – two regional axes in formation and why Israel wanted to blow this situation apart
It is useful to review the recent geopolitical situation in the region to fully understand Israel’s aims in launching this war. Two blocs of regional states have loosely been formed with drastically different aims. On one side is a tight alliance of Israel with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Ethiopia, linked to Greece and Cyprus at one end, and Modi’s Hindutva India at the other; on the other, the traditional alliance between Turkey and Qatar has now been joined, crucially, by Saudi Arabia, which has made a formal defence treaty with nuclear-armed Pakistan, and this alliance includes the new Syria as a key link between the Gulf and Turkey. Egypt, with its long-time relations with Israel, has traditionally been closer to the Israel-UAE bloc but is now in conflict with the UAE in the African theatre and is now closer to the Saudi-Turkey bloc.
Israeli leaders have long considered the Turkey-Qatar alliance, which is connected regionally to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Palestine (Hamas), as its second main enemy after the Iran-led bloc. The weakening of Iran and the enhanced power of Turkey’s Islamist-oriented Erdogan regime following the overthrow of Assad is leading to Israeli leaders continually hinting that Turkey is the next “enemy,” however difficult that may be to action given Turkey’s NATO membership. At a security conference in early 2025, Israeli leaders accused Turkey of “neo-Ottomanism,” asserting that a Syria run by Sunni Islamists allied to Erdogan could pose a greater problem for Israel than the Iran axis, and especially now that Iran is weaker, This view has been continually repeated, for example, by diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism minister Amichai Chikli in mid-January, who stated that Turkey wants to create a “neo-Ottoman empire oriented toward Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood,” and that “there is a direct link between the weakness of Iran and the dominance of Erdogan;” and then by former prime minister Naftali Bennet in mid-February, who stated that “Turkey is the new Iran,” also complaining that “Turkey is trying to flip Saudi Arabia against us and establish a hostile Sunni axis that includes nuclear-armed Pakistan.”
The decisive state here is Saudi Arabia, given its size, power and wealth. For many years it was closer to the UAE-Egypt bloc, hostile to Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, and viewed a powerful Iran as its main danger – especially given the significant Shiite population in eastern Saudi Arabia. But it significantly did not sign the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020, when the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco did; it was not such a simple matter for the informal head of the Sunni world, and guardian of the holy mosques of Mecca and Medina, to normalise with Israel while it remains in occupation of the third holy mosque in Jerusalem. Despite years of media-driven discourse, Saudi leaders have never stopped repeating that they would only normalise with Israel upon the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in all territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital. That is, the Arab Peace Plan, signed in Saudi capital Riadh in 2002. This is its minimum requirement. The Saudi’s new alliance with Turkey-Qatar has been furiously condemned in Zionist circles.
In fact, with the main Saudi-Iranian conflict, in Yemen, leading to quagmire, a ceasefire was signed in 2022 and has held ever since; then in March 2023, rather than normalise with Israel, Saudi Arabia instead normalised with Iran in Beijing, and relations have continued to improve. Israel’s genocide in Gaza made this Saudi stance against normalisation stronger, and then with the huge weakening of Iran due to Israeli blows on the country and on Hezbollah, the Iranian “threat” receded even further, replaced by the threat to regional stability by the revisionist regime in Israel. Hence its new link-up with the Turkey-Qatar bloc and its growing divergence from the UAE.
In fact, the Saudi-UAE split in Yemen is rather old. While both entered the war against the Iran-backed Houthis in 2015, the UAE focused much energy on a large-scale assassination campaign against the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood, killing some 160 cadres. Though the Saudis were also anti-MB, the Yemeni MB was part of the alliance defending parts of Yemen against the Houthis. The in 2017, the UAE set up the Southern Transitional Council (STC), advocating for secession of the old South Yemen, thus in revolt against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government. This conflict blew out into the open in late 2025, when the STC launched military attacks on the Yemeni government, and the Saudis launched their first bombing in Yemen for years – against the UAE supply of weapons to the STC. There was even a report of a Saudi-Houthi agreement to deploy a Houthi force along the Saudi border to fill the vacuum after the STC’s withdrawal. In September, the STC stated that an independent south Yemen would recognise Israel and join the Abraham Accords.
At around the same time, Israel became the first country to recognise Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, which in turn recognised Israel. While the UAE did not officially follow, it has interests in Somaliland, having made extensive use of its port. Meanwhile, Ethiopia – which also has strong relations with Israel – has also effectively recognised Somaliland by signing a separate agreement with it giving Ethiopia access to its ports. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt all re-emphasised their recognition of the territorial integrity of Somalia.
Then again, it was recently revealed that the UAE was using a training camp in Ethiopia to train the genocidal RSF rebel army in Sudan, at war with the Sudanese military since 2023. While the UAE (and for a time Russia) is the main country actively backing the RSF, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Iran are backing the Sudanese regime. Israeli voices continually call the Sudanese regime “terrorist” or “Muslim Brotherhood aligned.” Iranian planes carrying weapons fly to Sudan across Saudi airspace. The RSF is also linked to the east Libyan rebel government led by reactionary general Haftar, of both Gaddafi regime and CIA fame, and Haftar has been backed by the UAE, Egypt, Russia, Israel and the former Assad regime, while the Libyan government is backed by Turkey, Qatar and Iran. But the Egypt-UAE alliance here and elsewhere has come undone in Africa, as Egypt has long-term strong links with the Sudanese military, and also because Ethiopia’s ‘Renaissance Dam’ project on the upper Nile threatens water security for both Egypt and Sudan. Hence its reorientation towards Somalia, Turkey and the emerging Saudi position.
Israel has also aimed, ever since the overthrow of Iran-backed, but also Egypt-UAE-backed, Assad regime, to undermine the new Syrian government – which it routinely calls “terrorist,” “jihadist” or “extremist” – and fragment Syria along ethnic lines; an Israeli conference in 2025 advocated breaking it up into ethno-sectarian cantons. By contrast, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey want a unified Syrian state so that they can invest in a stable environment, and also as a bridge between the Gulf and the Mediterranean that avoids Israel.
A recent example of the latter was Saudi Arabia’s declaration that it wanted a to replace Israel with Syria as the transit country for a fibre-optic cable, the East to Med Data Corridor (EMC) signed between Greece and the Saudis in 2022, designed to connect the kingdom to Greece through the Mediterranean Sea. The Saudis also envision a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable project with Greece bypassing Israel in favour of Syria. AS Israel and Syria are the two main exits to the Mediterranean, it is not hard to see how the overthrow of Assad and the promise of a unified Syria is a strategic disaster for Israel.
What do all these conflicts have in common? Israel and the UAE are breaking up, or trying to break up, countries throughout the region, including Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Syria; the Saudi-Qatar-Turkey bloc is trying to prevent states form fragmenting. For Israel, fragmenting the region is part of the plan for Greater Israel, and keeping every other state, every other potential hegemon, weak; for the UAE, it is part of an ambitious, outsized plan to construct an empire bridging its interests around the Red Sea into Africa, so it dovetails with Israel’s strategy. For Saudi Arabia, most Gulf states and Turkey, keeping states in one piece is about stability for investment and oil flows, and preventing a Greater Israel from riding roughshod over their own regional hegemonic ambitions.
And, while the US under Trump has a powerful dedication to allowing Israel to destroy Palestine root and branch – and his ‘Board of Peace’, far from being an alternative to that is precisely its consecration – on the other hand broader US interests are better served by the Saudi-Turkey position of keeping states together in the region. While Trump’s personal bonding with he lies of Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and Turkish leader Erdogan are part of this, they do not fully explain the US position; broader US interests are in fact served by supporting a number of hegemons rather than only an out-of-control Israel.
Maintaining some form of regional stability for the Saudi-Turkey bloc meant campaigning against a US-Israel attack on Iran. Turkey and all Gulf states – and on this issue, including the UAE – strongly lobbied Trump against an attack, and supported Oman’s attempts to negotiate (the Saudis categorically denied a Washington Post disinformation piece claiming Saudi Arabia, despite its public stance, had lobbied Trump to strike Iran!). All Gulf states – again, including the UAE – stressed that their territory was not available to be used by the US for an attack on Iran. They knew there would be nothing worse for regional stability than this aggression that has come to pass. Why even the UAE split from its Israeli ally on this issue is easy to see now that the war has begun! In any case, the UAE has long managed to reconcile maintaining strong relations with both Israel and Iran, and in fact is Iran’s second-largest trading partner, after China, as well as having long been a major conduit for Iranian sanctions-busting. It has always seen its main regional enemy as the Muslim Brotherhood rather than Iran.
Israel blows the region apart – but is Iran’s reaction playing into its hands?
For Israel – especially the Greater Israel fanatics running it – this situation of having a number of alternative hegemons, especially Arab states who reject the Abraham Accords (Saudi Arabia, Qatar) and states connected to regional Sunni Islamist politics (Turkey, Qatar), was intolerable. Launching an enormously destabilising war against Iran, guaranteed to regional create chaos as described above, was a solution to break out of this dilemma. Such chaos inside Iran would not be restricted to Iran but directly impact the states bordering it – including the rival regional hegemons Saudi Arabia and Turkey, alongside Iraq and the Gulf more generally. A region is in chaos complements Israel’s attempts to fragment states throughout the region, so only ‘civilised’ Israel can be the ‘light on the hill’ for western imperialism in the region; and to play that role, a continued US presence in the region would be necessary, as little Israel cannot do it alone; and if the region looks like this, Israel has the “right” to expand for “security” purposes, and then stay forever: the conditions are created to forge Greater Israel.
This is already happening in Lebanon. While Hezbollah’s decision to launch rockets at Israel may be motivated by solidarity – almost incongruous considering that when Hezbollah was under existential attack by Israel around September-October 2024, Iran did nothing – it will have to explain, and be judged by, the Lebanese people if the result is that southern Lebanon becomes the first major conquest for Greater Israel. Israel has already killed up to 700 Lebanese, uprooted 800,000, carried out devastating bombings of south Beirut, and ordered the entire population evacuate from the region south of the Litani River, south Beirut, and parts of the Bekaa Valley!
Of course, the first expansion of Greater Israel in recent times was its seizure of parts of southern Syria outside the already occupied (since 1967) Golan Heights, after the Assad regime was overthrown in December 2024. It has kept up a steady stream of air strikes, land-based attacks on villages and towns, arrests, destruction of farmlands, seizure of water sources and other attacks since then, and states that it will never withdraw.
Meanwhile, since the attack on Iran began, the blockade of Gaza, only ever very partially lifted, has been fully resumed, with all border crossings closed, while the West Bank is being “strangled” as the world’s attention is focused elsewhere. We will need to watch Palestine as Israel most certainly plans to use this regional crisis to further extinguish it.
However, this raises an interesting question: does Iran’s reaction play into Israel’s hands? When attacked, Iran immediately struck US military bases in the small Gulf states the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, and while this led to protests by those states, in reality they would have expected US miliary facilities to be hit. While they seem to have lived up to their promises to not let their territory be used to attack Iran, military bases inevitably play a role in logistics and intelligence that aid the US war effort. Iran has also attacked air defence radars, and more generally its missile barrages are aimed at wearing down the number of anti-missile interceptors in the region.
But very soon after, Iran expanded its attacks to civilian infrastructure throughout these countries – ports, airports, office towers, hotels, oil and gas infrastructure – as well as expanding the attacks on US facilities and/or civilian infrastructure to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman – the country which had been mediating between the US and Iran – Iraqi Kurdistan and elsewhere. Of course, Iran has also launched attacks on Israel, but Israel is after all the aggressor – the fact that Iran has launched more attacks just on the UAE than on Israel is striking. Since then, Iran has effectively blocked the Straits of Hormuz, blocking oil shipments from the Gulf to the world, that is, some 20 percent of world oil flows.
But if it is in Iran’s immediate interests to create massive regional instability, doesn’t this coincide with Israel’s interests in doing the same?
Consider that all these regimes actively lobbied Trump against attacking Iran and banned the use of their territory for the attack; consider all the above regarding recent geopolitics, the Saudi-Iranian détente, the Saudi-UAE conflict, Qatar’s long-term outreach to Iran, Oman’s key negotiating role, the UAE’s strong economic relations, Saudi resistance to the Abraham Accords, their growing tendency to see an emboldened Israel as the main factor of instability rather than an already weakened Iran, the Saudi defence pact with Pakistan and its strong reconciliation with Turkey – what of all this now?
Surely, pushing the Gulf, especially the Saudis, into conflict with Iran is one of Israel’s key goals, and Iran has unleashed it. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have, for the moment, joined forces. The Saudi-Iranian détente is in trouble. The GCC convened an emergency meeting condemning the “heinous” attacks as a “serious violation of these countries’ sovereignty, good neighbourly principles, and a clear breach of international law and the UN Charter,” stressing they “will take all necessary measures to defend their security and stability.”
Seeing Iran’s ability to unleash such attacks on their countries will also likely drive the Gulf states further under the US military umbrella, and hence reduce their ability to act relatively independently of Washington. Former Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani warned the attacks will push Gulf states to lean more on outside powers for security, while Anwar Gargash, adviser to the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) said Iran’s actions isolates the country and reinforce the US accusation that its missiles are a danger to the region. And given Washington’s Israel alliance, this may reduce their manoeuvrability vis a vis Israel and Palestine. Former Obama and Biden administration official, Amb. Dan Shapiro, claims the situation highlights the value for the Gulf of “being part of a regional air defense network that includes the United States, but also includes Israel.”
Hussein Mansour, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said that Iran “catastrophically” miscalculated, its actions destroyed “every diplomatic off-ramp it had spent years cultivating … Last June, during the 12-day war, Qatar called Iran ‘the sisterly Islamic Republic’” and all Gulf states vigorously condemned Israel’s war. “Nine months later, Qatar is shooting down Iranian jets. Saudi Arabia has authorized retaliation and offered to place ‘all its capabilities’ at the region’s disposal. The UAE has shuttered its embassy in Tehran.” Alexander Gray, a former National Security Council chief of staff under Trump agreed that Iran’s actions are an “extraordinary strategic miscalculation,” claiming Iran “has encircled itself far more effectively than any American diplomacy could have accomplished.”
What are Iran’s aims in lashing out at the region?
If Iran’s actions are arguably playing into Israel’s hands, why then has it adopted this strategy? There are a number of aspects to this.
First, if this is an existential battle for the regime as Israel and the US relentlessly blow up Iran, then these considerations above are less important than survival, and as such, Iran has decided that it will blow up the regional economy – based on oil and gas, tourism, data centres and so on – and massively disrupt the world economy. “Unable to match US and Israeli military power symmetrically, Iran has adopted a strategy designed to stretch the conflict in time and space. … Tehran is not only seeking damage, it is seeking friction: forcing its adversaries to defend multiple fronts, testing the resilience of regional politics and gradually raising the economic and psychological cost of staying the course.” Indeed, as oil and gas prices rise dramatically and hit much of the MAGA base, Trump’s electoral chances – already weak and further diminished by this war enjoying the lowest level of popular support in the US of any US war – will be further smashed if he does not stop soon.
Second, the reason Iran is attacking at least some of these civilian targets is because its intelligence agencies believe they house US or Israeli intelligence and defence companies or personnel. The UAE has been targeted a truly disproportionate number of times compared to all other Gulf states; of 680 missiles shot at the Gulf, 261 have been directed just at UAE, and 1,440 of the 2,081 drones shot at the Gulf were fired at UAE; in contrast, only 2 confirmed missiles and 13 drones have been fired at Saudi Arabia, plus about 5 drones at Oman. Moreover, while non-military targets have been hit in all countries, overwhelmingly the targets in Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait remain the (very important) bases, while the UAE has experienced far more attacks on civilian infrastructure compared to any country, while its extensive network of US military bases have of course also been heavily targeted. While it might be assumed that is because it is the closest state to Israel, that has not translated into a hostile stance towards Iran. However, its Israeli connection meant that “the UAE is host to a lot of Israeli intelligence companies, arms companies … The UAE government has allowed Israelis to basically have an unofficial base in different parts of UAE.” Not unreasonably, Iran considers these to be no less legitimate targets than military bases. The UAE’s greater network of US bases makes it the key regional logistics and intelligence hub for the US overall, so the difference between military and civilian purposes is not always clear.
Third, it is not always clear whether attacks are directed by the Iranian government. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi seemed to apologise when drones hit Oman, saying that “we have already told our Armed Forces to be careful about the targets that they choose,” while noting that “our military units are now, in fact, independent and somehow isolated, and they are acting based on general instructions given to them in advance.” In other words, with the head cut off when Khamenei was killed, many IRGC units are acting autonomously. His reference to “general instructions in advance” refers to a “target bank” of “potential strikes” drawn up after the 12-day war, but now without any specific guidance. An Iranian official likewise told Drop Site news that prior planning for possible decapitation strikes included “delegating authority further down the command structure.” Ali Ahmadi, a fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, explained “This mosaic of different Iranian military commands around the country operate independently … You have different military sectors in different parts of the country with predetermined strike packages … a very decentralized network of ideological, security, economic organizations, all of whom are loyal to the founding principles of the Islamic Republic.”
On 7 March, President Pezeshkian apologised to the Gulf states, and announced that Iran would end attacks on their territory, unless it is used by the US in its war on Iran. Yet hours later, Iranian drones struck a US air combat centre at the Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE. At one level, no contradiction here – it is hard to argue that a US air combat centre in the context of this war is not a legitimate target. Moreover, soon after Pezeshkian’s statement, the US bombed a desalination plant in Iran; Iran responded by attacking the US base in Bahrain, claiming the attack on the desalination plant was launched from there. From there, attacks more generally resumed, indicating once again that the IRGC is acting autonomously.
Finally, there is also an opposite logic to that which sees Iran’s strikes playing into Israel’s hands: Iran is gambling that they may have the exact opposite effect, ie, to lead them to question the US ‘security umbrella’. These states host US bases, and have invested billions into the US economy, yet this US protection racket has meant little as their ports, airports and skyscrapers are getting blasted. It is worth remembering that the road to Saudi-Iranian détente did not begin with Iran’s weakening; that came later and entrenched it. Rather, it began in 2019 when Iran bombed the Saudi oil industry and put 50 percent of out of service, and Trump’s fierce anti-Iran rhetoric came to nothing. Iran gambles that this could be the same, on a larger scale: its message is that hosting US bases makes them targets, rather than making them safe. This is combined with Gulf anger over the US putting them into this predicament by listening to Israel rather than to their advice.
Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal put it bluntly: “This is Netanyahu’s war.” “No one in the region chose to go to war with Iran,” said Mohammed Baharoon, director of the Dubai Public Policy Research Center. “We’re directly joined at the hip by geography [to Iran]. Once the war is over and US ships go home, we will have to deal with Iran.” “This isn’t the Gulf’s war and we shouldn’t fall for the Israeli bait the way the US did,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University. “Lack of US reliability is not the surprise here.” David Robert at King’s College London, who has worked in Qatar, notes the irony that the six countries who pledged to invest over a trillion dollars in the US last year told Washington not to attack Iran, while Israel, to which the US provides billions each year, advocated war. “It’s not the first time Gulf states feel they’ve come second to Israel,” he said, claiming “The fundamental Gulf strategy has failed. Entrusting, investing in the US relationship … was all designed to prevent this exact conflagration.” Gulf states have also accused the US of “stonewalling” requests to replenish their air defence interceptors, or accuse the US of focusing its resources on defending Israel while ignoring their needs.
Prominent Emirati oligarch close to the regime, Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, wrote an open letter to Trump, asking him “Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with Iran? … And did you consider that the first to suffer from this escalation will be the countries of the region! … Was this your decision alone? Or did it come as a result of pressure from Netanyahu and his government? You have placed the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab countries at the heart of a danger they did not choose.”
Gulf states are also discussing withdrawing from future investment commitments in the US as a result of the economic impact of the war on their “hydrocarbon, shipping, tourism, and aviation revenues, as well as a huge increase in defence spending.”
The US is attempting to push the Gulf states into joining the attack on Iran in response to the attacks in their countries. Unhinged right-wing senator Lindsay Graham, who strongly pushed Trump into this war, lashed out at Saudi Arabia for “refus[ing] to use their capable military as a part of an effort to end the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed 7 Americans,” and threatened that if the Gulf states don’t take part, “consequences will follow.”
But, while the Gulf states have issued warnings to Iran that they “reserve the right” to defend themselves, to date they have tended to move in the opposite direction. The Emirati tycoon cited above responded to Graham: “We know full well why we are under attack, and we also know who dragged the entire region into this dangerous escalation without consulting those he calls his allies,” and pledged, “we will not enter this war to serve the interests of others.”
Hamad bin Jassim, the former prime minister of Qatar, declared that “The Gulf states must not be drawn into a direct confrontation with Iran even though Iran violated their sovereignty and initiated the attacks on our countries. There are powers that want a direct conflict between the Gulf and Iran, knowing that the war between the U.S. and Israel and Iran will end, whereas direct conflict between the Gulf and Iran will sap the resources of both sides and allow other powers to control us.” Even the UAE, according to Jamal Al Musharakh, the UAE’s UN ambassador, reiterated that the UAE “will not partake in any attacks against Iran from our territory, we will not be involved in such a conflict.”
More generally, the joint GCC statement cited above stresses that they “have always advocated for dialogue, negotiations, and the resolution of all issues with the Islamic Republic of Iran” and this is “the sole path to overcome the current crisis,” warning that “escalation would undermine regional security and drag the region toward dangerous trajectories with catastrophic consequences for international peace and security.” Several sources have reported that Saudi Arabia has intensified its engagement with Iran to try to de-escalate, and that Qatar and the UAE “are privately lobbying allies to help them persuade President Donald Trump to reach for an off-ramp that would keep US military operations against Iran short.”
This while Israel’s aim is to push the Gulf states into conflict with Iran, and further under the US security umbrella, Iran’s aim to push the Gulf states precisely to question the value of this this US security (alongside its broader aims of disrupting the global economy). Whether this Iranian or the Israeli “logic of chaos” wins out remains to be seen – there are indications that these states will emerge with deeply tense relations with both the US and Iran.
How soon will the war end? Who will be the victors?
With no crystal ball, this concluding remark is probably pointless, and may be proved completely wrong an hour after it is written! But what we can see is that Trump is desperate to extricate himself and the US from this quagmire, he tells us the war will be over “very soon,” as the US objectives in the war are “very complete, pretty much,” on the same day as his maniac War Minister Hegseth claims it has only just begun. But if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz the US will hot Iran 10 times harder than ever, and so on and so forth.
For the US this has turned into a disaster, and with massively rising oil prices hitting his MAGA base, who are already deeply nervous about being dragged into a longer term foreign war, his own political demise is at issue. However, in order to quit, he has to be able to dress it up as a victory. As has been quipped, while it took the US 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban in Afghanistan, this time it only took 10 days to replace Supreme Leader Khamenei with his son.
Of course, Trump can claim that he has destroyed Iran’s ballistic missiles, launchers and production sites and sunk its navy, thus “defanging” it, but this will only be a partial truth. Iran, for its part, does not want to let Trump get away with this grave crime and claim a political victory; therefore it continues to show that it has plenty more missiles and drones and that short of an unconditional halt in US and Israeli attacks, an unceremonial end to their aggression, Iran will just keep firing them – meaning in effect a victory for Iran, and a significant revival of its standing in the region – even many opposed to Iran will have to recognise that it stood up to this disgraceful, unprovoked act of illegal aggression and mass murder.
The other victory, however, is likely to be Israel: it knows very well there has never been an “Iranian threat” and, unlike Trump, Netanyahu has the almost full support for the Israeli public for this aggression, and, more significantly, it has enabled a new advance for Greater Israel with a likely seizure of a chunk of Lebanon – and significantly, Netanyahu has asserted that his Lebanon massacre will continue after any early end to the war on Iran. That, of course, is a whole new topic.
And the Iranian people’s movement?
Readers who despise Iran’s theocratic dictatorship may be disappointed that there is little mention of the people’s movement to overthrow the brutal regime in this piece. As I noted in the introduction, war and slaughter do not help promote people’s uprisings and revolutions but just the opposite; in fact I cannot think of a single good example in history.
While some may cite the 2011 Libya intervention, there is no parallel: regardless of what one thinks of the US intervention, or what one thinks of the nature of the revolution and its outcome – this is surely not the place to discuss! – in that case the movement against Gaddafi had already armed and was in control of a significant section of the country; the US intervention aided one side in an armed civil conflict. Moreover, this armed conflict already existed with a mass base before US intervention; the intervention did not spur it into being. Clearly, this has no relation to the situation in Iran today.
However, what if, in six months time, the presumed weakening of the regime’s repressive forces by the US-Israel attacks (itself a big presumption), allows the people’s movement to rise again through the cracks and overthrow the regime? If that were to occur, the people would have very right to do so and be rid of the regime which just mowed down some 7000 protestors in January, and has murdered and tortured the people for decades as billionaire mullahs and “revolutionary” guards amass wealth and spout slogans; any demonisation of them by western leftists from the computer screens would come from the same kind of imperial arrogance as that of our leaders, regardless of how powerless it is by comparison.
That would not make the current war any less illegal and horrifically murderous; nor would it make our opposition to it any less just; and indeed, regardless of my class hatred of the regime, I am glad it seems to be giving the aggressors a hard fight. No, it just means there are contradictions in reality that don’t fit into neat boxes imagined by either our warmongering politicians and media on one side, or an important, but brain-dead, part of the western “anti-imperialist” left on the other.
Down with US-Israeli aggression, and down with dictatorship, both murderers of the Iranian people!
The agreement between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on January 30 brings about the integration of the SDF and the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) into the Syrian state’s institutions. However, it contains a number of aspects which allow a degree of continued self-rule in the Kurdish regions:
For example, on the main issue which had divided the two sides since the March 10 integration agreement – whether the SDF military would integrate into the Syrian army on an “individual” basis or as a “bloc” – the outcome comes closer to the latter even if formally the former, in that a new army division, consisting of three brigades, will be created for the SDF to collectively ‘integrate into’ in Hasakah governate, while a new brigade for the SDF in Kobani will become part of the Aleppo military division.
The Kurdish Asayish internal security forces will be re-badged as part of Syrian public security, while continuing to patrol Kobani and Kurdish regions in Hasakah.
The Syrian army will not enter any “Kurdish areas,” or any “cities and towns” in Hasakah at all.
The SDF is to appoint the governor of Hasakah governate, the deputy Defence Minister and a number of other high posts, as well as select representatives from Hasakah and Kobani for the People’s Assembly, which had been left vacant last year.
While the civilian institutions of DAANES will be integrated into Syrian institutions, a number of provisions also imply some degree of ‘re-badging’ while maintaining the essence of the ‘autonomous administration’:
“settlement and certification of all school, university, and institute certificates issued by the Autonomous Administration”
“licensing of all local and cultural organizations and media institutions” (in accordance with relevant laws)
“working with the Ministry of Education to discuss the educational pathway of the Kurdish community and to take educational particularities into account.”
Together with references to “protecting the particular character of Kurdish areas” in the earlier January 18 agreement, these items suggest that the degree of effective local decision-making, including the retention of the more progressive aspects of the Rojava project, could well be questions of interpretation and negotiation, rather than a flat suppression as more negative readings could suggest. Certainly, the more positive interpretation is being given by leading SDF and AANES figures such as Mazloum Abdi.
The agreement also called for facilitating the return of all displaced Kurds to Afrin and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain). While a positive statement, this is currently made difficult in Afrin, and impossible in Sere Kaniye, by the presence of re-badged former Syrian National Army (SNA) brigades who committed atrocities against Kurds and plundered their properties when they took part in the Turkish invasions of 2018 and 2019 respectively (when hundreds of thousands of Kurds were driven out), as well as some remaining Turkish troops. However, SDF leaders have claimed that Turkish troops have now left Afrin (and, hopefully, will also be leaving the strip they control in the northeast around Sere Kaniye), while well-informed Syria watcher Charles Lister claims that “former SNA opposition fighters in Ras al-Ayn and Afrin will be replaced by other MOD units.” While Afrin Kurds still suffer harassment by ex-SNA brigades, the situation has improved significantly since the new government came to power and began pushing these brigades aside and working towards restitution of the Kurds’ property; some 70,000 Kurds returned to Afrin in the first months after the revolution, though many more still languish elsewhere in camps. Meanwhile, all three Afrin positions for the People’s Council were won by Kurds, “including Dr. Rankin Abdo, a female doctor and activist whose public views on Ahmed al-Sharaa are far from positive.”
To all this must be added the January 16 presidential decree on Kurdish rights, which declared the Kurds an essential component of Syria, declared Kurdish to be a “national language” that can be taught in schools, made the Kurdish Newroz festival a national holiday, banned hate-speech against Kurds, and annulled the results of the botched 1962 census which had stripped some 20 percent of Syrian Kurds of their citizenship; hundreds of thousands of Kurds were at a stroke granted citizenship.
Taken as a whole, all of the above represents a picture that is so comprehensively superior to anything during the 60-year Baathist dictatorship or before regarding the Syrian Kurdish issue that it is simply night and day. I think this at least should be conceded by critics before moving on; getting this far is an accomplishment that would have been impossible without the Syrian revolution, in the broadest sense of the term.
However, for supporters of the Rojava revolution, that is hardly the point: during those revolutionary years, they made their own revolution, they contend, so the current agreement integrating the Autonomous Administration into the Syrian state is a setback – not from the Baathist past, but from what they achieved in the meantime. There may be lots of formal rights now, but it is a step back from their autonomy, from Kurdish self-determination, and from the independent decision-making of the Rojava project they launched, with its range of radical policies from women’s empowerment through civil marriage to communal decision-making “taken closer to the ground” or even “the reformation of the legal system with an emphasis on restorative justice,” and many more claimed – though also often strongly disputed – achievements. While reality has been combined with much hype and uncritical adulation, and denial of its many serious faults, it would be difficult to not recognise the achievements in the gender equality area for example (leaving aside the tendency of such articles to give an incomplete picture of the reality in the rest of Syria).
An example of this critique which sees little positive in the current situation comes from Turkish revolutionary Marxist Foti Benisloy, who claims the situation under the current Syrian government “relegates the Kurds – at best – to a minority that will enjoy certain cultural rights on an individual level … The presidential decree published on 17 January, which recognizes certain rights of identity for Kurds, clearly shows that the Kurdish issue in Syria is not treated as a matter of self-government and self-determination, but as a mere problem of minority rights.”
Now, one can argue that a more explicit recognition of Kurdish autonomy in the areas they form a majority would be preferable to the agreement as is; even the most positive spin on the agreement’s terms regarding effective Kurdish self-rule is that this remains a matter of interpretation and negotiation, so there is no guarantee that this will eventuate.
However, we should remember that the SDF leadership, from very soon after the overthrow of Assad, declared its desire to ‘integrate’ into the new Syria and signed the March integration agreement, because they recognised that it was impossible to continue to have two governments in Syria, especially as the one they ran in 30 percent of Syria in the northeast extended far beyond the Kurdish regions; one way or another integration was necessary. Perhaps what they did not realise then was how shaky their hold was over the vast Arab majority of the DAANES statelet; negotiating as if all of this was “theirs,” which just happened to cover nearly all of Syria’s sovereign oil wealth, was a huge error of judgement. But once we take these regions away – and of course, they simply ‘fell away’ in January as the Arab masses shrugged off Kurdish-led SDF rule – this brings the issue back from an expanded imaginary ‘multi-ethnic Rojava’ concept to the Kurdish heartlands, and hence to the issue of Kurdish self-rule.
But that’s where a new problem arises: how do we define ‘autonomy’ or ‘self-determination’ given the demographic and geographic reality of ‘Syrian Kurdistan’. This essay will look at this question through a series of maps, and then wind up citing some recent comments by none other than the father of the ‘Rojava’ project, Turkey’s long-time Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, and how this bears on the discussion.
Maps of Syrian Kurdish demography
The first map shows the demographic reality of Syria:
Focusing on the north of the map, the pinkish areas show the main concentrations of Kurdish population. Two things are immediately apparent – first, the lack of any geographic contiguity, their wide separation into the three main concentrations – the town of Afrin the northwest, the town of Kobani in the centre-west (both belong to Aleppo governate), and Hasakah governate in the northeast; and second, even in the largest area of Kurdish population, the northeast ‘nose’ of Hasakah, Kurds are very interspersed with other groups.
This can be shown even more starkly if we look at medium-sized urban centres, of which only six in Syria, scattered along the Turkish border, are majority Kurdish: Afrin, Kobani, Darbasiyeh, Amude, Qamishli and Derik (Malikiyah):
As we can see, the first two are distant form each other and even more distant from the other four in Hasakah governate, which are reasonably close to each other; these four Hasakah towns have Arab, Assyrian and Armenian minorities.
Despite common misconceptions, neither Hasakah governate as a whole, nor most of its districts, nor its capital Hasakah city, are Kurdish majority. Hasakah governate is majority Arab, but its 30 percent Kurdish population is the largest of any governate in Syria (apologies for the language of “tribes and clans” in the graphic):
Hasakah city has a large Kurdish minority (42 percent), the majority mostly Arab with a small population of Assyrians. But there is a clear geographic separation, the Arab population predominantly living in the southern neighbourhoods, Kurds in the north, while the central neighbourhoods have mixed populations:
This preponderance of Arabs in the south of the city borders directly on the almost complete Arab majority in the south of the governate, the city located at the crossing point between the Arab south and the more Kurdish and mixed north of Hasakah governate:
This map shows that southern Hasakah governate, the district of Al-Shaddadi, is almost entirely Arab-populated, bordering on the Arab-populated Deir-Ezzor governate, which recently shrugged off SDF rule, along with Arab-populated Raqqa governate, so it is not surprising that this district, up to the gates of Hasakah city, also rapidly fell to the Syrian government in January.
According to this map, the central Al-Hasakah district itself also has a large Arab majority, much larger than the city itself; and another two districts, Rais al-Ain and Qamishli, also have Arab pluralities or slight majorities, with Kurds accounting for a very large 40 percent of the population in each, the latter also with 10 percent Assyrians; but as we saw above, a number of main urban centres in these districts are majority Kurdish. So, if this data is more or less right, the only district of Hasakah governate with an absolute Kurdish majority is the eastern-most Al-Malikiya, with 55 percent Kurds, 10 percent Assyrians and the remainder Arabs.
A note of caution, however – I have used this map indicatively, as it came to my attention without having time for further research, and would be happy for any of it to be corrected; the main point, however, is that both the south-north, Arab-Kurd distinction, and the ethnic mix in most regions, are well-established. But I do not necessarily trust the actual figures: an important issue is the 1962 census that removed the citizenship of one fifth of the Kurdish population – which the current government has just annulled with its presidential decree on Kurdish rights. I cannot know if these figures, even if nominally correct, include these “non-citizen” Kurds who have now become citizens. If this data does not include these Kurds, their inclusion could well tip the balance in the northern districts to absolute Kurdish majority, while also boosting their numbers in Hasakah district.
Either way, Hasakah city itself is a kind of demographic ‘border’ between a very Arab south and a very mixed or Kurdish north of the governate, which may also relate to political views towards the DAANES/Rojava project.
How then does the above demographic reality relate to questions of Kurdish autonomy, and to the various actual Rojava/DAANES statelets that have arisen since 2012?
First let’s see how different the Syrian situation is to that of Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Iraq:
What is clear is that in these three countries, there are large regions of contiguous Kurdish population, in sharp contrast to Syria. This is the basis of the idea of that the Kurds, as a nationin every sense of the term, should be entitled to their own nation-state, as the Turkey-based Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) fought for in the 1980s and 1990s. The dominant Kurdish movements in Iran and Iraq did not advocate such a state, but rather a high level of territorial autonomy within those states (like what now exists in Iraq), but once again this was realistic given this demographic reality, in sharp contrast to Syria – there is no contiguous region for territorial autonomy, so ‘autonomy’ can only really mean the degree of Kurdish self-rule at the local level.
The map also explains to us why the Syrian Kurds are so widely separated: the three main concentrations are ‘fingers’ of Kurdish population from Turkey or Iraq stretching into Syria. Only if an independent Kurdish nation-state were to be established across the whole region could these small concentrations of Syrian Kurds viably join it. Yet even the PKK long ago gave up the nation-state idea.
So how does this reality relate to the various sizes and shapes of the statelets ruled by the PYD/YPG/SDF since 2012?
The original three ‘Rojava’ cantons were established in 2012 by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the PKK. We can see these cantons corresponded reasonably closely to the main concentrations of Kurdish population, as we saw in Figure 1 above. This is only natural; in the chaos of revolution, counterrevolution and civil conflict, a Kurdish armed militia gained control of Kurdish population centres, the regions where they would have some base. Now, the story is not that simple, because many Kurds throughout the north were also supporting the PYD’s rivals in the Kurdish National Council (KNC), who were taking part in anti-Assad protests alongside other Syrians throughout 2011-2012; the impact of the PYD setting up Kurdish cantons arguably cut the Kurds off from the joint democratic struggle. Incidentally, this often involved well-documented PYD violence against Kurdish anti-Assad demonstrators; while on the other hand, explaining the drift towards armed separation must also factor in a hostile Turkish influence on parts of the Syrian opposition, and the rise of jihadist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, which launched armed attacks on the Kurdish cantons throughout 2013. But all this is another story – simply from the point of view of Kurdish self-rule, these original cantons roughly corresponded to Kurdish populations, reproduced below again for comparison:
Figure 8: The cantons of Rojava self-administration, roughly 2012-2014
Part of the reason for this change – ie the takeover of regions where Kurds did not predominate and in some cases were non-existent – was the large-scale intervention of two imperialist superpowers, the US and Russia, both allying themselves with the PYD/YPG in different parts of Syria, with their own objectives. These objectives either dovetailed with, or encouraged, a new aggressive irredentist version of the ‘Rojava’ state project the PYD/YPG was now developing; a version which in practice was the 180-degree opposite of the ideals of ‘democratic confederalism’ which the Rojava project was initially built on.
That is not to suggest there was no reality to the democratic confederalism project – much research comes up with markedly opposing opinions as to its reality, but certainly there has been enough carried out that demonstrates remarkable achievements in places. What is striking when looking back at these early reports on the Rojava revolution, however, was that they were almost invariably describing the Kurdish-majority heartlands, or otherwise some of the very ethnically mixed parts of the Hasakah region where long traditions of inter-ethnic co-existence were relatively easy to translate into a ‘democratic confederalist’ polity. But this ideal is by definition negated once the leadership decided to create an irridentist ‘Rojava’ statelet via conquest with aid of global imperialist powers.
Now admittedly it is not as simple as that. The US intervention, which began in September 2014 as the US airforce bombed ISIS to halt its genocidal advance towards Kurdish Kobani, was aimed at destroying ISIS in Syria; the YPG (later SDF) has been called the “ground troops” of the US “war on terror,” but this is not really accurate, because obviously the YPG had its own reasons for wanting to destroy ISIS. This began a decade-long US-YPG (later US-SDF) military alliance which eventually succeeded in expelling ISIS from its ‘capital’ in Raqqa – with the US airforce completely destroying Raqqa in the process – and then destroying most of the rest of the ‘Caliphate’ by 2019 (in the last year or two a Russian-backed Assad regime offensive joined in to “mop up” after the US-SDF had done all the heavy lifting – the Assadist discourse that the regime and its allies destroyed ISIS in Syria is real alternative reality stuff).
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I will just digress a little here, to correct a common meme that claims only the YPG/SDF (or sometimes “only the Kurds”) fought ISIS and “saved humanity,” a meme often used while slandering the current Syrian government as “ISIS.” A united front of all Syrian rebel groups (including Nusra, which current president al-Sharaa then led, then just one of dozens or hundreds of rebel formations) had already launched its own full-scale war on ISIS in January 2014, driving ISIS out of all of northwest Syria (Idlib, Aleppo, northern Hama and Latakia governates), even from Deir Ezzor in the east, and briefly even from Raqqa, though ISIS rallied hard and got Raqqa back. They did this with no support from the US airforce or any other, and through the entire operation, Assad’s airforce bombed the rebels, not ISIS. The rebels lost 7000 troops in this operation, a fact rarely mentioned in discussing the defeat of ISIS. ISIS took back Deir Ezzor in the east six months later after its massive haul of US weapons from its conquest of Mosul in Iraq – and as ISIS besieged rebel-held Deir Ezzor in July 2014, the Assad regime again helped it by bombing the rebels. And as the Aleppo rebels continually tried throughout 2015 to drive ISIS out of part of northeast Aleppo governate it had later reconquered (around Jarablus and Manbij), the Assad regime again continually bombed the rebels, and, though the US was by now in Syria fighting ISIS, it never bombed ISIS in support of these rebel offensives (on the contrary, the US often took time off from bombing ISIS to bomb Nusra, HTS, Ahrar al-Sham or other rebel groups).
Given the US wanted a partner that was fighting ISIS only, and not fighting the regime, the YPG/SDF was a perfect fit. That is not a slander; let’s say the YPG needed to prioritise due to geography (eg the US-SDF war on ISIS was in east Syria, the Assad regime versus rebels war was mostly in west Syria). Either way, it is still a fact.
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But now returning from this historical interlude, as the US-SDF alliance advanced against ISIS, naturally these regions needed someone to govern them; in war conditions, that would be the armed group defeating ISIS. So while Figure 9 above shows vast areas of non-Kurdish majority, especially southern Hasakah and the large region between Sere Kaniye and Kobani, initially this was simply rational. More on where the problems arose later.
The problem is, this US backing for territorial expansion may have been responsible for giving the PYD/YPG leadership ideas well beyond the necessary expansion against ISIS. In 2015, Polat Can, a senior PYD official, stated that “We in the YPG have a strategic goal, to link Afrin with Kobani. We will do everything we can to achieve it.” Never mind the hundreds of thousands (at least) of Arabs and Turkmen living between these two Kurdish concentrations. The PYD now had a map in its head of a grotesque ‘Rojava’ state stretching along the entire length of the northern border, regardless of ethnic realities, to be brought about by military conquest; ridiculous maps, like the one below, began to regularly appear in pro-Rojava publications.
The onset of Russia’s horrific air war in support of the Assad regime in September 2015 was to be their tool. The PYD welcomed the Russian intervention. While US intervention in its war against ISIS took place in eastern Syria, Russian intervention against the anti-Assad rebels took place in the west. The Afrin and Sheikh Maqsud PYD leaderships launched a large-scale attack on the rebel-held, Arab majority Tel Rifaat and surrounding region north of Aleppo in January 2016, backed by heavy bombing by the Russian airforce. They seized the region, expelling some 100,000 Arabs and Turkmen, who ended up in camps in Aziz on the Turkish border. While the PYD’s aim was to advance its irredentist project rather than to aid Assad as such (Assad always promised to crush Kurdish autonomy as soon as he regained control), for now it put the Aleppo wing of the PYD in alliance with Assad – made clearer when they actually aided Assad’s reconquest of rebel-held eastern Aleppo later in 2016.
Meanwhile, the US-SDF alliance drove ISIS from Arab-majority Manbij just west of Kobani in mid-2016, then Raqqa in 2017 and Deir Ezzor in 2018 (dividing the latter with the Assad regime forces finally coming from the west). But in the northwest, the SDF suffered a huge setback in 2018 when the Turkish army invaded Kurdish Afrin, driving out some 130,000 Kurds, who ended up, ironically, in the homes of those earlier expelled by the SDF from Tel Rifaat; and the next year, Turkey invaded part of the northeast, and seized the cities of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain, with their substantial (though not majority) Kurdish populations, driving out some 200,000 Kurds.
Therefore, if we look just before the fall of Assad, after both SDF expansion but also defeats, the map of the DAANES/Rojava statelet, shown in the yellow in Figure 11 below and accounting for 30 percent of Syria’s territory, bears almost no resemblance to a map of Kurdish regions in Syria:
Figure 12: Rojava/DAANES statelets clockwise in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2024.
Between ‘democratic confederalism’ and negation of self-determination in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor
So, getting back to the initially justified expansion of the Rojava statelet to the Arab-populated governates of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, due to their liberation from ISIS by the US/SDF alliance, what went wrong after that?
One specific aspect useful to note here: when ISIS was threatening the region back in 2014, various non-Kurdish militia in the region joined forces with the YPG to fight ISIS, including for example the al-Sandidid forces of the Shammar tribe, and also the Free Syrian Army’s 11th Division, known as the Raqqa Revolutionaries Front (RRF). Once the YPG was expanded into the SDF, these other forces joined. But the treatment of the RRF by the PYD/YPG is an example of how actual self-determination was shoved aside when the Kurdish leadership was challenged. This Wikipedia page gives a good summary, backed by abundant sources. The local Raqqa revolutionaries, who had earlier fought the Assad regime, were more or less representative of the Raqqa population; they arose from there. Much more so than a Kurdish militia that covered Raqqa with images of a Kurdish leader from Turkey.
That is a story of its own; the point is that there was a contradiction between a ‘democratic confederalist’ project which by definition is not about territorial conquest, and the long-term rule by the SDF, dominated by a Kurdish party, over another people, to the point that discussions about ‘autonomy’ and ‘federalism’ throughout 2025 seemed to assume that the entire 30 percent of Syria ruled by the SDF, with its arbitrary borders, should be the basis of some kind of autonomy or federal unit. Oddly for a project that aims to go beyond the prison of the arbitrary borders of modern states, the rupture of the arbitrary borders of DAANES by an act of Arab self-determination, as the Arab region collapsed into the more natural hands of the Syrian government, has been widely interpreted as a massive violation of Kurdish autonomy!
Ocalan: It “has nothing to do with federal autonomy”
Now that that phase is over, we return to the start: the regions the Syrian army did not march into are regions either of Kurdish majority or of large Kurdish concentrations mixed with other groups. But as we saw at the start, even these regions are not contiguous, and even the largest region of Kurdish concentration, Hasakah governate, is neither Kurdish majority as a whole, and even the Kurdish majority cities, towns and regions are interspersed with non-Kurdish regions. Just what can ‘Kurdish autonomy’, or Kurdish self-determination, in any territorial sense, mean then?
Ironically, while some Kurds and their supporters abroad now insist that some kind of autonomy must be maintained, and that anything less is betrayal, it is interesting to cite Ocalan himself, the Rojava project’s key inspiration. In a recent meeting between Öcalan and a commission of the Turkish parliament, he explained that the Kurds should find their place “through democratic self‑organisation within the existing framework” (whether in Turkey or in Syria); not only did this have nothing to do with secession, but it also “has nothing to do with federal autonomy.” In fact, he argued that a state needs both “central unitary powers and regional local democracy,” and that one cannot exist without the other. Far from ‘federalism’, this is an argument for a central state with decentralised power at the local level.
Of course, for those well-versed in Ocalan thought, this comes as no surprise; the very fact that peoples live interspersed and that there are few regions of homogenous ethnic population means that ‘democratic confederalism’ provides a better basis for minority groups to have their rights than territorial autonomy as such, let alone secession. What this means is that enhanced local ‘autonomy’ is needed, in the sense that local populations, of whatever ethnicity, should have wide-ranging powers over their own political, cultural, education, security and other affairs, while not contradicting the necessity of overriding central powers.
If we look at the current SDF-Government agreement of January 30, while far from ideal in many respects, there are arguably aspects of this that could be built on – or at least, there are many articles of the agreement expressed in a general enough way to be open to interpretation, subject to negotiations of what ‘integration’ means in practice. This is the way a number of prominent SDF/DAANES leaders are interpreting it. For example, Mazloum Abdi claims “the institutions that the Autonomous Administration was managing will remain as they are,” Ilham Ahmed claims the co-chair system will remain, that the YPJ will be included in the new brigades formed for the SDF, and that “education will be reorganized in a way that preserves Kurdish as an official language of instruction,” Fawza Youssef adding that “educational institutions will retain their specific character, with joint committees to be formed to discuss the continuity of the educational process, including curricula and languages of instruction,” while Sipan Hemo claims that “everything—from command structure to deployment centers—has been determined by us,” and that not only the Hasakah governor, but all district governors in Hasakah will be appointed by the SDF.
Indeed, Ocalan appears to be close to Abdi and was likely an important influence on his pragmatic approach that led to the agreement. As an aside, he also claims that “Israel today needs a Kurdish state as a geopolitical pillar for lasting dominance in the Middle East” but he sees the future of the Kurds tied to the peoples around them; earlier in 2025, rejecting Israeli dominance through the Kurds, he claimed to be the person who could prevent the SDF from falling under Israeli influence; his messages to the SDF were strongly pro-integration.
As for president al-Sharaa, he has regularly stressed that “even the concept of federalism, which some are putting forward, does not differ in substance from the local administration framework in force in Syria, particularly Law No. 107 issued more than ten years ago, which in practice already incorporates many of the concepts being proposed today, with the possibility of introducing amendments to it”.
So, could these various threads – SDF leaders interpretations of the agreement, mention of the ‘special character of the Kurdish regions’ in the agreement, Ocalan’s interpretation of ‘democratic confederalism’, Sharaa’s claims about the local administration law, the government’s new decree on Kurdish rights – mean that Kurdish autonomy at the local level, and the best aspects of ‘Rojava’ policy, could survive in the new integrated framework?
Here, we can be hopeful without needing to have illusions or to make confident predictions about the future. Everything depends on struggle, on negotiation, on relationship of forces. After all, as Sharaa notes, the legislation he points to was enacted under Assad (in 2011); he obviously does not think it was ever a reality under the Baath. The Kurdish leadership’s attempt to negotiate as wide self-rule as possible within the integrated framework should not be criticised as some secret desire for ‘separatism’, as many government supporters do – apart from local self-rule being a good thing in its own right, there are two important reasons why this is especially important for the Kurds.
First, the Kurds are an historically oppressed people in Syria and the region, as al-Sharaa’s decree on Kurdish rights clearly recognises. Historical oppression cannot be overcome simply by laws and decrees, but by long-term empowerment and redress of historical injustice.
Second, the assumption that merely integrating into the Syrian state with a set of Kurdish rights laws automatically leads to equality ignores the fact that the new Syrian polity itself, after decades of brutally oppressive Baath rule, can at this stage hardly be called either democratic, or representative of all components of Syrian society. To the contrary, at both the political and military-security level, it remains largely a state of the Arab-Sunni majority – whether one views that as the government’s ‘intention’ or rather an inheritance to be overcome. It is largely an inheritance from the Baathist catastrophe – Baathist rule was always based on effective sectarian division, with control of the military-security apparatus solidly in the hands of the Alawite minority, but one large dimension of its violent counterrevolution after 2011 was a war of sectarian genocide against the Sunni majority which formed the main – but not exclusive – base of the revolution; this utterly destroyed the social fabric of Syrian society. Some claim the new government is making slow attempts to overcome this; others claim the new ruling elite inevitably seeks to utilise a soft Sunni sectarianism as its ideological prop in the reestablishment of a soft-authoritarian capitalist rule.
While this is too complex an issue to go into detail here, the widely-noted ‘one-colour’ nature of the state to date, despite some improvement throughout the year, means that it requires maximum democratic change to become a genuinely inclusive polity – and given this, it is not just understandable, but essential, that non-Arab Sunni components – Alawites, Druze, Christians, Kurds etc – are able to represent themselves in a genuine process of democratic integration, regardless of who their current leaderships are. Chances to begin such a process – such as the National Dialogue Conference early in 2025, or the indirect ‘election’ process of the People’s Assembly later in the year – were either farcical in the first case, or failed to advance this process in the second. According to Ocalan, “Ahmed al‑Sharaa must, like the SDF, take concrete positive steps toward a democratic Syria,” his “central recommendation for Syria [being] to establish local democracy.”
The government has just accepted the SDF’s nomination of long-time SDF leader Nour al-Din Ahmad as Governor of Hasakah governate; the SDF has put forward another 10 names for positions, include deputy Minister of Defence. The SDF will also nominate people to represent Hasakah and Kobani in the People’s Assembly (places were left vacant during the ‘election’ process). On February 4, while meeting a delegation from the (non-PYD) Kurdish National Council in Syria in Damascus, al-Sharaa stressed his commitment to guaranteeing Kurdish rights within the constitution. When Colonel Mohammad Abdul Ghani, commander of Internal Security in Aleppo Governorate, visited Kobani to prepare for the entry of security forces to begin integrating the SDF’s Asayish forces, who will continue to be the (re-badged) local security force, he used the name “Kobani” rather than its Arabic name, Ain al-Arab. The entry of internal security into Hasakah and Qamishli for the same purposes proceeded smoothly; the joint statement by the Asayish and MoI leaderships, led off by a female YPJ cadre, has a genuine feeling to it; Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba thanked the local Kurds for their “warm welcome” and “love and gratitude.” These are positive signs; of course, there is no guarantee of what will happen tomorrow.
Ironically, the worst thing that happened during those days was that the SDF arrested dozens of Hasakah locals for coming out to welcome the entry of state security forces. A reminder for those decrying the end of ‘radical democracy’ at the hands of a ‘jihadist’ regime that authoritarian practices are not restricted to one side. Indeed, one issue raised by some Kurds opposed to the PYD is that the agreement at state level between the government and SDF may leave unresolved the issue of the democratic rights of Kurdish oppositionists in the SDF-controlled region.
On the other hand, despite these agreements and meetings, the government has maintained an effective siege of Kobani, which appears to be a means of pressure. This is exacerbated by the presence of large numbers of Kurds displaced from elsewhere in recent weeks. While a number of aid convoys have gone into Kobani, electricity is cut off to the region, which also means water pumps can’t run. To the government’s claim that it has not cut off electricity, but that the problem is damage to the network during the fighting, there seems to be no urgency about fixing it. This is outrageous and the government needs to end this form of collective pressure now.
These and many other issues aside, one way of looking at these new appointments is that this may be the most significant expansion to date beyond the much derided ‘one-colour’ domination of the ruling apparatus, and thus a good sign pointing towards a more inclusive Syria. But once again – we’ll see.
Syrian president Sharaa with Trump in the White House; with Putin in the Kremlin; with Lula at the COP30 conference in Brazil; Syrian foreign minister Shaibani with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing.
By Michael Karadjis
At the end of my review of the domestic situation of post-Assad Syria, I cited the article ‘Is the new Syrian state revolutionary’, where Riad Alarian and Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra argue that since the Syrian state and its global support network have collapsed, the new leadership inherited a “proto-state with minimal military resources, no clear international partnerships, and a heavily sanctioned economy,” while facing domestic and foreign threats, therefore, regardless of intention or ideology, “there is simply no alternative to integration into global capitalism.”
They are correct that no country (especially devastated Syria) can survive isolated in today’s world. In any case, no-one ever envisaged Assad’s overthrow leading to non-capitalism; “integration into global capitalism” for Syria’s capitalist government would thus seem obvious. As I noted, a capitalist government will aim to stabilise the domestic situation for local and foreign capital, and sideline any radical or working-class challenge; but at the same time, the Syrian masses who entered the streets in December 2024 have expectations, see this as their revolution that began in 2011, and democratic space exists that did not before December, for them to speak, organise, hold rallies and the like without being repressed.
However, I also noted that both truisms – ‘capitalist government’ and ‘democratic space’ – need qualification, because Syria, after 14 years of genocidal war, is a destroyed country. Reconstruction of the millions of homes, thousands of hospitals, schools and essential services, entire cities and entire sections of the country, is first priority; and the return of the 14 million internal or external refugees (60 percent of the population) is bound up with this; they need somewhere to return to. Reconstruction and economic recovery will require massive local and foreign capital, loans and aid. Therefore, at this moment ‘stability for investment’ also equates with people’s needs. And there can be no working-class movement without some level of recovery of industry and infrastructure.
These qualifications apply equally to foreign policy. Much left-wing commentary expresses the meaningless truism that “a capitalist government will align with capitalist countries and pursue a non-revolutionary foreign policy.” Yet there are no non-capitalist powers in today’s world to integrate with even if the government were socialist; and revolution cannot be ‘spread’ by bluster, only by example.
Again, despite my overall agreement with Alarian and Bushra, that the conditions the new Syria emerged with “sharply delimited the horizon of revolutionary possibility,” their claims regarding the inevitability of certain foreign policy choices due to integration into ‘global capitalism’ are over-deterministic, especially their acceptance of the media-driven discourse claiming Syria’s leaders are open to the Abraham Accords.
My review below may seem less critical of the Syrian government than my review of domestic policy. The Sharaa government does have power inside Syria, with all its limitations; its soft-authoritarian, soft-sectarian and neo-liberal inclinations are policies representing the ruling wing of Syrian capital and conflict with the traditions of the Syrian revolution – despite these inclinations being constrained by the power of these traditions. In contrast, whatever criticisms can validly be made of Syria’s foreign policy must be seen in the context that Syria is a seriously oppressed and devastated nation, a state under occupation by several countries, especially Israel, which has engaged in endless aggression since Day 1.
This centrality of the Israel issue will be briefly introduced here, while more detail will be provided in the main body of the essay.
The centrality of Israeli aggression
Israel’s aggression against Syria began the day its preferred leader, Bashar al-Assad, was overthrown. In late February 2025, after an air attack on Damascus, Daraa and other towns – one of hundreds of air strikes and hundreds more land-based attacks since December – Syrians in Damascus marched to Umayyad Square demanding the government attack Tel Aviv!
So why doesn’t it? Why hasn’t the government militarily responded to Israeli aggression since December? Of course, it cannot resist air attacks; Israel destroyed Syria’s air-defence system, along with 90 percent of its military arsenal, in the weeks after Assad’s fall.
But leaving aside small-scale grassroots resistance, the Syrian government has not responded to the daily ground-based aggression either. If it did, Israel would declare its occupation troops have the right to ‘self-defence’ from the Syrian ‘terrorist’ regime, and level Damascus.
Now, ‘Axists’ may proclaim that when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza, Israel responded by blowing south Beirut to pieces, so Syria should be prepared to suffer the same for the cause [these Axists though did not ask “why not Syria?” about the utterly passive Assad regime, which Netanyahu praised for 40 years of silence on the Golan].
However, before 2023, Hezbollah maintained a frozen border with Israel for 17 years, using the time to build its military arsenal, amassing 150,000 Iran-supplied missiles, while Lebanon rebuilt from its civil war. Whereas Syria has just emerged from 14 years of genocidal war, during which the Assad regime, backed by Russia and Iran (and Hezbollah while at peace with Israel) turned Syria into a moonscape, leaving entire cities and chunks of the country resembling Gaza, so the Syrian people cannot bear more just now; and as noted, Israel had just destroyed Syria’s military arsenal. The two situations could not be more different.
Israel has emerged as the number one enemy, Syria’s “main security threat.” How ironic that much shallow discourse – both from mainstream and ‘Axist’/campist ‘left’ media – claim that Syria-Israel ‘normalisation’ is on the horizon. There is a connection: while Israel calls the new Syria a “terrorist jihadist” enemy, its US ally made a sharp turn in May, from excruciating sanctions allied with Israeli aggression, to partially lifting sanctions to use the pressure of conditional economic engagement instead. Yet despite this, US leaders have not condemned Israel’s aggression. The point being that a key aim of US pressure (in both phases) is to force Syria to give up the occupied Golan and sign an even more humiliating ‘normalisation’ treaty with Israel than other states have.
This is not ‘peace’ between Syria and Israel, regardless of how treacherous that would be in normal circumstances; those who ‘made peace’ in recent years (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco) betrayed Palestine, but had no territory occupied by Israel; Egypt in its treacherous Camp David Accords of 1979 got its own Sinai back; Assad offered normalisation to Israel on the same basis. In contrast, Israeli aggression and US ‘friendly’ pressure today aims to formalise Syria’s submission.
Claiming the new Syria is ‘open to’ normalising with Israel could not be further from the truth. Condemning the victim of aggression and occupation for being forced into this dilemma is western ‘left’ privilege writ large. And that is apart from the fact that the Syrian government has made zero statements about being open to normalising with Israel in any circumstances, let alone without the Golan.
As Dalia Ismail writes in Al-Jumhuriya, this prospect of forced ‘normalisation “is not freely chosen, but emerges from an impossible bind: either accept normalization, with Israel continuing to occupy Syrian territory, or face the ongoing threat of airstrikes, instability, and potential future invasions; what appears as diplomacy is the formalization of coercion.”
Key goals and key principles of the new Syria’s foreign policy
This context is essential to understanding new Syria’s foreign policy, which includes two urgent goals, and two overriding principles. The two urgent goals are:
ending US sanctions, which is essential to get the massive injections of foreign capital, aid or loans required for recovery and reconstruction
ending Israel’s aggression and occupation beyond the 1974 disengagement lines.
The two overriding principles, aimed at meeting these foreign policy goals and crucial domestic goals (recovery, reconstruction, return, national unification) are:
First, a pragmatic approach to foreign relations, including with countries previously friendly to Assad, and not making hair-brained attempts to “spread the revolution”. This is less ideological policy than survival mechanism, bound up with Syria being devastated and divided, with no money, little food or electricity, half the population displaced, no real army or military defence, a traumatised population, under quadruple foreign occupation and sanctions.
Second, a refusal to be under the suzerainty of or aligned with any one power or ‘bloc’ of powers, but rather to balance between them; there is no intention of swapping Russian domination for another.
Is the new Syria part of a US-led, or reactionary, or capitalist ‘bloc’?
This second point is missed in most analysis, which often claims the very opposite.
For example, anti-Assad Syrian activist Joseph Daher (whose writings I strongly recommend) claims Syria’s rulers are “steering Syria towards a US axis” (which) would include “some form of normalisation with Israel.” In the excellent critical pro-revolution source al-Jumhuriya, Dalia Ismail claims that Syria is on a “path toward normalization with Israel and the broader US-aligned regional bloc.” Ismail explains that Syria’s choices cannot be understood outside “the combined weight of Israel’s military campaign and the crushing effect of Western sanctions” (which) “have left Syria structurally incapacitated,” and implies that Syria is buckling to this pressure. Syrian writer Shireen Akram-Boshar, while likewise stressing the context of Syria’s “weakened and largely devastated” reality, agrees that Sharaa is “aiming to join a reactionary status quo,” including some kind of “normalisation” with Israel. Finally, Alarian and Bushra’s acceptance of the media-driven discourse about the government’s alleged interest in the Abraham Accords is explained as an inevitable outcome of “integration into global capitalism.”
These claims that Syria is joining a “US axis,” “the broader US-aligned regional bloc,” “a reactionary status quo” or “global capitalism,” and that this inevitably leads to normalisation are highly problematic.
Firstly, given the government’s growing ties with Russia and China, are these countries part of a “US axis” or a “US-led regional bloc”? With the continual high-level meetings between Syrian and Russian leaders in Damascus and Moscow, many Syrians are making the opposite accusation, accusing al-Sharaa of being a Russian asset for cozying up to the state that bombed Syria for a decade.
Moreover, given the strong ties most of the alleged “regional bloc” (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Egypt) have with Russia and China, does it make sense to call them a “US-aligned” bloc? Are there any coherent ‘blocs’ or ‘camps’ in today’s geopolitics? All the regional reactionary states furiously condemned Israel’s attack on Iran; none ever agreed to western sanctions on Russia over Ukraine (and neither has Israel). These countries are strongly divided among themselves on regional issues. Frankly, talk of geopolitical ‘blocs’ or ‘camps’ is half a century out of date.
Which are the non-‘reactionary’ states that Syria could align with to not be part of a “reactionary status quo”? Which countries could (capitalist) Syria ally with outside of “global capitalism”?
Finally, if being part of a “US-led Bloc,” a “reactionary status quo” or “global capitalism” makes normalisation with Israel inevitable, why then is there no consensus on Israel/Palestine among regional or global capitalist and reactionary states? ‘Global capitalism’ just voted by an immense majority of 142 countries in the UN General Assembly to support a Palestinian state, with only the US and some odds and ends voting with Israel. ‘Global capitalism’ walked out of the Assembly en-masse when Netanyahu spoke, including almost all the alleged “US-led regional bloc,” while Russia and China remained seated. The states closest to new Syria (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey) have not ‘normalised’ and/or have hostile relations with Israel. Israel and Turkey stand as enemies in Syria; why would Saudi Arabia pressure Syria to normalise with Israel when it steadfastly rejects normalisation without a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders? Egypt and UAE have normalised with Israel, but they had also normalised with Assad and are rather reticent in relation to new Syria. Russia and China, presumably outside a “US axis,” have excellent relations with Israel. Is BRICS outside a “US-led axis”? An alliance including Egypt and UAE, the most pro-Israel members of the “regional bloc”? Almost every BRICS member maintains relations with Israel.
Syria’s ‘no-bloc’ foreign policy
The Sharaa government’s ‘no-bloc’ foreign policy is actually rather explicit. One sign is that it has used the term ‘strategic partnership’ with the US, Russia and China alike.
In a September interview with Sharaa in Al-Ikhbariya, after discussing growing relations with Russia, the interviewer notes Syria’s relations with the US and asks, “Where does Syria stand?” Sharaa responded that Syria had built good relations with the US, the West and Russia, and with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and other countries, showing that Syria “bring(s) together the global contradictions,” due to “the strength of the event that happened” (ie, the overthrow of Assad). This “led to a balance in relations,” Syria “standing at an equal distance from everyone.”
Similarly, Shaibani, when questioned in January about US and Russian bases in Syria, responded that Syria sees itself as “a point of balance” between superpowers that must never be used for “proxy conflict.” In October, he stressed that Syria’s foreign policy avoids alignment with any camp, Syria is not “in any axis.” Even when speaking of Sharaa’s upcoming trip to Washington in November, he stressed that Syria maintains “an equal distance with all countries.”
Broad outline of the new Syria’s foreign relations
When Assad fell on December 8, assumptions that states formerly aligned with the regime would be hostile to the new government and vice versa were not always warranted; the total disappearance of Assad’s regime meant that there was no way its friends could dream of restoring it, so some former enemies of the rebels sought pragmatic engagement.
Syria’s most immediate close allies emerged as Turkey and Qatar, which had long supported the Syrian rebels and never normalised with Assad;
at the other end of the spectrum, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which had normalised with Assad, reacted with suspicion towards new Syria, only cautiously accepting reality.
In between was Saudi Arabia, which had earlier supported the rebels, lost interest and normalised with Assad; it switched back to emerge as new Syria’s third main ally.
Israel emerged as the main enemy; despite its enmity with the Iran-led bloc, it understood that Assad’s regime was never a genuine ‘resistance’ regime and supported its maintenance against the opposition.
The European Union early engaged with the new authorities and began lifting sanctions; in early May, Sharaa met French president Macron, who denounced Israeli attacks and called on the US to remove sanctions.
The US, by contrast, steeped in the ‘anti-terrorist’, anti-Islamist and pro-Israel MAGA swamp, maintained a relatively hostile or sceptical stance the first 5 months, before a sharp switch in May.
Among Assad’s two key backers, new Syria oriented to maintaining strong relations with Russia, which adopted an overtly friendly position to the government which had just overthrown its satrap (who it gave asylum to);
whereas while both the Syrian and Iranian governments have sent signals to each other, the relationship remains cold (though there are divisions within the Iranian leadership).
The government has also strongly engaged with China.
Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
Turkey and Qatar immediately embraced the new authorities; due to its size, military power, long border and involvement with Syrian rebels, and with four million Syrian refugees inside its borders, Turkey was set to become a strategic ally. Israeli aggression also pushed Syria into military alliance with Turkey, which promised to train Syrian troops and re-equip Syria with air defence and other military assets. Yet this very size and proximity is also problematic due to the hegemonic influence Turkey could assert, especially regarding the Kurdish issue.
While neither Qatar nor Turkey restored relations with Assad, Saudi Arabia did so and played a key role in getting Assad to the 2023 Arab League Conference in Riyadh. In ensuring a state as financially powerful as Saudi Arabia was on side, Al-Sharaa is balancing with the overwhelming Turkish influence. Saudi Arabia had held a midway position between the anti-Assad Qatar-Turkey alliance and the pro-Assad Egypt-UAE-Bahrain, thus it was a relatively easy decision to use engagement rather than hostility to influence new Syria.
Geostrategically, the Turkish Islamist AKP and the Qatari emir have been supporters of regional ‘Islamist’ movements – Islamist forces in the Syrian rebellion, the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt after the 2011 Egyptian revolution (which was overthrown by the Saudi-UAE-backed al-Sisi junta in 2013), the Islamist-linked government in western Libya after the Libyan revolution, the soft-Islamist Enhada in Tunisia, Hamas in Palestine – as their means of regional power projection; they attempted to ‘ride’ the Arab Spring to saddle it with a bourgeois-populist Islamist leadership, rather than trying to crush it. Turkiye sees a friendly neighbour as an economic opportunity, a stepping stone to influence throughout the Arab world, and a means of keeping the Kurdish movement in check. Saudi Arabia is back to where it was in 2011-2015, offering support both to compete with Qatar, and to project its influence as the leading Arab power, to prevent Syria passing from Iranian to Turkish hegemony.
But Syria also represents geopolitical convergence, not only rivalry; both the Saudis and Turkiye see an open Syria as a strategic economic connection between the Gulf, its oil and gas, its Indian Ocean anterior and trade routes, with the Mediterranean and Europe. Syria as an alternative outlet to the Mediterranean (allowing Israel to be bypassed); while the original IMEC plans bypassed Turkiye, a route through Syria can incorporate it. All the more reason for Israel to hate an open and united Syria.
IMEC through Syria rather than Israel? Left: the original IMEC route; centre and right: road and rail routes from Gulf to Turkey and the Mediterranean through Syria.
Egypt-UAE caution represents the reverse of the Turkiye-Qatar position; the UAE, which bans the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, which aided al-Sisi’s coup against the MB-led government in Egypt (after which he slaughtered 1000 MB supporters), which has assassinated hundreds of Yemeni MB cadre despite them being officially ‘allies’ against the Houthis, and which, alongside Egypt, aids the renegade warlord Haftar’s forces in eastern Libya against the Libyan government, and which normalised with both Assad and Israel, sees populist-Islamist movements as enemies, projecting power in this anti-populist manner.
At a security conference in early 2025, Israeli leaders accused Turkey of “neo-Ottomanism,” asserting that a Syria run by Sunni Islamists allied to Erdogan could pose a greater problem for Israel than the Iran axis, warning Israel must prepare for war with Turkey. Israel also declared it wants to break up Syria into cantons, with Druze, Kurdish and Alawite statelets. Arch-fascist Smotrich has stated that conflict with Syria will end only when Syria is “partitioned.” This is not because Israel cares about minorities, but Israel sees region-based minorities as geopolitical opportunity to keep Syria weak and disunited; a convergence of minorities from the region was held in Israel in October.
Gideon Saar: “a gang of terrorists” seized Damascus; Israel Katz: “his real face: A jihadist terrorist from the Al-Qaida school;” Netanyahu: “extremist terrorist regime in Syria.”
The ‘normalisation with Israel’ media circus
Much noise has been made about whether the new Syria will “normalise” with Israel and “join the Abraham Accords.” This smoke and mirrors western media campaign (joined by Assadist and ‘Axist’ tankies), is a form of pressure on Syria, the psychological side of the hammer and anvil of Israeli aggression/US sanctions. Let’s get a few things straight.
The Assad regime stated in 2020 that it would readily join its friends in the Arab world (Egypt, UAE) in signing a peace treaty with Israel if it withdraw from the Golan: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.” Assad said nothing about Palestine or “resistance.” Both Assad senior in 1999-2000 and Assad junior in 2009-2011 engaged in serious US-mediated negotiations with Israel over such a Camp David-style agreement.
The Assad regime bombed, besieged and starved Palestinian camps in Syria, especially Yarmouk, killing thousands of Palestinians. Fayez Abu Eid, director of the Working Group for Palestinians in Syria, revealed that “the number [of forcibly disappeared Palestinians] rose after updating the data to 7294 missing,” while 560 were released in December, and 1305 died under torture, thus the fate of some 5300 is still unknown. He said “the failure to find detainees in the regime’s prisons” suggests they were “liquidated,” raising “the number of Palestinians killed to more than 10,000 people, equivalent to 5.6% of the total Palestinians in Syria.” The regime jailed hundreds of Palestinian militants, especially members of Hamas; when Sednaya was opened in December, it was confirmed the regime had executed 94 imprisoned Hamas activists, including senior al-Qassem Brigades commander Mamoun Al-Jaloudi (executions continued after the Iran-forced cold ‘reconciliation’ between Hamas and Assad in 2022); only 67 Hamas cadres were released from Sednaya by the new authorities in December (including a leading al-Qassem commander), along with the leader of pro-Hamas Aknaf Bait al-Maqdis militia and dozens of fighters. Palestinians around the region began looking for relatives who had disappeared into Assad’s dungeons up to 40 years earlier.
Throughout the Gaza genocide, the Assad regime, which stood apart from the “axis of resistance” in its complete passivity, engaged in intelligence cooperation with Israel, where Israel’s attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria were discussed; some Iranian sources suggest Israel got targeting information from the regime. Russia shared the skies with Israel and ensured that Syria’s air defences, which it controlled, never targeted Israeli warplanes bombing Iran-backed forces, as long as they left the regime alone.
Despite the media hype, the government has not made a single statement that it wants to ‘normalise’ with Israel; second-hand hearsay is constantly contradicted by government leaders rejecting normalisation and the Abraham Accords, such as in Sharaa’s discussion with David Petraeus in New York, or here a few days earlier, or in this interview with Al Majallah in August, or here in April, or in this interview with Shaibani, in Sharaa’s interview with Fox during his November US visit.
The Golan gives Syria cover for rejecting ‘normalisation’ which it does not want in any case. But in contrast to Assad’s explicit statement that Syria “can establish normal relations” if Israel returned the Golan, the Sharaa government speaks in the negative, that no discussion of normalisation is possible without the return of the Golan, that Syria’s foremost condition for any “peace process” to begin is a “complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights,” that “Damascus will not consider any diplomatic initiative that falls short of restoring Syrian sovereignty over all occupied territory, including the entirety of the Golan Heights.” This wording makes no promise to normalise if the Golan were returned; these are guarded statements to keep the US engaged. In his interview with Petraeus, Sharaa also noted Syrian “anger” over Gaza was another reason normalisation is not on the cards.
US-mediated negotiations for a ‘security agreement’ with Israel have led to much confusion, with various sources conflating such an ‘agreement’ with ‘normalisation’. Sharaa and others continually stress that the two are unrelated. Moreover, Syria, Israel and the US have different ideas about this purported ‘agreement’.
The only ‘security agreement’ the Syrian government will sign is one whereby Israeli troops return to where they were on December 8 and the previous 51 years, since the ‘security agreement’ Assad signed with Israel in 1974. Since December 8 Israel has violated it; the Syrian government has continually made the same demand: return to the 1974 disengagement lines. The Syrian government therefore needs no new agreement, but Israel’s violation of it forces it to take part in the US ‘security agreement’ charade.
Israel demands a new agreement to include it retaining some Syrian land stolen since December, especially Mt Hermon, expansion of the buffer zone further into Syria, three demilitarized zones (for the Syrian military and airforce) in the south, extending to Damascus, and Israeli control the air space in the south, with ‘flyover’ rights for its warplanes; Syria rejects these violations of its sovereignty.
Trump wants this unnecessary ‘security agreement’ in order to claim to have “ended another war” between enemies; to smooth over the irreconcilable positions of Israeli on one hand and Turkiye and the Gulf on the other; and to pressure Syria to at least partially capitulate to Israel’s terms; Trump may force some Israeli ‘compromise’, to demonstrate ‘impartiality’, but any concession to Israeli terms represents absolute Israeli victory over the pre-December situation, and over Syrian sovereignty.
These are ‘negotiations’ between an economically and militarily powerful state, and an impoverished, destroyed country which the former is occupying and attacking daily, and must be seen within this framework. There is no ‘principle’ that a country under occupation does not negotiate with the occupier; that almost always happens, on unequal terms. The ‘anti-imperialist’ discourse condemning Syria for not plunging the country back into devastating war by ‘resisting’ the occupation, or even for merely negotiating, are speaking fromextreme privilege and entirely missing the point; shallow analysis in mainstream media does not help. Rather than heroic ‘condemnation’ from laptops, western leftists who understood the concept of solidarity should be giving it to Syria.
In any case, Syria has refused to surrender to Israel’s demands on this security agreement (let alone the Golan). For weeks there was speculation that Syria and Israel would sign a ‘security agreement’ during the UN General Assembly in September; there was even patently absurd media-invented talk of Sharaa meeting Netanyahu there. Sharaa’s UN speech, condemning Israeli aggression and expressing solidarity with Gaza, was listened to by the whole assembly, while Netanyahu gave a blood-curdling speech to an empty hall. Sharaa’s interview with Petraeus was equally firm. New Syria came away with its head high, but Israeli aggression continued. Following this, the US downgraded its short-term expectations to a ‘de-escalation agreement’, whereby Israel would stop bombing Syria (but not withdraw) while Syria would not move heavy weaponry to the south.
The Syrian government’s participation in negotiations to ‘de-escalate’ and statements that Syria is too ‘exhausted’ for renewed conflict and is ‘not a threat’ to its neighbours are not aimed at reassuring Israel, but rather at the US, in the hope of the US pressuring Israel to lower the temperature, and for it to continue slowly lifting sanctions. Israel knows exactly what it is doing; it knows that Syria cannot pose a ‘threat’ even if it wanted to; its aims are precisely to prevent the Syrian government from stabilising the situation and uniting the country which Israel wants to dismantle. And Syria knows that Israel knows what it is doing.
Holding out is difficult – who will invest in a country’s reconstruction where active war continues, where your investment may get blown up? As Sharaa put it in September, “If you’re asking whether I trust Israel, no, I don’t trust them. Israel’s attacks on the Presidential Palace and Ministry of Defense buildings constituted a declaration of war. Syria knows how to fight but no longer wants to. However, we have no choice but to reach a security agreement with Israel.”
Syria’s dilemma is: agree to Israel’s conditions that violate Syrian sovereignty, or reject them and Israel continues attacking and bombing, with US connivance despite Trump’s Janus-faced smile.
Syria and Palestine
The year of solidarity with Palestine in Idlib and free Aleppo has been discussed above; all wings of the Syrian revolution had always identified with the Palestinian struggle so this was not really surprising; still less surprising are the links between specifically Islamist sectors of the Syrian rebellion and Palestinian Islamists like Hamas, and their links with the Erdogan regime in Turkey and the regional Muslim Brotherhood; add to this the mass release of Hamas and other Palestinian militants by the new government from Assad’s dungeons. However, once Syria came under massive Israeli attack in December and January, the government initially went quiet on Palestine, likely based on the hope that doing so might encourage US and European leaders to pressure Israel to back off. If so, it didn’t work.
Sharaa returned to form in February. Lauding the “80-year” Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing (note 80-year, not 60-year), he called Trump’s plan to expel the population of Gaza a “very serious crime” and even slammed Trump’s planned expulsion of Mexicans from the USA as an analogy. At the Arab League Summit in March, Sharaa’s speech vigorously condemned Israel’s crimes in Gaza, West Bank and Jerusalem, stressed Syria’s support for the Palestinian struggle, including specifically for “return,” and stated that Syria would always stand by Palestine. At the emergency OIC meeting in August, Shaibani condemned the “silence of global conscience” in the face of Israel’s war crimes of “bombing homes, hospitals and schools” which Syria condemns “morally, humanely and historically.” Then while most of Sharaa’s 10-minute UN speech naturally focused on his own country’s dire needs and Israel’s aggression against Syria, the only global issue he gave part of his speech to was solidarity with Gaza. And when asked by Christine Amanpour about his “terrorist” past in a December interview, Sharaa claimed instead that the terrorists are those who killed 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza (and those who killed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan while labelling others as terrorists, a subtle swipe at the US), and said Israel’s attacks on Syria are partly aimed at “evading responsibility for the massacres it is committing in the Gaza Strip.”
Does this mean Syria will do anything to aid Gaza or Palestine? For the present, no, and it knows it cannot, which is also why its firm and principled stance is not overblown; Syrians became allergic to Iranian-style bluster which used exaggerated “anti-Zionist” rhetoric to justify aiding in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Syria (and Iraq in the 1980s) while never doing anything of consequence in support of Palestine for decades (the “road to Jerusalem” always led through Arab capitals like Baghdad and Damascus); they now prefer a smaller gap between rhetoric and reality. Of course, Syria, under both Assad and Sharaa, shares the collective Arab betrayal of Gaza; but as a country under Israeli attack and occupation itself, we can blame every other Arab state before Syria.
Iran: Relations still frozen, despite feelers
Iran is the other opponent of new Syria, though this is inconsistent. On one side, leaders around president Pezeshkian have taken a pragmatic approach to the new government; in January, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran respects “the Syrian people’s will to decide their own fate without foreign interference;” in April, Deputy Foreign Minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said Iran is “ready to provide support and assistance” to the new Syria. There are ongoing indirect talks via Turkey, Qatar and Iraq. Iran’s embassy staff left Syria after December 8, for security reasons, and anticipate returning sometime; Syria has maintained its ambassador in Tehran.
In contrast, those close to Khamenei and the IGRC leadership dream of vengeance. In January, Iran’s top commander in Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati, condemned the Assad regime for sabotaging the Iran-axis fight with Israel, yet echoed Khamenei’s call for “resistance” against the new government, claiming “we can activate all the networks we have worked with over the years,” and “the situation there will not remain unchanged.” A few days before the Assadist insurgency in March, the Iranian Mehr Newsagency released a statement from the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria – Uli al-Baas, urging Syrians to revolt. There were no explicit Iranian fingers on the insurgency and Iran denied it (and Alawite insurgents condemned Iran for not helping). However, General Suleiman Dalla, a commander of the notorious Fourth Brigade linked to Iran during the war, was a key insurgent leader.
However, relations remain cold. If Iran wanted to improve ties, it could start by dropping its grotesque $30 billion claim on Syria for lost ‘investment’ in the Assad regime to help it commit genocide; this claim was recently reissued, despite Iran’s Foreign Ministry acknowledging that Assad embezzled these funds!
Russia bombed Syria for ten years on behalf of Assad’s tyranny, specialising in destroying hospitals, even using ‘bunker busters’ to bomb hospitals built underground; this is hard to beat in earning the eternal hatred of the Syrian people. However, both the Sharaa government and Russia have continually expressed the desire for good relations.
Already on November 29, 2024 as the rebels launched their offensive, HTS announced that “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia,” but merely aims “to liberate the Syrian people from … the criminal regime,” calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime, but rather with the Syrian people” as “we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.” This was a brilliant appeal to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.
On January 28, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov visited Damascus to meet president Sharaa and the foreign ministry, a few days later Putin had a phone call with Sharaa, and then Syria abstained on the UN General Assembly vote to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine (though arguably it was simply joining the Arab world’s bloc vote, a misguided way of protesting US support for Israel in Gaza). During his call with Putin, Sharaa emphasised “the strong strategic ties between the two countries.”
Unlike Iran, Russia is a superpower on the UN Security Council, so Syria needs it onside to get the ‘terrorism’ designation removed; and as Sharaa stated, “all of Syria’s arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by Russian experts. We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish.”
Following Israel’s large-scale attacks on Damascus during the July Suweida crisis, Shaibani visited Moscow and met Lavrov and Putin. Shaibani stated Syria wanted Russia “by its side,” thanking it for its “strong position in rejecting Israeli strikes and repeated violations of Syrian sovereignty,” while Lavrov thanked “Syrian colleagues” for ensuring “the safety of Russian citizens and Russian facilities” in Syria. In September, a Russian delegation from 14 ministries visited Damascus and met a large Syrian delegation; Shibani described Syrian-Russian relations as “deep, having gone through stages of friendship and cooperation, though lacking balance.” He said that any Russian bases “must serve the Syrian people in building their future,” in contrast to the past. He called for Russian cooperation in reconstruction, energy, agriculture, and health on a “fair and transparent” basis. Then in early October, a delegation of senior Russian military officials visited Damascus, to discuss Syria’s military hardware needs, following a Moscow visit by Syrian Defence Ministry officials.
Sharaa met Putin in Moscow on October 15. He was already expected in Moscow for a planned Russia-Arab summit that month, which Putin postponed when Trump’s Gaza ‘peace’ plan stole the limelight and no Arab leaders could confirm their attendance – with the sole exception of Sharaa! Talks focused on “revising old agreements signed under Assad, exploring investment opportunities,” the “future of Russia’s military installations,” and “rearming the Syrian army;” “the delivery of humanitarian aid, medicines and wheat,” projects in “the energy, transport and tourism sectors,” Russian help developing Syria’s oil fields, and Syria’s demand that Moscow extradite Assad.
The Syrian government expressed support for Russian patrols returning to southern Syria to help stabilise the Golan situation to give Israel less excuses for aggression and to add pressure on Israel to withdraw from territory recently seized. Just days after Sharaa’s high-profile meeting with Trump in Washington – as if to really emphasise the ‘balance’ policy – Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra welcomed a large Russian military delegation, led by Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, for talks in Damascus; on November 17, a convoy of about 30 vehicles carrying Syrian and Russian military officials made a field tour of Quneitra, visiting towns “where Israeli forces penetrate on an almost daily basis,” to assess possible Russian deployment in the region.
Sharaa knows Israel trusts Russia; ironically, while Sharaa tries to enlist Russia against Israel, Israel insists that Russia maintain its bases (Israel demanded the US not condition sanctions relief on Russia being evicted). Israel was happy with Russia’s presence in the region when it was backing the Assad regime, while protecting its Golan occupation from pro-Iranian forces, because it preferred that regime in power. Now, however, Israel is hostileto the new Syrian government itself. Israel knows that Syria is in no state to send Sunni ‘jihadis’ or Palestinian militants to the Golan, and that pro-Iran forces are gone. These are mere excuses for Israel to occupy the region, destabilise the Sharaa government, and grab territory; so a Russian offer now to protect Israel’s Golan occupation along the UN lines is a threat to Israel, removing its excuse for further occupation; Israel has no interest in returning to the 1974 lines.
Russia’s aim is to maintain its Mediterranean air and naval bases in Tartous and Latakia. If both Israel and the Syrian government want it in from opposite angles, Russia is happy to be all things to all sides. While Russia will do nothing to protect Syria from Israeli aggression, its rivalry with the US leads to ritual statements of support for Syria’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” which while meaningless, easily look better than the uncritically pro-Israel US position.
Links between Assadist elements on the coast and Russian forces in these coastal bases are widely suspected; either way, in any future souring of relations or governmental crisis, the presence of Russian bases (or Russian forces in the south or in the Qamishli airport) offers huge destabilising potential.
It is difficult to fault the Syrian government for wanting Russia to provide ‘balance’, however distasteful for Syrians that their mass murderer is still involved in their country. Looking around the region and the world, there are few good choices.
China: “Vast common interests”, but also issues
In April, Shaibani met China’s UN ambassador, Fu Cong, in New York, stating that Syria wanted a “long-term strategic partnership” with China. After Trump’s May sanctions announcement, Syria signed a major investment agreement with Chinese company Fidi Contracting, granting it a million square metres of free trade zones to build “a fully integrated industrial zone containing specialized factories and production facilities” in Homs and “commercial and service projects” in Damascus. This highlights the importance Syria attaches to China as a global economic powerhouse, given its massive needs. The timing of Shaibani’s July 27 meeting ambassador Shi Hongwei, before his trip to Moscow, was connected to Israel’s stepped up aggression, which Shi condemned; Beijing stresses that “the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Syria should be respected.” Announcing his state visit to Beijing in November, Shaibani stated that Damascus “needs genuine strategic partnerships – especially with China – during the phase of building and reconstruction.”
For Beijing, Syria’s importance is connected to its pivotal location as an exit point for its BRI project across Asia into the Mediterranean and Europe (though Beijing is not choosy, given its part-ownership of Israel’s Haifa).
Aside from China’s economic might, China is also of interest to Syria to balance both the US, with its Israel problem, and Russia, with its Assad problem; being more distant and comparatively uninvolved in Syria compared to these powers, China potentially offers fewer problems. However, China relations do have the problem that some of the “foreign fighters” remaining in Syria are Uyghurs, including roughly 2,000 to 5,000 Uyghur militants from the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), based on 2018 estimates, many of whom fought in HTS or other Islamist ranks against Assad. These fighters are now being integrated into Syria’s armed forces, several promoted to high ranks.
China has been urging action against them in the UN Security Council. In March, it demanded Syria’s leaders “fulfill their counter-terrorism obligations” and “take decisive measures” against TIP. Syria’s response is that by integrating them into its army, they will be less troublesome than if outside state bodies. Expelling fighters who helped bring down Assad is not an option; and if expelled they would likely head for Xinjiang. Following the announcement of Shaibani’s trip to Beijing, one report claimed “several individuals suspected of belonging to the Turkistan Islamic Party” were arrested, “as a direct response to China’s concerns,” but I have seen no confirmation of this.
Shaibani’s state visit to Beijing took place on November 17 – soon after Sharaa’s meeting with Trump, and on the same day as the Russian military tour of the south – meeting China’s foreign minister Wang Yi and other top officials. A joint statement said the two countries had “vast common interests.” Yi offered China’s participation in Syria’s reconstruction, while Shaibani praised China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Stressing cooperation against “terrorism,” Shaibani assured that Syria “would not let any entity use Syrian territory for actions against Chinese interests.” He also emphasised Syria’s support for the One-China policy, “recognizing Beijing as the sole legitimate government representing China, including Taiwan,” while China reaffirmed that the Golan Heights remains Syrian territory (Fu Cong strongly asserted this again at a UN Security Council meeting two days later, and demanded Israel immediately return to the 1974 lines, and demanded the end of all “unilateral” sanctions on Syria). An AFP report that Syria planned to hand 400 Uyghur fighters to Beijing was denied as “without foundation” by Syria.
United States
Phase 1: December to May – US indifference and/or hostility
Despite some ground-level engagement against ISIS and to facilitate government engagement with the SDF, until mid-May the US position remained cold, influenced by Israel and key White House and NSC Islamophobes and ‘anti-terrorism’ tsars in MAGA circles, including Trump’s director of counterterrorism Sebastain Gorka (who has “never seen a jihadi leader become a democrat”), Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (who visited Assad in 2017), and Israel-connected National Security Advisor Mike Waltz (whose removal “cut off a chunk of the White House’s ‘wall of resistance’ on Syria”); MAGA acolytes like VP Vance, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson were of a similar mindset. Just days before Trump’s sanctions announcement, Gorka condemned the Syrian government as “salafi-jihadist.” As Syria watcher Charles Lister writes, “For 5 months, the entirety of President Trump’s national security apparatus — from the National Security Council, to the State Department and intelligence community — has voiced varying degrees of hostility, scepticism and/or indifference to Syria’s post-Assad transitional government.”
While the EU statement on the coastal violence condemned both the Assadist coup and the sectarian slaughter of Alawites, the US State Department did not mention the former, condemning only “radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria,” declaring the US “stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities,” an odd statement excluding Syria’s Sunni majority since these non-Alawite minorities were not being killed. The US and Russia jointly called a UN Security Council meeting.
Just days before his Gulf trip, Trump reported to Congress that the Syrian ‘national emergency’ sanctions would be extended another year, because “structural weakness in governance inside Syria, and the government’s inability to control the use of chemical weapons or confront terrorist organizations, continues to pose a direct threat to U.S. interests.”
Phase 2: May-July – Trump’s sanctions announcement and US engagement
Trump’s abrupt mid-May announcement during his Gulf extravaganza that sanctions would be lifted left many in the White House, including officials tasked with implementing the policy change, completely unprepared. This move was no gift; maintaining the sanctions on the Assad regime for 5 months after that regime collapsed made no logical or legal sense; it was an act of violence against the Syrian people and their new government. What were the driving forces behind this turnaround?
The first was geopolitical; that Trump announced the lifting of sanctions (and met Sharaa) in Saudi Arabia during his Gulf show highlights his bending to the pressure of Saudi Arabia, Qatari and Turkiye (who want to invest and make money) against that of Israel, which lobbied Trump to not lift sanctions; Trump, announcing the move, exclaimed “the things I do for the [Saudi] Crown Prince.” This regional rebalancing also saw Trump’s non-aggression deal with the Houthis (with no mention of their attacks on Israel), opening negotiations with Iran, and direct meetings with Hamas to get a US citizen-hostage released – all balanced, however, with ongoing total US support to Israel’s main cause, the annihilation of Palestine.
Second, the US was simply slower than the regional regimes, the EU and Russia in recognising there was no ‘al-Sisi solution’ given the collapse of the old armed forces. As such, Sharaa’s ‘pragmatism’ became the ‘only hope’ to keep the country together; the government’s collapse would lead to chaos and the explosion of extremist jihadi factions. Rubio predicted the government was “weeks away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions.” If US regional allies, and US companies, are to invest in Syria, they want the country held together. Lifting sanctions faciliatates this investment and creates conditions for stabilising the situation; Gulf, Turkish and US economic engagement replaces enforced absence of economy as the new form of conservatising pressure on post-revolutionary Syria. As leading US Treasury official, John Hurley, put it, by investing in Syria’s reconstruction, Turkiye and the Gulf “could create substantial hope for peace there.”
This connects to the third aspect, Trump’s preference to withdraw most of the 2000 US troops in the northeast working with the SDF (Sharaa called this US presence “illegal”). However, the US does not want withdrawal to lead to Turkey attacking its Kurdish allies to force a ‘military solution’, as it threatens to; but neither has the US ever supported Kurdish independence (and this is not the SDF project). Meanwhile, Israel’s preference for partitioning Syria means it opposes the government-SDF March 10 integration agreement from the opposite angle to Turkey. Therefore, the US position balancing between its Israeli and Turkish allies ends up a somewhat positive one in support of the March agreement and a negotiated integration (SDF leader Mazloum Abdi travelled to Damascus aboard a US military aircraft to sign the agreement).
While this is sometimes misinterpreted as the US ‘betraying the Kurds’, precisely the opposite is at play: having worked closely with SDF leaders for a decade, the Pentagon sees their integration into the Syrian military as a buy-in to the regime whose Islamist credentials it remains suspicious of. As John Hannah, a senior fellow at the hard-right US think-tank Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) put it, just after a wayward jihadist within the Syrian army broke ranks and killed several US troops, “The SDF have been America’s most reliable and effective partner in fighting ISIS for more than a decade. The logic of incorporating those SDF units wholesale into al-Sharaa’s army and then unleashing them with U.S. backing on the ungoverned spaces of Syria’s central desert where ISIS has found real sanctuary is compelling.”
In any case, this US position is simple logic in connection with the previous aspect above: investors need a united country. US envoy Tom Barrack made this clear to both parties when he walked out of a government-SDF meeting where no agreement could be reached, stating no US funds would be invested in Syria until some agreement was reached, patronisingly claiming the US was bringing them together “like two kids in a playground.”
The fourth aspect is the US war on ISIS, even with reduced presence; with the US coordinating with the SDF but now also working with the government against ISIS, it logically prefers a united Syrian anti-ISIS response, rather than two anti-ISIS sides fighting each other.
That the US sees the possible collapse of the Syrian state as a concern indicates that its broader regional view – aligned with Gulf and Turkish interests – contrasts with Israel’s narrower interests and preference for a divided and collapsed Syria. However, reality is not so straightforward.
First, despite the outwardly friendly attitude to Sharaa and the sanctions announcement, there has since been no US statement demanding Israel halt its bombing and occupation. The US sees this as useful pressure for Syrian capitulation. Trump has recently boasted that he recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan, as have other US leaders such as Witkoff, as if oblivious that these are hostile statements. Syrian leaders are aware of this duplicity. The US-Israeli difference thus contains a ‘good cop bad cop’ element.
Second, before Trump’s announcement, the US had made a list of conditions for mere sanctions “relief.” Some were easy (cooperation against ISIS and on chemical weapons) while Syria claimed others infringed national sovereignty (eg anti-Palestinian demands, demands regarding foreign fighters etc); these became twelve demands. While there was no US demand for Syria to join the Abraham Accords, this was one of the five “expectations” (supposedly not “conditions”) Trump made on Sharaa when he met him in Saudi Arabia. Trump’s announcement that “all” sanctions would be lifted “immediately” therefore appeared a Syrian victory against this edifice of “conditions.”
However, while some sanctions were promptly removed, the most devastating, the Caesar sanctions, must go through Congress. Some leaders, including State Secretary Marco Rubio, right-wing Senator Lindsay Graham, and Trump’s far-right ‘counterterrorism’ tsar Sebastian Gorka, immediately began softening expectations, re-emphasising ‘conditionality’. While new trade and investment deals have continued slowly, the momentum has slowed. This post-May regime – part sanctions relief/economic engagement, part ongoing sanctions/conditionality – is the new form of US pressure in its ‘scissors’ partnership with Israeli aggression. Trump spelled it out in July: “the Secretary of State will reimpose sanctions on Syria if it’s determined that the conditions for lifting them are no longer met.”
Phase 3: July onwards – renewed US caution
A new turn began after the mid-July Suweida catastrophe. The Sharaa government bears primary responsibility – its attempt to use a local crisis to impose a military solution on the issue of decentralised governance for Druze-majority Suweida turned into a horrific massacre of the Druze. Beat back by the Druze militia, but also large-scale Israeli bombing, the government has now lost control of Suweida, and without a radical change in policy, this component of Syrian society is lost. I have discussed these events here. However, the government’s role must be separated from the use of these events by the US or Israel to intensify pressure.
In the debate between the Sharaa government advocating a relatively centralised state versus the Kurdish/SDF, Druze and Alawite preference for a decentralised or ‘federal’ system, US Syrian envoy, Tom Barrack, rejected federalism, lauded Sharaa’s “incredible enthusiasm” for integration while chiding SDF “slowness,” and stressed the only road “is through Damascus.” Aside from the arrogance of assuming the right to decree Syria’s internal system in relation to these delicate matters, his stance was odd in its 180-degree contrast with that of Israel.
This could be because Barrack is close to Erdogan and therefore less close to Israel; or it could simply be that Barrack, a Trump-lite real estate agent whose understands politics as ‘dealing’, was too clueless to understand his statements lacked nuance; or even that he set a trap for Sharaa in coordination with Israel. If the second case, Sharaa’s government remains at fault for assuming Barrack was smart, and going into Suweida like a bull in a china-shop assuming US support; if the third, falling into a trap set by a B-grade Trump clone demonstrates the government’s gullibility.
Rubio (rightly) condemned the “slaughter of innocent people” during the “horrific episode” in Suweida, demanding the government “prevent ISIS and other violent jihadists from entering the area and carrying out massacres” and “hold accountable and bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks.” The “US Central Command quietly paused its drawdown” of US troops “over concerns about the country’s ability to hold together.”
New moves were made in the US Congress to condition lifting the sanctions. In July, a House committee voted to support Republican Congressman Mike Lawler bill extending sanctions for two years with conditions, including protecting minorities. More significantly, Senator Lindsay Graham moved an amendment to the 2026 defence bill allowing ‘suspension’ of sanctions based on Syria’s compliance with “a detailed set of benchmarks on security, human rights, and regional relations – particularly with Israel,” including “guaranteeing the rights of religious and ethnic minorities with representation in government institutions … maintaining peaceful relations with neighbouring states including Israel, taking decisive measures against actors deemed to threaten regional security,” removing foreign fighters from security and military institutions and not financing “terrorist” groups. According to the Syria Emergency Task Force, Graham’s Amendment 3889 adds six new requirements not even imposed “during the Assad regime’s worst atrocities.”
However, reflecting the opposing pressure to open Syria for investment, the Senate passed an amendment in October to fully repeal the Caesar Act with the passing of the defence bill; but Graham’s draconian amendment was also accepted, requiring the president to certify every six months that the Syrian government has met the conditions. If conditions are not met for two consecutive periods, sanctions should be reimposed “and remain in effect until the President or his designee makes an affirmative certification.”
While much was made of Sharaa being the first Syrian leader to address the UN in decades, the Syrian team were only given a visa from September 21-25, covering only three days of the General Assembly which ran for seven days (September 23-29). Sharaa’s statement there that “the world must not be complicit again in the killing of the Syrian people by slowing down or preventing the lifting of sanctions” – which can only be aimed at the US – indicated the continuing elusiveness of the goal.
Following government-SDF clashes in October, US military helicopters brought Abdi to Damascus on October 7 to meet with Sharaa, Barrack and Cooper, and a ceasefire was signed. A mechanism was agreed upon to integrate the SDF into the Syrian military, a compromise between the two previous positions: the SDF would neither join “as a block,” but nor as “individuals;” SDF forces “will join as large military formations formed according to the rules of the Defense Ministry,” by forming some new corps in the region; the Kurdish ‘Asiyah’ security would undergo a similar process with Syrian public security. The idea of AANES officials gaining ministries and of Abdi being appointed to a high-level military post was floated. Government media reported that integrating northeast Syria would begin with (Arab-majority) Deir ez Zour. The timing of these announcements – around October 10 – coincides closely with the US Senate vote to repeal sanctions.
Phase 4: Sharaa’s November meeting with Trump and the end of sanctions
Sharaa’s high-profile meeting with Trump in the White House on November 10 may have marked a swing back to better relations, though the actual outcomes remain to be seen. Trump’s sudden invite to Sharaa followed hot on the heels of Sharaa’s meeting with Putin in Moscow, and Shaibani’s announcement of his “early November” trip to Beijing – a timing upstaged by Trump’s invite. Almost as if the three superpowers were competing over impoverished Syria! Syria’s strategic location, the power of the Syrian revolution and the wide internal legitimacy of the Syrian government have combined with the government’s global ‘balance’ policy and deft diplomatic skills, to lead to this strange situation.
Sharaa’s US visit was contradictory. On the one hand, there was none of the public pomp, Sharaa arriving at the White House “without the customary protocol usually afforded to visiting foreign leaders, entering through a side entrance out of reporters’ view rather than the main West Wing door where cameras are usually positioned;” on the other, he was the first Syrian leader visiting the US government since 1946, and following the secret meeting, we were treated to sickening displays of Sharaa and Trump almost slobbering over each other, giving gifts and the like. But aside from the show, and our feelings of disgust, what is this really about? Quite simply, alone in the world, the US government holds two keys: that of ending its crippling sanctions, and that of somewhat restraining Israel. There is nothing more important to Syria.
Next, the meeting led to Syria formally joining the 90-country Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State; given that this war takes place on Syrian territory, it is probably a good thing, though the Information Ministry stressed the agreement “does not yet include any military components.” Nevertheless, Syrian security forces seized the moment to demonstrate their mantle, launching a massive operation targeting ISIS cells on November 8-9, with 61 raids across multiple provinces, arresting 71 suspects. While dramatic, the Syrian government has already been fighting ISIS throughout the year (as did HTS and all rebel groups for the last decade); but the Syrian presidency officially denied media reports alleging that HTS had cooperated with the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS or al-Qaeda since 2016, calling the claims “untrue and baseless,” noting that “all decisions and measures taken at that time were made independently and internally, without coordination or requests from any external party.” Given heavy US bombing of HTS in 2016-17 by both Obama and Trump, this rings true. The foreign ministry also earlier denied reports that a US base was being set up in Damascus to promote the ‘security agreement’ with Israel; baseless media speculation about Syria has enjoyed a very full year.
Another crucial issue discussed was the ongoing integration negotiations with the SDF. According to the statement released about the meeting, “the two sides agreed to proceed with implementing the March 10 agreement signed between President Ahmad al-Sharaa and SDF commander Mazloum Abdi” (while it notes only “the American side” affirmed its support for reaching a security agreement with Israel). SDF leader Mazloum Abdi thanked Trump for taking leadership of the Syrian file and affirmed the SDF was committed to accelerating the integration process. The SDF named three commanders to assume posts in the Defence Ministry once agreement is reached, claiming it will be integrated into the Syrian military through one division and at least two brigades. While some government supporters want to believe that Trump gave them the green light to incorporate SDF/AANES on its own terms, the SDF reaction suggests on the contrary that the US wants a compromise position. Likewise, the SDF has welcomed the Syrian government’s accession to the anti-ISIS coalition, seeing it as more a chance to collaborate, rather than as competition for US favour; it figures the US will not want two members of its anti-ISIS front warring with each other.
Taking concrete and verifiable steps to combat ISIS, al-Qaeda and “other terrorist groups” in coordination with the US
Removing foreign fighters from senior positions in government, state and security apparatus
Respecting rights of religious and ethnic minorities and ensuring their equitable representation in government and parliament
No “unilateral or unprovoked” military action against neighbours, “including Israel” (note: the US considers Syria’s Golan Heights to be “Israel”)
Implementing the integration agreement with the SDF, including integration of security forces and political representation
Combatting money-laundering, “terrorism-financing”, weapons of mass destruction, and “ceasing support for sanctioned groups or individuals, including terrorist organisations, that threaten US or allied national security”
Prosecting perpetrators of gross human rights abuses since December 8, 2024, especially during attacks in religious minorities
Verifiable action against production and trafficking of drugs, especially Captagon
If the president cannot show “positive certification” in two consecutive reports, sanctions may be reimposed. To drive the point home, a few days later a group of 136 House Republicans (more than half of their total) released a joint statement calling for increased oversight of and accountability from Syria, stressing that the provision for ‘snapback’ sanctions must be imposed if necessary, and condemning the “mass murder of the Syrian Christians, Druze, Alawites, Kurds, and other religious and ethnic minorities.”
The twists and turns of US policy indicate a comprehensive lack of principle. Despite the public expressions of friendship (especially Trump’s clownish demeanour and fawning over Sharaa’s “attractiveness”), neither side trusts the other, but understands the pragmatic reality. The US needs some kind of integration of the Syrian state and a degree of stability so that its Arab and Turkish allies can invest, and to continue the war against ISIS (and Europe needs some stability to send back refugees); Syria knows only the US can end sanctions and perhaps pressure Israel to calm its aggression. However, US refusal to issue a single condemnation of this aggression and Trump’s doubling down on its support for Israel’s Golan theft indicate that the US only wants this integrated state as a vassal.
Concluding remarks: Where concessions go too far
This review has explained Syrian foreign policy from the perspective that it is a devastated country under foreign occupation, aggression and embargo, and thereby understand it without necessarily ‘endorsing’ or ‘condemning’. Socialists may well understand that capitalist governments will undertake a ‘pro-capitalist foreign policy’, but apart from there being no ‘non-capitalist’ countries in the world to connect with – making the statement an irrelevant truism – it is also worth considering how differently a ‘socialist’ Syria would act in similar circumstances. Leaving aside the great betrayals that the Stalinist USSR and Maoist China were guilty of, even governments that non-Stalinist socialists are often more favourable to – such as early post-revolution, pre-Stalin Russia/USSR or Cuba since the 1960s – have been forced by reality to make serious foreign policy compromises with alleged ‘principles’.
Arguably, the Syrian government often says and does things to curry favour with imperialist or reactionary states that have surpassed what could be considered necessary, thereby damaging its reputation (and that of the Syrian revolution) and its standing in front of the region’s peoples (as opposed to its rulers). While a socialist or even a revolutionary democratic government in the spirit of 2011 may be more conscious about not alienating the popular forces in the region while making necessary compromises, a bourgeois government would have fewer qualms.
One example is Sharaa’s offer to build a ‘Trump Tower’ in Damascus, while pleading to get the sanctions lifted before his meeting in Riyadh in May. While the objective is desperately important, the pressure was already there from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, and sections of the US Congress and US capital; a ‘Trump tower’ in the context of Trump’s support for the Gaza genocide would be unnecessary, damaging excess.
Another was the arrest of two Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leaders in April, just after newly announced US conditions for sanctions relief included a crackdown on Palestinian “terrorists.” To be clear, the government has carried out no “crackdown”; Iran-backed PIJ was pro-Assad and thus a politically easy target if such a ‘bloodless offering’ were needed in lieu of an actual crackdown; the arrests led to no crackdown on PIJ as a whole, which claims to still operate normally in Syria, with PIJ officials claiming the arrests were for “personal files” rather than political (and that very week PIJ had returned martyred comrades from Lebanon to Yarmouk for burial in coordination with Syrian authorities); and this arrest of two leaders pales in comparison to Assad’s murder of 94 Hamas militants and jailing and torture of hundreds more (freed by HTS after the revolution). Given all this, perhaps there were real allegations against the two related to the former regime. Perhaps – but given the total opacity since the day, it is difficult to not suspect this was a symbolic, unprincipled concession to this US demand; it is also important that unlike the main Assadist armed Palestinian factions (eg, the monstrous PFLP-GC), who played an active role in Assad’s war on the Syrian and Palestinian people, PIJ’s support for Assad was only verbal.
Not just with the US – when HTS began its offensive in November 2024 and reached out to Moscow, was it necessary to add that it was “not a party to what is happening in the Russia-Ukraine war”? It was obvious it had no part in it; the outreach to Moscow itself gave Russia an incentive to keep out of the conflict in order to keep its Syrian bases. Why explicitly dissociate from Ukraine, in its existential struggle? If true that some TIP cadre were arrested before Shaibani’s trip to China, this would be in the same vein; and Shaibani’s explicit throwing of Taiwan under the bus when (more understandably) declaring support for the ‘Once China policy’ in Beijing seems similarly unnecessary excess.
Sometimes it is merely cringe-worthy phrasing. While Sharaa’s language that Syria is too “exhausted” to enter into “new conflicts” such as with Israel was completely on target, some other early language aimed at stopping Israel’s aggression overstepped – but on this the government has since tightened up very strongly. In January, the Damascus governor made stupid comments outside his jurisdiction about wanting “friendly” relations with Israel, but he was reprimanded and forced to issue a retraction the next day.
Sharaa’s loose talk of Trump being the man to “bring peace” to the region is hard to hear, though he shares this with the SDF even with Hamas, in all cases an appeal to power, with the inclusion of flattery. One surreal case took place during a February interview, when Sharaa lauded Trump’s alleged plans to bring peace to the region. As this was just after Trump’s statements about expelling the population of Gaza, the interviewers asked about this. Sharaa called this a “very serious crime” and lauded the “80-year” Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing! This total flipping of his own script suggests a Sharaa more principled than his initial comments implied, while also highlighting the futility of those comments.
Despite valid critique of such exaggerated words and actions, the difference made by their absence would hardly qualify government policy as ‘revolutionary’. A bourgeois-led revolution has no incentive to ‘spread’ outside national boundaries, but there can be no fantasies about “extending the revolution” in any case when the revolution is not extending by itself; revolutions simply cannot be induced elsewhere, and any vain attempt to do so would not only fail but also bring the wrath of the neighbouring regimes down on Syria, leading to strangulation rather than reconstruction.
A case highlighting this dilemma was the public call by Egyptian-born HTS member Ahmad Mansour from Damascus for the overthrow of al-Sisi’s bloody dictatorship. Given Sisi’s alliance with Assad, one might expect the Sharaa government to welcome this. But with zero sign of any Egyptian uprising, and Syria’s desperate need for Gulf funding and ending sanctions, Mansour was instead arrested. Unlike the PIJ leaders, he was quietly released a month later; the arrest aimed to calm things down. While we may find this distasteful, arguably the government had little choice.
But in that case, was the revolution only for Syrians, and of no consequence to the region? While the answer may have to await future developments, any advance for one people’s freedom can only be positive for the peoples of the region (regardless of the nature of the current Syrian government). The revolution’s main gain for outside Syria is the example it sets – if the people can overthrow a brutally repressive regime, they can do so elsewhere. And this is good for Palestinians, given the symbiotic relationship between Israel and dictatorship in the Arab world.
This partly explains Israel’s relentless hostility, which many wrongly see as irrational or ‘counterproductive’. By keeping Syria under military attack and occupation, partitioned, poor and weak, Israel aims to present post-revolution Syria as a black hole that is anything but an incentive for revolution elsewhere. If this leads to more ‘Islamist’ extremism and intensifies the sectarian tendencies of the regime, so much the better; not because Israel likes this, but because it gives it more excuses to maintain its occupation and fracture Syria; see the July Suweida catastrophe. The biggest threat to both Israel and to despotic regimes in the region would be for the Sharaa government’s better tendencies to overcome its sectarian and authoritarian tendencies, leading to negotiated settlements with minority regions, greater inclusiveness in governance and security systems, and for the relative political freedom to translate to democratic political structures, while being allowed to rebuild; a successful non-sectarian democracy would be just too good an alternative to virtually all of them, especially Israel. And if this government cannot move in that direction, it is up to the Syrian people to reassert themselves with the message of the 2011 revolution, a message anathema to Israel and regional reaction.
Top: Some of the demonstrations celebrating one year of the Syrian people’s overthrow of the Assad tyranny that have rocked Syria since November 27, the anniversary of the beginning of the lightning offensive. While there is much to criticise and enormous problems in new Syria, the achievements are also impressive; and the sheer scale of these rallies throughout the country demonstrates that the vast majority of Syrians remain hyper-enthusiastic about their titanic achievement. As has been noted, almost none of these rallies of the millions carry photos of president Sharaa, despite his well-established popularity, an important contrast to the forced carrying of Assad in the dictatorship’s staged ‘rallies’ – the revolution is the people, not whoever happens to be in power. Bottom: A stark reminder that not everyone is able to celebrate – the majority of the Alawite and Druze minorities, while no doubt glad to see the back of Assad, have suffered massively negative impacts under the new order, even if much – but not all – of this can be attributed to the legacy left behind by Assad’s genocidal sectarian counterrevolutionary war – something which must be fixed if the revolution is truly for “all Syrians.” Nevertheless, we see an important impact of the Syrian revolution here: Syrian state security protecting an anti-government Alawite rally in Tartous, Video: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1363795558756621 .
By Michael Karadjis
Today, November 27, marks one year since the sudden Syrian rebel offensive landed them in control of Aleppo in 3 days, and in Damascus in 10 days, with the complete collapse like a house of cards of the 54-year hereditary monarchy of the Assad family. Everywhere they marched, the hated tyranny collapsed; no Syrian soldier considered it worth risking their lives for. Thousands of people gathered everywhere they arrived, stunned at the very idea that that the totalitarian nightmare that had caged their lives for as long as they had known had suddenly vanished into history. (I wrote this around a year ago).
The prison doors were flung open everywhere, especially Sednaya, the empire of evil, the capital of the Assad family’s Torture & Disappearance Inc. Thousands were released, even more stunned that their torturer was suddenly gone and they could breathe the air of freedom, could walk out and curse without being killed or jailed again. Many had lost their minds, did not know their names. Many had been there for decades. A 55-year old man saw the light after 39 years, jailed at 16 when a student from Lebanon for joining a party. Raghid Ahmed Al-Tatari, the pilot ordered to bomb the rebellious city of Hama in 1982 and refused, jailed for this heroic disobedience, saw the light of day after 42 years. Palestinian man Bashar Saleh had tried to shake the hand of Ahmad Jibril, a ‘Palestinian’ traitor who led the misnamed ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command’ (not to be confused with the actual PFLP), an organ of Baathist regime intelligence – but did so from his seat rather than standing up – so had been thrown into Sednaya for this slight 39 years earlier – and was now released. Some 600 Palestinians were also released, including 67 Hamas cadre, but 1300 Palestinians had been tortured to death in captivity, including 94 Hamas cadre, on top of some 7000 ‘disappeared’.
But the release of mere thousands – perhaps 25,000 – was a huge disappointment. Because at least 130,000 were known to have disappeared. The releases left over 100,000 unaccounted for – ‘disappeared’ by the regime, after it finished torturing them, into mass graves scattered around the country. The since updated database of the Syrian Network for Human Rights now puts the figure at 177,057 people forcibly disappeared. To be clear, this is on top of the 600-700,000 killed in the regime’s counterrevolutionary war itself, during which it destroyed entire cities and entire chunks of the country, in many places leaving no homes standing at all, a Gaza-like moonscape over much of Syria.
Why November 27? Addressing false discourses
To step back, why November 27? The name of the offensive – ‘Operation Deterring Aggression’ – demonstrates how little clue the rebels had when they began that the regime would collapse in 10 days. They thought they were, literally, deterring the regime’s aggression. A shaky ceasefire between the regime and the last remaining pockets run by anti-regime militia in the north, especially in Idlib, had been signed in 2020, under Russian-Turkish-Iranian auspices. But from the time that Israel began its genocide in Gaza after October 7, 2023, the regime and Russian airforce turned in the opposite direction and began attacking and bombing Idlib. The rebels therefore began planning an offensive to “deter” this regime “aggression.” However, there was a problem. Throughout these years, the fascist regime had been backed not only by Russia, but also by Iran, Iran-backed Shiite militia from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and by Hezbollah. At this moment, however, Hezbollah was taking a break from killing Syrians, and had returned to its original resistance credentials by firing across the northern Israeli border in solidarity with Gaza.
Now, the Syrian people, including the rebels, hated Hezbollah. If you can’t understand that, you probably need to do a little more research and expand your horizons beyond binary thinking. If Hezbollah had been dragged kicking and screaming into Syria by its Iranian masters and simply held up the rear, that would have been one thing. Instead, they took a lead role in a number of IDF-style regime starvation sieges around Damascus, during which hundreds actually starved to death, and these entire Sunni towns were uprooted and the people expelled to the north. So just let that sink in. But right then, Hezbollah was preoccupied with Israel. But, despite the inconceivably inaccurate popular understanding of this, this was precisely a problem for the rebels, not an “opportunity.” Because much as they hated Hezbollah (and Iran), they also hated Israel. The entire October 7 2023 to December 27, 2024 period, the rebels in Idlib and northern Aleppo organised rallies, seminars, fund-raisers in support of Gaza – the only part of Syria where this happened. One campaign raised $350,000 for Gaza, a remarkable achievement for a poor rural province under Assadist siege; April 2024 saw the opening of ‘Gaza Square’ in Idlib. Meanwhile, the Assad regime banned rallies in support of Gaza or Palestine, and in contrast to other alleged “axis of resistance” components, did not lift a finger on the Golan, even symbolically, to support Gaza, but also did not even lift a finger to support Hezbollah, in its existential hour of need (and neither did Iran btw), in fact the regime closed Hezbollah recruitment offices – despite all the honour Hezbollah had lost saving his regimes arse – and even engaged in intelligence cooperation with Israel against its erstwhile Iranian “allies” who Israel was bombing inside Syria!
Therefore, the rebels waited until November 27 because that was the day the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was signed, in which Hezbollah agreed to move north of the Litani River, away from the Israeli border. They did not move to deter the aggression against themselves until they could be sure they were not helping Israel in doing so. Despite the sensational ignorance and privilege of much of the western ‘left’ who think the rebels moved at that point to help Israel, surely a little common sense would tell them that if this were the aim, they would have moved during the height of Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, not wait till it was over. Countless thousands of Iran-backed militia were still in Syria, who could have tried to save Assad if they had chosen to. They did not fire a shot, and on December 6 made an agreement with HTS to facilitate their total and peaceful exit from Syria (I have discussed these issues here).
Israel’s one full year of aggression beginning on December 8
From the morning of December 8, when the Assad regime collapsed and Assad and other criminals fled to Russia (while some of the criminals fled to the UAE or Iraq), Israel began its biggest air war to date, weeks of bombing and destroying Syria’s entire military arsenal, all the advanced weaponry that Israel never touched as long as it was under the control of its preferred Assad regime. Israeli leaders from Netanyahu down claimed the new Syrian government was a “terrorist organisation that has taken over a state,” the IDF occupied a swathe of territory in southern Syria beyond the already occupied Golan Heights (Israel and Assad had both respected the 1974 UN disengagement lines for 50 years, which left Israel in control of the Golan but without Syrian or global recognition), and Israel has continued to launch air attacks of varying intensity, and less visible ground attacks in Quneitra and Daraa – seizing farmland, raiding houses, arresting civilians and taking them to Israel, taking control of water supplies etc etc – ever since; there has been no let-up, only less media (I wrote about this Israeli aggression here).
Just one example of the ongoing, daily nature of Israeli aggression: on November 28, as if to demonstrate their hostility to the Syrian revolution anniversary, Israeli troops and tanks raided the town of Beit Jinn, southwest of Damascus, attempting to seize a number of residents – as they regularly do. When locals resisted, six occupation troops were allegedly wounded, so the invaders brought in the airforce and attacked the village with shells, drones and artillery, killing thirteen Syrians. The Israeli military claimed “armed terrorists” fired on their troops, who responded “along with aerial assistance” and “a number of terrorists were eliminated” – as elsewhere, Israel believes it is its occupation forces who have the right to “self-defence” against locals resisting their invasion. Israel claimed they to be arresting cadre from Jama’a Islamiya, a Lebanese Sunni Islamist group which fought with Hezbollah against Israel, but also supported the anti-Assad revolution in Syria, but Israel regularly makes claims it produces no evidence for. The Syrian foreign ministry vigorously condemned the “full-fledged war crime” and “horrific massacre” carried out by the occupation army, claiming this “is a systematic policy by the Israeli occupation to destabilize the situation in Syria and impose an aggressive reality by force.”
Meanwhile, Russia still has its air and naval bases on the coast, the US still has a (reduced) military presence in the northeast, and Turkish forces are still present in parts of the north.
Assessing one year of post-Assad Syria
How can we assess one year of post-Assad Syria? That of course is a question beyond the scope of this mere ‘anniversary’ essay. I wrote a detailed sum-up of the first six months in domestic post-Assad Syria policy here; though that was before the Suweida massacre in July, which I thus wrote about here. The first article did cover the coastal massacre in March, however, but I also wrote a much more detailed report on that here. I’m about to release a thorough report on the foreign relations of the new Syria the next few days.
There are a number of points we need to consider together.
First, the new government inherited ruins. The World Bank estimates the minimum cost of reconstruction to be 215 billion $US; many estimates are several times that amount. Millions of homes, thousands of schools, hospitals, markets, every kind of basic facility, need rebuilding; two and a half million children are now out of school. Syria is the fourth most food-insecure nation on Earth. There is no real economy; there are few jobs. The job of the Assad regime was to destroy its country, and as long as Russia and Iran were willing to keep pouring in money and guns to keep their favoured mafiosi in power, it didn’t matter. Fourteen million people – 60 percent of Syrians – were uprooted, half internally displaced within Syria, and the other half, nearly 7 million people, as refugees abroad, the world’s largest refugee population. Perhaps 2 million internally displaced and one million refugees have returned. For many, returning to no home, no job, no money, no economy, and little security, is not on their agenda right now, for these obvious reasons. Therefore, the job of a new government inheriting the ruins created by a previous one is to reconstruct the country and get the economy moving – that is its primary brief, and its actions must be seen through that primary lens.
Second, this desperately poor and destroyed country is under permanent Israeli aggression and occupation, and US sanctions which had been imposed on the previous regime yet, absurdly, continued after that regime vanished. There is no global socialist fund to help countries reconstruct – most reconstruction funds will come from foreign investment, aid and loans, with all the strings attached. But as long as sanctions continue, and the threat of ‘snap-back’ exists when they are merely ‘suspended’, very little reconstruction money will enter Syria. From December to May, the US took a somewhat hostile stance, and then approached Syria with a list of draconian ‘conditions’ for mere sanctions ‘relief’. Trump’s sharp turnaround in May – during his Gulf extravaganza, at the behest of his Saudi and Qatari hosts and the Erdogan regime in Turkey, who all want to invest and make money in Syria – when he declared that “all” sanctions would be lifted “immediately” – thus appeared a big victory over this edifice of humiliating “conditions” being erected by the White House, State Department and National Security Council. In doing so, Trump went against not only many of the MAGA Islamophobes and “anti-terrorism” tsars, but also against Israel, which had appealed to Trump to not lift sanctions. This resulted in some announcements of some large investment projects, especially in crucial energy infrastructure, from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France and China. However, the reality is that Trump’s statement had little meaning – the sanctions may still be lifted by the end of the year (with snap-back provisions) but to date they still exist and hold up any real recovery (I wrote about the sanctions lifting issue here).
Meanwhile, as long as Israel continues with its unprovoked war of aggression and occupation in the south, this is all the more reason for investors to not invest – who wants to invest in a war zone? And this is partially Israel’s very goal – Israel openly says it wants to keep Syria poor, weak, divided, it wants Syria’s current serious divisions widened, for the country to break apart, and for the government to collapse.
Third, because Assad had already meticulously destroyed every other Syrian rebel force, had crushed the civil uprising, destroyed entire cities where hundreds of revolutionary councils had ruled in the early years of the revolution, expelled entire populations from the south to the north, expelled millions from the country, it so happened that the only significant rebel force left standing, partly due to Turkish protection, but also due to Assad’s focus on crushing democratic revolution, was the Islamist militia HTS, then ruling over Idlib in the northwest. Some other rebel groups also ruled other parts of the north, but they were even more co-opted by the Turkish government; HTS, with all its faults, was at least independent. HTS had attacked and crushed many other rebel forces over the years, and had assassinated some prominent revolutionary leaders. For most Syrian revolutionaries in the spirit of 2011, it was the last quasi-rebel force anyone wanted to come out on top. But given Assad’s crushing of everyone else, the Assad regime’s complete collapse allowing HTS-led forces to walk in, and a degree of transformation of HTS itself (it remained a rightwing Islamist group, but those ‘leftists’ calling it “al-Qaeda terrorists” are best described as the ‘Neocon left’), history simply brought this about.
But what does that mean? The government, to state an obvious truism, is a capitalist government; no-one was expecting socialist revolution. Its economic orientation is neoliberal; in fact, given the money in the hands of former Assad cronies, some of these have already been partially rehabilitated in the economic field; meanwhile, large numbers of workers have been retrenched from the public sector. And while HTS dissolved in January, the most important government ministries are led by former HTS members. However, the circle has broadened considerably beyond the former HTS since then. The cabinet of 23 only has four ex-HTS members, and another 5 with some association with it; includes mostly technocrats; but there is only one woman, one Christian (the same as the one woman, who however was a prominent democratic activist), one Alawite, one Druze and one Kurd, its attempt at ‘diversity’ thus looking highly tokenistic. It is not a government I would be supporting, but it is not about me; one way or another, it appears to have the strong support, at present, of the majority of the Syrian population, or at least of the majority, Sunni Arab, population; it has legitimacy.
The government has promised democratic elections in several years, once the conditions are more suitable (at present elections would exclude millions uprooted and in exile, there has been no census etc); in the meantime, it held a kind of farcical semi-election which did, however, involve a degree of popular input, for a transitional peoples assembly – this did further widen the governing body, but still the number of women and minorities ‘selected’ was far lower than the government’s own projections. Of 119 ‘elected’, only 6 were women, and 17 minorities (4 Alawites, 4 Kurds, 4 Turkmen, 3 Ismailis & 2 Christians). No Druze were selected because Suweida is temporarily outside Syrian government control, and likewise the ‘election’ did not take place in Raqqa or Hasakeh under SDF control, thus excluding most Kurds, but seats have been left vacant for these three governates; but all three seats in Afrin were won by Kurds. On the other hand, it is notable that no seat was won any former HTS cadre. One aspect widely considered the most negative about the process is that another third of seats are to be directly chosen by the president, giving Sharaa a huge amount of power; however, one expectation is that the president’s choices should be aimed at fixing up any imbalances. Whether Sharaa appoints significant numbers of women and minorities is therefore an important test, and if he does, it will be a somewhat ironic outcome from a democratic perspective.
The other side of the equation is that the post-Assad polity contains a democratic space that the Syrian people have never experienced before. This is the major gain of the revolution, the major contrast to the past; this is what must be preserved, against attempts by domestic and foreign enemies, or the government itself, to crack down on these democratic rights; and this is what must be greatly expanded. Sednaya and the entire edifice of Assad’s torture gulag are gone; they have not re-opened. People can demonstrate, hold rallies and meetings, criticise the government, without fear of persecution, let alone fear of being gunned down by guns and tanks, bombed by barrel bombs and chemical weapons, or jailed, tortured and disappeared. Women have demonstrated against government ministers suggesting outrageous things; far from forcing women to cover up as was warned of, even the only woman in the Syrian cabinet does not wear hair covering. There have been workers’ strikes, but without real jobs, without reconstruction, without a revival of industry, there can be no working-class movement with any strength – and when we speak of ‘neoliberalsm’, essentially this means capitalism today – it is only through workers’ rights to organise that this can be confronted, not through illusions in ‘better’ government policy if another party were running the country.
Sectarian divisions in new Syria: inheritance of Assad regime’s genocidal sectarian war
Both of these truisms – ‘capitalist government’ and ‘democratic space’ – must be set in the context of what has already been stressed – that of a destroyed country. But it is not only the physical destruction. The Assad regime destroyed Syria’s social fabric to a sensational extent, something not commonly understood. The two rounds of sectarian massacres – of Alawites in March and Druze in July – are such a stain on post-Assad Syria that it would be easy here to simply say that the new regime is just a Sunni Islamist version of the Alawite-dominated Assad regime. Following the murder of hundreds of Alawite and Druze civilians, even if these two communities hated the Assad regime (the Druze rose against the regime, while even many Alawites hated a regime which spoke in their name but robbed them daily while killing off their young men as cannon fodder), they would now see their lives as worse in the new situation. Indeed, much as I am against all foreign intervention in Syria, I would frankly not be opposed to some temporary UN protective role on both the coast and in Suweida, as these people are essentially victims of the consequences of the Assad regime.
However, just because it would be ‘easy’ to make such a simplistic statement – that the Sharaa government is just a Sunni Islamist version of the Assad regime – does not make it correct. We still need to reckon with the fact that for the vast majority of Syrians, the situation is infinitely better. Can the Druze now blame themselves for being in the forefront of the overthrow of Assad? Can the Alawites now blame themselves for standing aside as the regime collapsed and welcoming the rebels? If HTS had planned a sectarian massacre, would we not have seen signs of it then? In reality, one of the aspects of the revolution that was so positive was precisely the lack of sectarian ‘revenge’ and the clear and open calls by the new leadership to avoid it. The regime collapsed because it was rotten to the core; nothing could have saved it.
But the inheritance of the Assad regime’s counterrevolutionary sectarian war was a country deeply divided. Hundreds of Alawites were killed by Sunni sectarians in March; hundreds of Druze were killed by Sunni sectarians in July; tens of thousands of Sunni civilians were slaughtered in sectarian massacres by Assad’s fascistic ‘Shabia’ thugs throughout Syria in 2012, 2013 and 2014 in particular in countless large and small sectarian massacres. This cannot be overestimated, and cannot be brushed aside as Assad using repression against “everyone against him.” He did, but this was in addition to the specifically sectarian component of his war. I wrote in detail about Assad’s regime being “the incubator of sectarian mayhem” in one section of my large article on the coastal massacre. In addition, the towns and parts of cities destroyed were Sunni; the millions of homes destroyed were Sunni; the starvation sieges were against Sunni towns; most of the displaced internally and externally are Sunni; the 2 million living in tents in the north are Sunni. It is not “sectarian” to tell the truth, to analyse (it IS sectarian for elements of the current government or its supporters to exploit this to make everything about “Sunni victimhood” in order to justify their own sectarianism – but the point is this DOES have a basis in reality).
All of this had consequences. When the Assad regime vanished, and its leading thugs ran chicken to Moscow or Abu Dhabi, the regime armed forces and security forces collapsed; it could no more continue existing than the Nazi death squads in 1945. While both the Druze and the Kurds had their own armed forces (which allowed the Druze to beat back government-backed militia in July), independent of both the Assad regime but also of the main rebel groups, the Alawites had only had Assad’s armed forces – every other sign of independent Alawite life had been crushed by the Assad regime. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of the rebel armed forces by then de facto consisted of Sunni – yes some occasional Christians or even other smaller minorities also, but overwhelmingly Sunni. The ‘new army’ patched together in January through the dissolution of the rebel militia was thus a de facto Sunni armed force. New internal security forces (the GSS) were set up, largely from people associated with the Idlib statelet. Negotiations with the Druze (until July) and the Kurds and SDF/AANES (ongoing) to integrate their armed forces into the new army will hopefully yield results, but have not yet.
But the Alawite question festered. The Alawites who lost their jobs in army, police and security forces had no work; and there had been little time – or apparent intention by the new authorities – to begin integrating them into the new armed and security forces. Meanwhile, these Alawites (and Sunni members of Assad’s forces) passed through ‘resettlement’ centres to settle their status, to prove their innocence – but though ‘resettled’, they could still find no work. But meanwhile, thousands of Sunni Syrians, uprooted, returning to destroyed or occupied homes, could likewise find no work, because none existed. And while former Alawite soldiers were rightly ‘resettled’, these Sunni and other victims of the Assad regime received no justice because, despite arrests, not a single butcher, torturer, criminal from the old regime has yet been put on trial; lack of transitional justice allows irrational resentments to fester.
It is notable that the US sanctions – in denying the beginnings of economic recovery and reconstruction – played a role in both the drift of some of the cut-loose Alawite population towards the growing Assadist insurgency, and of the phenomenon of armed, rootless sectarian Sunni rabble – no jobs, no income, no hope, no justice, allows the sectarian inheritance of the former regime to fester on all sides. Some observers, such as Syrian activist Joseph Daher, argue that the new regime is weaponising Sunni sectarianism to build its power base in much the same way that the Assad regime was dominated by the Alawite minority; others emphasise the inability of the young government to effectively control the Sunni dominated armed forces and still less armed sectarian Sunni elements among the population; I believe the jury is still out in this question and the answer is far from simple.
Sectarian massacres of Alawites and Druze: Sections of the population lost by the people’s revolution
Into this explosive mix came the murderous March 6 uprising of former Assadist officers who had been hiding out, with tons of weapons, in the coastal mountains. They ambushed the new security forces – mostly new, young men just recruited – and murdered hundreds of them, alongside some 200 Sunni civilians, and seized government buildings throughout the coast. The government sent in more security forces, and the new army, to crush the coup – as was its responsibility. Thousands more troops and armed civilians also poured in at that chaotic moment, horrified at the prospect of the genocidal regime returning and at the hide of them even showing their faces so soon, and to avenge the murdered new, young security officers, while some mosques and social media sites pumped out sectarian hate. While most may have stuck to script, hundreds did not, and instead invaded Alawite villages and small towns and took irrational ‘revenge’ by slaughering the Alawite citizenry, destroying and looting. In Baniyas – scene of a horrific Assadist massacre of some 500 Sunni civilians back in 2013 – armed civilians from the countryside, relatives of those prior victims – carried out the most appalling, savage massacre of the entire event, one of the more direct ‘boomerang’ events. Several Turkish-backed ‘Syrian National Army’ groups were regularly named as the most responsible for the massacres, as well as armed civilians. The new internal security forces, most directly under government control, were regularly cited as the most professional, attempting at times to help civilians escape, and focused on the actual insurgents. Calling these events a “government massacre” is lazy nonsense. UNHCR, Syrian government, Syrian Network for Human Rights and other bodies carried out investigations revealing some 1400 civilians were slaughtered.
The Syrian government condemned the massacre, got all the unauthorised forces out of the region within two days, and set up an investigation, which named 298 people on the pro-government side, including military and police, and 265 Assadist insurgents, to be investigated for war crimes. Just last week, the first 7 of each side were put on trial. This is a good sign. I do not have to have many illusions to say that such a thing never took place under Assad. This is progress. But without a radical change in government policy – not only the trials and punishment proving effective, but also compensation, real reconciliation and justice, and above all inclusion of the Alawite population in the political and especially security architecture of the new state, this component of the population is effectively lost.
While the slaughter ended, killings and kidnappings of Alawites has continued to be a major factor in the lives of the civilian population, although some killings are clearly targeted at former Assadist thugs who have not faced justice. There is both an undeniably sectarian element to this, but also a broader element connected to the post-revolutionary state of insecurity, which most leftists, particularly those who have studied history, need to admit is the norm; when you “smash the state” it takes time to rebuild from scratch and many civilians end up the victims of this state of insecurity. But the connection between the sectarian and purely insecure elements is precisely the reluctance, or extreme slowness, in today’s Sunni-led Syrian polity to incorporate significant numbers of Alawites into the security and military forces in the regions they live in, an essential step.
Even then, this state of insecurity should not be exaggerated for Syria today: for example, in the fact that in the week November 25 to December 2, of 41 violent deaths across Syria, a full third of them (13 deaths) were the result of Israel’s attack on Beit Jinn, another 22 percent (9 deaths) the result of unexploded ordinance (UXO), a gigantic problem in Syria today that is barely mentioned by anyone, and another 12 percent (5 deaths) caused by ISIS, highlights the fact that random killings have actually been in sharp decline for months – in the circumstances, something of an achievement.
One important point here is that while the March massacres mostly took place in the Alawite-dominated coastal governates of Tartous and Latakia (since that is where the Assadist insurgency took place), today these regions are relatively calm by overall Syrian standards. For example, in the fortnight October 28-November 11, Tartous and Latakia experienced the least violence of anywhere in Syria, including only one killing – that of an Alawite murdered by an Assadist-Alawite armed faction for working with the authorities! In contrast, Homs, despite being largely spared in March due to swift action by Syrian security forces to protect the Alawite population, remains stubbornly the worst region in Syria for this low-level, individual sectarian violence, reflecting the extreme sectarian tensions in a region where Alawites are a minority, but where, under Assad, the Sunni population was massacred and uprooted mercilessly.
While the government needs to do much more to incorporate the Alawites and stem the violence, the situation is not helped by the ongoing low-level Assadist insurgency which, while lacking popular support among Alawites who saw themselves left to the slaughter in March by the reckless insurgents, continues to kill security forces and sometimes civilians, perpetuating the sectarian atmosphere. Worse, one Alawite who stood in the October semi-elections, Haydar Younes, was labelled a ‘traitor’ and murdered by the insurgents; the Alawite candidate who won a seat in Baniyas (against 10 Sunni candidates) has allegedly fled the country due to threats from these quarters. On the other hand, a series of peaceful demonstrations by the Alawite community in late November showed that Alawites could raise their demands politically in new Syria, despite the odds, and point towards a better direction for Syria.
In some ways it is worse with the Druze massacre in July, because it was not precipitated by a murderous Assadist uprising, and in fact the Druze had mostly been anti-Assad and had begun the uprising against the old regime from 2023 onwards, and also because one might expect the government to have learned from the experience of March. I don’t have space to go into the same amount of detail here (read my article), but in short, the government’s responsibility for the Suweida massacre was greater than for the coastal massacre – not that I think it planned a massacre here either, but the attempt to use intervention into the Druze-Bedouin clashes as a means to militarily ‘solve’ the ongoing negotiation over the degree of autonomy and decentralisation for the region – by essentially taking the side of the Bedouin rather than separating the forces as announced – had consequences that should have been predictable. While Israel’s large-scale aggression to “protect the Druze” – including bombing the Syrian Defence Ministry building and national palace grounds – was self-serving and hypocritical, and the tendency of some Druze groups and leaders to raise the Israeli flag appalling, it is also to be expected when subjected to such savage, existential slaughter. While members of government military and security forces have been detained for future trials following the government’s investigation, it is too early to judge whether this will deliver impartial justice, and once again, as with the Alawites, given the sheer scale of the slaughter, without a radical change in governmental policy, this component of Syrians – previous to that a relatively pro-government one – is also lost.
One difference between the coastal and Suweida massacres was that since the Druze still had their armed militia, they were able to give government-backed forces a bloody nose; while figures of 1500-2000 are estimated to have been killed in the crisis, up to one third of these deaths were government-backed troops and security forces, along with Druze militia, Bedouin civilians (an often overlooked group) and Druze civilians (the vast majority of deaths). This means that Suweida is now effectively outside Syrian government control; it has its ‘autonomy’, but lives in limbo. While the UN and other aid agencies continually bring in supplies, private trade with the rest of Syria is almost impossible due to the state of insecurity between Suweida and Damascus, which the government seems either powerless to fix, or uninterested in fixing, making the situation effectively an undeclared siege.
The Druze political-religious leadership under Hikmat al-Hijri has taken a very hard line towards the Syrian state; it has set up its own ‘National Guard’ as a kind of para-state and rules out negotiating with current Syrian authorities. Al-Hijri had taken a hard line against the government throughout the year, buoyed by Israeli statements of support which he willingly responded to. However, blaming a ‘Hijri-Israel conspiracy’ for the crisis misses the point that the majority of the Druze leadership had taken a relatively pro-government and anti-Israel position and had continually disagreed with Hijri’s maximalism; but the massacre left mud on their faces and from then on all daylight between their position and Hijri’s vanished, except for some small groups who lack popular support. However, after months in limbo new voices have appeared calling for a different position out of pure pragmatism; Hijri however has demonstrated his own authoritarianism, with sweeping arrests of Druze oppositionists in early December followed by news that two of them, prominent clerics, Raed al-Mutni and Maher Falhout, had been tortured and killed in detention. It is also important to note that al-Hijri appointed former Assad-regime brigadier-general, and war criminal, Jihad Najm al-Ghouthani to head his ‘National Guard’! Further, in an October 11 letter to the UN Security Council, he referred to Suweida by the Hebrew name “Bashan” in a direct appeal for Israeli annexation.
Demonstrations calling for ‘independence’ or even annexation by Israel have no reality: Suweida’s population is around half a million, the region agricultural; independence would leave Druze communities elsewhere in Syria a smaller minority with no ‘centre’, while also leaving Suweida’s banished Bedouin population permanently outside; it has no border with Israel, and Israel frankly prefers Suweida in its current state of limbo as a dagger cutting into the heart of Syria serving its interests rather than the messiness of another illegal annexation, notwithstanding the fantasies of elements of the Israeli right about a ‘David Corridor linking the Israeli-occupied Golan to the Kurdish-led AANES statelet via Suweida, and from AANES to Iraqi Kurdistan.
Despite the effective Sunni domination of the new Syrian polity, the situation for other minorities is rather different to that of these two geographically-concentrated minorities. The Christian ten percent of the population has tended, despite challenges, to closely collaborate with the new authorities, who have also gone out of their way to work with their leaders; the small Ismaeli population has found its niche in new Syria, often as interlocutor between Sunni and Alawite communities; while even the small Shiite population has tended to be supportive of the new government, and aware of how cynically they were used by Assad and his allies in the past, though their situation varies throughout Syria. In between, we have the situation of the Kurds: like Alawites and Druze, their geographic definition gives their position a higher priority to the government, but their leaders have strongly oriented towards forming some kind of partnership with the post-Assad authorities.
We can only hope that the negotiations to integrate the Syrian Kurds, and the AANES statelet and SDF armed forces (not the same thing as ‘the Kurds’), into the Syrian state proceeds smoothly. For various reasons, the US has more invested in this process, given its 9-year alliance with the SDF against ISIS. Turkey tends to pressure the Syrian government to adopt a military ‘solution’; Israel prefers permanent separation and rupture. In between the two extremes of these two mutually-hostile US allies, the US position ends up a somewhat better one by default. While there are significant differences between the government and AANES/SDF, there has also been progress in bridging these differences. The SDF wanted to integrate into the Syrian army “as a bloc,” while the government wanted its troops to integrate “as individuals.” The deal is a compromise: some new army corp will be set up in the northeast, and so the SDF cadre will join them as large groupings local to that region; some AANES leaders will have ministries and some SDF leaders, like Mazlum Abdi, will get a high position in the Defence Ministry. Meanwhile, Sharaa has said that the local government law protects ‘decentralisation’ at the level of the AANES councils. We’ll see. Everyone knows that any military ‘solution’ here can only bring enormous catastrophe. Incidentally, while there are divisions on both sides regarding the approach to integration, PKK leader Ocalan has weighed in to express strong support to the SDF/AANES integrating into new Syria.
Meanwhile, while much left and progressive opinion tends to favour the Kurdish and SDF/AANES position – understandably given a number of very progressive aspects of policy, in particular being far in advance of current or previous governments regarding the role of women in society – it should be noted that they do themselves no favours with actions such as attempting to close Assyrian Christian schools (since rescinded), for teaching the government rather than the AANES curriculum, issuing a circular banning celebrations of the anniversary if the revolution, and statements earlier in the year opposing the lifting of sanctions (a position seemingly changed) and reaching out to Israel. A key problem with the issue is that much of the 30 percent of Syria that AANES/SDF rules over is not Kurdish, and in particular, much of the the Arab population in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor sees its future with the Syrian government; moreover, Deir Ezzor is where most of Syria’s oil is located, AANES thus holding a key Syrian resource. Arguably, a more flexible SDF policy may have been to more actively compromise on regions known to be chaffing under their rule (and indeed not doing so could end up having negative consequences for the SDF). But that goes for the government as well, for example, the refusal to budge on dropping the word ‘Arab’ from the country’s name, despite the opposition Syrian Coalition having agreed to do so as along ago as 2015.
Syria and the world: An oppressed, devastated country under foreign occupation and aggression
It is in the context of all of the above that the new Syria’s approach to the outside world must be seen. While it is appropriate that much of the domestic policy of the new government be heavily criticised (while also acknowledging great progress in many areas), as it is the government and, with al its limitations, does have power, when it comes to foreign policy, the frameworkmust be different: whatever valid critiques can obviously be made, the framework is of a desperately impoverished, utterly destroyed country under one year of Israeli aggression and occupation, and still under US sanctions preventing recovery and reconstruction.
I will state this: I have found the level of white privilege among much of the western left on the issue of Syria’s foreign policy to be quite extraordinary.
Rather than express solidarity with Syria against Israel’s occupation and aggression, the privileged left condemns Syria for not “resisting.” Knowing full well that Israel destroyed Syria’s entire military arsenal in the first weeks. Knowing full well that any armed “resistance” at this stage would simply give Israel even more excuses to claim its occupation troops need the right to “self-defence” against the “terrorist jihadist” regime (Israel uses the same terms as some of the privileged left), and level Damascus. It is OK for you, but try to remember that much of Syria has already been levelled Gaza-style by Assad, Russia and Iran – it does not need more just at the moment, thanks.
Indeed, as noted above, when the people of Beit Jinn just did resist by merely injuring six of the invading occupation troops, the IDF responded with the airforce and killed 13 civilians. That is Israel’s model, as is well-known. Imagine that on a larger scale. Of course, as this incident shows, resistance will eventually grow because it cannot forever be held back against a brutal occupier, and when it happens they deserve our full support. But this is up to the Syrians themselves to determine when, how and how much, it is not up to computer-based, tyrant-worshipping, hypocritical western tankies. Given its enormous task of rebuilding a destroyed country, the government’s attempts to avoid this escalation through diplomatic means, especially through US government channels, is entirely sensible; Israel’s aim is precisely to provoke a military response so that it can openly continue Assad’s destruction of Syria.
Rather than express solidarity with Syria against Israel’s occupation and aggression, the privileged left proclaims, ignorantly (and usually wanting to stay ignorant) that Syria is trying to “make an agreement with Israel,” or even more ignorantly, that it is interested in signing the “Abraham Accords” with Israel, or that it is willing to give up the Golan Heights to Israel.
Trump’s ‘security agreement’ with Israel charade
Here are the facts:
The ‘security agreement’ that Trump wants (which, to be clear, has nothing to do with ‘normalisation’), is wanted neither by Syria nor Israel, but both go along with the discourse to try to get out of what they can from the US government, which ultimately has the power in the situation:
The Syrian government has endlessly issued the same message since December 8, 2024 when Israel ripped up the 1974 disengagement accord that Assad had stuck with for 50 years: that Israel must return to where its occupation forces were before that day. That is the only ‘security agreement’ Sharaa is willing to sign, ie, the exact same ‘security agreement’ that Assad signed in 1974 and stuck with forever after. If you cannot criticise Assad for never once attempting to go beyond the 1974 lines to liberate Golan in 50 years, with enormous armed forces, you can hardly criticise the new government for not gunning to do so in one year after Israel destroyed its military arsenal.
For Israel, on the other hand, if it is to sign any ‘security agreement’ with Syria, it has listed its demands: that it keep some of the extra territory stolen since December, especially Mount Hermon, that the UN buffer zone be extended some kilometres into free Syrian territory, that the entire south of Syria – Quneitra, Daraa and Suweida governates – be ‘demilitarised’ for Syrian military and air force, but that Israel control this airspace and be allowed to fly its own warplanes around at will to prevent “threats,” and that Syria cede the Golan. Syria rejects all of this out of hand.
Come on, privileged left – how about, good on you Syria for sticking to your guns?
The mainstream media circus does not help, of course. How ironic that we read phrases along the lines that Syria has been engaged in US-mediated negotiations with Israel “despite” Israel continually attacking Syria – that should be “because,” not “despite.” Countries under brutal aggression and occupation almost always have to negotiate with the aggressor; try thinking of any examples when that doesn’t happen. The privileged left condemns Syria for negotiating with its brutal occupier, while not condemning Hamas for negotiating, not condemning the Vietnamese for negotiating with the Americans – but on the other hand, demanding that Ukraine not only negotiate with the Russian imperialist aggressor and occupier, but also that it fully concede to Russia’s demands! Try making heads and tails out of this swill.
What is Trump’s position? Trump wants to be able to say he “ended another war” or some rubbish. But, despite his clownish friendly demeanour with Sharaa, lauding his “attractiveness” and so on, and his bending to the Gulf-Turkish position on Syria sanctions against the Israeli position, one thing is clear: ever since his first meeting with Sharaa in May, the US government has not once condemned Israel’s ongoing aggression against Syria. Trump’s flattery of Sharaa (mirroring what he likes to get) appears to be one of his means to achieve Israeli objectives, the good cop/bad cop show; though he may force Israel to concede just a little too, this is mostly about getting Syria to capitulate, to become a vassal. Moreover, only recently, Trump has yet again boasted about being the leader who recognised Syria’s occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory. Syria is well aware of this duplicity.
Syrian government: No to normalisation with Israel, entire Golan must be returned
On the Golan itself, the privileged left proclaims, ignorantly, that the new Syrian government is willing to give up the Golan for “peace” with Israel. Yet the Syrian government has continually stated that it absolutely rejects conceding the Golan, continually stressing it is Syrian and must be returned and here in the UN, that its occupation by Israel enjoys no “Arab, regional or international legitimacy,” and again in Sharaa’s interview with Petreaus, and by Syria’s UN ambassador at an October Security Council session. When Trump, in a joint press conference with Netanyahu, boasted that he had “recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” Syria’s Foreign Ministry responded by reminding the world of UN Security Council Resolution 497 (1981) which declared the Israeli annexation “null and void.” The sheer wealth of such statements seems far more active than the Assad regime ever was on this question.
Rather than express solidarity with Syria against Israel’s occupation and aggression, the privileged left accepts and broadcasts, ignorantly, the media-driven discourse that the new Syrian government is open to signing the Abraham Accords and normalising with Israel, even though the government has not made a single statement that it wants to do so; second-hand hearsay is constantly contradicted by government leaders rejecting normalisation and the Abraham Accords, such as in Sharaa’s discussion with David Petraeus in New York, or here a few days earlier, or in this interview with Al Majallah in August, or here back in April, or in this interview with Shaibani, and in Sharaa’s interview with Fox during his November US visit and so on.
There is no basis for normalisation in any case, because Israel has declared Syrian agreement to cede the Golan a condition for any ‘normalisation’ with Syria, and Syria rejects that as a non-starter. But actually, the Golan gives Syria cover for rejecting ‘normalisation’ which it does not want in any case. In contrast to Assad’s explicit statement that Syria “can establish normal relations” if Israel returned the Golan (aiming to follow his Egyptian and UAE friends), that this has been his government’s position since negotiations began in the 1990s, the Sharaa government only speaks in the negative, that no discussion of normalisation is possible without the return of the Golan, that Syria’s foremost condition for any “peace process” to begin is a “complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights”, that “Damascus will not consider any diplomatic initiative that falls short of restoring Syrian sovereignty over all occupied territory, including the entirety of the Golan Heights”; though in his interview with Petraeus, Sharaa also noted Syrian and global “anger” at Israel’s actions in Gaza as a further reason that normalisation is not on the cards. Unlike Assad, this wording makes no promise to normalise even if the Golan were returned; these are guarded statements to keep the US engaged.
None of this means that partial surrender at some stage is impossible – when you’ve got a gun at your head you may be forced to make concessions, as has happened throughout history. As Dalia Ismail writes in Al-Jumhuriya:
“Yet this outcome [the prospect of forced ‘normalisation] is not freely chosen, but emerges from an impossible bind: either accept normalization, with Israel continuing to occupy Syrian territory, or face the ongoing threat of airstrikes, instability, and potential future invasions … what appears as diplomacy is in fact the formalization of coercion.”
Very good – but the important thing is that Syria has not capitulated.
Syrian foreign policy: ‘Balance’, no hegemony, no ‘blocs’
Sharaa’s US visit in November was full of contradictions. On the one hand, there was none of the public pomp, Sharaa entering the White House through a side door, to a meeting with no media; on the other hand, once over, sickening displays of Sharaa and that slug Trump almost slobbering over each other, giving gifts and the like, which was hard to watch. But aside from the show, and our feelings of disgust, what is this really about? Quite simply, alone in the world, only the US government holds two keys: that of ending its crippling sanctions, and that of at least somewhat restraining Israel. There is nothing more important to Syria. The two other issues discussed were Syria formally joining the 90-country alliance to combat ISIS – given that this war takes place on Syrian territory, it is probably a good thing, though the current Syrian government has fought ISIS from the outset anyway (as did HTS and all rebel groups for the last decade); and the ongoing integration negotiations with the SDF.
Does this mean Syria wants to join a “US-led axis” or any such thing, as many have charged? Let’s look at the timeline. Before meeting Trump in May, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov visited Damascus to meet president Sharaa and the foreign ministry in January, a few days later Putin had a phone call with Sharaa; after Israel’s stepped up aggression in July, foreign minister Shaibani visited Putin and Lavrov in Moscow, in September, a Russian delegation from 14 ministries visited Damascus and met a large Syrian delegation, in early October, a delegation of senior Russian military officials visited Damascus, to discuss Syria’s military hardware needs, then Sharaa visited Moscow and met Putin on October 15, and around the same time Shaibani announced an upcoming visit to Beijing in “early November.” Note – this is Russia, the state that ruthlessly bombed Syria for a decade on behalf of Assad, who it gives asylum to! So much for US axis! In fact, others are calling Sharaa a Russian asset!
It was in these circumstances that Trump made his sudden invite on November 10, upstaging Shaibani’s Beijing visit. But within days of Sharaa’s US visit ending, Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra welcomed a large Russian military delegation, led by Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, for talks in Damascus; on November 17, a convoy of about 30 vehicles carrying Syrian and Russian military officials made a field tour of Quneitra, visiting towns “where Israeli forces penetrate on an almost daily basis,” to assess possible Russian deployment in the region. And this took place on the same day that Shaibani was in Beijing, being feted by the Chinese foreign ministry and other top officials, who declared their support for Syrian recovery of the Golan, for Syrian participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, while Shaibani promised that no foreign fighters (ie Uyghurs) in Syria would be allowed to use Syrian territory to threaten Chinese interests, declared Syria’s support for the ‘One-China Policy’, and unfortunately, even made it explicit that this included Taiwan! Yes, Syria knows its reconstruction requires China’s economic might on board!
Condemn the Syrian government for often going completely overboard in its concessions, as long as you recognise that this is just as likely with Russian and Chinese interests as with American. Was it necessary to throw Taiwan under the bus so specifically? No, it was not. And we can think of many other occasions when the Syrian government went beyond the necessary, to the unnecessary, and damaging. And I would certainly like to imagine that a more revolutionary-democratic or socialist-oriented government would try to avoid such pitfalls, be more cognizant of the appeal to the world’s peoples rather than just the world’s ruling classes. Well and good. But this is what we have at the moment, and we must realise that even if we avoided all these excesses, the pressure would still be on any government to do a great deal the same.
Actually, Syria’s policy of refusal to be in any (imaginary) ‘axis’ or ‘bloc’ has been very explicit in countless statements by Sharaa and Shaibani. One sign is that it has used the term ‘strategic partnership’ with the US, Russiaand China alike. In a September interview with Sharaa in Al-Ikhbariya, after discussing growing relations with Russia, the interviewer notes Syria’s relations with the US and asks, “Where does Syria stand?” Sharaa responded that Syria had built good relations with the US, the West and Russia, and with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and other countries, showing that Syria “bring(s) together the global contradictions,” due to “the strength of the event that happened” (ie, the overthrow of Assad). This “led to a balance in relations,” Syria “standing at an equal distance from everyone.”
Syria and Palestine
Finally, what about Palestine? I have already noted above the year of solidarity with Palestine in Idlib (I wrote about it here), but once Syria came under massive Israeli attack in December and January, the government initially went quiet, which was disappointing to say the least, though worth remembering that it was this government that freed hundreds of Palestinians, civilians and fighters, jailed by the Assad regime (those who survived Assad’s death dungeons). Sharaa returned to form in February, when asked in an interview about Trump’s plan to expel the whole population of Gaza, he called this a “very serious crime” and lauded the “80-year” Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing (note: 80-year, not 60-year), even taking aim at Trump’s planned expulsion of Mexicans from the USA as an analogy! Then in March at the Arab League Summit, Sharaa’s speech vigorously condemned Israel’s crimes in Gaza, West Bank and east Jerusalem, stressed Syria’s support for Palestinians struggle, including, crucially, for “return,” and stated that Syria would always stand by Palestine. And at the emergency OIC meeting in August, Shaibani condemned the “silence of global conscience” as Israel’s war crimes continue in defiance of international law and the UN Charter, by “bombing homes, hospitals and schools” which Syria condemns “morally, humanely and historically.” Finally, while most of Sharaa’s 10-minute UN speech naturally focused on his own country’s dire needs and Israel’s aggression against Syria, the only other issue in the world he gave the last part of his speech to was solidarity with Gaza.
Does this mean Syria will do anything to aid Gaza or Palestine? For the present, no, and it knows it cannot, which is also why its stance, while firm and principled, is not overblown; Syrians became allergic to Iranian-style bluster which used exaggerated “anti-Zionist” rhetoric to justify aiding in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Syria and Iraq while never doing anything of consequence in support of Palestine for decades (the “road to Jerusalem” always seemed to lead through Arab capitals like Baghdad and Damascus); they now prefer the gap between rhetoric and reality to be somewhat more smaller. Of course, we can say that Syria, under both Assad and Sharaa, shares the collective Arab betrayal of Gaza; but as a country under Israeli occupation itself, I think we can blame every other Arab country before Syria.
Why democratic gains are central to celebrate, to protect and to extend
The widely shared video at the top of this article shows Syrian security officers guarding an Alawite demonstration in Tartous. The Alawites were demanding the federalisation of Syria, and the release of Assad-era officers who have been arrested to be charged with war crimes, though other Alawite demonstrations in the region the same day were merely condemning sectarian attacks on their brethren in Homs the previous days (these attacks followed the gruesome murder of two Sunni where the killers daubed the place with anti-Sunni sectarian slogans; this was later revealed by authorities to have been a set-up). I have no interest in trying to prettify the grim situation of the Alawites, as I have made clear above. For precisely that reason, despite believing the slogans at this particular protest were incorrect, the fact that a people who feel themselves oppressed in new Syria can demonstrate and be protected by state security is such a contrast to the Assad regime – which from the beginning of 2011 (and forever beforehand) reacted to peaceful protest with murder, incarceration, torture and disappearance – that it serves as one of the best symbols of the real difference that does exist between now and then. In addition, the fact that president Sharaa reacted by stating that the Alawite protesters had “legitimate demands” that he was “fully prepared to listen to” is also very encouraging – though of course actions speak louder than words.
I say all this without illusions, recognising that that there ARE violations of human rights and civilians’ democratic rights taking place under this government, including an occasional disappearance in an unmarked car, if on an infinitely smaller scale than under Assad; and without knowing whether or not this quasi-democratic opening will last; that is a question of struggle. But right now this picture tells an important story of what has been gained and what must not be lost, but rather radically extended.
This is the key gain of the revolution, and the test of whether we can continue to speak of ‘the revolution’ referring to the ongoing situation very much depends on this lasting and deepening; the moment the government were to open fire on a protest would be the moment it has lost all legitimacy and ‘the revolution’ could henceforth only be defined as the struggle against the new regime (indeed, this was the lesson of the early years following the Iranian revolution of 1979 where the Khomeini regime quite rapidly turned its guns on the revolutionary people).
We need to understand this centrality of democratic rights not only because it is a self-evidently just thing in and of itself. For all those opposed to many key aspects of the current situation, the authoritarian tendencies, the sectarian dimension, the neoliberal economic policy, the limitations on women’s role and so on, it is only the intervention of the people – through the growth of trade unions, the revival of civil society, through popular struggle, that any of this can change. Real change will come from below, not from imagining a ‘better’ party in power than (the long dissolved) HTS, and this can only happen if democratic rights are protected and extended.
I wrote this back in 2022 during the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but never put it up here; it was published in the Oakland Socialist blog. Therefore, its details are a little out of date in a number of ways (eg, references to the Assad regime, Yemeni civil war, Libyan civil war etc) but while details have changed, the overall reality has not: this is an argument that the widely spoken-of geopolitical ‘camps’ or ‘blocs’ are comprehensively non-existent – this ‘campist’ politics is not only anti-Marxist, anti-working-class and morally abhorrent, but also based on entirely false premises. While an update may be useful, looking at the Ukraine issue today, with Trump – the head of US imperialism – offering Putin literally everything on a plate and publicly ridiculing Ukrainian leader Zelensky for his reluctance on that score, and the US and Israel both voting against a UN motion to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine while China and Iran at least only abstained, anyone should be able to see the sheer pointlessness of the very notion of ‘camps’.
Trump berating Zelensky for not capitulating to Trump’s demands for total surrender to Putin; Trump lays out red carpet for meeting old friend Putin.
[Useful introduction by Oaklandsocialist who re-published this article at https://oaklandsocialist.com/2022/04/27/the-grand-chessboard-its-not-as-simple-as-you-think/:The following article is by Australian Marxist Michael Karadjis. He uses a couple of terms that may be unfamiliar to some. “Tankies” refers to those on the “left” who support bringing out the tanks to crush a workers’ uprising if those lefts oppose the goals of those workers. For example, when Polish workers rose up against the bureaucratic dictatorship there in 1980 and were crushed militarily. The “campists” often take a similar position, but what that term refers to is how some on the left only see struggles within a country in terms of how it affects rival imperialist blocs; they don’t see what is happening in the class struggle within that country. They almost always feel compelled to find an excuse to oppose whatever side the US is on. In effect, they ignore the working class. What Karadjis shows is that who is in which camp is never as simple as it might seem].
Leftwing ‘campists’ base their “principles” upon some Grand Chessboard geopolitical-economic perspective – just as their erstwhile liberal “opponents” in support of western imperialism likewise do. While doing such analysis is considered by some as being a bit “edgy”, nothing could be further from the truth – it represents the comprehensive absence of class politics.
It is useful that we refute the campists on their own terrain. That is, quite apart from the fact that tankie/campist/counter-hegemonist politics is reactionary, giving political cover to rival imperialist powers such as Russia, or brutal anti-working-class dictatorships such as that of Assad, or reactionary nationalist ethnic cleansers such as Milosevic, it is also based on assumptions about the actual existence of various geopolitical ‘camps’ or ‘blocs’ which in fact are largely a figment of the imagination, a product of the wishes of a political tendency.
Nearly all these campist assumptions arise from the condition of various Old Left activists still apparently living 50 years or more in the past, now supplemented by the odd phenomenon of tough-guy, tankie neo-Stalinism among a section of radical millennials.
Arab Countries and Russia Take Yemen for example. The point has been made that while the US and western imperialism are condemning Russia’s invasion, they do not have the same attitude to years of Saudi terror-bombing Yemen. But while that is a very good point to make about western hypocrisy, a geopolitical analysis won’t help the campists usually trying to make it.
Putin high-fives Saudi Prince bin Salman. Which “camp” is Saudi Arabia in?
The alliance between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt with Russia, is now so solid that, despite these countries depending on US weaponry, they abstained in the UN General Assembly on condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UAE abstained on the Security Council (joining India and China), both Saudi and UAE leaders have allegedly been refusing to take Biden’s phone calls, and they are steadfastly refusing US requests that they pump out more oil to make up for the shortfall caused by sanctions on Russia. The Saudis in particular argue they are loyal to their oil agreements with Russia. The UAE has declared a “strategic alliance” with Russia, while last year Saudi Arabia signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia, and is still considering purchasing the Russian S-400 air defence system. Egypt meanwhile has been buying masses of Russian arms, and Russia began work on Egypt’s first nuclear plant. Finally, neither Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey or Israel have imposed western sanctions on Russia.
Yes, it is a US-backed Saudi war in Yemen, but the Yemeni government that the Saudis are defending (in such a monstrous way) against the Iran-backed Houthi Islamist militia is the internationally-recognised government, which means the one continually voted as such by the UN Security Council, ie by Russia and China, not only the US. Meanwhile, despite the apparent Saudi-UAE alliance, the UAE has been playing its own sub-imperial game against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government by supporting a South Yemeni separatist movement, the logic of which is, yes, also opposed to the northern-based Houthis, but at the same time amenable to a division of Yemen with them. Which are the pro- and anti-imperialists in this?
Israeli PM Bennet and Putin; Netanyahu election poster showing off his special relationship with Putin. Which “camp” is Israel in?
Israel In the case of Israel the famous alliance between Putin and Netanyahu is too well-known to warrant much space here, just to say that it continues with current Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet, the first “world leader” to make a high profile visit to Putin following the invasion, and while Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Yair Lapid has generally gone along with the US pressure to say something, the far-right Bennet steadfastly refuses to mention Russia and banned his ministers from doing so; meanwhile the Netanyahu opposition condemns the government for even buckling to US pressure at all by saying anything at all.
It is notable that the entire world media has explained, as if common knowledge, that Israel and Russia cooperate in Syria, where Russia allows Israel to bomb Iranian positions by not activating its air-defence system there, as long as Israel doesn’t bomb the Assad regime (which it has no interest in doing). Useful info in case anyone thought that Russia and Iran were both in some imaginary anti-American “camp.” But while all true, the fuller explanation is that Israel always preferred an Assad victory over the rebels, just that it prefers Russia rather than Iran to be the main benefactor of that victory.
Two years ago, Russia, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria’s Assad regime and French imperialism formed a coalition in support of the right-wing warlord Hafter in eastern Libya who was waging war on the Libyan government, which was backed by Turkey and Qatar, and also Iran. Try doing dumb campist politics with that! Which is the “US-backed” and “anti-US” side?
Turkey, Syria & NATO When Turkey invaded Syria to attack the US-backed, leftist Kurdish-led SDF in 2019, this was furiously condemned by Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Assad regime also condemned it, but at the same time made clear that it aimed to do the same as Turkey was doing to the SDF; basically it was angry that someone else was doing its job, but not too angry. Palestinian Hamas declared its support for its Turkish ally against the SDF, whose core group is the Syrian branch of the PKK, once an “anti-imperialist” favorite. So does that mean the SDF is in the pro-US imperialist camp and Hamas in the anti-US imperialist camp? But hang on, Turkey, where lots of Hamas leaders live, is in NATO, while Israel/Egypt/Saudi/UAE are not …
Incidentally, if Turkey attacks the SDF, the key US ally in Syria since 2014, while being a NATO member, and NATO-leader US’s key ally in Syria is the Syrian wing of the PKK, Turkey’s arch nemesis, this might also raise questions as to the effectiveness of NATO in ever acting as a united vehicle in some kind of offensive capacity against Russia, as much left-magical theory suggests (even perhaps aimed at “Balkanising Russia”, according to some truly out-there left-conspiracist fantasy). As we might remember, the loudest voices against the US invasion of Iraq came from NATO France and Germany, while NATO Turkey refused to allow the US to stage its invasion from Turkey. Four NATO members still refuse to recognise Kosovo, despite the Kosovo war having been virtually the only ever united NATO action, and even now NATO member Hungary rejects sanctions on Russia or arms to Ukraine.
In recent years, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco and effectively Oman have re-established relations with Israel (joining Egypt and Jordan which long ago did), allegedly with the somewhat more reserved backing of Saudi Arabia, which is reluctant to commit. In the very same recent years, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan and Oman have re-established relations with the Assad regime, with the somewhat more reserved backing of Saudi Arabia, which is reluctant to commit (it finally joined them in 2023). Tell me again, which “camps” are these countries in?
Russia and Syria When Russia launched its war of aggression against the Syrian people in 2015 on behalf of the genocidal tyrant Assad, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan released a statement welcoming the invasion, while Netanyahu’s already existing bromance with Putin began its true blossoming. When the US launched its war against ISIS in Syria in 2014, it was welcomed by the Assad regime.
In other words, the entire edifice of imaginary ‘camps’ in the Middle East simply does not exist, not at all, nothing, zilch, nada, but many leftists (and liberals for that matter) still imagine they are living in 1969 or something.
Conclusion: Get back to basics! But if this summary shows that conventional geopolitical assumptions are purely imaginary, what explanation can we make of this apparent geopolitical mess? How can we “geopolitically” analyse this mess? Seems to me we need to get back to the basics about class, revolution and counterrevolution, and combine this with recognition that powerful sub-imperial rivalries can at times ‘play’ with these class dynamics, try to ride them, coopt them, exploit them to their advantage against rivals, at closer range than larger imperialist powers, producing at times confusing alliances, but at all times the main dynamic is fundamental alliance against revolution and in defence of the the ancien regime system throughout the region, where the ruling classes of all these reactionary regimes were threatened by [the Arab] Spring.
A few years ago in reply to a friend I wrote this piece on the question [in relation to Syria], and though of course much has changed since, once again most of the basics are solid.
The investigative commission report into the March massacre of the Alawite citizenry, set up by the Syrian government at the time, finally turned in its findings on July 10, four months after it was launched. Claiming some 1400 killings, it identified 298 individuals broadly aligned with government-led forces, and 265 individuals who took part in the initial Assadist insurgency, as alleged perpetrators of these killings and other violations. I first held off publishing this report – much of which I wrote months ago – due to the difficulties of establishing facts from afar, but then as time went on decided to await the investigative report. However, as I publish, while press conferences have been held, the government has still not made the report public, though we are aware of its broad outlines, so I am releasing my understanding of the situation now; if and when it becomes pubic, I am happy to be proven wrong on any points; or to acknowledge that the investigation did not live up to expectations. Late Update: the UNHCR Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic has also finally released its mammoth report, with a huge amount of detailed information.
This is a huge report which I have put together over months. Please don’t complain that it’s too “lengthy.” It is not an essay. In writing this report I am also compiling a huge amount of material. Please treat it as a resource rather than a quick read. There is a bibliography, including main reports, at the end.
Michael Karadjis
Contents
Introduction
The Assadist Insurgency
The Syrian government’s security response – and the sectarian pogrom
Disinformation overload
Syrian government reaction
Arrests
Who was responsible for the civilian massacres?
The General Security forces (GSS): Reportedly the most ‘disciplined’ and ‘professional’
Military ‘factions’, ‘foreign jihadis’, ‘Amshat and Hamzat’ – Heavily reported as responsible for massacres
However, some military brigades acted with integrity
Armed civilians and “revenge” killing
Assad regime slaughterhouse: Incubator of sectarian mayhem
The initial ‘fairy-tale’ and its abrupt ending
The unfolding deterioration of the situation from December to March
Causes of this deterioration of the Alawite situation
What now? The evolution of the al-Sharaa government
What needs to be done?
Bibliography
Introduction
While the Assad regime’s tyrannical rule always contained an unofficial sectarian element, it was only when it came under threat from the people’s revolution in 2011-12 that it made a deliberate decision to sectarianise the conflict on a truly massive scale; Syria turned into a gigantic laboratory of genocidal sectarian engineering, cleansing and massacre. The large-scale sectarian massacres of Alawite civilians over March 7-8, which took place in response to the attempted coup and slaughter of security forces and civilians unleashed by Assadist officers on March 6, demonstrate that the impacts of this policy are ongoing and have boomeranged horrifically against innocent civilian members of the sect that the Assad regime’s rule was based among.
The medium-term impacts of these events are difficult to fathom. Just three months after the glorious revolution against the genocidal regime, characterised precisely by a total lack of revenge, either sectarian or directed, it seems the Assadist coup leaders got what they wanted: a massive hole in the revolution, the alienation from the rest of post-Assad Syria of a large part of the Alawite population now multiplied a thousand-fold. Whether some of that can be undone depends a great deal on what the government does next; but for a great many Alawi who were exposed to the slaughter, the ship has sailed; thousands have fled to Lebanon, thousands more just want to leave.
The Syrian government led by president Ahmed al-Sharaa ordered that civilians not be touched, condemned the massacres, set up a commission to investigate the events and bring perpetrators to trial, and made arrests, and rapidly expelled unruly elements from the region and brought the massacre to a close; the general security forces most directly under its command appear to have been the least involved and the most professional compared to unruly military factions, jihadi groups and armed civilians; propaganda claims that this was a massacre unleashed by the government of “HTS” (which no longer exists) or “al-Qaeda” (which Nusra, the forerunner of HTS, quit in 2016) should be dismissed. Indeed, the UN Commission of Inquiry report “found no evidence of a governmental policy or plan to carry out such attacks” (p.18). Simplistic nonsense serves no useful purpose, though it was very useful to enemies of the new Syria, especially Israel, Iran and various other forces influenced by them.
Nevertheless, that does not absolve the government; the military and other forces that carried out this pogrom were theoretically under the authority of the government, so even though it appears to be mostly a question of massive indiscipline and government lack of control of newly patched-together military forces, in international law it still holds overall legal responsibility. The government was also initially slow to move with the level of urgency that the gravity of the situation required, though this can also be explained by being overwhelmed by such fast-moving events. There are more significant critiques that can be made of its handling of the situation beforehand, which I will touch on later. It is certainly valid to critique its apparent lack of interest in giving the issue the attention it needs since, given that nothing that has occurred since the revolution can be compared to the slaughter of a thousand or so civilians over a couple of days (declaring a day of mourning, for example, would have demonstrated some kind of genuine commitment).
Whatever the case, the future of the revolution – meaning not simply the overthrow of Assad and the ‘democratic space’ now open in Syria, but more broadly the revolution’s promise of a Syria for all its communities, a Syria that rejects the methods of the past regime – now depends on how real, how effective, how transparent, how just this process of identifying, trying and punishing the perpetrators is, as well as working hard with the Alawite community leaders for effective policies related to compensation, reconciliation and above all inclusion in the institutions of the new Syria, especially at the level of security.
I am not making any predictions about how real this process will be, and am interested neither in spreading illusions in the al-Sharaa government, nor of demonising it. Below is my understanding of the situation for now; I can’t guarantee every sentence is correct. Not being in Syria, it has been extremely difficult to get a clear understanding, with Syrians on the ground presenting a myriad of different, often sharply contrasting accounts. That’s one reason I have held off publishing for so long; most of this was written months ago. Nevertheless, I believe the below, and the analysis of the wider background, is fundamentally sound.
[As I publish now, in early August, last month witnessed a disastrous debacle in Suweida with a horrific massacre of the Druze population which suggests the government learned little from these March events; some would say it shows the government still has little control over some of its armed forces, while others would claim it proves the government is deliberately behind such mass violations in order to instrumentalise sectarianism to consolidate its Sunni base, kind of Assad-in-reverse; I have written of these events elsewhere, but it is impossible to do any justice to these huge events here].
The Assadist insurgency
The chain of events began on April 6, when hundreds of former Assadist officers, who had been hiding out in mountainous parts of the two coastal provinces – Tartous and Latakia – where Alawites predominate, with large quantities of weaponry, launched a coordinated ambush on Syria’s new security forces in the region, as well as attacking government buildings, hospitals, power plants, gas and oil companies and attempting to seize control of the region. They also severed an underground power supply on March 7, cutting power to most of Latakia.
According to the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), the Assadists “targeted police stations, checkpoints, and cut the Latakia-Jableh-Baniyas main road, concurrently with attacks on the Naval Forces Command, the Naval College near Jableh, the Criminal Security branches in Latakia and Jableh, Al-Qardaha Regional Command, and Jableh National Hospital, taking full control of them. They also cut the Duraikeish Road, Al-Qastal-Latakia Road, the Beit Yashout Road, and Satamu Military Airport, in addition to seizing control of Tartous port checkpoints. At the onset of the attacks, these groups killed approximately 75 individuals, including members of the General Security, police officers, and civilians. Around 200 personnel were taken captive, and dozens were injured.” The UN Commission of Inquiry report however claims some 175 General Security officers (plus 22 earlier) were killed in these ambushes, plus 61 officers of the army Division 400 stationed in the region (p. 10-11).
Initial reports were that some 25 Sunni civilians were also killed, but later these figures were greatly multiplied, as over 200 civilians “including women and children, were killed in mass executions and systematic attacks targeting residential neighborhoods and public roads.” The first 15 civilians were killed by “gunmen targeting their vehicles on the outskirts of the city of Jableh” on Thursday March 6, according to reportage by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), who further reported that “vehicles with Idlib license plates were deliberately attacked, and several victims’ bodies were burned inside them,” claiming at least 32 civilian vehicles were so targeted, as in the example of “Badr Hatem, his wife Walaa Saqr, and his son Ali [who] were killed by remnants of the former regime and their bodies were hidden simply because they were from Idlib Governorate.”
According to Omran in Syria Direct, a resident of Jableh where the insurgency began (and who vigorously condemns the pro-government military factions who later sacked the city), “While first storming the city’s southern neighborhoods, regime remnants carried out sectarian killings against the Sunni component.” The report by the well-respected SCM notes the same. This prompted “Sunni youth to announce a public mobilization in the city and pursue the regime remnants to stop them from taking control of the city. They broke the siege on hospitals that were besieged by groups affiliated with the former regime.” Another report claimed “The coup attempt started in Alawite villages (Beit Aana, Hmeimim, Qardaha), reaching Jableh’s outskirts. Hospitals were used as ambush sites against security forces and civilians providing aid. … By midnight 07/03/2025, regime militias took Umm Barghal checkpoint in the south, attacking Sunni homes & killing 7 young men. … By 07/03/2025 afternoon, 15+ Sunni martyrs had fallen.” This report similarly discusses the decisive role of Jableh citizens in resisting this opening Assadist attack.
While some have attempted to downplay the Assadist insurgency and slaughter as a virtual invention of the Syrian government in order to initiate a sectarian rampage, even this report by a local Alawite which indeed does blame the government, does somewhat downplay the Assadist attack, and describes the slaughter of Alawites in the most horrific terms imaginable, nevertheless states that “at least 120 of them [government security forces] were killed by regime remnants [ie, Assadists]. … A friend who had helped evacuate his Sunni relatives from Snobar, near Jableh, put it bluntly: ‘All the good ones have been wiped out’.”
Similarly, Christian activist ‘S’ who “works with both Sunni and Alawite communities,” describes the night of March 6 in Baniyas, where possibly the most terrible massacres of Alawites subsequently took place (cited in Gregory Waters’ Syria Revisited site):
“ … you could hear and see the bodies of General Security being brought to the hospital. I think 150 bodies of security forces were brought to the hospital in total [from the city and countryside]. Many Alawites here still deny that there was an insurgency, but then why was I warned that evening and how do you explain the killed security forces? After a few hours of the attack and taking over some neighborhoods, most of the insurgents fled. They realized there was no foreign intervention coming and they had been tricked by the regime media and leaders and had made a huge mistake.”
The leaders of the Assadist insurgency are well-known. On March 6, a statement signed by Brigadier General Ghiath Suleiman Dalla, a former commander in the Assad regime’s notoriously brutal Fourth Division, announced the launch of “the Military Council for the Liberation of Syria,” calling for “the overthrow of the existing regime” and “the liberation of all Syrian territory from the occupying terrorist forces.”
Earlier, on February 7, another former Assadist military officer with a brutal record, Muqdad Fatiha, had announced the formation of the ‘Coastal Shield Brigade’, calling for attacks on government security forces. A series of killings of security forces increased throughout February and early March, leading up to the March 6 mass ambush. Another group are troops linked to Bassam Hossam Al-Din, a former leader of the Assadist Mountain Lions militia, who as early as December 11 threatened to launch an “Alawite military revolution,” and in January kidnapped and threatened to behead a number of security personnel. More recently, it emerged that yet another former Assadist officer, now residing in the United Arab Emirates, Mohammad Jaber, former leader of the Assadist Desert Falcons militia, was also involved in the insurgency, by his own admission.
The massacres targeted both security forces and civilians. In addition to the Sunni civilians targeted on a sectarian basis, it has been widely alleged that the Assadist forces also killed Alawite civilians considered ‘disloyal’ for refusing to support the insurgency. Indeed, Muqdad Fatiha himself released a video in early 2025 where he openly threatened Alawite civilians who had accepted the new Syrian government, or who had denounced his savage crimes: “Your punishment will be severe, boys and girls. I have your names and your social media accounts, I have all the information I need to find you. I’ll be coming to see you soon.” Interestingly, he notes that he has “no problem with HTS,” who “gave me amnesty and treated me well,” but “my problem is with you, my fellow Alawites.” He also confirms that images of him carrying out atrocities under Assad are real.
It is difficult to assess the degree of support among Alawite civilians for the Assadist insurgency. Reportage in the immediate weeks after the overthrow of Assad revealed how hated the Assad regime was among most Alawites, despite them being in many ways ‘favoured’; it massively thieved from them, while treating a generation of their young men as cannon fodder for these thieves. Yet the widespread alienation of much of the Alawite population – discussed below – by March can hardly be denied. There are numerous reports of sections of the Alawite population having been aware of the coup plans and not warning about them. According to another account, “some had prior knowledge of the preparations to target general security, and some hid the remnants and their weapons in their homes, while others participated in hiding weapons near the Ali al-Qadi School in Jableh.” According to ‘S’, a Christian from Baniyas, where the worst subsequent massacre of Alawites took place, in Qusour neighborhood early in the evening of the coup attempt, the Alawite population packed their bags and returned to their villages, one telling him “Close your shop and leave, everything will be settled soon” (though he says Baniyas was the only part of Tartous province where this happened). To be clear – the actions of some alienated Alawites in no way justifies the wholesale slaughter of the Alawite citizenry that took place next, but it is clear that such stories would have provided fuel to the murderous sectarian response.
The Syrian government’s security response – and the sectarian pogrom
Top: Photos of the first 100 security personnel massacred by the Assadists spread outrage around Syria; Bottom: Cover of the Syrian Network for Human Rights’ preliminary report into the massacres of Alawites.
When news spread of the slaughter of the security forces and civilians, along with that of an attempted comeback by the genocide-regime of Sednaya, demonstrations erupted around the country. While the government sent in many more of its new General Security forces (GSS) to confront the insurgents, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) also began to mobilise forces of the new army, which had only just been stitched together, made up of former rebel brigades and still lacking effective command and control; and in addition, thousands of armed citizens descended on the coast for the same reason, responding to unofficial calls for “general mobilisation.” At least some of these calls for mobilisation were made by sectarian preachers in certain mosques, preaching anti-Alawite hate. As the SNHR reports, “In these operations, local military factions, foreign Islamist groups nominally affiliated with the Ministry of Defense but not organizationally integrated with it, and local armed civilian groups provided support to government forces without being officially affiliated with any specific military formation.”
While their main target was obviously the Assadist killers, among the ranks of these thousands were perhaps hundreds who used the chaos to launch horrific sectarian attacks on defenceless Alawite citizens (often in rural areas), whether driven by thirst for irrational collective ‘revenge’ for the Assadist nightmare they had experienced, hateful jihadist ideology or simply looting and pillaging. While the violators included some security officers, overwhelmingly undisciplined military factions and armed civilian groups were responsible for the killing, as will be documented below; internal security (the GSS) were largely more disciplined and focused on fighting the insurgency. One very important aspect is that the slaughter of hundreds of security personnel stationed there, and then the need to fight the insurgency, severely limited their ability to protect Alawite citizens from the undisciplined sectarian elements theoretically on their side.
The SNHR reported that these “widespread and severe violations” included “extrajudicial killings, field executions, and systematic mass killings motivated by revenge and sectarianism. Additionally, civilians, including medical personnel, journalists, and humanitarian workers, were targeted. The violations also extended to attacks on public facilities and dozens of public and private properties, causing waves of forced displacement affecting hundreds of residents. Dozens of civilians and Internal Security personnel also went missing, significantly worsening the humanitarian and security situation in the affected areas.” Horrific reports included the killing of entire families, killing men in front of their families, the separation and killing of all the menfolk in an area.
Killers who went door to door regularly asked whether the residents were Alawite or Sunni, then proceeding to kill the menfolk if the response was Alawite, according to SNHR. Many such cases are documented in the Amnesty International report released in early April.
Five days passed before the respected SNHR released its preliminary full report; it took some time precisely because it aims to do a proper job, to at least attempt some initial sorting out of facts from the literal mountains of disinformation that spread around the world. The data released by SNHR in its March 11 report is horrendous enough, increasing in several updates. The following main data is from the latest April 16 update, while some extra information is from the more thorough April 9 update:
1662 unlawfully killed between March 6 and March 17 (most between March 6-10), of whom:
At least 445 were killed by the insurgent Assadist forces, a figure which includes:
at least 214 members of security, police, and military forces
at least 231 civilians
At least 1217 were killed by “armed forces participating in [government-led] military operations (including “military factions, armed local residents, both Syrian and foreign, General Security personnel”) during the extensive security and military campaign.” SNHR assessed that the “vast majority” were carried out by certain “military factions” that only recently joined the new Syrian army. More on this below.
These victims were mostly civilians but some were “disarmed members of the [previous] regime remnants.”
The latter group seems to refer to some who took part in the Assadist insurgency without uniforms, were disarmed in the fighting, and then field-executed. The SCM report noted the same thing, claiming the dead “included disarmed participants in the Assadist insurgency,” stressing this is still a war crime. SNHR reports that “It is extremely difficult to distinguish between civilians and disarmed Assad regime, as the latter were wearing civilian clothing.” However, according to the government’s investigative report, released in July, “some of the victims were former military personnel who had reconciled with the authorities,” which is even worse, because this means by then they were indisputably civilians. It notes that “the presence of Assad regime remnants among the dead cannot be ruled out,” but states “most of the killings occurred either outside combat zones or after the conclusion of military operations.”
The fact that many Assadist officers were in civilian clothing, or that some Alawite armed civilians joined the insurgency, “emerg[ing] with personal weapons as soon as the attacks began,” is not controversial. According to local Tartous journalist Ram Asaad, the Syrian government is responsible for the outcome “because it confronted them [the insurgents] inside cities and it cannot distinguish between civilians and remnants,” but this is because “the regime remnants wear civilian clothes, and are spread among civilian neighbourhoods. There is no distance between them and civilians.”
The killings included 60 children and 84 adult women (according to the April 9 update), 51 children and 63 women attributed to the pro-government forces, and 9 children and 21 women to the Assadist insurgents.
The SNHR notes there were also an unspecified number of Assadist troops killed, estimated to also be in the hundreds, but that it “does not document the deaths of non-state armed group members during clashes, as the killing of these forces is not considered illegal.”
The caution taken by the SNHR in releasing its data is replicated by Amnesty International, which took almost a month to release a report, though Amnesty only interviewed 16 Syrians, all Alawites. Meanwhile, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) released an updated report on July 11 claiming 1,060 casualties among civilians and some disarmed Assadist insurgents (considerably lower than the SNHR update’s figures), along with 218 deaths of members of the General Security forces (slightly more than SNHR). The government’s Investigative Commission’s report, released in July, reported 1,426 mostly Alawite civilian deaths (while noting, like the SCM, that many Sunni civilians were killed in the initial Assadist attack), thus a higher figure than either SCM or SNHR, as well as the death of 238 security personnel. The UN Commission of Inquiry report, released in August, reported some 1,400 people, “predominantly civilians,” were killed, along with “hundreds of interim government forces.”
Meanwhile, while responsible bodies were taking time and care with their reportage, most of the world’s media impatiently reported the claims of an organisation called the ‘Syrian Observatory of Human Rights’ (SOHR), run by one Rami Abdulrahman, from a computer in Coventry, UK. The SOHR’s numbers of murdered Alawite civilians jumped from 134 to 340 to 745 to 973 to over 1000 all within about 24 hours (and then up to some 1700 within a few days). While the actual numbers were horrific enough, releasing “data” at such a rapid pace would make any cross-checking for accuracy impossible and does not do justice to the victims (by contrast, the well-respected SCM’s 1060 figure was a reduction of some 100 from its initial report “as documentation and verification continued, showing that some of the names were duplicate, and that some individuals were included as dead based on multiple sources, and it was later found that they were still alive”). Notably, the SOHR and Abdulrahman have long been considered either unreliable or suspect by Syrian activists, in particular for claiming at times that the number of Assad regime troops killed was higher than the numbers of civilians killed, a claim defying basic objective logic. We can leave further aside claims of “7000 Alawites and Christians” killed made by various propaganda quarters.
Alawite victims of sectarian killings also included well-known figures who have been involved in the movement against the Assad regime for years or decades.
Anti-Assad Alawites, Abdul Latif Ali, murdered, and Hanadi Zahlout, who lost her brothers to murder, by sectarian pogromists.
Opposition activist and former Syrian prisoner Abdul Latif Ali was executed outside his home along with his two sons in front of his wife and other female family members. According to a Syrian friend, “In 1970, he was among a small group of left-wing Alawites from Jableh who attempted, unsuccessfully, to organize protests against Hafez’s coup. Infiltrated by Hafez’s informants, he and his comrades were detained and viciously beaten before they even had the chance. He was ecstatic when the regime fell in December. In his last Facebook post, he urged young Alawite men not to fall for the trap being laid by henchmen of the former regime.” Here’s what his daughter had to say regarding false claims he was killed by the Assadist remnants.
Hanadi Zahlout, a prominent activist who took part in the uprising against the Assad regime in 2011, mourns her 3 brothers, “murdered in cold blood yesterday in Syria’s coastal region.” President al-Sharaa rang her to express his condolences. She thanked him and said she was putting her faith into the official investigation.
The lives of anti-Assad Alawite activists are not more important than those of innocent Alawite civilians slaughtered. But it does highlight the completely counterrevolutionary nature of sectarian crimes, and the stain of sectarianism in general.
These events were horrific for all involved, the terrorised Alawite civilians of course, but also the families of the new security officers and civilians slaughtered by the Assadist officers. However, Assadists can be expected to act like Assadists. It is impossible to overestimate the feelings of sheer terror, as well as betrayal, of Alawite civilians, hoping for something better with the fall of the regime that treated them as a mix of dirt and cannon fodder, now being subjected to such a terrifying pogrom by forces aligned with the government, however undisciplined and in open violation of government orders they may have been.
Disinformation overload
There have also been mountains of misinformation and absurd exaggeration. While none of this changes the reality of what did take place, it is important to understand the levels of nonsense floating around cyberspace. It is unwise to share any images or testimonies you are not absolutely certain are the real thing. Here is just as small handful of examples.
The first is explained in the tweet itself: an example of passing off crimes of the Assad regime as crimes committed now against Alawites. The creator of the original dishonest meme is the strange web-virus calling itself ‘Syrian Girl’, who spent 14 years actively supporting the genocidal crimes of the Assad regime, such as this one she now tries to credit to “Jolani’s gangs.” Similarly, as revealed by the excellent Verify Syria site, the second example is a “widely shared video, allegedly from a fallen regime member’s phone, claimed to show summary executions of civilians. The footage actually dates back to 2013 and documents a massacre committed by Assad’s forces in Tartous.”
Another class of examples are those that claim crimes committed by Israel were actually occurring on the Syrian coast at the time. Verify Syria exposed this “widely shared video [which] claimed that Syrian aircraft bombed civilian homes with barrel bombs. In reality, the footage shows Israeli airstrikes on Qusaya, Lebanon, in December 2024.” Even crimes committed in India were passed off as crimes on the Syrian coast. The second photo above, showing a Syrian child named Dahab Munir Alou, and claiming her as a victim in the recent coastal violence, “has been circulated online multiple times over the years, with the earliest record dating back three years.” Still another class of misinformation images are countless cases claiming people have been killed who then turn up to demonstrate that are in fact alive. The video above on the bottom claimed that Dr. Kinanah Ali and her children had been killed. The doctor later appeared in this video, denying the news and confirming that she was alive.
There were also false claims about government policy. According to Verify, “claims that Syrian forces banned media from covering arrests and summary executions are based on a forged document. The alleged directive was altered from a February 14 order on military asset transfers.”
One specific aspect of disinformation was the assertion that Christians were also being slaughtered. The fact that these were lies does not make the actual slaughter of Alawites any better, of course, but the claims about Christians were aimed at western Islamophobic audiences. Among leading Trumpist circles, such claims, based on mountains of social media memes, were made by Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Vice-President Vance, and even Jim Risch, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The claim was not upheld in any of the human rights reports, and was denied in a statement issued by the Pastors of Christian Churches in Lattakia, who also advised in response to claims being spread on social media pages, “we kindly ask that you always rely on news issued through the official church pages exclusively, and we urge you not to be swayed by rumors, especially after the reassuring message we heard during the meeting we held this evening with a delegation from the leadership of the Syrian General Security Administration.” Syrian Bishop Hanna Jallouf, head of Syria’s Catholic Church in Aleppo, confirmed that “No Christians have been killed in Syria – claims to the contrary are false and misleading.”
Several Christians were killed in the chaos, one father of a priest in a carjacking by some people looting, one over a land dispute, and, ironically, two killed by Assadist gunmen shooting up cars with Idlib numberplates. Clearly, Christians were not specific targets in any of these cases.
Again, none of this means that horrendous killings did not occur. But misinformation does a disservice both to the real victims, by causing doubt about all claims, and to the actual victims in the other cases being misrepresented. The irresponsible spreading of lies by enemies of the Syrian people aims only to inflame the situation.
Syrian government reaction
Confronted with the Assadist insurgency and the slaughter it unleashed, the Syrian government sent in more security forces, but unofficial calls for a ‘general mobilisation’ spread around the country. This was partly responsible for the large-scale descent on the coast by factions and armed civilians from around the country that led to the chaos in which civilians were killed in large numbers. Latakia resident Alaa Awda claims that these calls for a general mobilization opened the way “indiscriminately for everyone to come to the coast, whoever they are, some of whom want to settle scores on a sectarian basis.”
However, already on March 7, the Military Operations Administration declared “the state does not need men to fight in its ranks or to declare a state of emergency in mosques,” and shortly afterwards, al-Sharaa called on “all forces that have joined the clash sites to fully obey the military and security leaders there, and to immediately evacuate the sites to control the violations that have occurred.”
In his first statements on Friday March 7, Sharaa condemned attacks on civilians and stated “everyone who attacks defenceless civilians and attacks people for the crimes of others will be held strictly accountable.” However, it was not immediately clear from this speech that forces fighting for the government side were already responsible for a large part of such attacks and of a most reprehensible form; and his primary attack was on the Assadist forces who had precipitated the disaster with their own massacres. While putting primary blame on the Assadists certainly had validity given their precipitation of the crisis, this statement arguably did not respond with the gravity required given how terrible the situation already was in relation to the slaughter being unleashed by elements of the pro-government side.
Sharaa stated “What distinguishes us from our enemy is our commitment to our principles. When we compromise our morals, we become our enemy on one level.” While this part of the statement is very good, it is still not clear from it that large numbers had already done precisely this, that they were precisely not “distinguishing themselves” from the Assadist enemy. He called on the security forces to “not allow anyone to overstep or exaggerate in their reaction” (to the Assadist insurgency), but it was unclear that overstepping was already going on on a large scale. He stressed it is their role to protect all the citizens of the coast, yet added, “from the gangs of the fallen regime.”
The interior ministry put the killings down to “individual violations” and pledged to stop them. “After remnants of the toppled regime assassinated a number of security personnel, popular unorganised masses headed to the coast, which led to a number of individual violations.” The source stressed that “these violations do not represent the Syrian people as a whole,” a welcome statement to be sure, but the violations were well beyond “individual” and had already become “mass” violations.
By March 8 the tune was changing. “We will hold accountable, firmly and without leniency, anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians … or who overstepped the powers of the state,” al-Sharaa declared. That morning the government halted military operations, having largely defeated the Assadists, and shut all roads in order to remove gunmen not under the command of the Defense and Interior ministries, and began making arrests. By late in the day, “at least five different groups of gunmen had been captured.”
On March 10, Sharaa again upped the rhetoric level. Noting that that “many parties entered the Syrian coast and many violations occurred, it became an opportunity for revenge,” he said. “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability. Even among those closest to us, or the most distant from us, there is no difference in this matter. Violating people’s sanctity, violating their religion, violating their money, this is a red line in Syria.”
Its mandate includes “investigating the causes, circumstances and details of the incidents, examining human rights violations suffered by civilians and identifying the perpetrators, investigating attacks on public institutions, security forces and military personnel, and referring those found guilty of crimes and violations to the judiciary.”
The government also announced a High Commission for Civil Peace in the coastal region, tasked with “meeting with communities and listening to them, ensuring their security and safety.” On March 19, the commission held a meeting with senior Alawite notables in Latakia and agreed on a set of measures, including release of Alawite detainees and others currently under investigation, removing any restrictions on former regime soldiers currently holding settlement cards, limiting arrests to those believed to pose imminent security threats, removing government forces from residential buildings which they had occupied as new checkpoints, and establishing phone lines dedicated for receiving complaints.
In addition, according to journalist Haid Haid, local authorities in Latakia announced mourning ceremonies for all victims of the violence, both civilians and security forces. However, they also announced celebrations of the anniversary of the revolution in days soon after the carnage. In Latakia and Tartous, the feelings regarding anything resembling a celebration, even for those most associated with the revolution, would be very mixed in the circumstances to say the least.
I am not citing speeches by al-Sharaa or other government statements, or providing information about the accountability and civil peace mechanisms, in order to sow illusions. Whether these statements are reflected in real action and whether these mechanisms lead to real accountability remains to be seen and should be judged on that basis; that is virtually a life and death test for the revolution. On March 24, the investigative committee met with the UN Commission of Inquiry in Damascus, reportedly planning to coordinate their work on the issue; this certainly seems to be a positive, but again, results are what count.
However, it is important to distinguish the actions of undisciplined sections of security and armed forces from the security operation as a whole, which was unfortunately made necessary by the Assadist insurgency; and to understand that the massacre of Alawites was not a policy of an “al-Qaeda regime” as much anti-Syrian propaganda purports, even if we can be critical of government policy in relation to the events, and in relation to the Alawite question leading up to the events (to be discussed below), and since.
And the improvement in al-Sharaa’s statements, while perhaps simply reflecting the fast pace of events, may also reflect pressure from the outrage expressed by thousands of Syrian revolution activists with the massacres, which goes against all they have fought for the last fourteen years; the revolution is the people and their demands as long as they have not been crushed, the revolution is not the regime.
Arrests
Arrests of perpetrators began on March 8 and has continued. The following two photos are from the ‘Syria Weekly’ compilation of March 4-11.
The first photo below shows a fighter from a MOD formation being arrested by Military Police in Latakia on March 10, accused of committing crimes against civilians which he filmed on his phone; the second photo, another four men arrested on March 11, accused of committing violations “and “unlawful violent acts against civilians” in Latakia.
The Military Police also arrested these two MOD fighters below on March 10, after a video of them committing “bloody violations of civil rights in a coastal village went viral.” They were “transferred to the special military court.” Second image is video of the March 9 arrest of “Hussein Wassouf and his group” accused of committing crimes against civilians.
According to long-time and well-known Syrian journalist and activist Hadi Abdullah, “more than 50 elements from the Ministry of Defense have been dismissed and transferred to the investigation for suspicions of their involvement in violations and individual offenses, and a follow-up of those who appeared in videos of other violations is being carried out.”
[Following the release of the government’s investigative committee report in July, which alleged some 298 individuals were involved in these killings, the first 42 have reportedly been arrested].
Who was responsible for the civilian massacres?
Tens of thousands of people both from official security bodies and unofficial armed civilians initially descended on the coast in the chaos to fight the prospect of a return of the genocidal dictatorship and to avenge the initial slaughter unleashed by the Assadists; some 1217 Alawite civilians (or ‘disarmed troops’) were killed according to the SNHR. Such numbers indicate that the vast majority of pro-government combatants did indeed focus their fight on the Assadist insurgents and did not target civilians.
Unfortunately, while war in general brings out the worst in people, in a chaotic situation in which the new government has only just set up new security and military forces, and the whole system of command and control remains rudimentary, violations are even more likely to occur; and even more so in an atmosphere pumped with sectarianism by the genocidal Assad regime sectarian laboratory, with many out for murderous collective ‘revenge’.
While many people on all sides of the debate will not like me making the analogy, I believe these factors also describe what happened in the Gaza pocket in southern Israel on October 7. Likewise the Hamas leadership claims it only aimed at the occupation military bases but that violations took place against the orders. This is not the place to make judgements on this, I’m merely reporting the statements. Like on the Syrian coast, thousands crossed the Israel-Gaza demarcation line (including large numbers outside Hamas leadership control), and hundreds of Israeli and other civilians were killed. In both the October 7 and March 7-8 cases, if anything even close to the majority of fighters were out for civilian blood, we would have seen thousands upon thousands killed. But hundreds, or even mere dozens, of fighters (whether uniformed or otherwise) determined to kill can kill a lot of people.
So who committed most of the sectarian crimes? Violations were reported by elements of all forces involved: elements of the security forces, ‘factions’ of the MOD military forces, and armed civilian groups, but far more from the last two categories than from the first. First, it might just be useful to explain the difference between these groups and who they are:
The “security forces” refers to the new General Security Service (GSS) set up by the new government under the Internal Affairs Ministry. According to very knowledgeable Syria watcher Gregory Waters, these forces “are generally speaking legacy HTS and Salvation Government formations, at least at the leadership level.” Both local police and GSS units “have roots in Idlib’s SSG political or police offices.” He assesses that this “has resulted in the Ministry of Interior appearing to have better command over its units, who in turn have an overall better track record of professionalism, than the country’s military units.” This assessment fits with the evidence below.
The new Syrian Army, under the Ministry of Defence (MOD), formed from dozens of former rebel factions, including HTS itself, which were asked to dissolve in January. Most, but not all, did so. However, Waters assesses that “this was almost entirely a symbolic process,” and “by and large, most armed groups have not merged into the new ministry, let alone dissolved.” Moreover, the least integrated into the new structure are the military factions from the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), which “retain their own independent revenue streams through both Turkish salaries and years of criminal activity in northern Syria and foreign deployments.” These SNA factions “are only nominally under the Ministry of Defense.” Once again, this fits with the evidence that certain SNA military factions were overwhelmingly responsible for large-scale crimes in the coast.
Armed civilian groups – this category includes both local Sunni civilians, and civilian groups that initially poured in from outside the coast.
Foreign jihadi groups, previously associated with HTS but now integrated into neither the GSS nor the Army can be included as a special category.
The General Security forces (GSS): Reportedly the most ‘disciplined’ and ‘professional’
According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights many of the cases documented were of “summary executions carried out on a sectarian basis reportedly by unidentified armed individuals, members of armed groups allegedly supporting the caretaker authorities’ security forces, and by elements associated with the former government [ie, Assad regime]”. Thus the new security forces (GSS) are not specifically noted. Similarly, the SCM report only notes “armed formations affiliated with or loyal to the Transitional Government’s Ministry of Defense, alongside foreign fighters, were involved in carrying out the violations,” while the Investigative Committee’s report “identified individuals and groups linked to certain military groups and factions from among the participating forces.” The SNHR report does include violations by “General Security personnel” along with “military factions [and] armed local residents, both Syrian and foreign,” but assesses that the “vast majority” were carried out by certain of these “military factions” that only recently joined the new Syrian army, rather than by wayward GSS. The UN Commission of Inquiry report likewise included general security alongside military factions, but stressed that “many interim government forces elements neither engaged in nor condoned the actions of those groups … to the contrary, it has documented their active efforts to evacuate, or protect certain populations and individuals” (p. 17-18).
Long time Syrian writer, activist and former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh basically concurs with these assessments:
“My impression, which needs verification, is that there are three subgroups within the armed formations that poured into the coastal areas after the bloody events of March 6.
“The first consists of organized forces from the General Security and the new army.
“The second includes sectarian Sunni Syrian groups like Amshat and Hamzat.
“The third consists of jihadist groups, including foreign fighters.”
Regarding the first group, the General Security (GSS) forces, Saleh writes that it appears that “in some cases, [they] exercised excessive repressive violence and captured Alawite civilians. … However,” consistent with the previous two assessments, “it was also the most disciplined, limiting further casualties in some instances, and it suffered significant losses in confrontations with armed Assad loyalists.”
It therefore appears clear that, on the whole, the new General Security forces should be distinguished from certain military “factions” of the army, armed civilian groups and jihadis. That does not mean there were no cases of General Security taking part in violations; there were. But let’s look at some evidence that backs up this general pattern.
The SNHR report claims there were “instances of direct clashes … between armed groups supporting the government’s security forces on one side and elements of the Internal Security forces who attempted to prevent indiscriminate killings on the other. In some cases, these clashes escalated into armed confrontations between the two sides” (p. 13).
In Homs, the government’s security forces formed cordons around areas to protect the Alawite citizens from armed gangs. The effectiveness of this was confirmed by an Alawite woman interviewed on Gregory Waters’ excellent Syria Revisited blog: “We were very scared, I didn’t go to work, we thought our turn would be next and the massacre would reach Homs soon … The General Security forces played a huge role in protecting the Alawite neighborhoods. They gathered more forces and forbade any armed groups to enter our neighborhoods, I may be able to say that without their protection, Alawite Homs could have faced the same destiny the coast had been facing.”
This was perhaps easier as the Assadist insurgency took place in Tartous and Latakia, so the security forces were able to be highly successful in less affected Homs; only three deaths were recorded in Homs over these days. This figure is surprisingly low, because Homs – with its mixed population – was much more the epicentre of sectarian conflict throughout the war, but also in the earlier low-lying post-Assad conflict, overlapping with random killings in a security vacuum, in the late December-January period, Homs had been far more impacted than the coast itself and has continued to be in its aftermath.
In this report from the town of Qadmus – an Ismaili town surrounded by Alawite villages – the interviewee reports no problems with the police or security forces, but some of the “factions” – meaning military factions – did commit crimes in the countryside (as did the Assadists).
Similarly, Latakia resident Alaa Awda recalled that “the clearing operations on the coast were carried out in several stages. When general security entered for the first time, they were professional.” Then, when other forces entered — factions affiliated with the Ministry of Defense — “they were harsher, with executions, assaults and robberies.” Or this Alawite woman interviewed by the Syria Revisited blog, who claims more generally that “security men are more professional in solving problems peacefully and they try to keep all things under control,” whereas “military members act more quickly and direct … they make a scene every time they do something … [they are] somehow more harsh and cold.”
The SCM report cites a case of killings in the village of Aziziyah in western Hama province carried out by “armed men … from neighboring Sunni-majority villages in the al-Ghab plain.” The witness did not know whether the men belonged to any government military formation, but he stated that “General Security personnel treated civilians respectfully and were not implicated in any violations.”
Researcher Gregory Waters similarly reports that “while some GSS members participated in extrajudicial executions during the March violence on the coast, Alawites and Ismailis have consistently described GSS behavior as much better than that of the [military] factions in Hama, Latakia, and Tartous … This is a trend that the author has found across most minority regions, and seems to reflect a generally higher degree of professionalism on the part of Ministry of Interior units when compared to the various military factions.”
Even this report by an anti-Assad Alawite coastal resident, which is completely gut-wrenching in its description of the mass murder and the terror of the Alawite citizens, and which puts indirect blame on the government itself, nevertheless also reports on an incident in which security forces directly aided Alawite citizens escaping from danger, and speaks of the security forces “trained in Idlib” who were “known for their professionalism and respectful conduct toward the people of the Syrian coast.”
On the other hand, Alawite anti-Assad civilian ‘J’, who reports “all my friends and loved ones are dead now,” claims that some of the security forces in Baniyas were involved in killing and looting, but after a point “the General Security men began to calm things down and stop the looting and fighting.” Clearly as noted above, they were not all innocent, but even this negative report paints them in a different light to the military “factions” and armed civilians that he claims carried out most of the killing (see below).
On the other hand, we sometimes hear that the security forces, while not generally the perpetrators, “did not protect civilians” from them (despite numerous other reports, as cited above, when they did). It is unclear if this means that security forces present did nothing in the face of violence from other factions, or that they were not present to protect. In the latter case, first, the massacre of hundreds of security personnel who had been stationed in the region initially hugely weakened their capacity to protect anyone; secondly, those remaining, and those rushed in from the outside, had as their first priority crushing the Assadist revolt. It appears that many of the massacres took place in vulnerable rural areas away from where the main action was. Therefore, this is difficult to assess.
For example, the Amnesty report notes that “according to residents” in one area of their study [note: Amnesty only interviewed 16 civilians in total], “the authorities did not intervene to end the killings, nor did they provide residents with safe routes to flee the armed men.” But it then goes on, “Three others said the only way for them to flee was when, eventually, they were able to secure car rides from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham [HTS],a former armed group integrated into the government armed forces.” As noted above, the GSS (security forces) are virtually a proxy for armed HTS cadre. How ironic that Alawites are aided in fleeing from violent factions by forces of what was once the most ideologically anti-Alawite faction.
Countless other examples of security forces acting professionally in contrast to either ‘factions’ or armed civilian groups acting murderously can be cited. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) also claimed that security forces returned more than 200 vehicles stolen by those they claimed “took advantage of the instability” on the coast.” On the other hand, the Reuters report does document cases where members of the GSS were directly involved in massacres, so this should not be read to mean they were uniformly innocent.
Military ‘factions’, ‘foreign jihadis’, ‘Amshat and Hamzat’ – Heavily reported as responsible for massacres
So, who committed most violations and what were the causes?
Yasin al-Haj Saleh claims that the other two groups [ie, military factions “like Amshat and Hamzat,” and “jihadist groups, including foreign fighters”] “engaged in genocidal violence—killing Alawites solely because they were Alawites. One acted out of a malevolent ideological conviction, while the other was driven by a mix of revenge, warlordism, and looting.”
It is difficult to separate motivations of groups, but my understanding is that Saleh means the third group, the actual jihadists – which includes foreign jihadi factions from the Caucasus or central Asia who were around HTS and have remained in the country since liberation – were those who acted out of “malevolent ideological conviction,” ie pure sectarian hatred of Alawites. While the HTS leadership has moved away from this stance, there remain strong elements of its base who hold these views; and given that foreign jihadi fighters entered Syria for the purpose of “waging jihad,” many may hold firmer to such malevolent ideas than many locals who have to relate to the Syrian society around them. Foreign jihadi fighters were reported in relation to violations in both the SNHR report and the SCM report (p. 19, 31). However, “foreigners” cannot be conveniently singled out for most blame.
Indeed anti-Alawite sectarian hate speech was widely reported to have emanated from various mosques. For example at this Aleppo mosque, a preacher tells hundreds of Syrians that “the land of the Levant cannot, cannot be anything but pure … the Levant was Sunni and will remain Sunni … the Sunnis must now unite and must know who their enemies are … we yearn for martyrdom, we yearn for battles, we yearn for killing.” Many examples of such hate speech spread not only by preachers but other social media influencers are collected in this report. Though it is unclear, it is possible that many of these hate preachers and influencers are associated with unreconstructed sectarian elements of the former HTS base. On the other hand, some preaching mobilisation warned against committing “transgressions.”
I believe Saleh is referring to the second group, “Amshat and Hamzat” – two military factions from the Turkish-backed ‘Syrian National Army’ (SNA) – as those driven by “a mix of revenge, warlordism, and looting.” “Amshat” refers to the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade of the SNA, named after its commander Mohammed al-Jassem‘s nom de guerre Abu Amshat. “Hamzat” refers to the al-Hamza Brigade of the SNA. Both brigades have a long history of war crimes and other violations, including abduction, extortion, torture, rape and murder, especially in Afrin, where al-Hamza ran an illegal women’s detention facility. Both militia are under sanctions by the US Treasury Department for violations in Afrin and elsewhere.
It is certainly true that these two SNA factions have been widely reported by countless Syrian sources to have been responsible for most of the sectarian killing. The SCM report specifically describes a number of cases, and the groups identified included Amshat and Hamzat, along with three other notorious SNA brigades, Sultan Murad, Ahrar al-Sharqiya and Jaysh al-Islam (pp. 18-19, 31), as well as a military brigade (Division 400) which was not SNA, but previously belonging to HTS. Likewise, the massive Syrian Archive report, based on open-source information, which documents the presence of every armed group on the coast, gives specific information about killings carried out by Amshat (p. 7-8), Ahrar al-Sharqiya (p. 9), an independent Qalamoun brigade, the ‘Lightning Battalions of Islam,’ which deployed “in coordination with the SNA Muntasir Billah Brigade” (p. 17), and members of the Al-Boushaaban tribe (p. 18). The UN Commission of Inquiry report also specifically documents the involvement of Amshat, Hamzat and several other brigades in various crimes.
“Warlordism and looting,” along with wanton murder, has indeed been the modus operandi of the worst SNA factions for many years, since their role in the Turkish invasion of Kurdish Afrin in 2018, so this is not surprising. These factions, like the rest of the SNA, are officially part of the new Syrian army (as opposed to the General Security), but as noted, this new “army” has only just been formed by cobbling together dozens of military factions from the old opposition throughout Syria, and the SNA brigades have only partially integrated; indeed, there is little evidence that any effective system of control and command has yet been established.
Ideologically, the SNA is an oddball collection which includes former secular FSA brigades and Islamist brigades alike, while the Suleiman Shah Brigade and another SNA brigade, the Sultan Murad Brigade, are Turkmen-based brigades, influenced by Turkish-nationalism. HTS’s origins in Jabhat al-Nusra mean it was more steeped in anti-Alawite sectarianism than any group in the SNA hodge-podge; the SNA in contrast is more likely to have specifically anti-Kurdish biases due to Turkey’s sponsorship. Therefore, it may seem odd that the worst violations appear to have been committed by SNA brigades like Amshat and Hamzat; and likewise the Turkish-nationalist Sultan Murad Brigade of the SNA was also implicated in attacks on Alawites in January, and again in the March massacres. What specific issue would these SNA brigades have with Alawites?
Most likely, it has little to do with Alawites as such, but rather what the SNA represents: a long-term degeneration of a number of groups, whereby Assadist repression forced them more and more under Turkey’s wing; being sponsored and paid by a state to do its bidding – whether anti-Kurdish offensives in Syria or participation in Turkey’s foreign ventures in Libya or Azerbaijan – meant the needs of their local base of support became less important. It is in this context that open criminality became the norm for some SNA groups, and indeed, a major additional form of financing.
That said, the SNA cannot be reduced to its famed criminality; the north near the Turkish border is where hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, from all over Syria took refuge from the Assadist slaughterhouse, fleeing their destroyed homes and towns and cities, and “disappearances” and torture chambers, and many would have had no other options but to sign up to a Turkish-backed militia. Needless to say, irrational collective ‘revenge’ would also likely be a major motivating factor among many of these dispossessed people now in SNA uniform. Finally, some of the SNA brigades, for example Jaysh al-Islam, whose cadres were displaced to the north after being expelled from Ghouta in the south, was always as fundamentally Sunni sectarian, anti-Alawite as HTS, if not more so; and this was alos the case for certain hard-Islamist northern brigades which were incorporated into the SNA, even if that was not a defining SNA charatceristic.
Getting back to the looting and wanton criminality, not all of it can be attributed to these SNA factions, but it is important to note that these motivations were important additions to jihadi ideology or lust for collective ‘revenge’. For example, this account from Jableh from Syria Direct by a Sunni resident al-Abdullah claims that when pro-government armed “factions” arrived in his town after the townspeople had driven back the Assadists, “the city suffered billions [of Syrian pounds] in material losses due to attacks on shops and homes. … [he denounced] “the poor morals of some of the groups, which engaged in vandalism and looting, with no differentiation between Sunnis and Alawites.” His family’s shop was “robbed and vandalized by some of the groups” that ostensibly came to “support” them. Another local, Omran, likewise claimed that “Some of the factions that entered Jableh committed widespread violations, including killings and theft against Sunnis and Alawites.”
The Alawite citizen ‘J’ (cited in the Syria Revisited blog) claims that his house was raided by five separate groups on March 7, of which the first group, a military faction from Hama, “were the worst and most violent and did most of the killings. They also stole gold, phones, cars, anything really.” The other four raids were either by other “factions” or by foreign jihadis, but none were as violent as the first; the next day the region was attacked by armed civilians from the countryside who were once again worse (see below).
HTS, in contrast to the SNA and perhaps some other unruly military factions, had been forced to deal with the Syrian reality where it ruled, and over time it adapted and became somewhat more pragmatic, despite its politically repressive rule and the ongoing existence of hard-line elements within its base.
For example, after taking over the Kurdish region of Afrin in 2022 from the SNA, HTS declared that it “confirms that the Arab and Kurdish people are the subject of our attention and appreciation, and we warn them against listening to the factional interests… We specifically mention the Kurdish brothers; they are the people of those areas and it is our duty to protect them and provide services to them.” In March 2023, HTS confronted the SNA after five Kurdish civilians were killed by members of a Turkish-backed faction during a Nowruz celebration in Jenderes. Jolani met with the Kurdish residents and HTS forces deployed in the town and seized control of headquarters of the military police and the SNA’s Eastern Army, which was accused of the killings.
Of course, Kurds are Sunni; Islamist groups like HTS include Kurds, and tend to be less ideologically Arab nationalist, while being more Sunni sectarian. Yet HTS also moved partially against its own sectarian background in Idlib in recent years, as I have documented here. Of course, these changes do not mean former HTS cadre do not commit violations; no doubt many do (as noted regarding Division 400), and changes at the top do not necessarily alter the long-entrenched sectarianism of sections of the base. However, this does help explain the widespread reports of several SNA factions bearing primary responsibility for the carnage, and of former HTS-led security forces being overall more professional.
However, some military brigades acted with integrity
All that said, the Syrian Archive report documents the presence of some 25 divisions of the new Syrian army (including from former SNA, NLF, HTS and new divisions), plus various independent militia and tribal fighters, on the coast at the time, yet the number of militia or military divisions specifically named in any of the key reports (SNHR, SCM, Syrian Archive, UN Commission of Inquiry, even the somewhat confused Reuters report) as committing violations and killings does not exceed the half dozen or so mentioned above. This is important, as the fact that most violations were carried out by wayward military factions does not indicate that the entire Syrian army acted as a genocidal gang during the events. It should be pointed out that the Syrian Archive report documents several cases where military brigades protected Alawite civilians from sectarian thugs and thus deserve an honourable mention:
First, referring to Faylaq al-Sham, a member of the mostly FSA National Liberation Front (NLF), the report states “On March 9, a civilian from the Jableh countryside posted several times on Facebook begging people to send the General Security to his house, and later wrote “Faylaq al-Sham, I will bear your debt until death. Thank God, members of Faylaq al-Sham saved us from the house before the arrival of undisciplined individuals intent on killing” (p. 11).
Notably, Faylaq was mentioned in another region, Bahluliyah in Latakia, by researcher Gregory Waters:
“According to one local I spoke with, the Faylaq commanders were respectful and professional as they searched the town. When they left, the commander gave everyone his phone number and said to call him if there were any issues. Later that day, another faction arrived – the witness does not know their name – and began looting homes and killing civilians. The man called the Faylaq commander, who returned and expelled the faction from the town. Faylaq al-Sham has remained in the Bahluliyah and Haffeh regions since March where it has a widely positive reputation.”
Getting back to the Syrian Archive report, it also discusses the well-established FSA brigade from northern Hama and Idlib, Jaish al-Izza (now the 74th Division). It was an independent brigade which was never in the SNA; the report claims it as a member of the NLF. Its commander issued instructions to its checkpoints and personnel in north and west Hama: “Random entry into villages and towns without coordination with the division’s leadership is prohibited. Any vehicle not bearing proof of ownership will be confiscated. Entry into neighborhoods and villages with sectarian diversity will not be permitted for the purpose of revenge. Residents of villages and cities are safe as long as they adhere to the instructions and decisions of the Ministry of Defense. Strict orders will be issued to deal with anyone who violates these instructions.” (p. 11-12)
The third group mentioned was the NLF brigade 77th Coastal Division, consisting of fighters originally from the FSA-held southern town of Zabadani, who were expelled to the north in 2016 following prolonged Assadist starvation siege; they were present in the Bahluliyah district of Latakia. According to a report of a villager, “factions [ie, military factions] in the villages of Al-Bahluliya, Da’tour Al-Bahluliya area, were burning houses and killing,” so he contacted 7th Division commander Abu Ahmed. Several villagers were killed by the “factions” and then in half an hour, “Abu Ahmed arrived with members of the 77th Brigade at the Al-Bahluliya junction. The faction said, “We will comb the village.” After some back and forth, the faction left, and Mr. Abu Ahmad and the elements of Brigade 77 spared “the village” from something that would have had undesirable outcome. Now Mr. Abu Ahmed has taken over the area for us. Welcome, may God bless you. Many thanks to the members of the 77th Brigade” (p. 14).
Armed civilians and “revenge” killing
But if unreconstructed sectarianism explained some crimes, and opportunistic wanton criminality others, what of the motivation for ‘revenge’? Lust for revenge by people whose families, friends and communities were slaughtered by the Assad regime, taking out their ‘revenge’ against innocent civilians, was clearly one of the factors here. Stating this is not to justify it. It is merely stating the reality that this is common in conflicts throughout the world. Most people involved in such battles may understand that the ordinary people on “the other side” are not at fault, and to kill ordinary citizens in “collective revenge” is to act no differently to one’s oppressors. However, not every severely damaged individual, who has known nothing but war, killing, atrocities and personal tragedy since their childhood “knows” this. From the atrocities on October 7, to brutal attacks on Kosovar Serbs by returning Albanian refugees driven from their country by Milosevic’s genocidal war, to countless anti-colonial violations and massacres around the world, so-called “revenge” takes place, especially in situations of security vacuum like in Syria where the old regime’s army and police collapsed and new ones take time to build.
The element of “revenge” may have been the most prominent among the undisciplined groups of “armed civilians” who were theoretically on the pro-government side but not under anyone’s command; yet putting on a uniform, whether security or military, does not always prevent these people, especially severely damaged young men, from acting differently. As such, this may have also been a motivation of many violators from other categories, whether General Security or military factions, especially SNA members as noted above.
We have some very direct examples of such collective revenge being taken out against an Alawite village, not by security forces or military factions or even armed civilians coming in from afar, but by local civilians from a neighbouring Sunni village who had been horribly mistreated by Assadist elements of that village under the previous regime; and security forces reportedly attempted to stop their carnage. This was reported in The Guardian:
“In Arza, local people say they know who their killers were. Three survivors accused the residents of Khattab, a nearby Sunni village, of being behind Friday’s massacre. Abu Jaber, a religious notable in Khattab and a former opposition fighter who had returned to the village, described how he and others entered homes, and forced men on to the town’s roundabout, with the purpose of displacing them from the village. “But then people who had their families killed [by the regime] came, and they opened fire,” he said.
“A survivor of the attack described how the killers left the bodies on the roundabout and began to loot houses, killing any men they saw while they pillaged. They said members of the Syrian general security tried to protect town residents, but were quickly overwhelmed.
“They came in the town chanting that they wanted 500,000 Alawites for the people they lost. They came into my house and took my brother and killed him in cold blood,” said a woman who was retrieving her belongings from her looted home, breaking down in tears.
“While Abu Jaber denied personally killing anyone, he said the people of Arza deserved their fate. He claimed that during the civil war the town’s residents had extorted and abused the residents of Khattab, and so the killings last Friday were merely people “claiming their rights”. He recalled a time when a regime official from Arza had bludgeoned a Khattab resident to death with a stone – and claimed the whole of Arza had celebrated after the killing. “What would you imagine that the villages that live around Arza, which committed these acts, what should they do? You think we should give them flowers?” he said.”
“Survivors of the Arza massacre admitted that select regime officials from the town did kill residents of Khattab,but said those officials had fled after the fall of Assad, and those left in the town had nothing at all to do with the previous abuses.”
Video of the attack on Arza show the attackers to be either ordinary villagers and/or criminal elements rather than security forces.
Similarly, the Alawite ‘J’ cited above claims that armed Sunni civilians were responsible for around 40% of the murders” in Baniyas. Importantly, both ‘J’ and Christian interviewee ‘S’ made a distinction between Sunni civilians in the town, who knew their Alawite neighbours and did a great deal to protect them, whereas “most of the local Sunnis who engaged in the murders were from the countryside,” notably, they were “from the areas the regime massacred in 2012 and 2013,” referring to the gigantic Baniyas massacre of that time (see below) – clearly another example of collective ‘revenge’.
On a smaller scale, an incident reported by Amnesty in its report tells of armed men raiding a home and killing the husband of a ‘Samira’, who said one of the men “blamed the death of his brother on the Alawite community.” When she protested that they had nothing to do with the former regime’s killings, he said “they would show him how Alawites had killed Sunnis.”
Such murders are clearly unjustified and appalling. However, these incidents raise the issue of where this came from – and therefore how this cycle can end.
Assad regime slaughterhouse: Incubator of sectarian mayhem
The Assadist slaughterhouse was the laboratory of sectarianism par excellence. This does not mean it was a religiously Alawite regime – it wasn’t, its ideology is better described as secular fascist – or that most ordinary Alawites benefited – they mostly remained poor and were torn apart by losing so many sons as cannon fodder for the regime. Rather, the Alawi-dominated regime weaponed sectarianism as a means of waging its counterrevolutionary war.
The regime itself was heavily dominated by the 10 percent Alawite minority, as this chart shows, though that was not ideological, but rather due to the nepotistic regime being dominated by the Assad family – who happen to be Alawite – and extended family, friends and connections, who lived like kings while the Alawite masses lived in poverty.
Most of the organs of state were also dominated by Alawites; as Syria expert Fabrice Balanche explains, noting that the initial uprising in 2011 aimed “to get rid of Assad, the state bureaucracy, the Baath Party, the intelligence services, and the general staff of the Syrian Arab Army,” this very fact could not help but tap an existing sectarian dynamic inherent in the Baathist set-up, because “all of these bodies are packed with Alawites, over 90 percent of whom work for the state.” If this figure is even roughly true, then, while certainly “working” for the state does not necessarily convey any kind of upper or even middle class status, it did put the average Alawite in a relatively privileged position compared to the average Sunni, placing two strategic tasks of the revolution – destroying the totalitarian state apparatus, and overcoming the sectarian divides – partially at odds with each other.
Above all, Alawite elements were absolutely dominant within the military and security apparatus of the regime — including head of the Republican Guard, chief of staff of the armed forces, head of military intelligence, head of the air force intelligence, director of the National Security Bureau, head of presidential security. According to Stratfor, quoted by Gilbert Achcar, “Some 80 percent of officers in the army are also believed to be Alawites. The military’s most elite division, the Republican Guard, led by the president’s younger brother Maher al Assad, is an all-Alawite force. Syria’s ground forces are organized in three corps (consisting of combined artillery, armor and mechanized infantry units). Two corps are led by Alawites.” Achcar continues: “Even though most of Syria’s air force pilots are Sunnis, most ground support crews are Alawites who control logistics, telecommunications and maintenance, thereby preventing potential Sunni air force dissenters from acting unilaterally. Syria’s air force intelligence, dominated by Alawites, is one of the strongest intelligence agencies within the security apparatus and has a core function of ensuring that Sunni pilots do not rebel against the regime.”
So when a regime that has ruled for decades, that is overwhelmingly Alawi-dominated, launches unlimited war against its population who rise up for democratic rights, and the majority of the rising population (though by no means all of it) just happen to be Sunni, then Alawite domination of the military-security apparatus waging this war becomes a fundamental aspect fuelling sectarianism. The towns and cities, or districts of cities, targeted for total demolition by this Alawi-led military were Sunni. As Syria expert Thomas Pierret explains:
“The problem is that many people do not even recognize the sectarian character of these atrocities, claiming that repression targets opponents from all sects, including Alawites. In fact ordinary repression does target opponents from all sects, but collective punishments (large-scale massacres, destruction of entire cities) are reserved for Sunnis.”
Pierret explains that understanding the fundamentally sectarian nature of the regime and its war is essential to understanding the scale of repression imposed by the Assad regime, which is not really comparable to elsewhere in the region:
“The kin-based/sectarian nature of the military is what allows the regime to be not merely “repressive”, but to be able to wage a full-fledged war against its own population. Not against a neighbouring state, an occupied people or a separatist minority, but against the majority of the population, including the inhabitants of the metropolitan area (i.e. Damascus and its suburbs). There are very few of such cases in modern history … No military that is reasonably representative of the population could do what the Syrian army did over the last two years [writing in 2013], i.e. destroying most of the country’s major cities, including large parts of the capital. You need a sectarian or ethnic divide that separates the core of the military from the target population. Algeria went through a nasty civil war in the 1990s, and Algerian generals are ruthless people, but I do not think that the Algerian military ever used heavy artillery against one of the country’s large cities.”
This includes the largest single massacre of the entire war – the murder of 1400 civilians in the Sunni, rebel-controlled Damascus suburb of Ghouta in August 2013, when the regime dropped the chemical agent sarin on the town, causing excruciating death.
But it is worse than this. The Assad regime’s sectarian lab was driven even more by its early establishment of proto-fascist sectarian Alawite militias (the Shabiha) to terrorise specifically Sunni populations, through mass murder of hundreds of people at a time and ethnic cleansing. This deliberate cultivation of sectarian mass murder, especially throughout 2012-2013, is what drove thousands into jihadist militia or to be otherwise bent on sectarian revenge.
Writing in the New York Review of Books, Jonathan Littell describes the process of regime-driven sectarian slaughter turning an anti-sectarian uprising into a sectarian war in Homs. On his arrival in Homs in January 2012, he reports “the people were still gathering daily to demonstrate—calling for the fall of the regime, loudly asserting their belief in democracy, in justice, and in a tolerant, open, multi-confessional society,” and notes that “The Free Syrian Army (FSA), made up mostly of army and secret services deserters disgusted by the repression, still believed its primary mission was defensive, to protect the opposition neighborhoods and the demonstrations from the regime snipers and the feared shabiha.”
However, he was able to document “the first deliberate sectarian massacre of the conflict, the murder with guns and knives of an entire Sunni family in the Nasihin neighborhood on the afternoon of January 26, 2012. Many more would follow, first of other families, then of entire Sunni communities in the village belt surrounding Homs to the West, in the foothills of the Jabal an-Nusayriyah, the so-called “Alawite mountain” from which the regime continues to draw its main support.”
He claims that even with this massacre, the FSA response “was not to slaughter an Alawite family, but to attack the army checkpoints from which the murderers had come.” But by mid-2012 this was changing and Assad’s strategy was bearing fruit as “uncontrolled” rebel units were also carrying out sectarian massacres of Alawites.
He also notes that the regime “favoured the rise, throughout 2012, of the radical Islamist armed groups that would soon enter into conflict with the more secular FSA. When Da‘esh first began conquering territory in Syria, in January 2013, “they never fought the Damascus regime and only sought to extend their power over the territory freed by our units,” as an FSA fighter explained. “Before their arrival, we were bombed each day by the Syrian air force. After they [Da’esh] took control of the region, the bombing immediately stopped.”
Following this “first sectarian massacre,” came a string of horrific Shabiha massacres of Sunni communities, of which only the most famous were:
the massacre of 108 civilians in the town of Houla in Homs, including 49 children and 34 women, killed with hatchets, knives and guns, mostly by cutting throats, in May 2012
the massacre of 78 people in the town of Qubair in Homs, half of them women and children, once again involving horrific killings with knives, burning and the like, in June
the massacre of 140 people in the town of Tremesh in Hama, after the town was ‘softened up’ by a combined tank and helicopter gunship attack, in July 2012
the enormous massacre of some 500 residents of the pro-rebel Damascus suburb Daraya, by regime troops and Shabiha, in late August 2012; under relentless regime shelling for days, the FSA left the town on August 23, in the hope of sparing the local people, yet once the FSA left, the killers went in, a Sabra-Shatilla replay
a smaller massacre of 107 residents in the south Damascus town of Al-Thiabieh, in September 2012; besieged by Assadist forces, the FSA again tried to save the town by leaving and evacuating residents, who however refused to leave; once the FSA left, Assadist forces moved in for the kill
the massacre of 106 people, killed and burned in their homes, in the village of Haswiya in Homs, in January 2013.
the gigantic, horrrifying massacre of some 450 Sunni men, women and children in Banyas and Bayda, in Tartous, in May 2013 (the fact that the worst massacre of Alawites on March 7-8 was in Baniyas is sadly no coincidence)
the massacre of 288 civilians, including seven women and 12 children, on April 16, 2013, in the Damascus suburb Tadamoun. The victims, randomly selected at regime checkpoints in a Sunni town under regime control, were blindfolded and shackled before being thrown into a pit dug in a street and shot in the back by regime troops. The bodies were then set on fire and the remains bulldozed over
However, the very fame and enormity of these large massacres can overshadow the fact that the slaughter of the Sunni population by the Shabiha regime was a far more widespread phenomenon. Thus though killings of a dozen here and half a dozen there were not so newsworthy, these small-scale massacres, village by village, killing and burning, were ubiquitous across much of Syria. This 2012 report by Amnesty International provides graphic information on the reality of full-scale death squad sectarian terror. One small excerpt:
“Syrian government armed forces and militias are rampaging through towns and villages, systematically dragging men from their homes and summarily executing them. They are burning homes and property and sometimes the bodies of those they have killed in cold blood. They are recklessly shelling and shooting into residential areas, killing and injuring men, women and children. They are routinely torturing detainees, sometimes to death.
“Everywhere, residents described to Amnesty International repeated punitive raids by the state’s armed forces and militias, who swept into their town or village with dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles, in some cases backed up by combat helicopters, firing indiscriminately and targeting those trying to flee. The outcome was the same in every case – a trail of death and destruction, much of it the result of deliberate and indiscriminate attacks.
“Everywhere, grieving families described to Amnesty International how their relatives had been taken away by soldiers and shot dead, often just a few metres from their front doors. In some cases, the bodies had then been set on fire in front of the terrified families. The mother quoted above had found her three sons burning outside her home. Another woman had found the remains of her 80-year-old husband among the ashes of her burned home after she was told by soldiers to look again for him in the house. Traumatized neighbours of a father of eight described how soldiers had dragged him to a nearby orchard, shot him in the legs and arm, shoved him into a small stone building, doused it with petrol and then set it alight, leaving the man to burn.”
More on the Syrian regime’s large-scale use of killing by fire. It is ironic that such practices would now be called ‘ISIS-style’, when in reality the horrific crimes of ISIS were carbon copies of those of the Assad regime, but on a significantly smaller scale.
This continued for years. As Robin Yassin-Kassab states, “The communities subjected to starvation siege were Sunni” [especially a string of Sunni towns surrounding Damascus from 2013 through 2017, like Madaya and Zabadani, where hundreds literally starved to death under regime and Shabiha siege, and of course the mostly Sunni Palestinian Yarmouk neighbourhood]. “The urban neighbourhoods reduced to rubble once housed Sunnis. And the people still living in appalling tent cities on the country’s borders are all Sunnis. The killing and expulsion of these Sunnis was committed by local Assadists – commanded by Alawi officers.”
Vast Gaza-like ghost-towns cover much of what was Sunni-populated Syria, bombed into oblivion. There is a vast belt extending through parts of Homs, Hama, northern Latakia and southern Idlib and Aleppo where no houses remained. As noted above it was in Homs, within earshot of the coast, where the sectarian divide created by Assad first flowered. Homs city is two cities: the Alawite side, with houses, and the Sunni side, an apocalypse. Most of the Sunni who lived in such places, and in the Sunni ring around Damascus, were forced into refuge in the north; returning to their homes means returning to no homes; but also, sometimes attempts to take back homes they were expelled from now occupied by Alawites; or sometimes ‘revenge’ attacks. The same is true for much of the 6.7 million refugee population. Also within earshot of the coast is the province of Hama, likewise divided between Sunni and Alawite; this is where the Assad regime bombed the rebellious city back in 1982 and killed 25-40,000 people.
Even as late as 2018, opposition sources alleged that Shabiha militia had massacred some 200 Sunni civilians in Homs over two weeks in September. And this is all without even getting to Assad’s string of torture dungeons, such as Sednaya, run mostly by Alawite security officials, housing a horrifically tortured prison population that was overwhelmingly Sunni, as were most of the 130,000 ‘disappeared’ into mass graves – “missing” when Sednaya and other torture dungeons were opened after December 8.
In this way, “The Assads made the Alawite community into which they were born complicit in their rule, or at least, to appear to be so.” Not that they necessarily were, of course; we’ve already noted above life-long Alawite anti-Assadists who were tragically slaughtered in March. But under Assad, “independent Alawite religious leaders were killed, exiled or imprisoned, and replaced with loyalists. Membership in the Baath Party and a career in the army were promoted as key markers of Alawite identity. The top ranks of the military and security services were almost all Alawite.” Meanwhile, the Sunni sectarian backlash that this terror produced was precisely one of the diabolical aims of the regime, in order to “frighten Alawites and other minorities into loyalty.”
An understanding of the real depth of the weaponised sectarianism unleashed by the Assad regime is essential to comprehending the extraordinary scale and seeming irrationality of the Assadist slaughter machine.
At a Gaza rally I attended recently, a young Palestinian refugee from Gaza, while speaking of the historical links between Zionism and antisemitism, noted that as a child living in the horror of besieged and traumatised Gaza, it was difficult to distinguish between Jews as people and the Zionist regime “when the only Jews you ever meet were those holding a gun in your face,” or we could add, torturing, disappearing and murdering your family, friends and neighbours; it is not difficult to see the analogy to how a traumatised Syrian Sunni child growing up in these years, now perhaps a severely damaged young man, possibly an orphan, would also not have known what an Alawite was beyond those holding guns to his face or slaughtering his family and neighbourhood.
This deliberate cultivation of sectarian hatred by the Assad regime meant that the necessary and inevitable victory of the Syrian people against the horrific dictatorship always had a serious question mark to it; was liberation for most Syrians going to be accompanied by large-scale sectarian revenge against the Alawite population? Even if the leadership tried its best to prevent it? This is not a “minorities” question as it is often posed; it is not about Christians, Druze, Ismailis, not even Shia, nor the ethnic Kurdish minority; it is a very distinctively Sunni versus Alawite question, created by the Assad regime sectarian lab. And the question was especially posed if victory over the regime was an all or nothing military victory, the only type the uncompromising regime allowed for.
The ‘political solution’ offered to the Assad regime by the UN Security Council and US-Russia agreements from 2012 onwards offered a way out that allowed some kind of transition authority composed of a mix of people from the regime and the opposition leading to elections; then UN Security Council Resolution 2254 of 2015 even dispensed with the transition authority, allowing the Assad regime itself to convene a “constitutional commission” leading to elections under the regime!
This would have prevented outright military victory by the opposition, allowing instead a transition away from dictatorship involving a series of stages and compromises, keeping the state machine intact. This solution offered more to the regime than to the aspirations of the revolution; it offered a conservative transition. Keeping the ‘state’ intact may have been positive in terms of public services and overall security, yet this was the state of the uber-repressive and genocidal regime. But given the sectarian divide created by Assad, it may have offered a safer road for minority populations, and especially the Alawites. Despite the maintenance of the Assadist state machine, if this road had created a more open atmosphere, it may have allowed for the civil democratic movement to re-ignite, opening the path for healing sectarian divides via common popular, democratic and working-class struggles, to hopefully replace the regime later.
But the Assad regime utterly refused to move. Not just the UN and US and EU, and Turkey and the Arab states, but also Russia and Iran attempted to push forward the constitutional commission and UN Resolution 2254. Russia and Iran increasingly saw the regime was rotting from the inside and understood that it needed to compromise, especially with Turkey, given its 3.7 million Syrian refugee population. The regime was unmoved. When the initially defensive push by the Idlib-led rebels (Operation Deter Aggression) came in late November 2024, the hollowed-out and hated regime simply collapsed, rendering the discussion of political versus military solutions irrelevant.
The initial ‘fairy-tale’ and its abrupt ending
Essentially forced by Assad’s obstinacy to take Damascus in this way, the possibility of uncontrollable anti-Alawite revenge was now open. The true miracle of the December revolution was that it did not happen. Despite its distant origins in al-Qaeda, the transformed HTS leadership helped ensure the inclusion of ethnic and religious minorities – Kurds, Christians, Druze, Ismailis, Shia and Alawites – in the immediate transition period. Whether one considers this ‘true conversion’ or ‘hard-headed pragmatism’ was irrelevant to the outcome. Not only was bloody revenge avoided, but arguably this outreach was just as crucial to the success of the revolution as the hollowing-out of the regime itself.
On December 5 HTS issued a statement proclaiming the Alawites to be an indispensable part of Syrian society, calling on them to abandon the Assad regime which it claims “hijacked” the Alawites to conduct a sectarian battle against the opposition. Alawite leaders – “we, the sons of this sect in the city of Homs,” responded by calling on revolutionary forces entering Homs “to maintain civil peace and protect all societal components in the city with all their different spectra,” to spare Homs “from entering a new round of revenge,” to show “the responsibility that you have shown in many cities that you have previously entered,” while also calling on local Alawites to “beware of being drawn into the false propaganda and plots that the regime has been spreading with the aim of sowing fear and terror among you,” and “not to allow the regime to use you again as fuel for a battle that it has in fact been losing since the first day of this revolution.” On the verge of the liberation of Homs, “we aspire for it to become a model to be emulated in affirming the unity of the Syrian people and their ability to overcome the wounds of the painful past.”
These messages on both sides allowed the revolution to proceed bloodlessly. And, whatever the inevitable bumps along the road, this promise of the revolution largely worked for Christians, Druze, Shia, Ismailis and Kurds (the initial Turkey-SNA war on the Kurds and SDF was quite separate from HTS-Syrian government policy). But while there was no revenge massacre of Alawites, things began to sour by the last week of December; yet hope remained, there was potential for improvement.
After the horror of March 7-10, however, many Alawites would find these fine words extremely bitter. The Alawites dumped the hated regime, which stole from them while sacrificing a generation of their sons to war, many greeting the revolutionary forces when they entered. But now that warning by Alawite leaders to not allow the regime to use false propaganda to “sow fear and terror” of the anti-Assad forces must feel ironic and deceitful. While few will begin praising the Assad regime which most know created this dilemma of mutual hatred, it should not be surprising if many or most now believe their lives were more secure before December.
As such, the March massacres can be considered the seemingly ‘inevitable’, delayed three months; as Robin Yassin-Kassab put it, the fairy tale has ended. But it was not inevitable.
A heavy weight lies on the shoulders of the Assadist officers who launched their coup and massacre of hundreds of security and civilians. They knew they had little support and their coup was in vain; the aim was to create massive instability, destroy any possibility of inter-communal reconciliation, and provoke a bloody response in order to call for international intervention, from countries such as Israel (and here), France or Russia. They were willing to sacrifice the Alawite population for these aims, as laid out in the most cynical terms in a March 18 public statement by Assadist insurgent leader Moqdad Fatiha, who, following the massacre of hundreds of his fellow Alawites, declared the uprising a “victory,” because the Syrian government suffered heavy losses “in numbers and equipment,” and was only able to respond “by killing women and children.” Apparently this murder of Alawite civilians, including “women and children,” is a victory because “thanks to our blood and martyrs, the image of al-Jolani and the de facto government was burned.”
The unfolding deterioration of the situation from December to March
Regarding the deterioration of the security situation in the Alawite regions from late December onwards, while one narrative poses this as a gradual lead-up to March – ie, Sunni sectarians or revenge-seekers began killing and kidnapping Alawites on a small scale from December until it evolved into an outright massacre – this omits a great deal of context.
These low-level crimes coincided with a number of things happening simultaneously. First, the government began a campaign to ‘comb’ these regions to arrest prominent Assadist war criminals, something which absolutely must happen. Yet in the process of doing so, some security patrols violated their protocols and carried it out in a heavy-handed way with serious violations. Secondly, the Assadist insurgency of March also had its low-lying predecessor; this began with the massacre of 14 security personnel on December 25, as they were on their way to arrest an Assadist war criminal, and continued sporadically. On January 14, when two security members are killed and seven captured by a militia led by former Shabiha commander Bassem Hossam al-Din near Jableh, al-Din released a video threatening to behead the men if HTS did not leave the coast. Meanwhile, footage was released in late December of the desecration of an Alawite mosque that had taken place weeks earlier as rebels approached Aleppo; this had taken place before the rebels arrived, and the new authorities condemned the action and arrested perpetrators; releasing the video now was aimed at suggesting this was happening then, leading to Alawite demonstrations.
Meanwhile, some of those seeking individual revenge on Alawites dressed as security personnel while carrying out violations. To counter this, on January 16, the commander of the Tartous Region declared that “any force from the General Security or the Authority that does not carry an official mission and does not have a Mukhtar [Alawite village leader] with themare thieves and troublemakers.” This was provoked when an armed group of some 40 men raided a house by in the town of Safsafa claiming to be from the Authority; General Security confirmed they were not from the Authority and the men fled. Further, the security vacuum in these regions meant that many ordinary crimes also took place, eg robbery, looting, kidnapping for ransom, in some cases leading to killing; this was not only happening in Alawite regions but around the country, but the security vacuum was worse in these regions.
The height of these earlier tensions was reached in late January, when a security patrol in the town of Fahel in western Homs kidnapped dozens of local men, most of whom were released, but some 20 found dead. Fifteen of these men were former military officers, but the dead included civilians, and in any case such murderous retribution without trial is unacceptable, and breeds terror, even if the officers were guilty of crimes. The authorities announced that “a number of suspects” had been “arrested and referred to the competent judiciary to receive their just punishment.” Around the same time, a security raid on an Alawite home in Maryamin, also in western Homs, was replete with religious and other violations. The Homs governor visited the house and promised consequences.
However, by February, the data was showing that violations on the coast were in decline, and violent deaths and kidnappings now lower than some provinces where there were new spikes in violence, in particular Aleppo, Idlib, Daraa and Deir Ezzor, that had nothing to do with the Alawite question. According to Gregory Alexander, “in February, all locals interviewed for this paper said that conditions in Tartous and Latakia were continually improving. Damascus had withdrawn almost all of its military factions and ended house raids following the massacre in western Homs in late January. The remaining GSS and police forces were well-regarded.”
There thus appeared to be momentary hope that the worst was over. Moreover, when the data for the number of attacks and killings began to rise again in the region in the last week of February and early March, these were attacks by Assadist remnants on security forces, ie, the galloping insurgency that broke out in earnest on March 6.
Violent deaths and kidnappings in the weeks February 11-18 and February 18-25 – death figures include those from unexploded ordinance (44 of 111 the first week, 28 of 62 the second week). Clearly, violence in Tartous and Latakia and even Hama was now eclipsed by violence elsewhere; even Homs showed a marked decline the second week.
Violence rises in late February and early March, but with kidnappings still low or absent in the four provinces concerned, and a surge of Assadist attacks, it is clear where the new violence was coming from.
Causes of this deterioration of the Alawite situation
What were the prime causes of this deterioration of the situation of the Alawites in Tartous and Latakia, and even more so of the Alawite minorities in the mixed provinces of Hama and Homs, especially in their western rural districts? Two discourses sharply oppose each other.
One prominent narrative is that the Alawite military and police officers of the Assad regime were granted sweeping amnesties, and have been allowed to wander around and live their lives, with only the most heinous criminals arrested, and none of them have yet faced the judiciary; that there has been no apology from mainstream Alawite leaders for their support for Assad and his genocide against Syrians; that many condemn Assad for “abandoning them” rather than for what he did; that they complain of their difficult situation but at least they have houses, whereas millions of mostly Sunni remain in exile or internally displaced, living in tents in the snow, as their homes and entire cities have been destroyed. Then these heavily armed Assadist insurgents came out of the towns and villages “protected by the local Alawites,” or who at least knew what was coming. Some had come into the streets and celebrated when there were rumours that Mahed al-Assad was returning to the coast. While few spin this story to justify the killings of civilians, they nevertheless claim these factors help explain the horrific retribution. In fact, some claim that al-Sharaa “is the only barrier against a full massacre against the Alawites in Syria,” and (according to another similar voice) “if you don’t believe me, visit us in the old neighborhoods of Homs and see the destruction and graves that have become public prisons.”
The opposite narrative is that while the Alawite military and police were amnestied, they lost their jobs as the old police and army were disbanded. They have been left to return to their towns and villages with no source of income, with no other work available. The government has also launched sweeping retrenchments from the public sector, which it has justified on the basis that there were large numbers of fake jobs that were just regime favours; and once again, the impact falls largely on Alawites. Meanwhile, the collapse of the old regime’s armed forces has left a security vacuum in the Alawite regions, and while there was no massacre in December, there were constant killings and kidnappings of Alawites over the three months before March 6. In some cases government security personnel are blamed, but while most perpetrators are unknown, there have been few arrests and no indictments. Again, while most do not justify the Assadist insurgency with this discourse, they see this as a reason it did have a degree of support or at least neutrality within the Alawite community.
Both narratives, however sharply opposed, contain much truth.
Yes, there was a sweeping amnesty; tens of thousands of former troops passed through government “resettlement” processes to demonstrate their innocence. However, while a very significant number of Assadist war criminals have been arrested, none have faced the judiciary yet; and even larger numbers of medium-scale criminals have escaped arrest altogether, supposedly in the interests of social peace. In some cases even worse Assadist criminals, unaccountably, walk the streets (eg, Fadi Saqr, former NDF leader who shares responsibility for the Tadamon massacre, was inconceivably amnestied, leading to protests; war criminal Ziad Masouh, responsible for massacres in western Homs region, was released from prison; Khaled al-Qassoum, head of the Shabiha ‘Popular Resistance’ militia and close associate of the ‘Butcher of Baniyas’ Ali Kayali, returned to live in Hama city with security guarantees!).
This has created huge resentment among Syrians whose families were slaughtered and homes and cities destroyed. The lack of a ‘transitional justice’ process in the months since December is widely cited as a factor driving on-the-ground retribution against perpetrators, assumed perpetrators, or in the worst cases, collective retribution against Alawites. Thus while the security forces can in some cases be blamed for being too harsh on the Alawite communities when searching for Assadist criminals, this goes hand in hand with the government being too soft on these criminals in the bigger picture. Al-Sharaa is aware of this; he has regularly declared that justice must take place through the courts, rather than on the streets. Yet there has been little to show for it.
Yes, the collapse of the Assadist repressive forces falls hardest on the Alawite community, yet it is unclear that this as anti-Alawite policy as such; this is an indictment of the extreme sectarian nature of the Assadist military-security complex, overwhelmingly dominated by Alawites at the level of officers. These repressive forces melted away in December, collapsed in a heap, to the relief of millions of Syrians. There is no way they could have remained in existence under their current officers after decades of genocidal violence.
This is the same with the mass retrenchments; they should be condemned as an anti-working class measure. Even if true that the former regime created fake jobs as claimed, this should be something investigated by the workers through unions of workers’ committees, to determine what jobs are actually fake rather than excuses for neoliberal restructuring. But once again, it seems likely that the reason the measure has fallen more heavily on Alawites is due to the overwhelming Alawite domination of public sector jobs.
That said, I do not doubt that the factor I cite here is intensified by unofficial sectarian discrimination, given the domination of the new state by former HTS elements.
But this is not the end of the problem; the problem remains that those who lost jobs as the old police and army collapsed, or in the public sector retrenchments, now do not have work. This in itself is both an injustice, and a source of alienation from the new authorities by the Alawite population who see the measures as directed against them, whether valid or not.
Moreover, the fact that those dismissed from the police and army, and whose status has been “settled,” have not yet been recruited to the new police, general security forces and the new army can both be seen as anti-Alawite discrimination, and in addition as the major reason for the security vacuum in the Alawite regions and the number of killings and kidnappings going unpunished being higher than elsewhere.
Undoubtedly, the government should have moved faster to re-recruit “settled” Alawite former security personnel into the new police and General Security, so that they could have primary responsibility within Alawite regions. Even though I have provided evidence above that General Security were the least guilty of violations and were most often considered to be ‘professional’ compared to military ‘factions’, nevertheless, a security force, however decent, which does not have roots in the area and the specific community, given the deep divisions in Syria, will inevitably not be able to do the job as well as local security forces would, and the paucity of arrest and punishment of the actual violators demonstrates this.
There is no formal ruling that Alawites must not be recruited or that the security forces must remain Sunni, and it is likely more a matter of the new regime only being in existence for three months after the collapse of a 54-year old tyranny and a 14-year war. However, there is much evidence of unofficial barriers, and whether this is due to unwritten understandings from above or merely discrimination on the ground remains unclear. For example, according to a long-time anti-Assad Christian in Latakia, “they are not allowing Christians to join the security forces and I don’t know why. I had a friend try to bring his son to GSS recruitment office. They said thank you we are happy to have you, but after they learned he was Christian they said sorry, we can’t take him,” adding “Still, we love the General Security and they cause no issues for us.”
Likewise, there has been no attempt to recruit “settled” former Alawite troops into the new Syrian army. But the “new army” at this stage is simply the partial patching together of most of the old rebel militia who formally dissolved in January, those which were still surviving after years of defeat, retreat, destruction, exile and in some cases degeneration. As such it is an overwhelmingly Sunni army by default, with scattered individual Christian, Druze, Ismaili and Kurdish members. Until the dissolution of the Emirati-backed 8th Brigade in Daraa in mid-April, not even all the Sunni-based militia had dissolved; and as noted above, many of the Turkish-backed SNA militia had only partially done so.
And herein lies a very important distinction between the Alawites of the coast and other territorially-based minorities, namely the Druze in Suweida and the Kurds in the northeast: the latter two have been able to maintain security in their own regions, and pose a strong negotiating position with the government (ie, neither have yet joined the new army, despite agreeing in principle), because they developed their own armed forces due to their autonomous struggles during the revolutionary period. By contrast, the only de facto Alawite armed forces were those of the Assad regime. When it disappeared, they had nothing else.
Therefore, it is an urgent task for the new Syrian police, security forces and army to recruit former Alawite equivalents whose status has been settled, not simply to provide them with income but to end the security vacuum in their regions and as a step to fuller inclusion of the now effectively excluded Alawite part of the population.
In addition to unofficial discrimination and shortness of time, there is a further reason why recruitment of security and military forces beyond the core group has been slow: the ongoing US sanctions, which are making recovery and reconstruction impossible, and ensuring the government has no money with which to pay new troops from any quarter. Indeed this is also a reason why some of the former militia components of the new army remain in practice autonomous, connected as they are to traditional means of earning income (eg, for some SNA militia, payment from Turkey, criminal activities etc).
What now? The evolution of the al-Sharaa government
The al-Sharaa regime has shown contradictory features since assuming power in December. On the one hand, there is a strong pragmatic streak, whereby many of its moves – beginning with the outreach to non-Sunni minorities during the revolution – stood in stark contrast to HTS’s Sunni Islamist sectarian history, while others show a growing attempt to assert precisely these more Islamist aspects in a gradualist way.
These two sides represent two different pressures on the ruling group: the democratic pressure of the revolution itself, which was never about imposing any kind of religious dictatorship on the people, but on the contrary, overthrowing a dictatorship in order to establish a free Syria for all; and the pressure from sections of the HTS base which had joined HTS precisely due to its Sunni-Islamist heritage. The latter, by the way, is by no means all the HTS base; on the contrary, the pragmatic direction the al-Sharaa leadership took the last few years reflected a significant part of the base who had only joined HTS as it was the most effective fighter against the regime, and after the Assad regime had conquered and subjugated so much of free Syria where a wide variety of more democratic and progressive political forces had dominated among the rebels; HTS remained the only major force outside the direct control of Turkey (which had similarly coopted other beleaguered rebel forces).
The ongoing revolutionary process is manifested in the continuation of a largely free atmosphere for discussion, organisation and protest; the new government does not react to popular protest against its policies with machine gunning, tanks, warplanes, barrel bombs, chemical weapons, mass graves and industrial-scale torture gulags. Anyone believing the new regime is simply an Islamist copy of the old simply has no idea of the Syrian reality (though arguably, after March, it very much does appear this way to the Alawite population).
However, the ruling group around the former HTS leadership has also made various moves to consolidate its power within the new set-up, limiting the move towards democracy at an institutional level: Sharaa being appointed as interim president by a January conference of rebel militia (who agreed to dissolve into the new army), meaning he was appointed by only on section of Syrian society; the long promised National Dialogue Conference did not live up to its promise and was arguably farcical; the government declared it would take some four years to write a new constitution and five years for elections to be held; the interim constitution, to be in effect until a new constitution is written, declares ‘Sharia’ to be the major influence on Syrian law, and that the president must be a Muslim – though in fact in continuity with the Assad regime constitution, revolution supporters would prefer to go beyond the old regime on this (though other aspects were better, including those regarding equality for women and respect for the country’s for ethnic and religious diversity); the interim government appointed by Sharaa to rule for the first three months was heavily stacked with HTS leaders and close allies, but the new transitional government appointed in April was much better, with only 4 HTS members of the 23 members, yet there is only one woman, one Alawite, one Druze, one Kurd and one Christian (who is also the one woman) as opposed to 19 Sunni Arab men (for more detail on all this, see my article ‘Syria 6 months after the revolution – Part I: The domestic situation’).
While there are concerning aspects in all this, the revolution is not the regime, but the people who made it and their continuing ability to organise and influence the direction of policy without suffering repression. The problem is that unions, civil society, grassroots organising, are all in a very weak position due to decades of totalitarian repression and a decade of genocide, the crushing of all revolutionary institutions and councils, and mass exile. This is a dangerous reality, especially given the desperate poverty, the lack of work, the sanctions and the lack of reconstruction, forcing people into the struggle for everyday survival. Nevertheless, we have seen admirable examples of fightback when government ministers have made regressive moves, including significant demonstrations and public meetings by women to protest the anti-woman agenda put forth by some HTS appointees.
Therefore, while many of these institutional moves are concerning, in themselves they do not represent the burial of the revolution or the institution of a ‘dictatorship’. On the contrary, the situation remains fluid and open. The possibility of the revolutionary masses influencing the country’s direction, including altering such institutional aspects, remains potent.
This however is what is different about the slaughter of hundreds of Alawite civilians on the coast in March. Whatever the negatives of the situation, most non-Alawite Syrians consider themselves free, that their freedom was brought about by the revolution, and are optimistic about the direction their country is going. Despite propaganda, Christians on the whole are strongly supportive of the revolution and the government, as are Ismailis; and both Christians and Ismailis have played a kind of mediation role between the Sunni-led government and the Sunni and Alawite communities at times. According to a Christian activist in Latakia, “General Security deployed to all churches during Easter while local Sunni-Christian neighborhood groups also protected churches.” The Druze have likewise generally been supportive of the post-revolution reality. A group of local civil, religious and militia figures in Suwayda called upon the transitional government to review the constitutional declaration and to ensure that those responsible for sectarian violence be held publicly accountable, and the Druze leaderships have been hard-bargaining with the government on the specifics of their integration into the new Syria. Following clashes between armed jihadists and Druze in late April, the government and most of the main Druze leaders reached an agreement that the GSS would enter Suweida, but that it would be composed of local Druze [the terrible conflict in mid-July took place well after this was written and essentially negates this prior reality]. Likewise the Kurds are doing their own hard bargaining but continually stress they see their future in an integrated Syria. The agreement between the Syrian government and the SDF on March 10 – just a few days after the March bloodshed – for the future integration of the SDF and the Rojava statelet into Syrian institutions, represents a huge positive, and both sides appear committed to moving forward, with committees being formed to hash out the details. Even the Shia have continually declared support for the new government, while the government has prevented attempts by ISIS to attack the main Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zeinab near Damascus (indeed it was tipped off by US intelligence).
In contrast, whatever attempts many Alawites initially made to feel the same, as of March, it would be surreal to not recognise that the Alawite citizenry do not feel free; that they feel their torment and manipulation by Assad has been replaced by total alienation and impunity, existential fear and exclusion from the new Syria. The revolution’s aim was to free all Syrians, not 90 percent of them; the exclusion of the Alawite ten percent and the coastal region from the revolution is a massive hole in it. Recovering from it, if possible, is a life and death question of the country’s direction.
Of course, there are different views among the Alawite population, with some elements still open to seeing how the government’s investigation turns out. For example, long-time anti-Assad Alawite Hanadi Zahlout noted above, whose brothers were murdered by sectarian gangs in March, noted that al-Sharaa had called her to express condolences “to my family and to all the victims’ families, and promised to hold the culprits accountable.” She expressed her support to the Commission “and we are ready to cooperate and submit our certificates for justice to be done and the law to prevail in our country and on our land.” Similarly, on March 8, 49 Alawite clerics and civil leaders issued a public statement declaring their support for the interim government and for al-Sharaa’s speech, calling for accountability on all sides and demanding that weapons be restricted only to the state. These two examples suggest that there is still a part of the Alawite citizenry that believes in the possibility of justice being done and of reconciliation; these are significant people, and while their confidence is difficult to even fathom in the circumstances, it must be taken into account.
Top: Hanadi Zahlout’s statement mourning her brothers; Bottom: Declaration of 49 Alawite clerics and civil leaders calling for accountability while declaring support for interim government.
However, even such confidence, or hope, is strained to put it mildly. Three months later, on the eve of the release of the commission’s report, Hanout describes the situation grimly: “my home area is still surrounded by checkpoints. The killings continue and people live in constant fear, unable to resume their lives or even perform basic daily tasks like farming or moving along the roads. Families of the victims are still denied the dignity of burying their loved ones. Survivors continue to search in vain for healing. Homes lie in ruins, and children live in perpetual terror.”
Furthermore, some 22,000 Alawites have fled to Lebanon, according to the UNHCR, while 8,000 others took refuge at Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in Latakia, according to the Russian News Agency TASS (it seems Russia more recently encouraged them to leave, in cooperation with Syrian security forces who assured them of their safety). For them and perhaps the majority of the now heavily traumatised population, it is extremely unlikely that any belief in justice or reconciliation is possible, at least for the foreseeable future.
One final point: aside from the severe moral and political imperatives, dealing properly with the massacre and the alienation of the Alawites, as well as dealing properly with other minority issues (Druze, Kurds), is essential to forging a real Syrian unity; far from being seen as a ‘compromise’ with ‘separatism’ as some voices claim, this is essential to standing against not only internal sectarian or separatist threats, but also external (especially Israeli or Iranian, but potentially Russian, Turkish, UAE or US) exploitation of these divides; it is a life and death question of the revolution’s security, given the number of real and potential foreign enemies it has. This will be discussed in a future article: Syria 6 months after the revolution – Part II: New Syria’s Foreign Policy.
What needs to be done?
To salvage the situation, Syria needs to ensure a number of things happen.
First, the investigation must be genuine, fair and transparent, and perpetrators on both sides must be held accountable. While a number of arrests have been made, the danger would be just lower-level perpetrators being convicted, and those responsible at a higher level, with regime connections, not held accountable. In particular, the widespread evidence of the involvement of the ‘Amshat’ and ‘Hamza’ SNA brigades in the crimes against Alawite civilians raises important issues. While HTS has clashed with these forces in the past, in order to coopt them their leaders have now been given important positions.
For example, Mohamed Jassim (Abu Amsha) was appointed commander of the 25th Division within the Defense Ministry (subsequently called the 82nd Division, while somewhat confusingly he still runs his own brigade which is now called the 62nd Division). The 25th Division is based in Hama; he was probably moved there in February precisely in order to get him out of Afrin (and since he vacated Afrin and HTS-led security took over, tens of thousands of Kurds have returned). However, being located in Hama may have facilitated the entry of Amshat militias to the coast in March (though there are also ex-FSA-based divisions in Hama, the 60th and 74th Divisions, which seem to have gained the confidence of the population). Similarly, the former leader of the Hamza Division, Brigadier General Sayf al-Din Bulad (Abu Bakr) was appointed commander of Syria’s 76th Division, based in Aleppo.
In similar vein, while not directly connected to the coastal massacre, in May, the government appointed Ahmad al-Hayes (Abu Hatem Shaqra), head of the notorious Ahrar Al-Sharqiya militia, to lead the new army’s 86th division, responsible for Raqqa, Al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor. In 2021, he was placed under US sanctions for crimes including “overseeing summary executions at a prison Ahrar Al-Sharqiya ran outside of Aleppo and trafficking Yazidi children and women,” as well as the murder of Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf during Turkey’s 2019 invasion of northeast Syria.
So will the investigation net ‘big fish’ such as these, or just the street criminals and rank-and-file troops we see in the photos of those arrested? But just as important are issues of compensation, reconstruction and inclusion. The outcome is crucially important to Syria.
Secondly, Transitional Justice Is a Must (with this link raising many good arguments). While the lack of it does not justify vigilante justice (let alone collective punishment of Alawite civilians), it would be naïve to think that these will not be the results, as not everyone acts rationally. In fact, while the massacre was brought to a swift end and even the level of ordinary violence is now relatively low, we are now seeing the beginnings of more directed ‘street justice’ moves. In Homs, a former Assadist commander was killed on April 20, and the assassin appeared on video complaining he had raised charges against him related to crimes against civilians, to no avail, so he acted himself; and in Aleppo, a militia calling itself the Special Accountability Task Force was launched on the same day, by former rebels take the law into their own hands and assassinate former Assad regime criminals.
On April 25, Syrian activists called ‘Friday of Rage’ demonstrations around the country under the slogan ‘Transitional Justice and the Beginning of Trials.’ This demonstrates the depth of anger at the lack of accountability of the Assad-era criminals responsible for hundreds of thousands of killings and untold destruction. While this is obviously a crucially important thing to happen in and of itself, its connection is that, if the investigation committee does do its work properly and people are prosecuted for crimes against Alawite civilians, but there have been no prosecutions against those responsible for the Assadist genocide, this may result in popular rejection of the justice meted out to the first group, and further poisoning of community relations. “Ending sectarian tensions,” al-Abdullah, a Sunni resident of Jableh claims, cannot be spoken about “without arresting the remnants of the regime and bringing them to justice.”
Al-Sharaa finally issued a decree on May 17 for the establishment of a Transitional Justice Commission, tasked with “uncovering the facts regarding the violations of the former regime” and to “hold accountable those responsible for the violations … and redress the harm caused to victims and consolidate the principles of national reconciliation.” On the same day, a National Authority for Missing Persons, to be responsible for “investigating and uncovering the fate of the missing and forcibly disappeared and documenting their cases,” was also established. While a hopeful sign, to date there has still been no sign of prosecutions, and the sight of a number of major Assadist war criminals walking free, as discussed above, is not a good sign at all for the prospect of Sunni war criminals from the coastal massacre seeing accountability.
Third, it is urgent to fully include the Alawite population in the new governing structures, including security forces. Despite Alawites being involved in lower-level local councils, all power is with the security forces and new regime officials at higher levels. Alawites need to be appointed to higher level governing positions, recruited to the general security forces to serve in their regions, and “resettled” former troops need to be enlisted into the new army. To date, these remain de-facto largely Sunni institutions. The Alawite woman interviewed by Gregory Waters (cited above) claims that in Homs, “General Security members all come from the same sect, except for one member called George [a Christian] … no Alawite or Shia’a or other minorities have joined the security force till now.”
There have been important developments in southern Syria, where the government has begun recruiting Druze in Suwayda for the army, with significant early turnout, based on a memorandum of understanding with Druze leaders agreed to shortly after the government-SDF agreement on March 11. Local security forces are already Druze. While there is no official impediment to recruiting Christians, and Ismailis have cut out their special place within Syria’s new security architecture, it is moving the dial on Alawite recruitment that is crucial. The Security Forces opened up recruitment centers across the country in April, including in Baniyas and Latakia, as well as Hama, Homs and elsewhere; hopefully this is a sign that Alawites and not just Sunni in these regions are to be recruited.
Again citing the interviewed Homsi Alawite woman, when questioned what needs to be done for the Alawites to feel included in the new Syria, she responded “I think they should allow and chair the Alawite men to join the police and security forces … And the Alawites should elect a group of active and educated and religious men to make a council or something that speak in their behalf and meet with the president Ahmad al-Shara and make some kind of deal to protect and save their rights and to reactivate their existence in society in an effective way.” Something called the Alawite Islamic Council has been set up, but it is unclear how representative it is. Claiming “the former regime is the one that kept us poor, with no way to make a living but to volunteer for the army or state jobs”, the council noted that Alawite notables, in repeated meetings with the new Syrian administration, had called for “security cooperation with the state and its security forces, by forming security committees from both sides,” an end to provocations and inflammatory sectarian slogans and the reinstatement of dismissed state employees.
Fourth, the government needs to crack down on uncontrolled armed jihadi groups, of the type that took part in the Alawite massacre and led the attack on the Druze in southern Damascus. This will be no easy task – their existence is related to a number of factors: first, the lack of transitional justice; second, the lack of jobs in Syria’s current catastrophe (in this sense they have something in common with their Alawite enemies who took part in the Assadist insurgency in March); finally, the fact that many of them belong to the traditional jihadi base of HTS from which the current leadership arose, so despite not wanting the instability they cause, there may be elements within the ruling state apparatus that still have connections to these groups, there may be a spectrum with a lot of grey areas. Either way the government does need to act to prevent their deeply destabilising impact.
Related to this is the necessity of a political struggle against sectarianism. It is one thing when ‘street justice’ in the absence of court justice targets actual criminals; it is an entirely different thing when the entire Alawite population is associated with the crimes of the Assad regime and targeted collectively (and even more when this is extended to other non-Sunni minorities that had no connection to the Assad regime, such as the Druze). While obviously the Assad regime’s criminal weaponisation of sectarianism to carry out its counterrevolutionary war is responsible for this mutual hate, liberation means not simply reversing the victim but fighting the ideology.
Two important steps have taken place. First, on May 30 the Ministry of Defense issued a code of conduct and discipline for the army, which demands troops “treat[ing] citizens with dignity and respect, without discrimination based on religion, race, colour or affiliation,” observe human rights standards, protect civilians and so on, and prohibits any assaults on civilians or property, “engaging in any form of discrimination,” “proclaiming slogans or positions that undermine national unity or disturb civil peace” and the like. While a code itself does not immediately change deep-seated attitudes, it is undeniably an important step in that direction [post-script: though the Suweida massacre in July demonstrates that much more is needed than the existence of a code]. Second, on June 6, the Supreme Fatwa Council issued a fatwa declaring that those who have been wronged are “obligated to obtain their rights through the judiciary and competent authorities, and not through individual action,” declaring acts of “revenge or retaliation” to be forbidden – an important step in the context of ongoing retribution killings which, while mostly directed, can by definition both lead to errors and/or can act as cover for sectarian killings.
Next, the complete end of sanctions against Syria. Fortunately, this is now in progress (which it wasn’t when this piece was started), but the process is not complete, and various US leaders continue to imply that it may be conditioned on certain geopolitical moves by the government (eg, Trump recently threatened that “The Secretary of State will reimpose sanctions on Syria if it’s determined that the conditions for lifting them are no longer met”). The economic strangulation of the Syrian people must end, so that the government has the money to pay proper wages for public services (including security), industry begins to move and creates jobs, and housing, energy and infrastructure can be repaired. The lack of work for a very large part of Syrian society is connected to both alienation of a large part of the Alawite population and a reason some, or many, may have backed the Assadist insurgency, and to the rootless armed jihadi factions. Whether the mass retrenchments from the public sector, and the collapse of the old military and police forces, had their biggest impact on Alawites due to active discrimination, or conversely, due to pro-Alawite discrimination in employment under Assad (and this is most obviously the case with the military-police dismissals), is almost a moot point; the fact of the matter is that the government has no money to either maintain its public sector or to employ greater numbers of new security forces (eg, to re-employ the Alawite security personnel in the GSS and new army) until some level of economic activity, investment, access to loans and so on kicks in. Of course, if the rights of Alawites continue to be violated or the investigation’s aftermath becomes a farce the demand for end of sanctions may seem counterintuitive, but Syria does need to right to recover and ensure rights for everyone else; measures short of devastating anti-people sanctions can be taken if the new government defies its democratic mandate.
Finally, reactivation of civil society, of trade union and worker activism, and push for more democratisation against centralising tendencies – the great range of local coordinating committees and people’s councils that arose during the revolution, and were crushed by the regime, provide a terrific blueprint for what is possible, if sanctions relief leads to people being able to look beyond the everyday struggle for survival. While this point is relevant to Syria’s future in general, it also has specific relevance to the Alawite question because popular anti-sectarian initiatives from below will ultimately be a more powerful antidote to popular-based sectarianism than mere state security action can ever be; while the development of a working-class movement is crucial to enable class to be counterposed to ‘sect’ as a basis for popular identity and organisation.
At the grassroots we have seen things such as:
Many reports of Sunni civilians protecting Alawite civilians during the crisis, and vice versa (such as in this report from Jableh, one of the centres of the clashes, and this one), as well as Alawite civilians defending towns against the initial Assadist assault. Al-Abdullah, a Sunni from Jableh, says where he lives “in the same building are Alawites, and we are like family. When I go out to shop and buy bread, I buy it for them like family.” When violence erupted in Jableh, “we were checking in on each other. Sunni families embraced Alawites, and Alawites took in our wounded.” Alawite resident Hussam hopes that “good people from all sects and parties will have a role in civil peace in the next phase.” While small-scale, such on the ground reports demonstrate that people can still live together as neighbours. The SCM report “documented testimonies from [Alawite] survivors who affirmed that their Sunni neighbours protected and smuggled them to prevent attacks by factions. Additionally,
Alawite families hosted wounded General Security personnel and those injured during the clashes.” This demonstrates that, despite the sectarian atmosphere, a counter-culture based on human solidarity among ordinary people remains a source of hope.
Inter-communal dialogue initiatives have been taking place on the ground. For example, Gregory Waters reports on a Sunni activist in Latakia who is also a member of the Engineers Syndicate who says that his syndicate “holds different activities and seminars to ensure that all sects are represented and holds dialogues between our members and prevents exclusion against any of the sects;” and when Alawite employees “are scared to travel, I will send cars to pick them up.” This is an example of how working-class organisation can have an anti-sectarian dynamic.
In addition, there are also neighbourhood meetings (since before March) that aim to build ties between different communities, and after March he launched his own initiative “where we went to the Alawite villages and met with victims from both sides … The Alawites we met said they tried to stop the insurgents and prevent them from doing the attack.” He claims “our larger group is 50 men, including an Alawite sheikh and Christian and Sunni leaders and government officials,” but smaller groups go to both Sunni and Alawite villages to understand their issues, fears and concerns, “and then we bring those issues to the bigger initiative with 50 people. So, in this way the voices of these rural areas are heard.” Similarly, a Christian activist in Latakia said that “Three days after the fall of regime I made a 50-person group with all sects and we went around to different communities to engage with them, but after massacres we cannot do this work.” Nevertheless, he still keeps up mediation work on an individual basis with Alawites and Sunnis, while claiming the local government is now doing effective inter-communal civil peace work – something obviously positive but very difficult to evaluate from afar. The key inter-communal role of the Ismaili community in Qadmus has likewise been discussed above.
At the level of local councils, while not comparable to the revolutionary councils that existed in the early post-2011 years, a significant network of elected councils has sprung up focusing on the needs of today – eg services, reconstruction, social peace – that have some ability to reflect these better instincts at the grassroots level. According to Gregory Waters (and this article ought to be required reading for anyone interested in this largely overlooked aspect), “many local communities, facing an immediate need to maintain basic services and civil peace, established their own systems in this vacuum, including alternative justice models for overworked or non-operational courts. The new authorities have had little choice but to engage with and work through these new systems, something that has strengthened non-HTS participation in post-Assad state-building at the local level.” As these “bottom-up administrative models are now being merged into HTS’s top-down structure … a hybrid form of governance—in the arenas of local administration, security, and justice—emerged across Syria. Neither decentralized nor centralized, the hybrid governance structures combine elements of central rule with grassroots initiatives and local adaptability.”
A good example of how such councils can aid with social peace – despite obvious resource limitations – is that of the Alawite town Sabburah in Salamiyah countryside of Hama. “Once the core of the former regime’s shabbiha network in the countryside, the town is now run by a local council established by two ex-political detainees, Tawfiq Imran and Kareem Akkari, both of whom were long-time officials in the local branch of the Syrian Communist Party.” According to Akkari, “a lot of people came here in the weeks after [the fall of] Assad demanding a return of their rights,” referring to neighbouring Sunnis and Bedouins who, according to Waters, “had for years been attacked, detained, and robbed by regime militia networks based in Sabburah.” Therefore, Akkari continues, “we used negotiations and payments to prevent killings and maintain civil peace.”
The March public statement by 49 Alawite clerics and civil leaders declaring their support for the interim government and calling for accountability on all sides demonstrated, almost unbelievably, a strong desire for integration and inclusion in the new Syria, despite the horrors happening around them. It was not the first such statement. In January, a group of 17 Alawite lawyers released a statement, amidst the growing cycle of violence at the time, declaring their desire “to work together with our brothers in every corner of Syria. Long live Syria, free and proud.” The goodwill in such declarations needs to be met in equal measure. One example was the joint statement by dozens of former anti-Assad activists condemning the slaughter of Alawite citizens. Their concluding statement serves as a useful point at which to conclude this long essay: “There is no dignity for any Syrian when the dignity of the Syrian Alawites is violated, and there is no security for any Syrian when the Syrian Alawite does not feel safe.”
Bibliography
Although all sources are hyperlinked, below is a bibliography of the most important documents plus a number of other articles which demonstrate the variety of source material used in this report:
Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Preliminary Report on the Violations that Took Place in the Course of the Attacks Carried Out by Non-State Armed Groups Linked to the Assad Regime, Mostly in the Governorates of Latakia, Tartus, and Hama Between March 6-10, 2025, 11 March 2025, https://snhr.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/R250305E.pdf
In bombing the Syrian Defence Ministry building in Damascus, and also outside the presidential palace, along with killing 15 Syrian troops and several civilians, Israel was only escalating what it has been doing since December 8, the day the Syrian people overthrew Israel’s preferred leader.
Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes, possibly over 1000, since December 8. In the first few weeks, Israel destroyed some 90 percent of Syria’s strategic weaponry, in its largest air war ever, while occupying a significant part of southern Syria beyond the already-occupied Golan Heights, in “Syrian Golan” (Quneitra province). While airstrikes have returned with some intensity approximately monthly, in the meantime aggression takes place on the ground, away from headlines: taking over more land, destroying farmland, abducting “suspected terrorists,” attacks into Daraa and Damascus provinces, seizure of south Syria’s water sources and the like. It has not let up. Since February, Israel also banned the Syrian army from entering south of Damascus, ie, Quneitra, Daraa and Suweida provinces, with the threat of bombing.
So, while the latest aggression goes under the title of “protecting the Druze,” this background helps us understand that this is merely one of Israel’s excuses. Since the beginning, Israeli leaders like Netanyahu, foreign minister Gideon Saar, defence minister Israel Katz and others have called the new Syrian leadership “jihadists,” “terrorists,” “extremists,” “al-Qaeda” and so on. Both arch-fascist Ben-Gvir and Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amachai Chikli have now called for assassinating Sharaa; Chikli called the Syrian government an ‘Islamo-Nazi regime’ and ‘Hamas’. Arch-fascist Smotrich has stated that conflict with Syria will end only when Syria is “partitioned.” Israel has said it wants Syria split into “cantons,” and requests the US keep its forces in east Syria, and that Russia keep its air and naval bases in west Syria, as part of dividing up the land.
Now, all that said, there was of course a huge crisis in the southern Druze-dominated province of Suweida, and while for Israel it is an excuse, that does not alter the fact that real crises, and how a government handles them, can be critical in terms of the political facilitation of an aggressor. And while much can be said of the antics of some more extreme Druze leaders, or of Druze revenge attacks against Suweida’s Bedouins – all of which will be discussed below – the main story here is the hellish massacre of the Druze population in Suweida – even Israel’s outrages must be seen within the context of the events that politically facilitated its actions.
It did not need to be this way, especially given the goodwill shown to Damascus by the majority of the Druze leadership, who continually tried to reach agreement with the government on compromise plans to integrate the minority-dominated province, based on locally-controlled security arrangements, and who continually rejected Israeli “protection” and condemned Israeli attacks. But Sharaa’s apparent decision in the midst of the crisis to attempt to impose a military solution, and the resulting horrific crimes imposed on the Druze by government-led fighters – whether planned or not, whether due to state loss of control or state-led sectarian instrumentalisation – has almost certainly resulted in the complete alienation of the Druze minority (like the Alawite minority since March) from the post-Assad polity, from what the Syrian majority still see as their revolution. It also resulted in a total defeat for the government’s position, and an enhancement of both Israel’s position and that of the most pro-Israeli wing of the Druze, as the population is now more united than ever against the Sharaa government.
While there is a great deal of dust to settle, and the “fog of war” makes countless claims and counter-claims still unclear, this is my general understanding of what happened.
Background to the crisis in Suweida
The Druze in Suweida have their own sect-based military formations, which arose during the Syrian revolution; while for the most part they were anti-Assad, they were also strongly independent of the Syrian rebels; their focus was on defence of Suweida, and resisting being recruited by Assad to fight his war. Some parts of the Druze leadership and militia were more pro-rebel than others, some more pro-Assad, but always independent. In a sense, analogous to the Kurdish-led SDF in the northeast, with the difference though that the SDF included large numbers of Arabs and somewhat reflected the multi-ethnic nature of the region, whereas the Druze militia were explicitly Druze. This is not a criticism, but it is important going forward, because while Druze account for 90 percent of the population, their militia do not represent the non-Druze in the province.
Following the overthrow of Assad, the Druze militia have guarded their autonomy, rejected simply dissolving their militia into the new Syrian army, while agreeing in principle to eventual integration; as with the SDF, the question is on what terms. As with the SDF, the government rejects incorporating the Druze militia as ‘blocs’ within the army, but rather wants them to dissolve and for their members to join the army as individuals, which is theoretically what happened with all the mainstream rebel formations in January, including HTS. The problem for minority groups however is that the army and the government itself remains overwhelmingly dominated by the Sunni Arab majority, and, given the kinds of violations which have occurred (such as the large-scale massacre of Alawites in March following an Assadist coup and massacre), minorities need to feel the new Syrian polity is more inclusive than it currently is, and hence the terms of integration are important.
During clashes in late April and early May between Druze security forces and armed jihadi gangs in two outer suburbs of Damascus, Druze militia in Suweida clamoured to enter the fray to protect the Druze, but were attacked along the road north by armed Bedouin fighters. Following these events, the government reached an accord with the majority of the Druze religious and military leaderships, that the government’s public security and police would be activated in Suweida to look after internal security, but would consist only of local people. It was also suggested that a new brigade of the Syrian army could be formed at some stage for local Druze militia to join, but nothing happened due to the differences noted above. In the meantime, the Druze leadership remained opposed to the Syrian army or public security from outside deploying in the province, except to maintain security on the Suweida-Damascus highway.
In the background was a long-term low-level conflict between the Druze and the Sunni Bedouin people in the province, over trade routes, land-use and many similar ongoing issues. These are two very usefulbackground articles.
With the Bedouin minority socially and economically marginalised, the lack of any government security forces – banned by both the Druze leaderships and by Israel for different reasons – meant they were also unrepresented in the region’s security forces, the Druze militia being for Druze. This left their region a kind of lawless no-man’s land. Meanwhile, the government abandoned its obligation to maintain security on the highway in practice.
Onset of armed clashes
Hence the background to the current disaster began with a seemingly random crime, when a Bedouin gang seized a Druze truck on the highway. In response, Druze militia kidnapped eight Bedouins as hostages, from the in the al-Maqhous quarter of Suweida city (although ‘Bedouin’ often denotes ‘nomad,’ the majority in Syria are settled), an escalatory move given that the issue was not with city Bedouin at the time. Bedouin then responded in kind. This soon led to serious clashes and killings.
After two days of clashes, amid calls for the government to do something, it sent in General Security and army units on Monday July 14, defying the ban imposed by the Druze and by Israel. What happened next is disputed. According to Druze sources, government forces took the side of the Bedouin in the clashes. SOHR reporting supports this view. According to many Syrians, as the government security forces entered to separate the sides, they were ambushed by one of the Druze militia, the Suweida Military Council (SMC), whose forces are most associated with former Assadist elements; the SMC seems to take the political of Sheikh Hikmet al-Hijri, one of the three top Druze religious leaders, who has consistently called for Israeli intervention and opposed cooperation with the Syrian government. Some 18 government troops were killed on Monday morning. A third version has it that, yes, the Druze attacked, but it was not only Hijri’s forces; rather, all Druze militia still rejected the government security presence and tried to resist their entry. A version of this is actually cited by Laith al-Bahlous, the most pro-government Druze leader, and Hijri’s main political opponent, yet he absolves Hijri’s forces of these accusations, claiming that the Syrian government told Druze leaders of its intention to enter Suweida, but they did not convey this to the people; therefore, armed Druze fighters, coming across government troops, mistakenly assumed them to be invading so they attacked them.
I don’t have a solid opinion on this, and there may have been a mixture of all these factors. But it cannot be disputed that government security forces were ambushed as they arrived, before being involved in any violence, because Druze fighters posted images of themselves standing over the bodies of the troops, and marching others away in their underwear. These images enraged Syrians, leading to demonstrations around Syria calling for revenge, which included ugly sectarian incitement against the Druze.
The conflict spread to Suweida city, between Druze fighters and Bedouins in al-Maqhous. Again, who shot first is disputed; some report it that Hijri’s militia launched an attack on the neighbourhood to subdue it, while others simply report clashes amid the mutual hostage taking. Either way, it led to Bedouin fighters from the countryside attacking the city in support of al-Maqhous, and also attacking smaller Druze towns. At the same time, in response to what they considered the ambush of their troops by Hijri’s forces, the government massively mobilised troops and began a siege of the city, attacking with tanks, mortars and heavy weaponry. And so, if the government and Bedouin forces were not already one, as claimed by many Druze, they effectively became one in the process. This was a fateful, destructive and unnecessary decision, which I will comment on below. Israel began bombing Syrian tanks on Monday, then stepped it up on Tuesday, killing at least 15 government troops, further fueling sectarian rage around the country.
After some 24 hours of conflict, the government security forces and the main Druze religious and military leaderships, including Hijri, the other two main religious leaders, Yousef Jarbou and Hamoud al-Hanawi, along with Laith al-Balous, associated with the powerful Men of Dignity militia which fought the Assad regime, signed a peace agreement on Tuesday. Fighting would cease, “the entry of the Interior and Defence Ministries’ forces in order to impose control over the security and military centres and to secure the province” was “welcomed,” Druze militia were called upon to “organise their weapons under the supervision of state institutions,” and the state was called on to activate its institutions “in cooperation with the province’s people.”
What happened next is again disputed. Many reports claim that, 30 minutes after the meeting ended, Hijri repudiated his own signature, claiming it was made under pressure, and called on Druze to rise up and attack government forces, and for “external Druze” (ie in Israel) to come to their aid. According to one source, Hijri’s forces “launched simultaneous ambushes against government forces across a dozen locations in the city, timed perfectly with renewed Israeli airstrikes.” The obvious coincidence between Hijri’s and Israel’s actions demonstrates what gave a local Druze leader the kind of confidence to take on the government’s army and security forces. However, Druze sources on the ground, such as this harrowing account of the ensuing massacre, claim that after their militia allowed in government forces, they at first were peaceful but then launched their all-out horrific attack on Druze civilians, and this is what caused the Druze militia to renew the fight, while other Druze sources claim the government forces never stopped attacking.
It seems clear the fighting did stop for some time. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which tends to have an anti-government bias in its reporting, reported that “the clashes reached an end, after a ceasefire agreement … SOHR activists have reported seeing tanks and armoured vehicles, which have recently been deployed in Al-Suwaida city, withdrawing from the city … Meanwhile, security forces have been deployed in the city’s major streets, amid tense calm which comes after two days of fierce clashes that left tens of fatalities.”
Therefore, the question really is whether Hijri’s rejection of the ceasefire and renewal of hostilities took place before the government forces renewed their attack, or only as a result of the government re-unleashing hostilities. While it is impossible from this distance to determine who shot first next, a couple of things are clear. First, it was initially only Hijri who rapidly rejected the agreement. The other leaders, including Jarbou, Hanawi and Bahlous, and other militia groups, did not do so until fighting had clearly resumed and it became a defensive war. On the whole, there has been a clear division within the Druze leaderships all along: Hijri and the SMC reject cooperating with the government, reject integration, and call for Israeli intervention; the other main leaders prefer to try to de-escalate, to reach agreements with the government, to negotiate towards eventual integration, and reject Israeli intervention.
While it is possible that outside observers exaggerate the differences amongst the Druze leadership, it is useful to listen to Bahlous. Here he takes aim at some of the Druze “religious and political leadership” for acting “unilaterally,” supporting Israeli intervention and “attempts at division,” and even goes so far as claim they bear responsibility for the bloodshed. Likewise, Sheikh Yusuf Jarbou, claims the agreement had widespread support, but noted “Yes, there is support for al-Hijri’s position. We do not deny that, and sometimes it may have an effect on the ground. We respect their opinion, and they must respect our opinion and the opinion of he majority.” He claimed that supporters of Hijri’s position “burdened society with many losses because of their refusal to accept this agreement,” and vigorously condemned Israeli air strikes.
Massacre
But regardless of who shot first, the second undeniable fact is that once hostilities did resume, elements under the leadership of the government armed forces then carried out large-scale horrific atrocities in the city. In one massacre, 12-15 civilians in a guesthouse were murdered. People saw their neighbours killed on the road, or found them dead in their homes. Dozens, at least, are alleged to have been killed in summary executions. Whole families were murdered. A number of truly horrific crimes were reported. Others were killed by snipers or by mortars being fired in the middle of the city. Looting, home destruction, and acts of sectarian humiliation – such as filmed forced shaving of Druze beards and moustaches – also took place.
Water, electricity and fuel were cut off, and violent clashes took place at the entrance to the hospital, which filled up with corpses. A hospital massacre reportedly took place, though there are sharply different versions of who was responsible, but either way the situation there was catastrophic with complete power cut-off, leading to bodies decomposing. Tens of thousands were displaced. Druze describe a complete hell of helplessness and impunity in this period. Druze activists launched ‘Suwayda is Dying’ humanitarian appeals to the world.
Taking the ‘Men of Dignity’ (Rijal al-Karama) militia again as a kind of bellwether, despite Bahlous’ fierce criticism of Hijri’s actions, they are first of all a Druze militia tasked with defending their people, and as government-led forces went on the rampage, their forces strongly mobilised to fight them. By the end of Tuesday, the ‘Men of Dignity’ issued a statement condemning the “monstrous attack,” claiming it was one of the worst attacks on Suweida in “over a century,” by “the forces of the Syrian government, which has violated all the agreed upon pledges and guarantees made this morning.” They claimed to have lost 50 martyrs among. Other Druze militia not associated with Hijri’s group issued similar statements and likewise went to the defence of their compatriots.
According to the SOHR, by end of the fighting with final ceasefire late Wednesday, some 590 people had been killed over the four days; but given that their figure was only 116 people at the time of the first ceasefire on Tuesday, this means nearly 500 deaths occurred in those last 24 hours after the ceasefire ended. SOHR’s breakdown shows some 154 Druze civilians were killed, along with 146 Druze militia fighters, 257 members of the government’s armed forces (plus another 15 government fighters killed in Israeli airstrikes, and several more in the headquarters in Damascus), 18 Bedouin fighters, and 3 Bedouin civilians killed by Druze militia. However, the fact that SOHR’s claim of only 3 Bedouin civilians killed remained unchanged the entire week, even after large scale Druze attacks late in the week (see below), underlines SOHR’s unreliability in my view, and hence I am not using their later updates, which now report 1448 killed altogether (one third government-led forces), until confirmed by other more cautious bodies; that said, I have no doubt that the numbers now really are drastically higher. The much more cautious Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has recorded 814 deaths (and 913 injuries) as of July 24, but emphasises these figures are preliminary, and has yet to do a breakdown of the victims.
Many Syrian government supporters are in denial about the extent of the massacre, but descriptions from inside Suweida bear out the gut-wrenching reality. This essentially renders all the discussion about the provocative actions by the more extreme wing of the Druze leadership, such as the initial ambush of government forces and unilateral rejection of the first ceasefire, purely secondary; while essential to a full analysis of the events, none of it can provide excuses for the gigantic massacre that ensued.
First ‘final’ agreement, revenge operations, and tribal offensive
A new agreement was reached late on Wednesday, and following this all government armed forces – General Security and the army – withdrew from Suweida. Once again, the agreement was signed by all major Druze leaders except Hijri, who called for ongoing resistance against “armed gangs falsely calling themselves a government,” and warned that anyone engaging with the government “will face legal and social accountability, without exception or leniency.” Sheikh al-Jarbou accused Hijri of illegitimately seeking to monopolize Druze leadership.
Following their withdrawal, Druze militia launched attacks on at least 10 Bedouin villages throughout the region. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Hijri’s militia killed dozens of Bedouin in these attacks, leading to forced displacement and widespread migration, within and outside the province, with reports of other human rights violations, massacres and hate speech (eg threats to “kill and burn all members of the Bedouin tribes in Thaala village”). On July 17, the ‘Gathering of Southern Tribes’ issued an urgent humanitarian appeal, claiming “We are being silently exterminated.” In turn, this led to thousands of ‘tribal’ fighters with links to the Suweida Bedouin in Daraa and Deir Ezzor attacking the province in support of their brethren, once again reportedly carrying out massacres, burning villages, firing mortars, looting and other violations, and again, hate speech (eg “we will burn Suweida completely”), while also escorting besieged local Bedouin across provincial borders. Israel again launched attacks against the Bedouin fighters.
This further conflict then led to further negotiations and new agreements; having just withdrawn, the government was now allowed to send its General Security – but not the military – back in for 48 hours to enforce the ceasefire. On Saturday the alliance of tribal fighters agreed to ceasefire and had withdrawn by late in the day; after ensuring their exit from the province, the security forces took up positions on the provincial border to prevent them re-entering; on Sunday the situation was reported to be “calm.” After exchange of hostages, 1500 Suweida Bedouin civilians who had been held hostage by Druze militia were expelled from the province as part of the agreement.
Analysis of final ceasefire agreement – complete rout of government operation
This second or third “final” agreement did not substantially change the terms of the first “final” agreement on Wednesday. According to this agreement which led to the withdrawal of both the army and government security, security would be kept by internal security and police “staffed by local Suweida personnel,” and “police officers and personnel from among Suwayda residents to assume leadership and executive duties in overseeing security in the province;” yet another of the terms is to “fully integrate Suweida into the Syrian state, including restoring service provision and civil state institutions.” Again, the Suweida-Damascus highway would be secured by the government. In his speech announcing the ceasefire terms, Sharaa also affirmed that “we decided to assign some local factions and Sheikhs of Reason with the responsibility of maintaining security in Suweida.”
This is curious wording, because despite talk of “fully integrating” the province, the security regime described is identical to that before the crisis, identical to the agreement reached in early May, that activated government security and police but to be staffed only locally, with the state only responsible for securing the highway, and otherwise keeping out; a huge amount of blood was spilled for no change. And in the final, final agreement, the terms are even clearer, for the complete exit of public security and the Ministry of Defense from the administrative borders of Suweida, and prevention of them re-entering the province. Essentially a complete defeat for the government.
Furthermore, even though it is consistent with the previous agreement his government made, Sharaa seems to be saying that this was only forced on Syria by Israeli bombing. He claimed the decision was made to “put the interests of Syrians above chaos and destruction” as the alternative was “open war with the Israeli entity” which aims to “drag our people into a war they want to ignite on our land, a war with no aim but to tear our country apart.”
Sharaa analyses Israel’s aims very well in this speech, noting that “the Israeli entity has always targeted our stability and sown discord among us since the fall of the former regime, is once again trying to turn our sacred land into never-ending chaos … to break our unity and weaken our ability to move forward with rebuilding and progress.”
However, the problem is not his analysis of Israel’s goals; rather it is that by blaming Israel for the failure of his goal of “integrating” Suweida,” he demonstrates his incomprehension of the fact that if he really did aim to integrate Suweida, based on real unity among Syrian people, then it is his government that totally blew it by attempting a military solution that resulted in a gruesome massacre of the Druze population. And while he targets Hijri, without naming him, for rejecting all cooperation with the government or moves towards integration, and many Syrian government supporters point to the rejection of Hijri’s extremism and pro-Israel position by other Druze leaders, the likely impact of the massacre will be to weaken the position of those like Bahlous who tried to cooperate, to strengthen Hijri’s position and unify the Druze population and leadership against the government. In fact, word has it that Bahlous has left the province and been labelled a “traitor.” Not because he was; but because all his admirable attempts to cooperate with the government were blown up by the brutal massacre.
In his speech, Sharaa stressed that “we are committed to holding accountable anyone who overstepped and wronged our Druze community” and in other speeches stated we “strongly condemn these heinous acts and affirm our full commitment to investigating all related incidents and punishing all those proven to be involved,” and so on. These are very good words. Likewise, the ceasefire terms include “the formation of a joint fact-finding committee to investigate the crimes, violations, and abuses reported during the recent violence in Suwayda while identifying the perpetrators and compensating the victims.”
However, there are some reasons why such fine words are unlikely to win back any support among Druze for current Syrian authorities for the foreseeable future, and not only because it is difficult to come back from such a terrifying massacre even in the best of circumstances.
First, all of this was promised after the massacre of Alawites on the Syrian coast in March – of course, this is not entirely fair, as the investigative commission that the government set up has only just released its report, so it is not out of the question that we will see accountability take place, perhaps that is just a matter of time. Either way, the lack of accountability so far obviously contributes to doubt that it will take place with Suweida. And a bigger problem is that neither have any of the genocidal Assadist war criminals been brought to justice, and some of the most infamous are even walking the streets under government protection, meaning that any attempt to punish killers of the Druze or Alawites may confront Sunni resistance. Moreover, even if it is necessary to wait for this process, the government could have pushed forward with other processes, including compensation, official mourning and inclusion of Alawites into the local security forces, but it has shown frankly little interest.
But more important is the fact that something like this could happen again after the experience of the coast. On the coast, local security was overwhelmed after hundreds of their members were slaughtered in the Assadist coup attempt, and undisciplined military brigades, rootless jihadi groups and armed civilians bent on vengeance went on a pogromist rampage. Arguably, government security did well to clear the region in two to three days and end the carnage. But with this experience, the government has few excuses the second time, especially since in Suweida, unlike the more chaotic descent onto the coast to confront the Assadist insurgency, the government forces clearly led the operation.
It is unclear exactly which forces carried out most of the violations in Suweida – government security forces, military brigades, Bedouin fighters, criminals exploiting the situation – and we will need to await proper investigation. SOHR obtained information from locals that cards issued by the Syrian Ministry of Defence were found in possession of several attackers; countless reports speak of attackers in government military or security uniforms, though others also speak more generally of people wearing ‘fatigues’; videos showed Bedouin fighters, already in conflict with the Druze, riding through the streets on government tanks, brandishing their weapons; videos showed fighters approaching the city expressing hate speech and threatening to kill all Druze.
Some claim that Sharaa and his government planned the massacre as a way of consolidating a sectarian Sunni base of support, but in my view this is unlikely; the massacre has resulted in a massive setback to the government’s efforts to restore some stability to the devastated country. It is more likely that it lost control and that forces under its command ran amok. But in the end it makes no difference; it is the result that counts. This once again demonstrates that the government does not have control over the collection of forces that have been patched together as the ‘Syrian army’, many made up of heavily traumatised young male victims of the Assadist genocide; that it does not have a professional, let alone inclusive, armed force at its disposal, seen as legitimate by diverse parts of Syria; the army remains a de facto Sunni Arab army. And after the coastal massacre, the government should have known this. As such, the last thing a government should do is try to impose a military solution on a minority issue.
Imposing military solutions and alienating chunks of Syria
It seems clear that at some point the government made the decision to go well beyond the initial mandate of separating the Druze and Bedouin forces and instead decided to ‘solve’ the six-month Suweida integration issue militarily. Whether it made that decision at the outset, or after the initial bloody ambush by Druze militia, is unclear. There was no way in Syria’s fragile, sectarian circumstances inherited from the Assadist slaughterhouse, the great sectarian lab par excellence, that the imposition of a military solution by an entirely Sunni military, with a huge volume of sectarian preaching and sloganeering in the background, was not going to lead to catastrophic slaughter. Reportedly, even some of the notoriously undisciplined military units which were widely reported to have carried out mass killings of Alawites in March – such as ‘Amshat’ (the Sultan Suleiman Brigade), were, inconceivably, sent to Suweida.
Such a decision to “solve” Suweida’s integration issue militarily seems the only way of explaining the decision to launch a huge siege of Suweida city itself, with tanks and artillery; attempting to take the city by military force was unnecessary if the aim remained merely separating the parties in conflict; separating the forces in rural Suweida while attempting to de-escalate the clashes in the city via negotiating the entry of public security, without the army, would have been more rational. Worse still, this meant the government forces were now besieging Suweida together with the Bedouin forces, even if that had not been the original aim; the government was now effectively on the side of one of the two forces they were supposed to separate. It also meant that the minority Bedouins, already in conflict with the Druze and with genuine grievances, were thereby given the power of impunity.
In one of Sharaa’s final speeches, at the end of the ‘second round’ when the tribal fighters from outside the province agreed to withdraw, Sharaa praised them not just for withdrawing, but for their “heroic stance”, based on their “lofty values and principles” which “motivates them to rush to the rescue of the oppressed,” meaning the local Bedouin who suffered revenge attacks after the government forces withdrew. But, he said, they “cannot replace the role of the state in handling the country’s affairs and restoring security.” While he also stated “the Druze constitute a fundamental pillar of the Syrian national fabric,” his blame for the crisis was laid entirely on “illegal armed groups,” meaning Druze militia. This double standard is not just hypocrisy, it goes to the core of the problem of the government’s project that there should be no armed bodies outside the control of the state; because the tribal brigades, which entered Suweida heavily armed, are obviously outside state control, yet were praised rather than labeled illegal armed groups; minorities are not going to give up their arms if Sunni tribal fighters, or other Sunni jihadist forces, are not also comprehensively disarmed.
Fadel Abdulghani, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said the unrest stems from Syria’s failure to embrace inclusive governance following years of conflict. “This is not just about security,” he said. “Excluding political participation fuels instability.” The fact of the matter is, neither in the political sphere nor in the military-security sphere is the current regime in any way seriously inclusive of minority groups and regions.
The only way that can be overcome is if integration – particularly of regionally-based minority communities such as the Druze in the south, the Alawites on the coast, and the Kurds in the northeast – is carried out in a way that fully democratic, inclusive and respectful of the needs of these communities, and where they are primarily responsible for their own security. While the government can be accused of doing nothing along these lines with the Alawites, there have been positive negotiation processes with both the Druze and the Kurds.
The government’s catastrophic decision to impose a military solution on the Druze issue has not only led to total defeat, with Suweida more independent than previously, but has left a new massive hole in support for the post-Assad Syrian polity, the second after the huge Alawite hole – yet until then, the Druze were largely a supportive constituency, if on their own terms. For the majority of Syrians, the revolution means freedom – the end of a tyrannical regime, the opening of Sednaya and other torture gulags, the freedom to protest and organise, to reconstruct their country bombed into a moonscape by Assad, to begin the process of return of half the population. And this post-Assad reality, the ‘revolution’ let’s say, maintains overwhelming legitimacy among the Syrian majority, as does the current government.
But for the vast majority of Alawites, and now Druze, the current reality is instead one of exclusion, alienation, insecurity and now slaughter. They would now feel much like the vast majority of Syrians felt under Assad. That is not a political statement, simply a statement of reality. It may be salvageable, but it would take a miracle for it to be salvaged in the foreseeable future, or under this government.
And if support for Israel and its actions among the Druze, and for the more pro-Israel and anti-government Hijri-led wing of the Druze, has come about as a result, the blame lies squarely on the Syrian government for this situation. It is not good, but people react to being slaughtered by accepting help from anyone who offers, regardless of their motivations. Israel’s motivations are to create a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Syria, and using the Druze card is a key part of that strategy. Israel aims to ensure that Syria cannot be re-established as any kind of stable, united state; which means that if the Syrian government acts as a sectarian agent against parts of its population, it plays directly into Israel’s hands – if the regime destroys Syria’s unity, Israel is happy to “help” from the other side.
That said, arguably Israel’s bombings did more to inflame the sectarian situation than help anyone; when looking at casualty figures, the huge numbers of Syrian government troops killed make clear that resistance by Druze militia on the ground was the more decisive factor. Much took place – outrageous Israeli bombing, intransigence and provocative acts by the Hijri wing of the Druze leadership, the violent revenge operations against the Bedouins – but the sheer enormity of the hellish massacre of the Druze is the main story here.
Damascus: like everywhere in the country, jubilant Syrians celebrated the fall of the tyrant
The fall of the Assad regime on December 8 2024 was a belated culmination of the revolution which began in 2011, an extremely broad, diverse, democratic revolution; however, long before this, by around 2016-18, this revolution had been largely crushed or confined by the Assad regime’s genocidal terror. Years of repression, stalemate, despair and exile followed.
As Syrian writer Robin Yassin-Kassab described it just before the December 8 victory:
“The civil revolution that began in 2011 was largely crushed, its experiments in democracy eliminated, its most grassroots military forces co-opted or gobbled up by more powerful and authoritarian actors. There are no longer hundreds of independent, quasi-democratic local councils to organise civil life. The country is divided, traumatised, cursed by warlords and foreign occupiers. But suddenly it looks as if it may be possible not only to challenge but to end the rule of the monster …”
Hence as the regime, with the decisive aid of Russia’s air war and Iranian-backed Shiite sectarian militia, drove back the revolutionary forces, the only remaining areas free of Assad in the northwest came under the hegemonic control of either the Turkish regime, or of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the hardline Islamist militia then led by today’s president Ahmed al-Sharaa. While there were sharp differences and armed conflicts between the Turkish-backed groups and HTS, both Turkish and HTS hegemony in their own ways were negative influences from the perspective of the democratic revolution that they were coopting.
This is the background to HTS emerging as the leading force in November and December 2024 – the opposite of the situation 2011-2017, when HTS’s predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra, was only one of countless rebel forces; and the opposite of the expectations of the vast majority of Syrian revolutionary forces since 2011.
Background to HTS
Here it seems a little background on HTS would be useful. Jabhat al-Nusra arose in 2012 as a Sunni sectarian militia which affiliated to al-Qaeda (its leaders like al-Sharaa had been veterans of al-Qaeda in Iraq who took part in the Iraqi resistance against US occupation), and its reactionary and repressive politics were anathema to the goals of the revolution. However, following its rejection, in 2013, of the attempt of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) – which had quit al-Qaeda – to impose itself on Nusra in the form of ISIS, an important distinction arose: the more Syria-based Nusra, which focused on fighting the regime, often bent to the pressure of the people and other rebel factions, while ISIS from the outset was an outright enemy of the revolution, much more so than it was ever an enemy of the regime (indeed, both the regime and ISIS always focused more on fighting the rebels than each other, often enough at the same time).
Therefore, from a purely military standpoint, the vast array of Syrian rebel groups, representing a wide variety of ideological perspectives, were usually in some kind of united front situation with Nusra against the far more powerful genocidal regime and genocidal ISIS. In 2016, the Nusra leadership split from al-Qaeda as well, and in early 2017 formed HTS with a number of smaller Islamist factions to focus on Syria rather than connections to ‘global jihad’.
Despite this convergence of interests, Nusra, and later HTS, also worked to monopolise the situation where it was strong, and would sometimes destroy other rebel formations which threatened its power. This was not always successful though, and vast rebel-controlled coalitions and regions resisted Nusra or HTS encroachment and at times imposed important defeats on them.
However, the regime’s victories aided the process of HTS hegemonisation. The crushing of free Aleppo in late 2016 – where Nusra had been only one of 40 odd rebel groups – and of a number of famous revolutionary towns such as Daraya and Moademiyah around Damascus in 2015-17, and then the reconquest of the south from some 50 democratic rebel groups (the FSA Southern Front) in 2018, left only the northwest under rebel control. But in the huge regime and Russian offensives between 2018-2020 in the northwest, all the famous revolutionary towns with a strong revolutionary-democratic tradition, and a hsitory of resistance to Nusra/HTS encroachment – Saraqeb, Kafranbel, Maraat al-Numan, Atareb and so on – were conquered by the regime, hugely weakening the more independent, non-HTS sectors, and driving everyone into a corner near the Turkish border – either Idlib under HTS control, or the northern border regions under Turkish control.
So, while in the 2012-17 period, Nusra’s 10,000 fighters never formed more than about 10 percent of the rebel fighting force, HTS was estimated to have some 35,000 fighters when it launched its late November offensive last year. When these revolutionary towns in the northwest were conquered in 2018-20, their populations fled to remaining free territory, controlled by HTS, and many people not previously associated with it joined its fighting ranks. According to Ayham al-Sati of Baynana, a Spanish-language media outlet founded by Syrian journalists, “Many of the people who are now fighting … are children of areas like Saraqeb or Kafranbel. We are seeing figures we recognise from 2011, who then fought a regime that was bombing its population, and now they are doing it again.” Even troops from FSA brigades earlier destroyed by Nusra later joined HTS ranks, as their main aim remained the fall of the regime and this had become the last effective fighting force.
It should also be noted that the HTS-led ‘Deterrence of Aggression’ offensive in November 2024 also included a number of Free Syrian Army formations, most notably Jaysh al-Izza and the National Front for Liberation, which had managed to maintain a degree of independence from both HTS and the Turkish-controlled Syrian National Army (SNA). While having ideologically little in common with HTS, in practice they became closer to HTS simply because it continued to fight the regime, whereas the SNA was largely used by Turkey as an anti-Kurdish proxy while the Erdogan regime appealed to Assad for joint action against the Kurdish-led SDF, and as such aimed to keep the peace in the northwest.
But this meant that, while on one hand, HTS monopolised the fighting forces, the impact also went the other way, because the huge growth of HTS meant the vast majority of its cadres were never in Nusra, and therefore never connected to al-Qaeda. And these influences by non-Nusra elements, as well as the simple needs of technocratic governance in Idlib for 8 years, had a serious moderating impact on HTS, which was vital to its ability to lead the revolution in December.
This underlines the fact that HTS was essentially a coalition, and cannot be easily defined by the original Nusra core group. It includes pragmatic elements, hard jihadist elements, elements closer to the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the revolution and so on. Discussion on whether HTS’s transformation is real or superficial often takes on essentialist forms (absurd statements like “al-Qaeda can never change”), yet there have been marked changes over last few years in Idlib itself, including outreach to Christian and Druze communities which Nusra had severely oppressed, as well as to Kurds and to the SDF.
However, these genuine changes in HTS do not mean that it ceased being an authoritarian Sunni Islamist group, and in any case a significant part of its base still consisted of ideological jihadists. Reports by human rights organisations consistently reported on repression and torture used in prisons (although by then the majority of prisoners were unreconstructed al-Qaeda or other hard-jihadist militants rejecting HTS’s pragmatic course); and Syrian revolutionary activists remember that some of their outstanding cadres, such as Raed Fares and Hamoud Juneid, are widely believed to have been murdered by HTS cadre.
Nusra/HTS, in other words, was long a known quantity, and was previously the very last choice of Syrian revolutionaries to be the leadership, but hard reality changed things.
‘Deformed revolution’ or mere ‘popular coup’?
What accounts for such a rapid collapse of the regime? The main cause was that it was hollow; its troops refused to fight; no soldier in Syria thought they should put their life on the line for the rotten, uber-corrupt, thieving, tyrannical regime. But there was a second factor, and this was the ability of this more pragmatic HTS to realise that, to carry through this revolution, it was required to do and say things which stood in stark contrast to its background, ideology and practice in Idlib, for example outreach to all religious and ethnic minorities, promises to women of no compulsory veiling and so on. The revolution would not have been possible without this – even people who hated the regime may still have resisted if they believed HTS was still what Nusra had been a decade earlier.
The regime’s previous crushing of the revolution and all its popular organisations, combined with its utter hollowness, meant that it simply collapsed once the HTS-led “Deterrence of Aggression” offensive took off, so the rebel army simply took power, but without a mobilised and organised revolutionary population taking part. While some observers, such as Gilbert Achcar, have claimed that this was therefore not a revolution (indeed he warns against characterising it “as the resumption of the Syrian revolution”), in my view this lacks a huge amount of nuance; millions of Syrian people did come out and welcome the rebels everywhere, and countless popular initiatives began to take shape, and in their consciousness the masses feel it as the culmination of what they began. Nevertheless, it means that the new government, while based on popular support, is under less restraint from the revolution’s base than it would have been otherwise, and the new state’s armed forces were de facto almost entirely Sunni Muslim in composition.
Rather than a mere ‘popular coup’, what occurred is better analysed as a ‘deformed revolution’.
A capitalist regime, a democratic opening and a devastated country
To state the obvious, the Islamist-influenced government led by al-Sharaa is a capitalist one; no-one had ever imagined anything different. And the cadres around the former HTS seek to consolidate their own power as the leading political force in this government. A capitalist government, whatever its political colouring, will aim to stabilise the situation for local and foreign capital, and to sideline any radical, working class or socialist challenge to its rule.
At the same time, December 8 created a semi-revolutionary situation: the Syrian masses who entered the streets in December have expectations, they are pressing their demands. Above all, democratic space now exists that did not exist before December; the masses are able to speak, to organise, to hold rallies and meetings around the country without being repressed. This is a vastly different situation for organising – and only now is there some possibility of attempting to establish a workers’ movement. Previously you would have ended up in the Sednaya concentration camp or in a mass grave.
Some of the apocalyptic destruction the Assad regime imposed on Syria; when a regime destroys its country, it becomes the job of whoever overthrows it to reconstruct it.
Currently there is electricity for a few hours a day, if lucky, food and fuel are absurdly expensive due to being in very short supply, and wages abysmal, the state bankrupt – so bankrupt that Qatar and Saudi Arabia paid off a mere $15 million in debt to the IMF and World Bank that the government could not afford. With the central bank sanctioned, virtually no banks around the world have been able to make financial transactions with Syria; not even remittances could get through much of the time. Even a Qatari attempt from January to pay public sector salaries for a few months was held up by US sanctions until May, when special permission was finally given by the US (except for military and security salaries).
Clearly, no reconstruction can occur without the lifting of sanctions. And there can be no illusions about a working-class or socialist movement in the short-term without some level of recovery of industry, infrastructure and of the population.
And in the real world, getting the economy going again, bringing about reconstruction, will require massive injections of local and foreign capital, loans and aid. While “stability for investment” may be goal of a capitalist government, at this moment it also equates with the popular mood and with the needs of the country and its population. The sanctions not only devastated the population, they also further demobilised them, both under late Assad and post-Assad, given their everyday struggle for survival.
Of course, capitalist investment and economic activity are no panacea, but currently it would be a luxury to worry too much about this in the context of the absence of any money for investment and development; Assad’s kleptocratic crony capitalism was little more than a regime of plunder, and its collapse has left nothingness in place of it. Capitalist investment and an onset of economic recovery would create conditions for class struggle to revive, to confront the evils that capitalist investment will re-introduce in a new form.
A capitalist government with an unclear direction
Which direction does its need to establish a stable capitalist regime lead the ex-HTS core group now in effective control in Syria?
Towards continuing with its pragmatic liberal-capitalist transformation, and opening further in a non-sectarian direction towards the countries’ minorities?
Or to reasserting its more ‘Islamist’ character, imposing a hard Sunni Islamist regime, as a means of repression, and asserting Sunni sectarianism as a means to suppress minorities? The Sunni version of what happened in Iran.
The jury is still out on this; both pressures and tendencies exist. To date, while the government has mostly gone in the first direction, there have also been signs of the second. Either way, it has tended to appoint many people from former HTS or closely allied groups to key political and military-security roles in the caretaker government – critics call this ‘one colour’ appointments – and has somewhat limited the move towards democracy at an institutional level, while maintaining a generally pragmatic course and environment of free expression. These are some of the major changes:
At a conference of armed factions in January, the rebel militia were told to dissolve – including HTS itself – and form a new Syrian army. However, there has been little real progress in fully integrating the factions, especially some of the SNA factions who carried out terrible crimes in March on the coast (see below). Moreover, this underlines a fundamental problem/weakness with the new regime: given that the overwhelming majority of rebel cadres, especially by late in the conflict, were Sunni Arabs, this means the the regime’s main armed forces are essentially from this one dominant part of the population. While this is an inheritance rather than a deliberate policy, there has been very little movement to expand the military to incorporate minorities, a fundamental issue when the army is used in non-Sunni areas, given the deep divisions inherited from the Assad regime.
This conference also declared al-Sharaa interim president. While this was arguably formalising a reality, he was thereby declared president by a purely military gathering representing only one section of Syrian society.
The long promised National Dialogue Conference in March did not live up to its promise – the committee appointed to organise it was small and dominated by supporters of the ruling group; the basis upon which delegates were selected at local gatherings was opaque; invites to the conference were sent out only two days beforehand, preventing many long-time Syrian revolutionaries abroad from reaching it; the conference lasted only a day; and its decisions carry little weight.
The government declared it would take four years to write a new constitution and five years to hold elections. Some period of time for recovery is understandable, and millions of Syrians abroad or internally displaced should also be able to take part in decision-making; and in any case, holding elections now would most likely simply lead to al-Sharaa being elected and strengthened. However, these periods of time are widely considered rather long.
The interim constitution declared in March, to be in effect until a new constitution is written, declares ‘Sharia’ to be the major influence on Syrian law, and that the president must be a Muslim. While these aspects represent formal continuity with the Assad regime constitution, people expect the new Syria to go beyond the old regime; moreover, some fear that these clauses may be used undemocratically by an Islamist-influenced government where they were not by the secular-fascist Assad regime, which justified totalitarian rule using different ideological constructs. The interim constitution also gives sweeping powers to the president, allowing him to appoint one third of the national assembly. However, many aspects were better, including clauses guaranteeing “the social, economic and political rights of women,” protecting “freedom of belief and the status of religious sects” and guaranteeing ”the cultural diversity of Syrian society, including the cultural and linguistic rights of all Syrians.”
The new transitional government appointed in April emphasised technical expertise, and of 23 members, only four had been members of HTS and another five associated with it at some level; this was thus an improvement on the one-colour interim cabinet. Respected civil activists such as Hind Kabawat, who has a background in Syria’s civil opposition movement, and Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets disaster relief and rescue service, were included. However, there is only one woman, one Alawite, one Druze, one Kurd and one Christian (Kabawat, who is also the woman!), as opposed to 19 Sunni Arab men, so this attempt at diverse representation smacks of tokenism. Five ministers previously served in senior positions in the Assad regime, including the two main economic-related ministers, who not surprisingly are advocates of neoliberal policies.
When government ministers have made unacceptable statements or decisions, there has been pushback, often leading to retreat. For example, when announced school curriculum changes (including scrapping evolution) were widely protested, the government said they were only suggestions, and that the only actionable change was the removal of Assad worship; Syria’s caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, appeared in front of a flag that displayed the shahada (Islamic profession of faith) as well as the Free Syrian flag, but following a storm of criticism, at his next public appearance only the revolution flag was present.
Significant demonstrations and public meetings were held by women to protest the anti-woman agenda put forth by two HTS appointees. Thus far, there is little evidence of this agenda being implemented, despite worrying signs. The governor initially appointed for Suweida province was the first woman in Syria’s history in that position. When asked about women’s rights to study and work, al-Sharaa pointed out that in Idlib under his government, women are 60 percent of university graduates. Given what happened to women’s rights under an Islamist regime following a popular revolution in Iran, women’s movements will need to stay alert.
There have been plenty of declarations by small groups of leftists, workers organisations, other progressive groups and the like around various issues, but it is hard to gauge how significant they are. There is no room for exaggeration on this – after 54 years of monstrously repressive rule, it is going to take some time for workers and leftist movements to emerge in a country destroyed. There have also been many local grassroots initiatives, eg local people began organising their own people’s security forces in Aleppo; a popular initiative there quite early put the demand on HTS and the other militia to leave the cities to local councils, and they agreed; non-governmental civic councils in parts of Daraa and Damascus monitoring local government and services; grassroots local councils in the Qalamoun region supporting education and aid initiatives for displaced people; grassroots re-greening initiatives in Daraa; inter-communal dialogue initiatives between Sunni and Alawite communities taking place on the coast; and much more. Again, however, this is mostly small-scale.
Neoliberal orientation – and Assadist connections?
In January, the government announced an economic policy based on free markets and privatisation of ‘loss-making’ state enterprises, while maintaining critical infrastructure in state hands. An article in the Financial Times was headlined ‘Syria to dismantle Assad-era socialism, says foreign minister’, referring to Shaibani’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, demonstrating the way the new government aimed to get needed foreign investment by propagandistically playing up its rejection of the so-called ‘socialism’ of the Assad regime.
However, while the new government certainly is neoliberal, there should be no illusions about the role of large-scale private capitalist ownership under the Assad regime, largely owned by Assad family and regime-connected cronies. For example, again from the Financial Times, Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, controlled “as much as 60 per cent of the country’s economy through a complex web of holding companies. His business empire spans industries ranging from telecommunications, oil, gas and construction, to banking, airlines and retail. He even owns the country’s only duty free business as well as several private schools. This concentration of power, say bankers and economists, has made it almost impossible for outsiders to conduct business in Syria without his consent” (ironically given the ‘socialism’ title in the article above, the Financial Times here cites another of the same paper’s articles entitled ‘Syria sees benefits of liberalisation’, referring to the Assad regime!). Moreover, much of this “complex web” extended into what is euphemistically called the ‘state-owned economy’ via massive corruption and nepotism.
On top of this, foreign investment is hardly new; after all, Russia and Iran owned large chunks of the Syrian economy, and even became rivals for control of the Syrian corpse. Russia owned phosphate mines, ports, gas fields and so on; Iran amongst other things owned much of the telecommunications network. These deals were often not on terms beneficial to Syria. Whatever the case, this collapsed with the regime.
As such, Syria’s new quest to mobilise local and especially foreign capital is not so much a change as a step to the side; Shaibani’s talk of Assad’s ‘socialism’ pure opportunism to encourage western investment. Ironically, the government actually cancelled a 49-year contract over a Tartous port held by the Russian navy in the same week as Shaibani’s speech in Davos; Syrian authorities said that revenue from the port would “now benefit the Syrian state,” whereas Russia had received 65 percent of the port’s profits in the old agreement, meaning Syria basically carried out an act of nationalisation, of ‘socialism’, just as Shaibani was talking up rejecting ‘socialism’!
All that said, the continuity of neoliberalism means anti-worker policy. The government has called for the retrenchment of some 400,000 of the 1.3 million-strong public sector workforce; some of this has either already been implemented, or workers were placed on three months of compulsory leave (whether paid or unpaid remains unclear) while authorities assess whether these jobs are needed. The excuse given is that these are just paper jobs created by the previous regime to pay its cronies and supporters for doing nothing; while this claim should not be dismissed out of hand, rather than trusting capitalist governments to deal with such issues, they should be investigated by unions or workers’ committees. Of course retrenchments are hardly surprising in a bankrupt economy, after losing the lifelines provided by Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies, which until May were not replicated even by Syria’s new friends due to US secondary sanctions. There have been strikes in health and education and other sectors against lay-offs. On the other side, in late June, Sharaa issued a decree raising all public sector salaries (as well as those of employees in joint-ventures), and pensions, by 200 percent, thus raising the average wage from $40 to $120 a month; this is the first step in a promised 400 percent increase.
The beginnings of sanctions removal following Trump’s mid-May about-turn is of course a hugely welcome change, but at the same time there can be no illusions about what a massive influx of local and foreign capital will do politically. On the one hand, it is important to re-emphasise how essential this is. Already, major French, Chinese, Turkish, Qatari, Saudi and Emirati projects have been launched, focused on restoration of Syria’s crucial infrastructure and energy sectors.
However, as Syrian writer Joseph Daher stresses, an economic free for all without clear targets will not lift the country out of its misery, especially given the government’s neo-liberal orientation; he also stresses the necessary political dimension of democratic inclusion and revival of civil activism to assuring the gains are not all made by big capital, otherwise the government’s already centralising tendencies could drift towards what he calls “authoritarian neoliberalism,” which is essentially what the Assad regime, like the other regional regimes, had become and was precisely what led to the revolution – with the proviso that “authoritarian” is a rather euphemistic term to use for a regime as totalitarian and genocidal as that of Assad and it would take massive anti-democratic setbacks for this new order to even begin approaching that scenario.
One thing the Assad regime did leave was some fabulously wealthy individuals, and these Assad-connected capitalists may be grabbing some of the new investment opportunities. As Syrian writer Mahmoud Bitar notes, “Russia and Iran are not standing aside. Their economic arms, state-linked contractors, businessmen, and cronies are still embedded in Syria’s reconstruction, energy, and infrastructure sectors. … The likes of Mohamad Hamsho, who controls hard currency flows, and Fuad al-Assi, who runs the country’s largest money transfer network, remain central players … Lifting sanctions could make them stronger tomorrow.” As a party calling itself the Syrian Democratic Left Party notes, new investments will only contribute meaningfully to recovery if protected from entrenched corruption inherited from the former regime, requiring a new regulatory framework.
Shortly, after writing these lines, Bitar returned to the largest and most important showpiece of the post-sanctions climate: the $7 billion investment in power infrastructure by the Qatari-led UCC-Holding and Power International consortium, expected to provide some 50 percent of Syria’s power needs and to create 50,000 direct and 250,000 indirect jobs. While the importance of this for Syria can hardly be doubted, Bitar notes that these two linked companies are owned by Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who were also behind a 2005 “disastrous Ummayad Tunnel project in Damascus” which was carried out “in partnership with the Military Housing Establishment, one of Assad’s most notoriously corrupt state fronts.” Moreover, he notes that the Al-Khayyat brothers are nephews of the very Mohammad Hamsho he had just mentioned, who was “the Assad regime’s top economic operator, still active and protected in Damascus despite international sanctions.” Bitar also questions why the consortium is not investing in the 14 existing power plants, rather than “building 4 new ones from scratch.”
Bitar also revealed that Farhan al-Marsoumi, “a key figure in Assad’s Captagon production and smuggling networks, has received a license from the new Syrian government to open a tobacco company.” Aside from his Captagon trade, he was also a key Iranian-connected figure in Deir Ezzor , who led recruitment efforts for Iran’s 47th Regiment, and was even connected to Maher al-Assad’s notorious 4th Brigade.
Capitalism is clearly a key point of connection between the previous and current regimes, and if these examples become the norm, we may be seeing the resurrection of elements of the old regime by stealth.
Interestingly, al-Sharaa’s economist father, Hussein, strongly criticised the privatisation push, declaring the state sector a “national asset built over decades,” and claiming that “the issue is not with the public sector itself, but with the mismanagement that has plagued it.” He warned that privatisation posed both ‘sovereignty’ and economic issues.
Transitional justice or lack of it
Al-Sharaa issued a decree on May 17 for the establishment of a Transitional Justice Commission, tasked with “uncovering the facts regarding the violations of the former regime” and to “hold accountable those responsible for the violations … and redress the harm caused to victims and consolidate the principles of national reconciliation.” On the same day, a National Authority for Missing Persons, to be responsible for “investigating and uncovering the fate of the missing and forcibly disappeared and documenting their cases,” was also established.
However, to date the Syrian people have seen virtually no evidence of this justice in action, and even the formal establishment of this commission was considered months late by the public. On April 25, Syrian activists had called ‘Friday of Rage’ demonstrations around the country under the slogan ‘Transitional Justice and the Beginning of Trials.’ This demonstrated the depth of anger at the lack of accountability of the Assad-era criminals responsible for hundreds of thousands of killings and untold destruction. Interior Ministry spokesman Nouruddin al-Baba confirmed that 123,000 former regime personnel were implicated in crimes against Syrians.
The lack of a ‘transitional justice’ process in the months since December is widely cited as a factor driving on-the-ground retribution against perpetrators, assumed perpetrators, or in the worst cases, collective ‘retribution’ against Alawites. Thus while the security forces can in some cases be blamed for being too harsh on the Alawite communities when searching for Assadist criminals, this goes hand in hand with the government being too soft on these criminals in the bigger picture. So, on the one hand, there was a sweeping amnesty of ordinary Assadist troops and security forces; tens of thousands of troops passed through government “resettlement” processes to demonstrate their innocence. This is of course a very good measure of the new government. However, while a very significant number of Assadist war criminals have been arrested, none have faced the judiciary yet, which casts the actual positive measure in a negative light to many victims. The amnesty is aimed at engendering social peace, but the lack of accountability for actual criminals engenders the exact opposite.
What has made it much worse is that in some cases even worse Assadist criminals, unaccountably, now walk the streets. For example, Fadi Saqr, former National Defence Forces (NDF) leader who shares responsibility for the horrific Tadamoun massacre, was inconceivably amnestied, leading to protests; war criminal Ziad Masouh, responsible for massacres in western Homs region, was released from prison; Khaled al-Qassoum, head of the Shabiha ‘Popular Resistance’ militia and close associate of the ‘Butcher of Baniyas’ Ali Kayali, returned to live in Hama city with security guarantees! In some cases the explanation is that is that these Assadist generals made last-minute deals and stood aside in December, ensuring the surrender of entire territories without causing unnecessary bloodshed. This has created huge resentment among Syrians whose families were slaughtered and homes and cities destroyed.
However, Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa claims the releases are provisional, prioritizing short-term stability while pledging long-term justice. Thus civil peace efforts, including community reconciliation, are precursors to formal justice, as “a turbulent atmosphere guarantees neither fair trials nor reparations.” He referenced post-apartheid South Africa’s model, where truth-telling preceded prosecutions. At a June 10 press conference, Hassan Soufan of the Civil Peace Committee claimed the government’s “amnesty-centered approach” had helped sharply reduce [Assadist] insurgent attacks since March.
Whether this works or not is unclear. In Homs, a former Assadist commander was killed on April 20, and the assassin appeared on video complaining he had raised charges against him related to crimes against civilians, to no avail, so he acted himself; and in Aleppo, a militia calling itself the Special Accountability Task Force was launched on the same day, by former rebels take the law into their own hands and assassinate former Assad regime criminals. Such initiatives are inevitable in the circumstances; but though they appear directed at actual criminals (Alawite and Sunni alike) rather than Alawite civilians, there is huge potential for this to go wrong. According to Gregory Waters, such vigilante executions “surged” following Soufan’s June 10 acknowledgement that Fadi Saqr had been given a role in the committee as a key intermediary with ex-regime insurgents and loyalists, a kind of “peace-builder” whose safety is “guaranteed” by the Committee!
Much worse is the appearance of a new Sunni sectarian militia, Saraya Ansar al-Sunna, which has essentially declared war on the country’s minorities, which made its appearance by killing 15 Alawites in Hama in February. Unlike ISIS it has not yet militarily confronted the government, but it has issued fatwas against al-Sharaa’s “tyrannical” government, declaring them infidels. While such an ideologically reactionary militia cannot be blamed on lack of transitional justice, it may well be able to recruit from some disaffected by it.
More generally, the lack of transitional justice (and perceived betrayals of it), combined with the lack of jobs in sanctioned post-Assad Syria has also been a factor in the prominence of jihadi-inspired armed civilian groups which played an important role in both the slaughter of Alawites in March, and the attacks on Druze in late April-early May, to be discussed below.
How much does the government control?
A few tens of thousands of troops that HTS and its allies had may have been adequate as a security force for the northwest corner of Syria, but once in control of a country of 23 million people, it is in a weak position. The government currently only controls part of Syria, most of the Sunni Arab heartland running down the west of the country from Idlib and Aleppo in the north, through Hama and Homs, down to Damascus. Regarding the rest of the country:
South of Damascus, the also Sunni Daraa and Quneitra provinces came under the control of old Free Syrian Army (FSA) Southern Front brigades, some of which joined the new army while some resisted; however, the main militia resisting integration, the formerly Russian and UAE-backed 8th Brigade, finally dissolved in April, an important victory for the government, so formal government authority now extends to these provinces.
The neighbouring Druze-majority Suweida province is somewhat autonomous, controlled by Druze militias which arose during the revolution against the Assad regime, which had also maintained independence from the main rebel formations. More on this below.
Israeli occupation forces control the Golan Heights (occupied since 1967) and also an expanded region in Quneitra and Daraa provinces which they have seized since December, while also making incursions into Damascus province; Israel bars the government from moving its control south of Damascus under the threat of bombing, meaning government authority in Quneitra, Daraa and Suweida is incomplete at best.
The heavily Alawite coastal provinces of Tartous and Latakia, as well as Alawite sections of Homs and Hama, are theoretically under government control, but there remain Assadist remnants in various parts engaged in a low-lying insurgency; meanwhile the Russian military still controls its major air and naval bases here.
Parts of the northern border strip are still controlled by Turkish troops supporting their proxy Syrian National Army (SNA) militias; although theoretically dissolved into the new army, by all accounts they maintain significant independence.
One third of Syria in the northeast is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by 2000 US troops.
US troops also control part of the Jordanian border region in the southeast in collaboration with the Syrian Free Army (SFA, not Free Syrian Army-FSA), an ex-rebel brigade which fought only ISIS but not the regime, with US backing.
In parts of the central desert region ISIS remains active. In mid-May, ISIS called on foreign fighters in Syria to defect to its ranks to join its fight against Syria’s government (accused of “idolatory” and “apostasy”), showing images of al-Sharaa shaking hands with Trump, followed by a May 18 attack on government forces in Deir Ezzor (previously most attacks were on the SDF).
This map somewhat underestimates the degree of government control, but is not that incorrect as a general guide.
The question of minority regions
Due to the way the government came to power, the new security forces which emerged are by default overwhelmingly Sunni in composition. The new General Security forces (GSS) and the new army consist almost entirely of cadre from former rebel groups. The GSS itself is virtually a proxy for former HTS cadre, and from the previous HTS-led Syrian Salvation Government of Idlib, and as such the government has been able to assert reasonable control over it. The new army, however, is simply a patching together of dozens of rebel groups who formally agreed to dissolve into it at the January conference, but many are not fully integrated, and there is limited command and control. There is no formal block on non-Sunni joining these forces, and this process has begun but is still in its infancy.
Clearly, unifying Syria is a crucial task for the new government, but the question is how this can be achieved, especially given this reality. This is connected to Syria’s religious and ethnic diversity. On the one hand, most of Syria’s Christians, Ismaelis and even Shia have maintained good relations with the new authorities, despite its Sunni-centric tendencies. It is where minority populations coincide with geographic regions that major issues exist: the Alawites on the coast, the Druze in Suweida in the south, and the Kurds in the northwest.
But there is a very important difference between these three groups: the Druze and the Kurds have been able to maintain security in their own regions, and pose a strong bargaining position with the government as they negotiate integrating into the national security architecture (despite agreeing in principle), because they developed their own armed forces during their autonomous struggles during the revolutionary period. By contrast, the only de facto Alawite armed forces had been those of the Assad regime; when it disappeared, they had nothing else, as Assad had repressed any sign of Alawite opposition.
The Alawite coast
This left a security vacuum in the Alawite-dominant provinces of Tartous and Latakia on the coast, and where they are a minority in western Homs and Hama. HTS attempted to fill this vacuum with the GSS, but the situation deteriorated. While both the GSS and local Alawite leaderships attempted to work together, on one side large numbers of armed Assadist remnants have hidden out in the region, with the support of a section of the population, while on the other, a section of the Sunni population – especially among those who lost everything, whose homes and entire cities have been destroyed – is bent on revenge for the genocide which Assad carried out against the Sunni population using Alawite fascist death squads (Shabiha) and armed forces overwhelmingly dominated by Alawite officers. Some killings targeted Assadist criminals, but this was combined with sectarian ‘revenge’ killings of Alawite civilians, as well as ordinary criminality in the security vacuum. This also coincided with a GSS push to arrest war criminals, which at times was carried out in a heavy-handed way with serious violations, and a growing Assadist insurgency beginning with the massacre of 14 GSS personnel on December 25 – quite a tragic cocktail of different elements.
The government passed thousands of former regime troops (mostly Alawites) through a process to ‘settle’ their status; once shown they had committed no crimes, they were free. However, the collapse of the Assadist repressive forces left these former troops without income, and no process began to recruit them to the new security forces, increasingly alienating them from the new authorities. While there was no formal block on recruitment of non-Sunnis, a certain reluctance with Alawites due to past Assadist affiliations combined with the government’s lack of money to pay new recruits due to the sanctions and catastrophic economic situation. This exacerbated the security vacuum, because, whatever the intentions even of the better GSS personnel, they were stretched thin, and without roots in the region and the Alawite community, they were in a weak position to confront the criminality.
On March 6, the Assadist insurgency broke out in full force in Tartous and Latakia, initially slaughtering over 120 of the new, young GSS members and 25 civilians. As the government scrambled to confront it, thousands of people poured in from around the country, including GSS forces, military factions from the new army, jihadi gangs, and armed civilian groups, enraged by the slaughter of the security forces and the audacity of remnants of the hated regime to attempt to return to power. Among these thousands were perhaps hundreds who, rather than help confront the Assadists, instead engaged in a horrific sectarian pogrom of the Alawite citizenry over the next two days, driven by a combination of sectarian hate (fomented by some hate-filled preaching), lust for revenge or simple criminality.
While some GSS units were reportedly involved in atrocities, overwhelmingly reports suggest this central arm of government, made up mostly of former HTS cadre, acted professionally, focused on fighting the insurgents, and took a heavy toll. Long time Syrian writer, activist and former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh claims, regarding the GSS, “in some cases, [they] exercised excessive repressive violence and captured Alawite civilians. … However, it was also the most disciplined, limiting further casualties in some instances, and it suffered significant losses in confrontations with armed Assad loyalists.” Even this report by an anti-Assad Alawite coastal resident, which is uncompromisingly gut-wrenching in its description of the mass murder and the terror of the Alawite citizens, nevertheless also speaks of the security forces “trained in Idlib” who were “known for their professionalism and respectful conduct toward the people of the Syrian coast,” and claims “the best of them” were massacred by the Assadist insurgents on the first day. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) report does include violations by “General Security personnel” along with “military factions [and] armed local residents, both Syrian and foreign,” but assesses that the “vast majority” were carried out by certain of these “military factions” that only recently joined the new Syrian army. In Homs, the GSS formed cordons around areas to protect the Alawite citizens from armed gangs, while an Alawite woman interviewed on Gregory Alexander’s excellent Syria Revisited blog claimed “the General Security forces played a huge role in protecting the Alawite neighborhoods. This interviewee from the town of Qadmus – an Ismaili town surrounded by Alawite villages – reports no problems with the police or security forces (GSS), but with some of the “factions” (ie military factions), as well as the Assadists. Similarly, Latakia resident Alaa Awda recalled that “when general security entered for the first time, they were professional,” but when factions affiliated with the Ministry of Defense entered, “they were harsher, with executions, assaults and robberies.”
Saleh, like the SNHR and others, claims most atrocities were carried out by undisciplined military factions of the semi-integrated new army, above all two notorious SNA brigades “Amshat [the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade] and Hamzat” (both were widely named by other sources too) and by “jihadist groups, including foreign fighters,” and these forces “engaged in genocidal violence,” driven either by “malevolent ideological conviction” or “a mix of revenge, warlordism, and looting.” Notably, the Amshat and Hamzat brigades have long been under US sanctions for their extensive violations in Afrin when they took part in Turkey’s conquest of the Kurdish town, and they have now been placed under EU sanctions for their role in the coastal violence. These two brigades, plus another three notorious SNA brigades – Sultan Murad, Ahrar al-Sharqiya and Jaysh al-Islam – were also mentioned as violators in the report by the well-respected Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), as was a military brigade (Division 100) which was not SNA, but previously belonging to the now dissolved HTS. Irregular armed civilian groups, including from the region itself, bent on revenge, also played an important role in the atrocities.
On March 7, al-Sharaa demanded that “all forces that have joined the clash sites” immediately evacuate the region. The GSS managed to clear the region of the undisciplined forces, make a number of arrests and put an end to the slaughter by March 9-10, but according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the toll included some 889 civilians or disarmed fighters killed by the forces nominally on the pro-government side, and 445 killed by the insurgent Assadist forces, including 214 members of security forces and 231 civilians.
During the crisis, al-Sharaa claimed that “many parties entered the Syrian coast and many violations occurred, it became an opportunity for revenge.” He continued that “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability. Even among those closest to us, or the most distant from us, there is no difference in this matter. Violating people’s sanctity, violating their religion, violating their money, this is a red line in Syria.” These are strong words. And the evidence from a range of sources above that that the state’s GSS was least involved in killing and was largely ‘professional’ and acted to quell the violence, likewise means that claims by enemies of the new Syria, as well as some sloppy journalism, that “the Syrian government carried out a massacre of Alawites,” are extremely irresponsible.
However, my aim here is not to make the case for government or GSS innocence, but simply that their roles need to be distinguished from that of the actual pogromists. It would be pure apologism to deny some level of overall responsibility: the military factions involved were undisciplined, yes, yet in theory they belong to the new army whose chain of command leads back to Damascus; while Sharaa’s own words were strong, some other government leaders tended to blame the Assadists for most crimes, or to downplay the massacres as “individual” violations; and as Syrian activist Rami Jarrah points out, while the Syrian government immediately declared condolences and mourning for the Christians killed in the late June ISIS church bombing in Damascus, there was no such mourning or even official condolences for the slaughtered Alawites.
Whatever the case, the future of the revolution – meaning beyond the mere ‘democratic space’ now open in Syria, the revolution’s promise of a Syria for all its communities, that rejects the methods of the past regime – now depends on how real, how effective, how transparent, how just this process of identifying, trying and punishing the perpetrators is, as well as working hard with Alawite community leaders for policies of compensation, reconciliation and inclusion in the institutions of the new Syria. Much depends not only on the report, but on the government’s response to it.
While some Alawites have declared their support for the government’s investigative commission, tens of thousands have fled Syria and countless more, likely the majority, will be too traumatised by these events to ever feel the new Syria is their home again. In the case of Hanadi Zahlout, a long-time Alawite supporter of the revolution since 2011, whose brothers were murdered, on the one hand she also gave her support to investigative commission, after Sharaa rung her and gave condolences, yet three months later, on the eve of the release of the commission’s report, she describes the situation grimly: “my home area is still surrounded by checkpoints. The killings continue and people live in constant fear, unable to resume their lives or even perform basic daily tasks like farming or moving along the roads. Families of the victims are still denied the dignity of burying their loved ones. Survivors continue to search in vain for healing. Homes lie in ruins, and children live in perpetual terror.”
Notably, leaders of ‘Amshat’ and ‘Hamzat’ still occupy important positions in the new army; if only street criminals but not ‘big fish’ are netted this will be farcical. Unfortunately, the injustice of seeing large-scale Assadist war criminals like Fadi Saqr walking the streets as reported above is not a good sign for justice for the Alawites – if leading Sunni criminals were to be brought to justice while leading Assadist criminals are not, it would lead to popular rejection and likely more sectarian ‘revenge’ violence. The worst outcome would be the government’s obsession with ‘social peace’ meaning neither set of criminals facing justice.
(The investigative report is due for release on July 10. This short section cannot do justice to the enormity of this issue; I will be releasing a big report on this to coincide with the release of that report).
Top: Photos of the first 100 security personnel massacred by the Assadists spread outrage around Syria; Bottom: Cover of the Syrian Network for Human Rights’ preliminary report into the massacres of Alawites.
The Druze south
While the Alawite issue was always going to be a minefield, the situation of the Druze is quite different; overwhelmingly the Druze opposed Assad, and the new stage of the revolution arguably opened with mass Druze demonstrations in September 2023. The various Druze militia – always independent of the rebel formations but also of Assad’s regime – played a direct role in the overthrow of Assad in December. However, they have resisted integration into the new army without certain guarantees.
In late April, a fake video purporting to show a Druze leader insulting the Prophet led to attacks on the Druze-majority town of Jaramana in Damascus by gangs of Sunni jihadists from the neighbouring area Mleha (“and other neighborhoods of Damascus heavily destroyed by the regime and Druze NDF members from Jaramana”). The defenders were government-aligned Druze security forces, who were reinforced by GSS forces sent in by the government to fight off the attackers. As these Druze civilians who were hiding out from the April 28 attack by armed jihadists reported, “Syrian security forces … had intervened to quell the fighting at the expense of suffering fatalities themselves” from the jihadi gangs. However, then four members of the government’s security forces were killed, and their bodies mistreated, by an anti-government Druze militia (including former pro-Assad Druze militiamen); in late February there had already been a clash in the same town between government forces and a Druze militia derived from the Assadist National Defence Forces (NDF).
There were important divisions among the Druze leadership. “Top Druze clerics were split between calls for calm and escalation in response to this week’s violence. Two of the three Sheikhs of Reason, Yousef Jerboa and Hamoud al-Hanawi, issued a statement calling for calm and restraint on April 29. The third, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, took an escalatory stance towards Damascus.” The Men of Dignity movement noted above, led by Layth al-Balous, is strongly identified with the first position. By contrast, the SMC identifies with Hijri’s anti-government stance.
These clashes left 48 Druze militia cadre, 28 government security forces and 14 civilians dead. Not good, but this outcome was vastly different from the disaster on the coast, partly because the attacking forces were much smaller, the GSS was more ready, it had not been preceded by a murderous Assadist coup, and above all because the Druze had their own armed forces. The government and most of the main Druze leaders – including Jerboa, al-Hanawi and al-Bahlous – reached an agreement that the GSS and police would be activated in Suweida, but they would be composed of local Druze; separatism was explicitly rejected, and Israel’s interference was rejected. Only Hijri, who had also expressed support for Israel, did not sign this agreement. The next day the government announced that over 1500 local faction fighters had applied to join the GSS; while the Druze militia themselves would remain the main military force for now, expectations were “underway to form a special military brigade for Sweida, affiliated with the Ministry of Defense.”
Israel launched a series of attacks on the region supposedly to “protect the Druze,” including an attack on Damascus close to the presidential palace, which Israeli leaders said was an warning to al-Sharaa. Netanyahu warned Israel would not allow the “extremist terrorist regime in Damascus” to harm the Druze. Some wounded Druze did flee to Israeli occupied parts of southern Syria to get hospital treatment for injuries. The Israeli Druze leadership, which supports the Israeli government and does not identify with the Palestinians, pressed for more Israeli intervention. The great majority of Druze reject Israel’s intervention and its pretence of “protecting” them, as well as any Israel-driven fantasies of a ‘Druze state’. As Syria watcher Charles Lister sums it up, “when Israel has militarily intervened, or threatened to do so, it’s only ever been to specifically protect Druze militias known for hostility to Syria’s new government and for having previously been part of, or loyal to Assad’s regime.”
Despite the sharp differences between the Alawite and Druze situations, one factor in common was the intervention of outlaw sectarian forces theoretically allied with the government, but with their own agendas. These rootless Sunni jihadi forces are causing mayhem, and the government needs to seriously rein them in, rather than only doing so when they begin killing. Some accuse the government itself of being behind them – they cause chaos, then the government sends in the GSS to restore order and thereby gain control of minority regions. Joseph Daher, a long-time anti-Assad Syrian analyst, believes sectarianism is promoted by the government as an ideology of state to cement its Sunni base; suppress class struggle, by diverting “the attention of the popular classes from social, economic and political issues by making a particular category (caste or ethnicity) a scapegoat as a cause for the country’s problems;” and to be used as a tool of repression when necessary, for example, he claims that strikes against anti-worker policies have declined since March due to fear the sectarian gangs may be used against them – while there has been no evidence of any such use, it is a legitimate concern.
The former HTS base is a spectrum and therefore linkages no doubt exist at some level between sections of the state machine and such jihadist gangs; it is not unusual for bourgeois governments to use sectarian, nationalist or similar prejudices to homogenise and mobilise their base in a way that heads of united working class struggle, so Daher’s analysis may partially explain these phenomena. However, this seems too conspiratorial a reading to fully explain either the far more complex events, or the actions of a government under pressure from a variety of directions, many of which are in contradiction to the priorities of its former jihadist base. For example, on the coast, the government obviously did not organise an Assadist insurgency and slaughter of their own forces in order to then have to fight to regain control; in Suweida, the GSS lost lives to the jihadis from the first day, and the outcome in the final agreement would appear positive for the Druze. Arguably the actions of sectarian jihadists are deeply destabilising for a government attempting to hold the country together and help it recover. Not having the resources to properly control the base (whether in uniform or not) is just as plausible an explanation than a deliberate strategy in my view, but many aspects probably combine to make the big picture.
[The big clashes between local Druze and Bedouin fighters which erupted in mid-July, bringing the government security forces in to quell the fighting and sign a new agreement with the Druze leaderships, which then collapsed, leading to far greater violations than in this episode, indeed, a horrific massacre, and involving large-scale Israeli airstrikes on government forces and on Damascus, occurred too late for this piece, and would require substantial new analysis].
The localised security outcome for the Druze [which was confirmed following the rivers of blood shed in July] needs to be repeated with the much more difficult Alawite situation: it is an urgent task for the new Syrian police, security forces and army to recruit former Alawite equivalents whose status has been settled, not simply to provide them with income but to end the security vacuum in their regions and as a step to fuller inclusion of the now effectively excluded Alawite part of the population.
The Kurdish northeast
The Kurdish situation is extremely complex. Turkey immediately took advantage of the overthrow of Assad to push an attack on some regions held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which included bloody attacks on Kurdish civilians; indeed, the SNA was not really involved in the HTS-led offensive which toppled Assad, but rather in this side venture. However, the situation is far from straightforward and not everything can be reduced to a simplistic “Turkey and/or Syrian government versus the Kurds” narrative.
The shape and size of the region controlled by the SDF, called ‘Rojava’ or the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), covering 30 percent of Syria (Hasakah, Deir Ezzor and Raqqa provinces), has little correspondence to the regions with majority ethnic Kurdish composition. The three Kurdish ‘cantons’ controlled by the Peoples Defence Units (YPG) from 2012 onwards corresponded quite closely to Kurdish populations; like the Druze militia, they tended to be independent of both the regime and the rebels, though at times they cooperated with one or the other. The great expansion of SDF control began after 2014 when the US airforce intervened to save Kurdish Kobani from the genocidal ISIS assault, and from then fought alongside the SDF to liberate the rest of the territory controlled by ISIS over the next 4-5 years – most of which however was Arabic in composition. Of course, given the options in east Syria being SDF, ISIS or the Assad regime, these Arab populations preferred SDF hands-down, but it is not clear that remains the case now that regime has fallen.
Map on top of original ‘Rojava’ cantons shows their close correspondence to main concentrations of Kurdish population (second from top, olive green along northern border). Map on bottom of current AANES/Rojava statelet shows its almost complete lack of correspondence to Kurdish population centres. Notably, the map in middle also shows that even the largest area of Kurdish population, the northeast ‘nose’ of Syria, is very ethnically mixed
Therefore there are two related but distinct questions: the future of AANES as a separate statelet with its own armed forces, and its own political system, from the rest of Syria; and that of the national rights and autonomy of the actual Kurdish regions.
In December, several days after the revolution, a popular uprising of the Arab population took place in Deir Ezzor city against SDF rule; they wanted to join the new main Syrian polity, and the SDF wisely let go. However, nearby in also Arab-majority Raqqa city, the SDF is alleged to have used violence against a similar movement.
The initial Turkish-SNA offensive against the AANES in December only reconquered the Arab-majority regions of Tel Rifaat north of Aleppo, and Manbij on the northern border. The SDF had taken Manbij from ISIS in 2016, aided by the US airforce; Tel Tifaat, however is a different story – the SDF conquered that Arab-majority region from the democratic Syrian rebels in January 2016 with the aid of the Russian airforce intervening to back the regime. Arguably, therefore, regardless of Turkish means and motivations, in neither case was it necessarily ‘wrong’ or anti-Kurdish that the SDF lost them. However, two caveats. Two years after the SDF conquest of Tel Rifaat, Turkey and the SNA conquered Kurdish Afrin, also in the northwest, and much of the Kurdish population fled to the Tel Rifaat region, from where a similar number of Arabs had earlier been expelled; as such, it was these uprooted Kurds again on the move. Secondly, while Manbij itself is majority Arab, it is dangerously close to Kurdish Kobani. From that point conflict stalemated around the Tishreen dam on the Euphrates river which separates their forces.
From the start, the new HTS-led government stressed a negotiated settlement with AANES, implicitly rejecting the Turkish approach. Syrian defence minister Abu Qasra called for the formation of a united military via negotiations with the SDF that would serve “as a symbol of the nation rather than a tool of repression.” Foreign minister Shaibani issued a Kurdish-language statement on January 21 declaring “The Kurds in Syria add beauty and brilliance to the diversity of the Syrian people. The Kurdish community in Syria has suffered injustice at the hands of the Assad regime. We will work together to build a country where everyone feels equality and justice.” Senior SDF official Ilham Ahmed responded that Shaibani’s remarks were a “place of honour for the Kurds. The Kurds will bring their own colour to Syrian society when their rights are guaranteed in the constitution. We will build together a new Syria that is diverse, inclusive, and decentralized.”
The January back and forth between Shaibani and Ilham Ahmed presents a positive picture of what the new Syria could be; the March 10 agreement between the Syrian government and the SDF to integrate their administrative and military institutions was the first time the leader of a major national Kurdish organisation was ever in Damascus
This was a tremendous step forward, the polar opposite of the catastrophe on the coast just winding down at the time; how it develops is crucial for the future of a democratic Syria. A few days later, the SDF rejected the interim constitution because it did not reflect the spirit of the agreement days earlier; and in particular, Arabic remains the sole official language. There are important differences to be ironed out; the SDF wants to integrate into the Syrian army as a bloc, while the Syrian government wants a unified structure with no blocs. This is related to the SDF’s preference for a federal system, with wide-ranging powers for regions with ethnic, religious and cultural minorities, which is rejected by the government.
Arguably, ‘federalism’ (depending on the definition) does not work in Syria’s reality, where most ‘minorities’ are religious rather than ethnic, and would thus entrench sectarian identities as in Lebanon; and even with the ethnic Kurdish minority, there are few regions that are not to some extent ethnically mixed. While some non-Kurdish (Arab, Syriac) peoples in parts of AANES (especially in Hassakeh province) appear to be supportive of the Rojava arrangement – which is officially multi-ethnic rather than Kurdish – others appear not to be (especially in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa); according to one source, “the overwhelming majority of Arabs living in the autonomous region express support for immediate integration into the new Syrian state. But this only underlines how difficult it is to find a clear solution, and the problem of what criteria would define ‘federal’ units, if not based on clear ethno-national criteria.
However, some degree of decentralisation where the administrative and security apparatuses are strongly representative of the diverse populations of regions such as the northeast, the coast and the south seems essential to forging a new Syrian unity given Syria’s reality. In practice the first major step taken under the government-SDF accord process was very promising: an April agreement for the SDF to move its military forces out of two Kurdish districts of Aleppo city, while leaving their internal security forces there, which will be supplemented by the government’s General Security working in collaboration, and the Kurds running their own administration, schools and the like. Such processes, along with the outcome for the Druze outlined above, offer hope, and with some will, could be extended to other Kurdish regions; the critical leg of this process will be how this works for the Alawites.
Unfortunately, the latest meeting between Sharaa and Abdi in July was inconclusive, with the government apparently unresponsive on decentralising initiatives, and the SDF insisting on a federal arrangement whereby the whole SDF enters the Syrian army as a bloc, even insisting on keeping Deir Ezzor and Raqqa within such a federal unit. According to one report, Shaibani asked the SDF to withdraw from Arab-majority Deir ez-Zor, but the SDF responded that was a matter for joint committees to discuss. While arguably the SDF position is maximalist, the government’s own insistence on a centralised state is arguably likewise; and seems to contradict its own agreements with the Kurds in Aleppo and the Druze in the south. Especially after the Alawite massacres, no minority will give up some kind of security control and simply trust a ‘centralised’, Sunni-dominated arrangement.
While the SDF joining the Syrian army as a ‘bloc’ may seem unreasonable, it may also be a bargaining chip. For instance, does the government’s position mean that MOD decides where any troops are stationed? Does it mean a central decision could be made, for example, to send former SNA troops into Kurdish regions while sending Kurdish troops to, say, Daraa, a decision that could have disastrous consequences? Or does it simply mean that some new divisions of the Syrian army could be established in the northeast, to mostly incorporate former SDF troops? One article suggested the government would accept the Kurds running their own councils and internal security, just not a separate army. But it remains unclear exactly what was proposed by each side. Clearly, some kind of middle ground needs to be found.
It is also not straightforward for AANES to simply dissolve the entirety of its political-administrative structure into the transition Syrian polity; whatever one views as the positives and negatives of each, both have arisen via a degree of popular negotiation in revolutionary conditions, and only a sustained negotiation process involving the people on both sides, and not only the leaderships, can bring about a real unity which has popular legitimacy. Any attempt to force the situation will only result in bloodshed and the return of massive instability.
This necessity to forge a real Syrian unity should not be viewed as a ‘compromise’ with ‘separatism’, but rather is essential to standing against not only internal sectarian or separatist threats, but also external (especially Israeli or Iranian, but potentially Russian, Turkish, UAE or US) exploitation of these divides; it is a life and death question of the revolution’s security, given the number of real and potential foreign enemies it has. This will be discussed in Part II of this series, New Syria’s Foreign Policy.
Where to from here?
Given the current stage of post-revolution Syria – a democratic revolution with a bourgeois-Islamist leadership with mildly authoritarian tendencies in a catastrophic socio-economic situation – what should those advocating a more radical-democratic or socialist orientation advocate at this time? Here are a number of important issues, by no means intended as exhaustive.
First, demanding the complete, comprehensive end of sanctions on Syria. Fortunately, this step is now in progress (which it wasn’t when this piece was started), but the process is not complete, and various US leaders continue to imply that it may be conditioned on certain geopolitical moves by the government (see Part II of this series). Indeed Trump recently threatened that “The Secretary of State will reimpose sanctions on Syria if it’s determined that the conditions for lifting them are no longer met.” All unacceptable conditions must be rejected and sanctions lifted unconditionally. The economic strangulation of the Syrian people must end, so that the government has the money to pay proper wages for public services (including security), industry begins to move and creates jobs, and housing, energy and infrastructure can be repaired.
However, this renewal of local and foreign capitalist investment needs to take place under the supervision of workers’ committees and the broader community to limit corruption, protect workers’ rights, and attempt to ensure the benefits accrue to society rather than just the capitalists. And while this capitalist investment is essential, sweeping privatisation should be rejected as far as possible. An economic orientation towards restoring the health of state coffers so that it can expand its own investment in key sectors should be supported. Mass retrenchments should be rejected, and if there are legitimate issues of fake jobs created by the old regime, this should be dealt with under workers’ supervision. The proposed 400 percent wage increases should be available to all public sector workers to set a standard for workers throughout Syria.
Reactivation of civil society and push for more democratisation against centralising tendencies – the great range of local coordinating committees and people’s councils that arose during the revolution, and were crushed by the regime, provide a terrific blueprint for what is possible, once sanctions relief hopefully leads to people being able to look beyond the everyday struggle for survival. Support all popular initiatives to protect the current democratic space and utilise it to push people’s demands. This in particular applies to women’s organisations mobilising to obstruct any attempts to impose “Islamist” restrictions on their democratic rights. In various places, new councils have begun to be formed after free elections, for example the Al-Ahli Musyaf Council following elections in May. At a higher level a genuine national dialogue conference might be pushed for, and discussion of the new constitution needs to be an open, democratic process.
A transparent process of transitional justice needs to get underway. If ‘truth-telling’ needs to come first then it also needs to get underway. If no-one is held accountable for years and decades of Assadist crimes against humanity, and major Assadist criminals walk free while others grab sections of the economy, the result will not be social peace but quite the opposite. Transitional justice also includes crimes carried out by non-Assadist forces, including in the past by HTS and its predecessor Nusra, relatively minor as they may be by comparison. But only if Assadist crimes are appropriately punished will many among the Sunni majority accept the necessary punishment which must be given to Sunni sectarians who engaged in the Alawite massacre in March. Meanwhile, on June 6, the Supreme Fatwa Council issued a fatwa declaring that those who have been wronged are “obligated to obtain their rights through the judiciary and competent authorities, and not through individual action,” declaring acts of “revenge or retaliation” to be forbidden – a healthy step.
The government needs to crack down on uncontrolled armed jihadi groups, of the type that took part in the Alawite massacre and led the attack on the Druze in southern Damascus. This will be no easy task – their existence is related to a number of factors: first, the lack of transitional justice; second, the lack of jobs in Syria’s current catastrophe (in this sense they have something in common with their Alawite enemies who took part in the Assadist insurgency in March), and so economic improvement is just as important as transitional justice; finally, the fact that many of them belong to the traditional jihadi base of HTS from which the current leadership arose, so despite the instability they cause being damaging to the government, there may be elements within the ruling state apparatus that still have connections to these groups, especially at base level, and there may be times the government surreptitiously uses their sectarian antics to its benefit. It is essential that the government acts to prevent their deeply destabilising impact.
But as members of the new army also committed massive violations in March, the government also needs to establish control over wayward military factions; an important step took place on May 30 when the Ministry of Defense issued a code of conduct and discipline for the army, which demands troops “treat[ing] citizens with dignity and respect, without discrimination based on religion, race, colour or affiliation,” observe human rights standards, protect civilians and so on, and prohibits any assaults on civilians or property, “engaging in any form of discrimination,” “proclaiming slogans or positions that undermine national unity or disturb civil peace” and so on. A great start, but making this reality remains a challenge [update: a challenge which completely failed in Suweida in July].
Related to this is the necessity of a political struggle against sectarianism. It is one thing when ‘street justice’ in the absence of court justice targets actual criminals; it is an entirely different thing when the entire Alawite population is associated with the crimes of the Assad regime and targeted collectively (and even more when this is extended to other non-Sunni minorities that had no connection to the Assad regime, such as the Druze). While obviously the Assad regime’s criminal weaponisation of sectarianism to carry out its counterrevolutionary war is responsible for this mutual hate, liberation means not simply reversing the victim but fighting the ideology.
The investigation into the massacre of Alawites in March – as well the Assadists who sparked it by slaughtering hundreds of security personnel – as must be genuine, fair and transparent, and perpetrators on both sides must be held accountable. While a number of arrests have been made, the danger would be just a number of lower-level perpetrators being convicted, and those responsible at a higher level, especially with regime connections, are not held accountable. In particular, the widespread evidence of the involvement of the ‘Amshat’ and ‘Hamza’ SNA brigades in the crimes against Alawite civilians raises important issues. While HTS has clashed with these forces in the past, in order to coopt them their leaders have now been given important positions in the new Syrian army [and related to this: can the government prosecute these Sunni ‘big fish’ if Alawite Assadist ‘big fish’ like Fadi Saqr and others referred to above are free from prosecution? The worst possible outcome is that criminals on both sides walk free]. In addition, the issues of compensation, reconstruction and inclusion of Alawites in governing and security bodies are just as crucial.
As noted above, a new unity needs to be forged based on some degree of decentralisation where the administrative and security apparatuses are strongly representative of their diverse populations, and this is particularly the case regarding the Druze in the south, the Kurds in the northeast and the Alawites on the coast. While important processes are underway with the Druze and the Kurds which must be followed through, the Alawite issue remains crucial: there is an urgent to fully include the Alawite population in the new governing structures, including security forces. Alawites need to be appointed to higher level governing positions, they need to be recruited to the general security forces to serve in their regions, and “resettled” former troops need to be enlisted into the new army; to date, these remain de-facto largely Sunni institutions, except for southern Syria, where the government has begun recruiting Druze in Suwayda for the army, based on a memorandum of understanding with Druze leaders agreed to in March.
Concluding comments – ‘Is the new Syrian state revolutionary’ – and forward to Part II:
In an important theoretical article entitled ‘Is the new Syrian state revolutionary’, Riad Alarian and Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra argue that it cannot be, regardless of intention or ideology, or whether or not current leaders believe they are just concealing their true ‘Islamist’ intentions to get back on their feet first or they really are pragmatists or whatever the case. Rather, it is a simple matter that the Syrian state collapsed, and with it its global support network (principally Russia and Iran), and so the new leadership inherited a “proto-state with minimal military resources, no clear international partnerships, and a heavily sanctioned economy, all while facing various domestic and foreign threats”; and as such, there is simply no alternative to integration into global capitalism. They are correct: no country – capitalist or otherwise – can survive isolated in today’s world, let alone a devastated Syria, and the world is capitalist (including the former regime and its Russian and Iranian backers, which are/were capitalist with gusto).
They write: “In theory, post-Assad Syria was a blank canvas upon which the revolutionary movement could realize its vision for a new kind of state. In reality, the political and economic conditions in which Syria’s emergent leaders found themselves sharply delimited the horizon of revolutionary possibility. As many continue to hail the success of the Syrian revolution, it is increasingly clear that what is materializing is not a revolutionary state, but a political order shaped by the same structural pressures and conditions that have historically defined state formation in the post-colonial Middle East” and further “What we are witnessing transpire in Syria is a predictable consequence of the material conditions under which modern proto-states are compelled to develop and operate.”
These are fundamentally crucial points to understand; in essence, this accords closely with what is written here. However, a number questions arise in relation to their framing of the issue.
First, it is not entirely clear what the authors mean by a “revolutionary” state, which would be counterposed to the neoliberal capitalist reality. The Syrian revolution was always fundamentally a democratic revolution against tyranny; much as many of us would like such revolutions to go beyond capitalism, there is no-one I am aware of who ever thought that any of the leaderships of the Syrian struggle were anti-capitalist, or that socialism was on the immediate horizon. The persistence of mass revolutionary struggle can indeed lead the working masses to push beyond capitalism in specific circumstances, but that was even less likely once Assad had crushed the early grassroots democratic phase of the revolution.
Secondly, this leads to what the authors seem to imply was the potential “revolutionary” state they are counterposing to the neoliberal capitalist reality: some kind of ‘revolutionary Islamist’ society envisaged by various radical Islamist currents, including that which gave rise to the current crop of Syria’s post-Assad leaders. But apart from the fact that, as explained above, Nusra/HTS was the very last rebel formation any of the revolutionary vanguard every wanted or expected to assume power post-Assad because its vision was furthest from the revolutionary democracy they envisaged, the implication that political ‘Islamist’ movements are somehow anti-capitalist seems wide of the mark. Certainly, there can be rhetoric about “the dispossessed” and there can be a “social” component to their capitalist rule in some cases, but basically everywhere that either Sunni or Shiite Islamist movements have come to power – the Iranian revolution, the AKP in Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and so on – they have pushed an ‘Islamic’ form of neoliberal capitalism. So it is unclear that there is any contradiction here. On the other hand, if they mean the more regressive aspects of “revolutionary” Islamism such as imposing harsh versions of “sharia law,” reactionary laws oppressing women or more generally theocratic rule, then it is indeed a good thing that such a “revolutionary” vision has been largely abandoned by the new rulers, despite some regressive moves; but this is actually a reflection of the pressure of the actual revolutionary spirit, which was always liberatory and sharply opposed to Nusra’s reactionary program.
Finally, they note rightly that the pressure to conform to global capitalism would be the same whether the post-revolutionary regime contains a greater or lesser amount of bourgeois democracy. Addressing Yasin al-Haj Saleh’s concerns about the limitations on real democracy in post-Assad Syria, they question his implication that success or otherwise of the revolution can be measured by the degree of democracy, asking “what would that success amount to if the new government still had to submit to the imperatives of international capital and the interests of the dominant powers to which Syria is presently beholden?” However, this seems to miss the point: while there would certainly still be capitalism, the amount of democracy is precisely central to the ability of the workers, peasants, urban poor, women, minorities and others to organise for their interests within this capitalist reality. In this sense, the continuing relative political openness in Syria, despite its challenges, is crucial to understanding what the revolution is; at this stage, this is the revolution; the revolution does not mean the particular regime in power following the overthrow. And this must be zealously defended against attacks on it either by the current authorities, Assadist counterrevolution or external enemies; indeed must be expanded as much as possible.
Nevertheless, despite these issues, an understanding of their general argument is very important for grasping both the internal situation, as discussed here, but also the foreign policy of the new government. And once again, my overall agreement on this is coupled with some quibbles regarding what they claim to be inevitable foreign policy choices of the new government, above all their tendency to take at face value some of the deliberately vague statements the new leaders have made about Israel and the media-driven discourse that claims they are even open to the Abraham Accords – something I argue is neither true, nor an inevitable outcome of alliance with global or regional capital, especially since there is no consensus at all on the Israel/Palestine question, especially regionally; in particular, the states closest to the new Syria are precisely those which have not ‘normalised’ or have relatively hostile relations with Israel. I have already taken up the issue of US and Israeli pressure on Syria regarding ‘normalisation’ and the sheer volume of nonsense in reports by various anonymous “sources” in my last article. But more generally regarding the new government’s foreign policy, be on the lookout for Part II of this series.
In this extraordinary declaration reproduced below, the ‘Civil Assembly of the People of the Golan’ has released a document entitled ‘The National Pact,’ not only condemning ongoing Israeli aggression into the (until recently) unoccupied part of Golan (ie Quneitra province), but also stressing the right of return of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians expelled from the Golan Heights following Israeli conquest in 1967, stressing that Golan is not some regional issue (ie that can be bargained away) but rather is “a purely Syrian national affair,” and calling for enshrining the rights of Golanis in the constitution and for genuine parliamentary representation in the People’s Assembly “proportional to their numbers exceeding one million,” pointing to the “catastrophes and denial of rights” they have been subjected to for 57 years.
Where did this declaration suddenly come from now? It seems unlikely to be coincidence that this comes just a week after Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa held a meeting with dignitaries from Quneitra and the Golan, where among other things Sharaa stressed that “we reject the past where the president’s region ruled everything,” which seems directly connected to the demand for parliamentary representation and inclusion in the constitution, while condemning Israeli attacks and affirming efforts to halt them through indirect talks with international mediators. So while there is no direct evidence that Sharaa’s meeting with the Golanis prompted them to make this declaration, it at least appears they are connected.
And then why did Sharaa make this trip to Quneitra to attend this special meeting? Many would have noticed much media speculation about “Syria-Israel discussions,” either “indirect” or “direct”, supposedly discussing, depending the imagination of the author, everything from “security matters” to “normalisation.”
According to some anonymous “sources,” the Syrian government is “open to normalising with Israel” or even “open” to ceding to occupied Golan Heights to Israel as a price for “normalising,” so desperate they must be normalise, or that “Syrian sources” say a “peace agreement is possible with Israel by the end of 2025.” But then we get to “Israeli sources” claiming that “Syrian sources” told a “Hezbollah-affiliated outlet” that president Sharaa is open to “diplomatic relations” with Israel but “his supporters” are not, “such a step does not enjoy genuine consensus, even within the team loyal to Sharaa,” so Israel “doubts” it will happen.
Whether there really are any such “Syrian sources” saying anything like any of this is anyone’s guess; all of these endless statements which somehow never seem to come from any public statement by any Syrian leader but are always second hand allegations, hearsay and anonymous “sources”, are likely embellishments of Syrian government messages being used as a form of pressure aimed at destabilising the Syrian government and/or pressuring it into something it does not want to do. If the public statements of Syrian leaders matter in any of this, then there has been zero correspondence between these and the hearsay. But even if we are just relying of second-hand “sources,” they are also far from uniform.
For example, according to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, “According to sources close to the current Syrian leadership, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa is not prepared to sign up to any broader peace agreement with Israel for now.” Or, according to “anti-Zionist Arab Jew” Alon Mizrahi, based on a “report coming out of Israel,” “Syria is not ready for a permanent agreement with Israel or for joining the Abraham Accords at the moment; it is interested instead in going back to the 1974 ceasefire agreement (signed after the 1973 war), which will force an IDF withdrawal from all the territories captured during the last two years, plus a cessation of hostilities against Syria.” Or then there’s US Syria Envoy Tom Barrack, who while asserting that “both sides” were “open to normalization,” claimed that “Syrian officials hint peace may come by 2028.” 2028? I was pleasantly surprised to read that, and also surprised by Barrack’s gullibility; “2028” is another way of saying “sometime in the undefined future” (perhaps after Israel collapses under the weight of its genocide). Barrack added that “Damascus seeks to halt Israeli attacks in Quneitra.”
As we see from these statements, every single time we hear what the Syrian government says, it comes back to the same thing: the demand that Israel return to the 1974 disengagement line that Assad and Israel respected for 51 years, and Israel end its attacks that it began the morning the revolution overthrew Israel’s man Assad. That’s it. Whether secret “direct negotiations” are going on nobody knows; the Syrian government denies it. When in Paris in May, al-Sharaa admitted to the indirect, mediated discussions; he said they were aimed at deescalating the situation in southern Syria, where Israel has been continually attacking, bombing and occupying; he told Macron that “Israel has bombed Syria more than 20 times in the past week alone.” Once again he demanded Israel return to the 1974 disengagement line and that the UN Observer Force return (they were expelled by Israel after December 8).
A May 27 Reuters report about alleged “direct negotiations” over “security” issues in southern Syria named Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Dalati as heading these discussions, to which he responded “I categorically deny my participation in any direct negotiating sessions with the Israeli side and confirm that these allegations are unfounded and lack accuracy and credibility.” On July 2, the Syrian government officially denied that there were any “peace negotiations” taking place with Israel. Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV asserted “There can be no negotiations on new agreements with Israel until it fully respects the 1974 disengagement accord.” Al-Sharaa and the Syrian government have been making the same demand since December. It comes back to that every time. When he met Trump in May, Trump “advised” him to join the Abraham Accords with Israel in return for lifting sanctions, while claiming it was not a condition and Syria needs to “straighten itself out first;” Sharaa’s response was that “we have shown our willingness to implement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel.” On July 8, “sources” claimed that Sharaa had met Israeli National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi during his then visit to the UAE, to which the Syrian Information Ministry responded “there is no truth to the reports about any sessions or meetings being held between President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and Israeli officials,” and then Israel denied it too – especially given that Hanegbi was at the time in the US with Netanyahu!
In April, two US Congressmen visited Syria and advocated for the end of sanctions. They reported that Sharaa would be willing to sign the Abraham Accords if “the right conditions were met.” Notwithstanding what the vague “right conditions” could mean – return of Golan, Arab Peace Initiative for a Palestinian state, who knows? – there was no such statement from the Syrian government, though of course Sharaa no doubt would have fudged some response to encourage them encourage Trump to lift sanctions. When asked about this in an April 30 interview, Shaibani responded “In fact, the word normalisation was not mentioned, and I was present during this meeting. What was discussed was that we want Syria to live in security and stability. The Israeli incidents that they talk about are a matter of Israeli threats and doubts about this matter … The Abraham Accords and normalisation were not mentioned.” When pressed about an Israeli newspaper claim that Damascus is considering joining the Abraham Accords, Shaibani insisted “This matter was not discussed at all, and Washington has not asked us about this issue.”
In recent reportage of US discussions with Israel towards a new Gaza truce, it was said that as a prize for Israel to end or pause the war, there would be a “regional” package which would include “bringing Syria and Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.” Trump apparently thinks he can just deliver whole countries to the Accords without their perrmission. Every Saudi statement for years has emphasised that there will be no normalisation with Israel until it withdraws from all territories occupied in 1967 and allows the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Earlier this the Saudi regime released a 3am statement to once again deliver this message – in as strong a way as possible, declaring its “unwavering position” is “non-negotiable” – as an immediate response to Trump claiming the Saudis no longer made that a condition. But Trump would deliver Saudi Arabia, and also Syria?
Yet by the next day, we read, no, it won’t be the Abraham Accords yet, just a “security agreement.” The next day it becomes “Syria will make a statement that the state of war which has existed with Israel since 1948 no longer exists” – a tall order when Israel has been actively making war on Syria for 6 months straight. Next it was going to be a “non-aggression pact,” an odd idea given that only one side has been engaged in aggression. Next the Golan would be turned into a “peace park.” Next we hear that Israel’s alleged “security” concerns in southern Syria will be taken care of by allowing US troops to patrol the “buffer zone,” the euphemism for the part of southern Syria Israel has annexed since December as a “buffer” to its already illegally occupied “buffer” the Golan itself. Then “sources,” citing “Israeli media,” informed us that the deal was that Israel will give back one third of the Golan, or two-thirds but lease back one third, and Syria will be compensated with northern Lebanon, including the city of Tripoli! Apparently the Lebanese government is supposed to simply agree! When it got to actual Syrian government statements, however, that article could only, yet again, cite Syrian foreign minister Shaibani demanding Israel return to the 1974 lines.
Clearly, if we are to take too much notice of all this media manipulation, our heads would spin. As the Syrian government says, there can be no talks on anything before Israel returns to the 1974 disengagement lines. But that’s all it says – that “talks” would thereby be possible. There is no suggestion from Syria that “talks” would lead to the Abraham Accords. People are entitled to think that’s what it means; and given Syria’s precarious situation crushed between the desperate need for reconstruction of its destroyed country, the need to put an end to non-stop Israeli aggression, and the need for investment and above all the full release of US sanctions, the Syrian government is entitled to allow its deliberately vague language to be interpreted by the US government in a way to try to achieve those goals, while in reality not promising anything.
Of course, returning to the 1974 lines does not solve the bigger problem of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. Obviously Syria, a victim of a decade of genocidal mass murder and apocalyptic destruction by the Assad regime, Russia and Iran, is in no position to open a military front on the Golan at this point. As Sharaa put it in December, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts,” the country must instead focus on reconstruction of half the country Assad destroyed, including housing for the half the country uprooted from their homes either internally or in exile; and indeed, as a transitional leader who simply filled the vacuum opened by the collapse of the Assad regime, before any elections have been held, he has no mandate to open a military front against a crazed nuclear armed genocidal entity and force the Syrian people to commit suicide. His mandate is reconstruction, recovery, and return of refugees. However, for exactly the same reason, he also has no mandate to cede any chunk of Syrian sovereign territory, such as the Golan, for “peace.”
Despite much nonsense from “sources,” every statement made by Syrian leaders on the Golan declares it to be Syrian territory that must be returned. On January 17, Syria’s UN ambassador Koussay Aldahhak, in a UN session condemning Israel’s aggression into the ‘buffer zone’, also “reaffirm[ed] Syria’s inalienable right to recover the occupied Syrian Golan in full.” When asked during a February interview with The Economist whether he would be ready to normalise with Israel, president Sharaa replied “actually we want peace with all parties,” but as long as Israel occupied the Golan, any agreement would be premature. At another UN session on April 10, Aldahhak demanded implementation of UN resolutions 242, 338 and 497 and “the end of the Israeli occupation of the occupied Syrian Golan.” When Shaibani attended the Munich Security Conference with European and Middle Eastern leaders in February, he stated that the “Golan Heights are Syrian land and no one has the right to give it to anyone.” In April, while condemning ongoing Israeli aggression, he again stressed that “the Golan Heights continue to be considered occupied territory, in clear violation of the UN Charter.” In late April, the Syrian foreign ministry, in rejecting speculation about the Abraham Accords, noted that “such agreements do not apply to a country whose land remains under occupation.” The same article above reporting the July 2 statement that no talks are possible without Israeli withdrawal to the 1974 lines, also cited a source within Syria’s foreign ministry adding that Syria’s foremost condition for any “peace process” is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights;” another source claims “Damascus will not consider any diplomatic initiative that falls short of restoring Syrian sovereignty over all occupied territory, including the entirety of the Golan Heights.”
It is also worth noting, given some discourse claiming “the Gulf” is adding to “western” pressure to normalise with Israel (as if “the Gulf” were not divided into different countries with often very different regional politics, especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), that the Gulf Cooperation Council also issued a July 2 statement not only “condemn(ing) Israeli violations and repeated attacks on Syria,” but also “confirm(ing) that the Golan Plateau is a Syrian Arab land.” Given that Israel’s key condition for a “peace” agreement with Syria is that Israel keep the illegally annexed Golan, as Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar has just reaffirmed, this makes it very clear that there is no basis for any “normalisation” discussions.
To reaffirm: Syria has made no statement to the effect that it would sign a peace agreement with Israel without the return of the Golan; however, again note the language – return of the Golan is the precondition for any “peace process” to (possibly) begin, not for a peace agreement to be made or for “normal relations” to be established. To clarify: Syria has also made no statement that it would sign a peace agreement with Israel even if it did return the Golan – though of course since we know Israel will never return it, it is OK for Syria to hide behind this for now. Incidentally, Assad, by contrast, did explicitly state that he was ready to join his best friends in the Arab world (Egypt, UAE, Bahrain etc) in normalising with Israel if it returned the Golan Heights: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land.” Sharaa has NOT said that. Assad mentioned nothing about Palestine or “resistance” in this interview; and in any case, we are well aware that both in 1999-2000 and in 2009-2011, Assad father and son were engaged in precisely such ‘land for peace’ negotiations with Israel (blocked only by Israeli intransigence on returning the Golan). Notably, this statement by Assad puts him to the right of Saudi Arabia on the Israel question.
The problem is, however, not what “sources” imagine Sharaa wants or doesn’t want; nor even necessarily what Sharaa wants or doesn’t want; nor the opinions of leftist keyboard warriors wet dreaming that already massively traumatised Syrians should be engaged in suicidal “resistance” for their benefit (they mostly didn’t care that Assad never engaged in such “resistance” and never opened any front on the Golan for 51 years and was widely praised by Zionist leaders, including Netanyahu, for this). No, the problem is that Syria is not like any other Arab country except Palestine itself (and to some extent Lebanon): Syria is a devastated country under aggressive Israeli attack and occupation, daily attacks, bombings, killings, arrests, destruction of farmland, of water sources, ever since the morning of December 8. And of course, Israel also immediately destroyed 90 percent of all Syria’s strategic weaponry immediately after December 8, weaponry it had no problem with as long as it was in Assad’s hands, because they knew Assad only ever used it against the Syrian people. And in their occupation of extra Syrian lands since December, they are now in control of the al-Mantara dam, the major water source for all of southern Syria: think about that for a moment.
Every day, Netanyahu, foreign minister Saar and defence minister Katz call Syrian leaders jihadists, extremists, terrorists and al-Qaeda (just like western tankies do). Now they say we want to sign the Abraham Accords with them. Really? They want to make a peace accord with jihadi terrorists? No. The demand itself is an act of aggression. The demand says: we will continue to bomb your country, occupy the south, seize farmers land, destabilise the country, and have a stranglehold over your water, unless you both sign away the Golan Heights and sign a “peace” treaty with Israel on that basis. Syria needs our solidarity, not our ignorance or our keyboard heroism.
I read ignorant statements from critics that “the new Syrian government is “rushing” to make peace with Israel, apparently unaware of Israel’s war on Syria. News reports of the indirect or alleged “direct” talks between Syrian and Israeli officials suggest this may indicate “warming” of relations. Strange discourses assert that Syria is engaged in indirect or “direct” talks with Israel “despite” Israel’s ongoing attacks on Syria; the “despite” indicates just how much these writers don’t get it. Israel – a massively armed genocidal entity – is in occupation of Syrian territory and has been constantly attacking Syria – a devastated, disarmed, exhausted country – since December 8. Of course Syria engages in mediated “negotiations” with the aggressor, the occupier, to try to get it to end its aggression and occupation. It is normal that countries negotiate with their enemies, their aggressors. To depict “negotiations” between the powerful occupier and the powerless occupied country as some kind of equal negotiation about to “normalise” is to miss the point fantastically.
I repeat there has been zero suggestion from the actual mouths of Syrian leaders about either ceding the Golan or normalising with Israel. But that does not make it out of the question at some point; this is not a confident prediction of what will or won’t happen in the future, given the situation which Syria is in. On one hand, Israel continues its daily aggression and occupation in the south; at the same time, despite Trump’s lifting of sanctions, the US is capable of slowing down or reversing that process – several days ago Trump stated that “the Secretary of State will reimpose sanctions on Syria if it’s determined that the conditions for lifting them are no longer met.” That’s what all this aggression since December 8 is about. If devastated, destroyed, disarmed Syria were to capitulate at some point (more likely some “security arrangement” than full normalisation), it is important to recognise that it would be something forced on Syria by overwhelming pressure and endless aggression; that must be the greater context through which any “condemnations” of any such capitulation are made.
Now here’s where we return to where we began – up till this point, all this has been on the level of states and geopolitics. By going to the grassroots – by going to the people of Quneitra and the refugees from occupied Golan, and getting this statement from them, Sharaa made a deft move: he helped make it much harder for himself, or any Syrian government, now or future, to sign away the Golan for “peace” with Israel.
Below is the declaration and introduction by the Zaman Al Wasl news agency.
The people of the Golan declare the National Pact: No concession on identity… and no alternative to return
⛔️ أبناء الجولان يعلنون ميثاق العهد الوطني: لا تنازل عن الهوية.. ولا بديل عن العودة#زمان_الوصل في خطوة لافتة، أعلن "التجمع المدني لأبناء الجولان" وثيقة بعنوان "العهد الوطني"، حددوا فيها جملة مطالب اعتبروها "مشروعة وعادلة"، مؤكدين التزامهم بالدفاع عنها في كافة المحافل السورية،… pic.twitter.com/y9HX3qgHxM
— ZAMANALWSL – زمان الوصل (@zamanalwsl) July 1, 2025
In a remarkable step, the ‘Civil Assembly of the People of the Golan’ has released a document entitled ‘The National Pact,’ in which they outlined a series of demands they considered “legitimate and just,” affirming their commitment to defending them in all Syrian forums, considering the Golan issue “not a local matter, but a purely Syrian national affair.”
The statement, a copy of which was received by Zaman AlWasl, stated that Quneitra Governorate, the heart of the Golan, continues to suffer from Israeli occupation attacks, land confiscation, and home demolitions, while hundreds of thousands of Golanis displaced since the June 1967 setback live dispersed across five Syrian governorates.
The document emphasized the need to unify the voice of the Golanis inside Syria and in displacement camps, in order to crystallize their political, service, and constitutional rights. The signatories emphasized that what they put forward “is not merely sectarian demands, but rather national and moral obligations.”
Key points of the document:
1- Support for the legitimate Syrian leadership:
The people of the Golan declared their support for President Ahmad al-Sharaa, colnsidering that his leadership “represented the will of the people and led the country toward liberation.”
2- Rejection of Israeli attacks:
The statement condemned what it described as “repeated Israeli aggression against Quneitra lands,” warning against “attempts to complete the occupation of the remaining Golan.”
3- Adherence to the right of return:
The people of the Golan affirmed their full commitment to the right of return to their occupied land, based on United Nations resolutions, rejecting any understandings or agreements that would infringe upon or undermine this right.
4- Rejection of the “administrative integration” project:
The statement warned against the project to integrate displaced communities into other governorates, considering it “an attempt to obliterate the Golan identity and a pretext for closing the Golan file internationally.” It also paves the way for the abolition of the Quneitra governorate.
5- Demand for Full Parliamentary Representation:
The signatories demanded that the Golanis be granted genuine representation in the People’s Assembly, commensurate with their population of over one million, pointing to the “catastrophes and denial of rights” they have been subjected to for 57 years.
6- Legal Recognition of the Rights of Displaced Persons:
The demands included the right to adequate housing, employment opportunities, and a decent standard of living, similar to what is stipulated in the United Nations conventions for displaced persons around the world.
7- Enshrining Rights in the Constitution:
The statement called for the inclusion of the rights of the Golanis in the constitution or in a permanent law, “so that the demands do not turn into a seasonal debate that is repeated with each new government.”
8- Moral and National Obligation:
The statement concluded with a recommendation that this document be considered “a moral and national charter for all Syrians,” particularly those who will hold representative positions in legislative bodies.
According to the Golan Heights Civil Gathering, this document emerged after months of consultations between representatives from Quneitra and the displacement camps. It will serve as a reference for any national dialogue on the Golan Heights issue.
Above: Syrians celebrate news of the lifting of US sanctions, New Arab
By Michael Karadjis
Trump’s proclamation that the US will lift the sanctions on Syria is a tremendous gain for the Syrian people. Everywhere in Syria were scenes of wild celebration. While much can be said about Trump’s motivations or about what concessions may be forced from Syria, the first thing is celebrate with the Syrian people.
Following the announcement, the Syrian pound appreciated 30 percent against the dollar almost immediately, a sign of things to come. The lifting of sanctions allows for normal economic activity, investment and economic development; currently 90 percent of Syrians live in poverty, Syria ranking as the fourth most food-insecure nation on Earth. Large parts of Syria, entire towns and cities or sections of cities, were reduced to rubble by years of regime and Russian bombing; much of Syria is the closest thing to Gaza in the mideast. Half of Syria’s water systems are destroyed. A 2017 World Bank report estimated that nearly a third of the housing stock and half of medical and education facilities had been damaged or destroyed by regime bombing; two and a half million children are now out of school (among Syrian refugees in the region, half are under 18 and one third of them do not have access to education). One third of the population are out of the country, and even inside the country, some two million internal refugees live in tents. While tens of thousands were released from Assad’s torture gulag in December, some 130,000 remain unaccounted for, slowly being dug out of mass graves, a fraction of the 700,000 killed in the genocidal war; the enormous process of excavation and identification, so essential for the Syrian people to recover, requires technical skill, equipment and a lot of money. Currently there is electricity for a few hours a day, if lucky, food and fuel are absurdly expensive due to being in very short supply, and wages abysmal, the state bankrupt – so bankrupt that Qatar and Saudi Arabia paid off a mere $15 million in debt to the IMF and World Bank that the government could not afford. With the central bank sanctioned, virtually no banks around the world have been able to make financial transactions with Syria; not even remittances could get through much of the time. Even a Qatari attempt from January to pay public sector salaries for a few months was held up by US sanctions until May, when special permission was finally given by the US (except for military and security salaries). Clearly, no reconstruction can occur without the lifting of sanctions.
Already, major French, Chinese, Turkish, Qatari, Saudi and Emirati projects have been launched, focused on Syria’s crucial infrastructure and energy sectors. While renewed capitalist investment and economic activity are obviously no panacea and will introduce their own problems, it would currently be a luxury to worry about that in the context of zero money for investment, development and reconstruction; there was certainly no lack of capitalism under Assad, where his family and cronies owned great chunks of the economy, but Assad’s kleptocratic crony capitalism was little more than a regime of plunder; its collapse has left nothingness in its place.
One thing the Assad regime did leave, however, was some fabulously wealthy individuals, and these Assad-connected capitalists may well be the very people grabbing new investment opportunities. As Syrian writer Mahmoud Bitar notes, “Russia and Iran are not standing aside. Their economic arms, state-linked contractors, businessmen, and cronies are still embedded in Syria’s reconstruction, energy, and infrastructure sectors. … The likes of Mohamad Hamsho, who controls hard currency flows, and Fuad al-Assi, who runs the country’s largest money transfer network, remain central players … Lifting sanctions could make them stronger tomorrow.” Likewise, as Syrian writer Joseph Daher stresses, an economic free for all without clear targets will not lift the country out of its misery, especially given the government’s neo-liberal orientation; he also stresses the necessary political dimension of democratic inclusion and revival of civil activism to assuring the gains are not all made by big capital.
These are critical issues moving forward, but right now Syria does need this massive investment, and so far it has been the most crucial sectors targeted. And for those of us interested in seeing a working-class movement develop, or even for the revolution go beyond capitalism at some stage, there is no short cut without renewed capitalist investment and reconstruction, in the absence of a global socialist development fund: class struggle starts with the very existence of a powerful working class in crucial industries up and moving; it does not happen among a dispossessed people struggling for daily survival.
It is simply impossible to overestimate how important this is for the Syrian people, and their right to recover after the Assadist genocide.
Syria’s reconstruction needs are estimated to range from $400 to $600 billion.
No gift: Continuation of sanctions after Assad was a crime
It should be understood that this is not a gift to Syria, rather, the maintenance of the sanctions placed on the Assad regime for 6 months after the end of that regime was a criminal act in itself that made no logical or legal sense and was an act of violence and pressure against the Syrian people and the new government. For example, the number one condition for the end of the Caesar sanctions imposed on the Assad regime was the release of the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Assad’s gigantic torture gulag; everyone saw the scenes of the mass releases of tortured and emaciated and insane prisoners, many there for decades, in December. Another was creating conditions for the return of the 6.7 million Syrian refugees abroad; 482,000 have already returned to Syria, on top of 1.2 million internal refugees who have returned to their homes, and the main thing continuing to hold up return of both groups is precisely now the sanctions, because no-one has any money in Syria and there is no capacity to begin reconstruction of the half of Syria destroyed by the previous regime – including homes of these millions. Another was to end the bombing of hospitals and medical infrastructure etc – yes, the new government has not been bombing its cities and schools and hospitals and bakeries and markets. So why did the sanctions continue?
Some background on Syria sanctions and US-Assad relations
Before continuing, we will digress a little to look at the historical context of US sanctions.
There were already layers of sanctions before the 2019 Caesar sanctions, for example in 1979 the US imposed hypocritical “sponsor of terrorism” sanctions on Syria, meaning simply that Syria refused to capitulate to Israel, and there were further sanctions in 2004, and then in 2011 following the onset of Assad’s massive crackdown. However, their impact was less severe than the Caesar sanctions; when the US imposed these sanctions, they affected US trade and investment, which, when you look at a map, you could understand would be miniscule for Syria. Nor did they prevent large-scale US-Assad dealing, such as when the Bush administration was sending Islamist suspects during the “war on terror” to Syria to be tortured.
However, the 2019 Caesar sanctions imposed a secondary sanctions regime, whereby the US sanctioned anyone else doing business with the regime. This had a more devastating effect, because as the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt and later Saudi Arabia all restored relations with Assad and were determined to invest their money there, they could do little of that without being sanctioned themselves. Sanctions on Syria’s central bank made loans and investment almost impossible. The Caesar sanctions, named after ‘Caesar’, a former Syrian prison photographer who released tens of thousands of photos of tortured prisoners, were therefore a double-edged sword – on the one hand, being a result of years of Syrian human rights activists campaigning, their key demands were absolutely supportable; on the other hand, their draconian nature had a devastating impact on ordinary Syrian people, while the cronies of the Assad regime continued to amass enormous wealth; that everyday struggle for survival also had a negative impact on the ability of Syrians to maintain any kind of anti-regime struggle.
It is mistaken to assume that all anti-Assad Syrians and supporters internationally supported the sanctions in this form, although some kind of more targeted sanctions against such a horrific regime were certainly justified (just as we support sanctions on the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv). But it is also arguable that lifting them under Assad would have made little difference with a regime that was stealing from the population on such a scale; and for the millions abroad, and displaced within Syria, some kind of pressure was the only way they could ever return; they are Syrians too. And lifting sanctions to allow reconstruction – of the millions of homes and entire cities destroyed by the same regime – could also have had criminal consequences, as the regime was passing laws to dispossess the original owners who did not return (and most could not return because they did not want to see their sons and daughters “disappear” into the gulag); therefore, the regime was building new accommodation for new “owners,” including luxury accommodation for cronies.
In addition, their impact was partially buffered by Syria’s two main allies – Russia and Iran – being among the world’s largest oil producers, and as victims of US sanctions themselves, there was no impediment on them supplying oil to Syria, while the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria, which controlled most of Syria’s oil, also traded oil with the regime, with US consent; then there was Assad’s huge Captagon empire, a lucrative trade to enrich some of his support base. All of this ended with the collapse of the regime, although the SDF re-started its small-scale delivery after agreements with the new government this year. Even basic humanitarian aid to Syria via the UN, which has largely been supplied by the US and EU over the years, fell since the overthrow of Assad, because the period corresponded with the Trump administration’s foreign aid freeze; the 9th international donors’ conference on Syria in March raised 5.8 billion Euro, down from 7.5 billion in 2024, due to the US absence.
Why did the US impose these drastic sanctions when it did? On one hand, as it came after years of Syrian activism, pressure took time to build up on the US Congress. On the other, the sanctions were imposed in 2019 only after the revolution had been safely crushed by the regime, facilitated in doing so by both the Obama and Trump US administrations. Trump in particular began his rule by ending whatever remained of the limited Obama-era US support to a number of “vetted” Free Syrian Army rebel factions; even in Obama’s time, that aid was mainly aimed at co-opting these factions into the US war on ISIS, and the US vigorously enforced a ban on any country attempting to supply anti-aircraft weaponry to the rebels, in what was primarily an air war (what a contrast to Ukraine!). Trump also ended all Obama-era aid to hundreds of community councils in opposition-held territory, which ran schools, health clinics and other essentials, regardless of the US aiming at NGO-style co-optation. In 2017, Trump bombed an Idlib mosque which he accused of being a headquarters of Jabhat al-Nusra (the predecessor of Syrian president al-Sharaa’s HTS organisation), killing 57 worshippers; under both Obama and Trump, hundreds of Nusra and HTS cadre were killed in US attacks. In 2018, Trump, Putin and Netanyahu coordinated to facilitate Assad’s reconquest of the south from rebel control, right up to the occupied Golan.
US leaders feared the destabilising effects of successful revolution on US control of the middle east more than their distaste for Assad. Once this threat of revolution was crushed by 2018, the US now felt free to sanction the regime whose destruction of its entire country and creation of the world’s most gigantic refugee population was also deeply destabilising to the region; the US aimed to “change Assad’s behaviour” without the danger of revolution. And the deeply demobilising nature of sanctions ensured that continued. While the complete hollowness of the regime led to its collapse with a relatively slight military push in November 2024, the Syrian masses only came out into the streets in response to these victories; the demobilised and demoralised population were unable to play a decisive role in bringing down the regime themselves.
But whatever the case, there was no basis for continuing these sanctions after December 8, yet the Caesar sanctions were extended another four years by Congress in late December!
Of course, one might say, there is good reason to not trust the new government to be all democratic and so on either; but how is that different to countless other governments in the region and the world? Why are western governments the world’s police, and if they are, why don’t they sanction so many repressive regimes that are their allies, not to mention Israel? To not give a new government, that had opened up Assad’s gulag and dissolved the repressive apparatus, at least a breathing space was not only illegal and illogical but also immoral, because it has meant six months of excruciating poverty, inability to begin reconstruction, and was a huge obstacle to the government doing many of the things expected of it precisely by western governments, such as attempting to close the post-revolution security vacuum, because it has so little money to pay its security forces. After all, western governments could always “snap back” sanctions if they decided things went badly. The EU and UK did drastically lighten (though not repeal) their own sanctions, while emphasising it was no ‘blank cheque’ and that sanctions could return if the al-Sharaa government violated human rights or went in an anti-democratic direction; but the US rigidly maintained its sanctions regime, which, with its control of global banking and secondary sanctions, were much more fundamental.
Israel and other sources of US hostility
The hostile US stance was partly related to Israel’s relentless hostility to the new Syrian government – Israel had always preferred Assad – as well as the deeply anti-HTS stance of a number of key White House Islamophobes and “anti-terrorism” tsars in MAGA circles, including Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism Sebastain Gorka (who has “never seen a jihadi leader become a democrat”), Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (who visited Assad in 2017), and Israel-connected National Security Advisor Mike Waltz (whose abrupt removal “cut off a chunk of the White House’s ‘wall of resistance’ on Syria”); while VP Vance, Elon Musk, and other MAGA acolytes outside the government like Tucker Carlson were on the same wavelength. Just days before Trump’s announcement, Gorka had called the Syrian government “salafi-jihadist” and praised Israel’s aggression. As Syria watcher Charles Lister writes, “For 5 months, the entirety of President Trump’s national security apparatus — from the National Security Council, to the State Department and intelligence community — has voiced varying degrees of hostility, skepticism and/or indifference to Syria’s post-Assad transitional government.”
In April, the US changed its description of Syria’s UN mission to “the mission of a country the US doesn’t recognise,” with US leaders emphasising that it “does not recognise any Syrian entity as a government.” In February, of 23 European and Arab countries assembled at the Paris Conference on Syria to support Syria’s “transitional phase,” only the US did not sign the final declaration (due to the “reservations the US has on HTS”). In an April 10 UN Security Council session amid Israel’s ongoing aggression against Syria, only the US took Israel’s side, stating that “Israel has an inherent right of self-defense, including against terrorist groups operating close to its border.”
More generally, both the US and Israel understood the danger of a revolution overthrowing an Arab dictatorship, regardless of the particular leadership, and thus Israel’s months of bombing and occupation following December 8, combined with US sanctions, aimed at forcing as many concessions as they could from the new government, and in practice further entrenched its economic and security dependence on conservative regional states, greatly limiting the ‘demonstration effect’ of a successful revolution elsewhere in the region (in particular Jordan and Egypt). Israel was more hostile than the US: the latter would be satisfied with a weakened and humbled Syrian government, whereas Israel openly declares its aim is to partition Syria into cantons and keep it weak forever. For Israel, the possibility of the new Syrian government succeeding in uniting the country even on a quasi-democratic basis was anathema; such a government would be in a position to push for its rights, such as on the occupied Golan. As for the particular leadership, Israel understands that, despite Sharaa’s outward pragmatism, the Islamist movement he comes out of is deeply connected across the region to fellow Islamist movements that consider Palestine a holy cause, so forcing it into a besieged corner also contains such connections.
Harsh US conditions for mere sanctions ‘relief’
Some six weeks ago, the US presented Syria with 8 demands it would need to meet for mere “sanctions relief,” but not abolition. While some were things the government had no problem with, such as cooperating with international anti-chemical weapons inspections, cooperation against ISIS and help with finding a number of American citizens who had disappeared in Syria, others were for the right of the US to bomb “terrorists” in Syria whenever it saw fit, the expulsion of all Palestinian groups from Syria, and that no foreign fighters hold any positions in Syrian governance or security structures. The government responded that some were easy to agree with, but expressed reservations about others which infringed national sovereignty.
Despite much social media misinformation, there was no US requirement for Syria to join the Abraham Accords. It was not in any of the published lists of conditions, and it was explicitly denied by Syrian foreign minister Shaibani. And nor did the al-Sharaa government make any statement about being interested in joining the Abraham Accords, despite a huge amount of misreporting based on second-hand hearsay and embellishment by two American Congressmen (who have Syrian constituencies) who had visited Syria; moreover, the Syrian foreign ministry noted the idea was a non-starter because the accords were signed by states that “do not have occupied lands under Israeli control.” Obviously, the Syrian leadership saw the visit of US policy-makers as a chance to push for the end of US sanctions, and so fudged their questions about the Accords; even their own reports that al-Sharaa allegedly said “in the right conditions” can mean whatever one prefers, eg, the “right conditions” could mean not only Israel’s withdrawal from Golan but also its acceptance of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (ie, a sovereign Palestinian state in all of ’67 with Jerusalem as its capital). Another anonymous leak alleged Sharaa said that only when Israel withdraws from Syrian territory can we “talk about” an agreement; there is a big difference between “talking about” an unspecified “agreement”, and agreeing to normalise with Israel – which Assad explicitly committed himself to. The government is “playing the game a little bit here by saying the most that they can say to please their audience without pushing the boat too far and suggesting that they’re about to do something which they’re not,” as Syria watcher Charles Lister explains.
I recommend trying to avoid the avalanche of misinformation flooding social media. The government did, quite sensibly, continually stress that it was not a “threat” to any neighbouring state “including Israel,” that the Syrian people were exhausted and did not want conflict. After all, the Assad regime had kept the quiet on the ‘border’ of Israeli-occupied Golan for 51 years, and was widely appreciated by Israel for this, and that’s when it had a huge military arsenal, all of which was destroyed by Israel in the weeks immediately after Assad fell; any stupid move by the weak, disarmed new government would have resulted in Israel turning Damascus into south Beirut.
Nevertheless, the pressure was on. Reportedly, the eight conditions became twelve in recent weeks. Just several days before Trump’s current trip to the Gulf, on May 11, he reported to Congress that the Syrian “national emergency” sanctions would be extended another year. In justifying the extension, Trump explained that “structural weakness in governance inside Syria, and the government’s inability to control the use of chemical weapons or confront terrorist organizations, continues to pose a direct threat to U.S. interests.”
According to three sources speaking to the New Arab, “the administration has increasingly been viewing relations with Damascus from a perspective of counterterrorism … US officials conveyed to [Syrian foreign minister] Shaibani that Washington found steps taken by Damascus to be insufficient, particularly on the US demand to remove foreign fighters from senior posts in the army and expel as many of them as possible.”
To top it off, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen stated in the Senate that she had become aware that some foreign policy circles of the Trump administration had suggested assassinating al-Sharaa, but Trump had been persuaded against the idea by the King of Jordan, because it could lead to civil war!
So, what changed?
What then changed in a few days for Trump to suddenly announce the end of “all” sanctions, apart from Trump as an individual’s tendency for abrupt and erratic changes based on his temperament? There are several aspects here.
Firstly, while Sharaa was not able to satisfy all US demands, he decided to appeal to Trump on two grounds known to move his instincts: money and flattery. Several days ago the Syrian government offered US companies access to Syrian oil, gas and minerals. Chinese companies have been strongly courting Syria (and at the UN, Syrian Foreign minister Shaibani, meeting his Chinese counterparts, said China and Syria would establish a “strategic partnership”), and in early May, Syria signed a 30-year contract with French shipping giant CMA CGM to develop and run the port of Latakia (followed by Sharaa’s visit to France); however, Syria still needed the end of US sanctions. Offering US companies a special place was aimed at getting these sanctions lifted; it obviously does not mean that French, Chinese or other countries’ business will be turned away. On the contrary, US sanctions hold up these other countries from doing deals in Syria.
In making this offer, Sharaa was following Iran’s similar offer to Trump several weeks ago, that US companies could bid on Iran’s nuclear projects meaning “tens of billions of dollars in potential contracts are up for grabs” if sanctions were removed; more recently, Iran allegedly again proposed a joint nuclear-enrichment venture, involving Arab countries and American investment. Both of course base these offers on the “Ukraine minerals deal” model.
Then more symbolically, yet cringingly, al-Sharaa offered to build a ‘Trump Tower’ in the middle of Damascus if he lifted sanctions, using the weapon of flattery that reportedly works well with Trump. While many Syrians, given the alternatives, may see this as distasteful but symbolic enough to accept if sanctions are lifted, it is hard to imagine an uglier, in all respects, addition to the beautiful Damascus skyline.
Trump’s Gulf extravaganza and growing Saudi-Israeli divergence
It is hard to know how much the economic offer and the Trump Tower impacted Trump’s decision-making, but the other thing of course was Trump’s Gulf trip itself. Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates was all about money. The three countries have offered to invest trillions in the US economy; the Saudis agreed to $142 billion in arms purchases from the US; Qatar signed over $200 billion dollars worth of deals, including the purchase of 210 Boeing jets. Meanwhile, the Trump family business itself also has huge ventures in these countries.
Trump sees a number of powerful sub-imperial states running the region in their spheres of influence as the US gradually shifts more of its attention to confronting China in east Asia. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey are key states in this equation; meanwhile Trump sees a new Iran nuclear deal as a way of bringing Iran into the regional system, or at least neutralising another powerful state in its own now reduced sphere; and of him perhaps getting a Nobel Prize. These aims, and the enormous, glittering wealth behind them, somewhat conflict with the priorities of the US’s main regional ally, the Israeli regime currently carrying out a devastating genocide in Gaza, which was in full swing during Trump’s trip.
While Israel was starving Gaza to death and launching horrific attacks on hospitals, these Arab leaders feted the US leader supplying Israel with all its killing equipment, and barely a word was said about Gaza the whole time, yet another stunning indictment on those Arab states who actually have some power to do something if they wished.
But the fact that these rulers don’t care about the Palestinians is a given. When it comes to interests though, they increasingly diverge from the particular priorities of Israel, and especially of this regime. While years of commentary has claimed Saudi Arabia was about to sign onto the Abraham Accords with Israel, and that Trump’s big goal is to get a Saudi-Israeli normalisation happening, in reality the Saudis have stood steadfast on the condition for normalisation: a sovereign Palestinian state in all the territory occupied by Israel in 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital, as per the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. They are particularly uninterested in even discussing normalisation as long as Netanyahu continues the genocide. In fact, the Saudis made it a condition of Trump’s visit that the idea not even be mentioned. They care nothing for Palestinians; however, they also increasingly care little for the globally isolated genocidal entity as they revel in their own power.
In this context, Trump’s view of US interests in the region also partially diverges from Israel’s extremist regime in a number of ways. If the Saudis and Israel can’t agree, he will deal with each separately. Rather than ‘normalisation’, the Israel issue is now ‘de-coupled’ from other issues in the region. Therefore, what we have seen in recent days and weeks has included:
Trump’s deal with the Houthis in Yemen, to stop bombing them if they stop hitting US vessels in the Red Sea (which in any case they have not been doing for months). The agreement did not include any US reaction to ongoing Houthi attacks on, or attempts to attack, Israel; Israel was not consulted, and was said to be “blindsided.” The Saudis, despite bombing the Houthis for seven years (2015-22), pressured the US to make the deal, determined that the three-year Yemen ceasefire, and two-year Saudi-Iranian normalisation, continue. On the Houthis, Trump said “You could say there was a lot of bravery there,” noting that he “honours their word” on ceasing attacks.
Trump’s decision to begin direct negotiations with Iran to get a new nuclear deal was sprung on Netanyahu at an April press conference in the US; again Netanyahu was blindsided. Israel is determined to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and expected US support if not participation; Trump instead wants a deal he can dress up as “better” than Obama’s one he ripped up. Trump sacked his National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, for allegedly going behind his back and planning an attack on Iran with Netanyahu. Again, Saudi Arabia strongly supports US-Iran negotiations and has facilitated them (in stark contrast to last time round) – leading Saudi and Iranian officials have visited each other in recent days and weeks to facilitate the deal; during his meeting with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini in April, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman called Iran and Saudi Arabia “two main pillars of the region.”
On Saudi Arabia itself, Trump has said he is going to do a Saudi deal “without Israel.” While it is unclear exactly what this means, since “deal” till now meant normalisation with Israel, he has certainly done a massive Saudi deal! It is generally understood that the Saudis want American support to develop their nuclear industry, but until now the US tied this to the Saudis recognising Israel. Trump may now aim to support it without such recognition, though this has not come up during his visit, possibly because it is tied to the question of the Iran deal and how this impacts that country’s nuclear industry.
The US negotiated directly with Hamas to get the hostage US citizen Edan Alexander released, again going behind Israel’s back, which is opposed to direct negotiations with Hamas. So is the US normally, but this was about a US citizen.
So finally, Trump’s abrupt and unexpected declaration that he was lifting “all” US sanctions on Syria must be seen in the same context – as Trump himself admitted, both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish leader Erdogan strongly appealed to Trump personally to lift the sanctions; “the things I do for the Crown Prince,” Trump exclaimed, when announcing the lifting of sanctions. Both see this as in their interests, from both common but also somewhat rival perspectives, and a stable Syria is an important economic link between the Gulf and Turkey. By contrast, Israel had appealed to the US to not lift Syria sanctions. Again, Trump went with his Saudi and Qatari hosts, and the Turkish leader, over Israel.
Decision a shock to US leaders; Trump has killed their conditions … or has he?
And really, there is not much more to it. By all accounts, the decision came as a complete shock to senior officials in the US government. “The White House had issued no memorandum or directive to State or Treasury sanctions officials to prepare for the unwinding and didn’t alert them that the president’s announcement was imminent, one senior U.S. official told Reuters. The sudden removal of the sanctions appeared to be a classic Trump move – a sudden decision, a dramatic announcement and a shock not just for allies but also some of the very officials who implement the policy change.”
The importance of this is that, if Trump follows through on this decision to scrap – not reduce – “all” sanctions, this will mean his personal, abrupt, immediate-context driven decision-making will render all the ghastly “conditions” the White House and State Department and NSC have been working to impose on Syria to get sanctions lifted irrelevant! It renders irrelevant his own comments just days earlier. State Department spokesperson Michael Mitchell confirmed that the US “did not request any guarantees from the Sharaa government” before lifting sanctions, that “Trump’s decision came unconditionally.” If this is the case, this is a far, far better outcome than the ongoing strangulation of Syria until it capitulates even on basic national principles.
However, that remains a big “if.” The problem is that while some sanctions can be lifted by presidential order, others, especially the crucial Caesar sanctions, have been voted into law and therefore require Congressional approval, while the “terrorism” label on al-Sharaa would have to be removed by the UN Security Council, and this prevents the US from supporting World Bank loans. “Removing sanctions is rarely straightforward, often requiring close coordination between multiple different agencies and Congress. … Edward Fishman, a former U.S. official, said the unwinding of Syria sanctions, which were imposed under a mix of executive orders and statutes, could take months to ease.”
However, there are provisions in the Caesar Act allowing the president to issue a ‘general license’ to suspend sanctions for a period of time. If Trump wanted to act, he would need to suspend them for at least two years for this to have any effect in terms of giving banks and businesses some confidence to deal with Syria. At this stage they have been suspended for 180 days.
And all this is the catch. If the White House, or Congress, or Trump himself, decide they want to continue the pressure on Syria, they could drag out the process and make it be known to the Syrian government that, if it wants Trump’s order expedited, the conditions in effect still exist. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated, on the one hand, that US sanctions “relief” was not contingent on Syria immediately acting on US “concerns” such as ISIS resurgence, human rights protections, and the presence of foreign militant groups; but on the other, ominously, that “If Syria makes progress, we will ask Congress to permanently lift sanctions” – suggesting that if no “progress,” they won’t. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “That’s premature.” The next day Rubio went even further, stating that sanctions relief “does have to be conditioned on them [the Syrian government] continuing to live by the commitments” made verbally, i.e., combatting “extremism,” not launching attacks on Israel, and forming a government that “represents, includes and protects” ethnic and religious diversity.
Rubio’s caution reflects a middle position within ruling Republican Party circles between Trump’s sudden conversion on one side, and those like Gorka who are no doubt reeling in shock (saving face, Gorka asserts the lifting of sanctions is “not unconditional … we have made those stipulations very clearly”). Warning that Syria could explode into civil war and partition, Rubio explained that “the transitional authority figures, they didn’t pass their background check with the FBI,” but “if we engage them, it may work out, it may not work out. If we did not engage them, it was guaranteed to not work out.” Clearly, Rubio means that if it does “not work out,” Trump’s announcement is hot air. Another sitting on the fence, Senator Lindsay Graham, stated “waiving congressionally passed sanctions … has to be done in a coordinated fashion with our allies,” which presumably includes a hostile Israel. Graham said that Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism could “hopefully eventually” be rescinded.” Eventually …
It is deeply ironic and troubling that possibly the best we can hope for is that Trump’s very public and very unconditional statement on lifting “all” sanctions may mean he will feel compelled to honour his word, especially made as it was in front of his Saudi friends.
After the Saudi extravaganza at which he made his declaration about lifting sanctions, Trump met briefly with al-Sharaa and Saudi leader MBS, with Erdogan on call. While there is no recording of the meeting, it is understood that Trump put five points to Sharaa; State Department spokesperson Michael Mitchell stressed that these are “expectations” and are not actual conditions for the removal of sanctions. Trump urged Syria:
to join the Abraham Accords
to expel all “foreign terrorists” (ie Islamist fighters from other countries who helped Sharaa’s struggle)
to “deport Palestinian terrorists”
to help prevent a resurgence of ISIS
to take on “responsibility for ISIS detention centers in Northeast Syria”
In his artful response, al-Sharaa allegedly:
thanked Trump, MBS and Erdogan for arranging the meeting,
noted shared U.S.-Syrian interests in countering terrorism and eliminating chemical weapons (thus avoiding anything specific about points 2,3,4 and 5 – we already know he has no problem with points 4 and 5 on combating ISIS)
reiterated that Syria supports maintenance of the 1974 ceasefire lines with Israel on the Golan, which Assad maintained for 51 years and which a destroyed and disarmed Syria can obviously do nothing about at this stage; this can be considered his response to the first point.
expressed his hope for Syria to “serve as a critical link in facilitating trade between east and west, and invited American companies to invest in Syrian oil and gas”
“Shared Syria’s stance on current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, emphasising the need for international accountability,” with no more specific information.
On the Abraham Accords, even Trump seemed to understand that Syria would not be joining any time soon, responding to a question alter about whether he thinks Syria will join them: “Yeah, but I think they have to get themselves straightened out. I told him, I hope you’re going to join once you’re straightened out & he said yes. But they have a lot of work to do.”
Indeed, it will take many years for Syria to get “straightened out.” And in any case, since neither his Saudi nor Qatari hosts, both strong supporters of Syria, have signed or intend to sign the Abraham Accords, Sharaa has plenty to hide behind. And as Shaibani, his foreign minister has stated, only states who do not have territory under Israeli occupation have signed the accords, so we can only “talk” about an agreement when that ends; Israel, of course, never intends to withdraw from the Golan. Another wall to hide behind.
Nevertheless, nothing is certain. Officials in the White House and Congress may put their foot down. If under unbearable pressure Syria’s future capitulation cannot be ruled out; if that happened, it should be condemned as a betrayal of the Palestinian people, while recognising the pressure it was put under. However, the current anti-Sharaa social media circus on this question is condemning something that has not happened, that Syria has been resisting, and that no Syrian leader has ever suggested doing; those involved see their fact-challenged soundbites as more important than this hugely important victory is for the Syrian people.
Sharaa’s response back in Syria
In his first speech back in Syria, Sharaa thanked or mentioned every country in the region, as well as Trump and European governments that have engaged with Syria in recent months. The only relevant countries not mentioned were Israel, Iran and Russia. But despite his special appeal to US companies in the lead-up to Trump’s visit, there was no mention of this; on the contrary, he “welcome[d] all investors — Syrians at home and abroad, as well as Arab, Turkish, and international partners — to seize the opportunities available across various sectors.” He emphasised that Syria would no longer represent one bloc against another, that there are no special privileges.
While thanking various leaders, he also attributed the lifting of sanctions to coordinated diplomatic engagement and “the unity of Syrians at home and abroad,” noting “the interaction of Syrian communities around the world helped convince international actors that it was time to end Syria’s isolation.” Just days before Trump’s trip, 55 Syrian and International NGOs called on Trump to ease Syria sanctions.
Sharaa also declared that “Syria is for all Syrians, regardless of sect or ethnicity … coexistence is our heritage, and the division has always been caused by external interventions. We reject these divisions today.” Good – but now that sanctions are being lifted, it is important that “all Syrians, regardless of sect and ethnicity,” do get to be included in the new power structures and the government ceases its tendency towards an overwhelmingly Sunni-led state, with real accountability for crimes, such as against the Alawite population in March. Otherwise, such words will mean nothing, and division, exploited by foreign parties, will indeed continue.
The Syrian people need jobs, food, water, electricity, housing, reconstruction. Celebrating with them at this moment is the most important reaction, all caution considered. Syria is not a normal state capable of making free decisions. It is a state where much of the country is rubble, just emerging from 54 years of tyranny and 14 years of genocidal war, under attack and occupation by Israel in the south, while Russia, Turkey and the US also occupy parts of the country, over half of whose population is either in exile or uprooted inside the country, while well over 100,000 have still not been recovered from mass graves, with an economy crushed by massive theft by the former regime on top of devastating sanctions. It is not Gaza 2025 – a genocidal crime of an almost unique level of evil – but much of Syria is the closest thing to Gaza in the region. Try to imagine the kinds of “conditions” that will be placed on a future Palestinian state to allow it to breathe.
Touring around Trump while Israel’s holocaust in Gaza escalates to unimaginable levels, with weapons supplied by Trump, was a disgusting spectacle by Gulf rulers, even if, as demonstrated above, these regimes currently have different interests to Israel and Trump has been bending their way. But that’s not Syria’s fault; it lives in the world as is, with horrible choices, of which it had to choose the lesser evil of shaking Trump’s hand at this show.
It would be good to think that Trump’s divergence from Israel’s priorities on Yemen, Iran, Syria, Saudi normalisation and even direct negotiations with Hamas would translate into a Trump break with Israel on its Gaza genocide. Even if nothing more could be hoped for from Trump in terms of long-term justice for Palestine, right now just stopping the genocide is so important that, if he were impelled to do so by the Gulf extravaganza, it would justify the show. Whether the Gulf rulers cared to pressure Trump on this or not, or whether he listened or not, what we know at this moment is that nothing has happened, except for some words like “awful war.” Most likely Trump’s ‘de-coupling’ from Israel’s regional priorities elsewhere will not be repeated for Israel’s own key priority, ie, occupied Palestine, and Greater Israel will continue to be a key US ally alongside the other powerful regimes in the region. I sincerely hope to be proven wrong. It is a sad situation whereby at this particular moment, this seems the best one can hope for.
In Myth 7, I already dealt with the claim that Ukraine was “forced” by an alleged Boris Johnston statement to abandon peace talks, and demonstrated that Ukraine never abandoned the path of negotiations.
However, the more general idea that the war continues because the US (before Trump) and European leaders want it to, to grind down Russia, and they therefore use their sway over Ukraine to push it to take uncompromising positions which prolongs the war, remains widespread within a certain “left” discourse. According to this version, most Ukrainians would happily give up some or all of the Ukrainian territory that Russia has conquered in exchange for peace, but their leaders, puppets of the US, UK and EU, keep forcing them into the “meat grinder” over this little bit of borderland.
Before we get onto the main issues, it is worth just noting that if western powers were using Ukraine to grind down Russia by keeping the war going – ie continuing to fund Ukraine’s defence against illegal aggression and occupation – then surely Russia, if it did not want to be “ground down” like this, could withdraw from the illegally occupied territory, and end the war? But yes, simple logic like that is not as much fun as blaming the victim.
For the record, of course it is a legitimate argument that the war has gone on too long, that too many are getting killed, and that this can no longer be justified by the need to regain territory, and therefore Ukraine may be forced to make a compromise that is against its interests, due to Russia’s overwhelming military superiority. Liberation movements have many times been forced into such rotten compromises when the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against them. And if and when they do, supporters in the West would be completely out of order to “condemn” the victim for “capitulating;” in our solidarity, we would continue to condemn the aggressor as the cause of the rotten compromise, the imperial theft, but recognise the right of the oppressed nation, in this case Ukraine, to make its own decision.
And yes, some of the people I might partly disagree with do simply advocate this; they believe there is no alternative; Ukraine’s case is hopeless; being forced to give up territory is unjust, but a necessary pragmatic decision because the number of Ukrainian troops dying cannot be justified by keeping the territory. They don’t necessarily put the blame on Ukraine, the condemn the Russan invasion, but they think if Ukraine does make the rotten compromise now, it will only have to do so later, after countless more have been killed. And this article does not argue against these comrades; that is a valid position.
But when Ukraine has not made such a decision, surely it is just as out of order for people in the West to be “condemning” Ukraine for not making a rotten compromise, for not capitulating, for not agreeing to trade away its occupied territory, and the Ukrainian populations who live or use to live there, while making every excuse under the sun for Russia’s right to aggression, occupation and annexation. When it is not simply a pragmatic argument, like in the previous paragraph, but one that puts the blame on the occupied nation for the war continuing. Yet that is the view of a substantial part of the western left.
Let’s be clear on what kind of compromise Ukraine is being asked to make: Russia has annexed five Ukrainian oblasts – Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kerson and Zaporizhzhia. Crimea was annexed in 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk were invaded in 2014 but less than half occupied by 2022, while Kerson and Zaporizhzhia were not invaded until after the 2022 war began. Only later in 2022 did Russia formally annex these four oblasts, despite still not controlling all of Donetsk, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia.
Map shows how much of the five oblasts Russian troops currently occupy (red line shows the extent of Russian occupation)
The question is whether Ukraine should give up these 5 oblasts in their entirety, or all the sections of them currently under Russian control, or whatever was under Russian control in February 2022, in exchange for an end to the war. The five oblasts constitute about 20 percent of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. Look at the map: it almost completely cuts Ukraine off from the Black Sea, which, after all, is precisely one of the strategic aims of Russia’s imperialist war of conquest.
We should also be clear that Russia demands formal recognition of all these annexations, made by brute, illegal, military conquest, not simply long-term ceasefire. Take for example the Syrian Golan. Israel conquered the Golan in 1967, Syria made an attempt to regain it in 1973, and then in 1974, recognising the overwhelming odds, signed a long-term demarcation of forces agreement, whereby Israel remains in occupation of the Golan – which it later illegally annexed – and Syrian and Israeli troops were separated by a UN force, and Syria never again attempted to recover its territory – but neither the Assad regime nor the current post-Assad government recognise the annexation; every year, a UN Resolution reaffirms Syrian sovereignty.
To be clear: this kind of pragmatic arrangement is not on offer to Ukraine. In fact, for all those saying Ukraine should just negotiate over territory, and blaming it for not doing so, remember that from Russia’s viewpoint, there is nothing to negotiate: Putin’s regime demands recognition of Russia’s annexation of all five oblasts as a prior condition for negotiations to even begin!
So what do Ukrainians think of territorial compromise?
What the is the truth about the opinions of Ukrainians? Are they being forced by a Zelensky government acting as western “proxy” to fight rather than surrender territory? The easiest way to check is to do 5 minutes of research.
In 2022-23, a full 87 percent of Ukrainians rejected any territorial compromise. But after years of war, surely the figure has gone down? Yes, it has, but not by as much as might be expected.
According to a Gallup poll conducted in late 2024, around 52% of Ukrainians “would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible,” while only 38% “believe their country should keep fighting until victory.” Ten percent didn’t know or didn’t answer. This is a big change compared to previous years.
However, only 52% of this 52% agreed that “Ukraine should be open to making some territorial concessions as a part of a peace deal to end the war.” That is, only 27% of the population agree to even “some” territorial compromise.
Of the 38% who believe in “fighting till victory,” only 19% would agree to some territorial compromise (as the bar chart shows, 81% reject any territorial compromise); that is, only 7% of the population:
Add this to the 27% from the first group, and 34% of Ukrainians are now in favour of “some” territorial compromise. In contrast, around 51% of the population reject any territorial compromise.
These figures tie in well with another survey, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), from mid-2024, which found that 32% of Ukrainians were in favour of some territorial concessions, while 55% reject any compromise.
Now, while both surveys show a majority rejecting all territorial concessions, the majority is razor thin, even if the pro-concession group is considerably smaller. However, the devil here is in the details.
In the Gallup poll, as can be seen in the chart above, while 81% of Ukrainians wanting to “fight till victory” believe all territory must be recovered for this “victory, a full 96% believe that Ukraine must regain a substantial amount of territory: 9% want to regain all territory lost since the Russian invasion of 2022 (ie, all of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and most of Luhansk), about half the occupied territory, while another 6% want to regain all four eastern oblasts but would be prepared to give up only Crimea.
If we were to add these people to those rejecting capitulation to Russia’s territorial demands, the number goes up to 56%, while those in favour drops to 29%.
But as the poll does not give similar breakdown data for the first group, ie the majority wanting a negotiated settlement, who agree to “some” territorial concessions, it is likely to also be the case that many of those who agree to “some” would reject ceding all territory. As such, the numbers rejecting the Russian demand to recognise all annexed territory as Russia’s is likely to rise to some two thirds; the number accepting to be a quarter at most.
Clearly, the vast majority are opposed to ceding all territory to Russia, so it is fiction that the Ukraine government does not represent the popular will. However, it is clear that the majority is declining, and the numbers supporting “some” territorial concession, while still a minority, are now substantial enough to suggest that some kind of compromise is possible for the sake of ending the war. But the problem remains that Russia’s starting point for beginning negotiations is Ukraine’s prior recognition of its annexation of all five oblasts, even the parts it does not control. This makes condemning the Ukrainian government or people for wanting endless war, seeing them as the party that needs to be pressured, is somewhat absurd.
NATO, security guarantees, and Trump
It is also important that Ukrainians in various polls (especially the KIIS poll) see security guarantees as just as an important an issue; if forced to make territorial concessions for peace, they do not want Russia to re-invade again in a few years. And most see NATO membership as the most certain form of security – it is rather obvious to them that Russia invaded a NATO non-member, while Sweden and Finland, the latter with a long border with Russia, have never been touched or threatened since joining NATO.
Yet for all this – and all the non-sequitirs from much of the left about prospective Ukrainian NATO membership being what “provoked” Russia’s invasion, the reality is that NATO membership was never on the cards for Ukraine, and Zelensky was always ready to trade that away – this was offered to Putin before his invasion, and he rejected it, since his aim was territorial conquest, not the NATO bogey; Ukraine again offered it in a formal peace plan a month into the war, to which Russia responded with the Bucha massacre and the complete obliteration of Mariupol (see Myth 7). If there is no NATO membership, Ukraine has been willing to accept other forms of tight security guarantees all along. But the NATO discussion will the topic of Myth 9.
A final note related to what Ukraine may have to compromise on: the problem with Trump’s blatant dealing with Putin over Ukraine’s head about Ukraine is not some pragmatic recognition that the war is a quagmire and requires negotiations and bad compromises; nor that the US wants to get out of Europe, focus elsewhere, and leave European problems to Europe. It is hilarious watching parts of the left cheer Trump – the guy who wants to expel two million Palestinians from Gaza – as a peacemaker!
Because if Trump simply wanted to launch a negotiation, he might have included Ukraine and Russia on equal terms rather than engaging in such blatant imperial carve-up; and he would not have given everything to Moscow in advance, he and his ministers declaring in advance of negotiations both that Ukraine will not recover its territory and that it will not join NATO and that the US will not be involved in any other security guarantees; Trump told Zelensky that he had “no cards,” as he had given all of Ukraine’s cards away to Russia before any negotiations begin. If that is not a blatantly pro-Putin action, I don’t know what is. And if he wanted the US out of Europe, it is strange that he invited Zelensky to the White House to get Ukraine to sign a colonial deal to hand over its mineral wealth to the US; Ukraine is in Europe.
It is no accident that Zelensky’s popularity in Ukraine shot up following the Trump-Vance ambush where he left without signing the colonial deal; because whatever else may be wrong with the Zelensky government – a neoliberal government that socialists would take issue with on many fronts – the stance of defending Ukraine’s self-determination against Russian imperialism remains one with significant majority support.
Myth 1: Israel was “behind” the overthrow of Assad – silly conspiracism
Myth 2: OK, it wasn’t, but the fall of Assad serves Israel’s interests – quite the opposite actually
Myth 3: OK, it doesn’t, but Israel’s actions inadvertently facilitated the fall of Assad by weakening Iran and Hezbollah – valid discussion, but in reality makes no sense
Above: The city of Idlib in rebel-held Syria opened Gaza Square in solidarity with Palestine amid Israel’s genocidal war, April 2024; Below: Israeli leader Netanyahu occupying Syria’s Mount Hermon, after his man Assad falls, December 2024.
The massive popular revolution which overthrew the 54-year old Assad dynasty is a momentous event shaking West Asia. As the real scale and depth of the horror of the former regime’s prison-torture gulag is being revealed along with the continual unveiling of mass graves containing some 100-150,000 souls, the enormous significance of the Syrian people’s achievement becomes more undeniable.
Meanwhile, leading up to the Gaza truce, Israel’s holocaust in Gaza became more unspeakably barbaric by the day, if that is even possible. The destruction of the last hospital in northern Gaza, the mass killing of civilians taking refuge there and mass arrest of doctors, the freezing to death of Palestinian infants, were greeted with a collective yawn by the world’s rulers.
While Israel’s aim of annexing northern Gaza appears to have no succeeded as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians return – albeit to rubble – Netanyahu is expecting support from the incoming Trump administration for the annexation of the West Bank as a quid pro quo to consecrate Palestine’s worst catastrophe since 1948.
While the solidarity shown with Palestine by southern Lebanon under Hezbollah’s leadership and by the AnsarAllah authorities in north Yemen was undoubtedly appreciated by Palestinians, the realistic conclusion is that it made no difference to Israel’s ability to commit genocide; and when Israel decided to turn around and “show deterrence” by destroying Hezbollah’s communication network, military capacity and most of its leadership in some ten days, this not only did not detract from its war of extermination in Gaza, but rather Israel accelerated it under the cover of Lebanon, implementing the General’s Plan for the complete ethnic cleansing and demolition of northern Gaza.
This demonstrated two things. Firstly, that any illusions that Israel – an entrenched colonial-settler-state acting as a virtual extension of the world’s most powerful imperialist state – can be defeated purely by military pressure, or that any ‘fronts’ other than Palestine itself could be more than symbolic, ought to have been destroyed; such illusions were particularly high in late 2023-early 2024 before reality set in. This is not an infantile criticism that Hezbollah or the Houthis “should have” done more when no-one else did anything, rather it is simply a statement of reality. Secondly, related illusions that these two outside fronts were driven and empowered by some “axis of resistance” led by the reactionary Iranian theocracy – rather than being more situational – should also have been smashed.
Indeed, the fact that the Iranian regime was unwilling or unable to do anything of note to prevent the defeat of its own close Lebanese ally Hezbollah essentially means the death-knell of “axis of resistance” discourse, if such an “axis” means illusions that repressive capitalist states like Iran are willing or able to aid Palestinian liberation (the fact that Syria’s Assad regime not only did less, but arguably even sabotaged Hezbollah and even minimal Iranian efforts, is much less surprising). In reality, as Palestinian author Rashid Khalidi argues, that was never the purpose of Iran’s “axis” in the first place.
The key date here is November 27. This was both the day of the Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, and the day that Syrian rebels launched their long-planned ‘Operation Deter Aggression’, which, unbeknown to themselves, landed them in Damascus ten days later. The coincidence of the date, and the fact that both Hezbollah’s defeat and the fall of the Assad regime can be considered defeats to the Iran-led “axis” – even if one was a victory for a genocidal regime and the other a victory against one – has led to much debate about the ‘geopolitical’ relationship between the two events, and their outcome.
There are three main assertions arising from this, which will be disputed here.
The first assertion, made by many so-called “anti-imperialists” who only see the world through the struggle against Israel and the US, and see everyone else’s struggle for freedom as secondary (including the more vile sub-set of shills for the genocidal Assad regime), is that that Israel and the US were “behind” the toppling of Assad. This conspiracism is easy to dispute, but nevertheless will be dealt with seriously.
The second assertion, made not only by this same group but also by many people who welcome the overthrow of Assad and wish the Syrian people well, is that while the fall of Assad may be good for the Syrian people, it also happens to be in Israel’s geopolitical interests, since Assad’s Syria, though it did nothing for Palestine itself, was the territorial ‘link’ across which Iran sent arms to Hezbollah. While more serious than the first assertion, at the outset Israel’s immediate massive attack on free Syria from the moment Assad was gone, to destroy all the weaponry that it never had any problem with the Assad regime possessing, to establish a “safe zone” on the Syrian side, free of weapons and “terrorist” infrastructure” (Israeli defense minister Yisrael Katz), and to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel” (Netanyahu), and Israeli leaders descriptions of the new Syrian government as “a gang of terrorists” (Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar) and “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel), and claims that “the events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration” (diaspora affairs minister Amachai Chikli), do not offer much support to this assertion.
The third assertion is more serious; even among many who reject the first and even the second above, who welcome the Syrian revolution, stress that Syrian freedom should not be hostage to anyone else’s struggle and so on and so forth, nevertheless believe that Israel’s defeat of Hezbollah and Iran and the destruction of many of their assets played a key role – even if inadvertently – in enabling the rebels’ rapid victory and Assad’s collapse. Although the law of unintended consequences is a real thing, I will argue below that when we look at this argument in detail, in reality it played little if any role and makes little sense.
Each of these assertions will be dealt with in depth, but here at the outset, I will note that the explanation regarding the two events coinciding on November 27, 2024 is more simple than many imagine, yet belies precisely the kinds of ‘connections’ many want to make: despite being under constant bombardment by the Assad regime ever since October 7, 2023, the Syrian rebels in Idlib, led by HTS, did not activate their Operation Deter Aggression, to deter this aggression, before the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as to not help Israel. Once Hezbollah had signed the agreement to implement UN Resolution 1701, requiring it to withdraw north of the Litani River and be replaced there by the Lebanese army, we need to understand that the “axis” – if interpreted in the narrow sense of Iranian arms crossing Syrian territory to reach Hezbollah – had become irrelevant, not only for any symbolic solidarity with Palestine, but for defence of Lebanon itself. At that point, the Syrian rebels made the decision to no longer delay their own struggle against genocide to avoid harming another struggle, as that other struggle had come to a close.
Was Israel ‘behind’ the ousting of Assad? Sure didn’t look like it!
It is difficult to “refute” an argument based on nothing. Just because conspiracists and sad, bitter Assadists on social media proclaim that Israel was “behind” the Syrian rebel offensive, without offering a grain of evidence, does not make it a fact. “On the streets they are saying it is Mossad,” I was reliably informed after December 8. Just exactly how is anyone’s guess, these memers never explain the alleged mechanism – did Mossad secretly pay off every soldier in the Syrian army to not fight? There was no connection between HTS in Idlib, which spent the whole year since October 7 campaigning for Gaza, and Israel, which calls the rebels ‘jihadists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘hostile entity’, ‘al-Qaeda’, you name it – but who knows, maybe this is all just a front, and they “secretly conspired.” Or maybe some people need more appropriate hobbies.
Nonsense aside, there are some points we can make that demonstrate the distance from reality of these assertions, because they show not only that Israel wanted the regime to remain in power, but also that it was as taken aback as everyone else was by its rapid collapse.
The first point concerns the revelations about the long-term intelligence links between Israel and the Assad regime which have been exposed since the overthrow. Classified intelligence documents of the regime came to light after its fall showing the messages exchanged between an Israeli agent code-named Mousa (or Moses) and then Syrian Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Mahmoud Abbas, who then passed the messages onto Assad’s intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk. These documents concerned the long-term well-known ‘mechanism’ by which Israel and Russia collaborated in the Syrian skies, as Russia’s world-class S-400 anti-aircraft missile system gave a decade-long pass to Israel’s attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah assets in Syria, as long as Israel spared the Assad regime itself.
But while it was previously assumed that Israel only coordinated with Russia, acting on Assad’s behalf, these exposures demonstrate Israel’s direct line to the regime itself. While some messages are warnings to Assad to reduce collaboration with Iran, others are Israeli explanations for certain anti-Iranian actions, sounding almost apologetic in some cases, while still others thank the regime for “positive” moves against Iran and show Israel’s respect for the regime meeting its own “security” needs.
For example, Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss write up a message from ‘Moses’ to Abbas on June 16, 2023, where it was noted that Syrian Airforce planes, which Israel had previously accused of helping transport Iranian weapons to the Hmeimim airport for transfer to Hezbollah, were no longer landing there, and also that the Syrian regime had halted Iranian cargo flights which had been landing at Nayrab Airport. Moses comments that these steps “are regarded (by us) as positive steps that will safeguard your interests. We do not wish to take action against the Syrian Arab Army. Therefore, using the organized mechanism under Russian supervision will allow you to meet the army’s needs without risking infrastructure or sites exploited by the Iranians for weapons transfers, which ultimately cause harm to you. Since you are the party responsible for halting these flights, know that you have successfully prevented an unnecessary confrontation, one that neither side desires.”
The exposed messages only cover the brief period May-July 2023, and as will be shown below, the regime went much further than these “positive” steps away from the “axis” in the year after October 7, with, as we will see below, Iranian suspicions that the direct Israel-Assad communication line may have revealed Iranian assets that Israel subsequently bombed. The idea that Israel would move (somehow) to remove the regime with which it maintained this long-term useful intelligence connection with, through which it was apparently making gains, to replace it with a former Sunni jihadist group with which it has zero links, makes little sense. Israel’s expressed wish to “not take action against the Syrian Arab Army” only turned into its opposite once the regime collapsed.
The second point relates to the visit by Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, to Russia in early November 2024 (following a visit to Israel by Russian officials on Oct. 27) to discuss Russia pressuring the Assad regime to fully block Iranian arms from reaching Lebanon (which Russian officials affirmed they were prepared to assist with). Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius cites Israeli officials being “hopeful that we can get Assad to, at a minimum, stop the flow of arms to Hezbollah through Syria. Maybe more.” More significantly, Dermer told his Russian hosts that Israel would propose to the US to lift or freeze sanctions on the Assad regime in exchange for such efforts; Ignatius also cited Israeli sources claiming that “the U.S. is willing to give the Syrians some benefit if they go down that road.” [Notably, the close ally of both Israel and the Assad regime – the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – also met US officials around this time to request such sanctions relief for Assad in exchange for positive moves]. This demonstrates that Israel still saw working through the regime as the way to go and believed the regime would still be around for some time – why would you request US sanctions relief for a regime you are about to overthrow?
Thirdly, Israeli government and media statements leading up to the overthrow of Assad show either that Israeli leaders were opposed to the rebels (“the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop”, according to Netanyahus’s November 29 security consultation with defence chiefs), and that Israel may be “required to act” to prevent Syria’s strategic weaponry falling into the hands of the rebels, or at best, viewed both regime and rebels as enemies (eg, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s December 3 claim that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there”), or in some cases open support for Assad was expressed because “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy” so “The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view,” or because Assad “is a weak enemy and a weak enemy serves our interests” so “we must support Assad’s existence.”
None of this looks like a government or military-security apparatus “behind” the overthrow of Assad; but also, if Israel was carrying out this nefarious plot, it is strange that many of these statements indicate a belief the regime would survive at some level; indeed, the idea of Israel establishing a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Syria between the Golan occupation and the HTS-led forces “guarded by forces of Assad’s regime” was put forward by former senior Israeli intelligence officer Lt.-Col. Amit Yagur!
While the last idea may sound outlandish, it corresponds to the claim made by David Hearst in Middle East Eye that “Israel wanted to keep Assad in power under Emirati tutelage” in southern Syria (while also pushing for Druze and Kurdish states) as a buffer zone against HTS and Turkish influence. Hearst reports that “In the early hours of Sunday 8 December, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, the Syrian prime minister, appeared on video saying he was willing to hand over power peacefully.” As HTS forces approached Damascus to receive this handover, “the Emirati and Jordanian ambassadors in Syria were making desperate attempts to stop HTS from gaining control of Damascus,” and they “encouraged the Free Syrian Army and allied groups from the south to get to Damascus before HTS,” arranging for the prime minister to hand over the state institutions to these southern fighters rather than HTS. “Jalali was filmed being escorted to the (Four Seasons) hotel by soldiers from the Hauran region in southern Syria belonging to the Fifth Corps, a military force made up of former rebels who had previously reconciled with the Syrian government.” This was thwarted when HTS leader, al-Sharaa, told Jalali by phone not to do it.
It is hard to confirm the precise details of Hearst’s story. One problem is that it tends to cast the southern FSA as a treacherous body; in fact the Southern Front of the FSA in Daraa and Quneitra has a very proud history, and their revolt, alongside that of the Druze fighters in neighbouring Suweida, in the final days was every bit as valid as the revolution approaching from the north. However, as noted, much of the FSA Southern Front had been pressured to “reconcile” with the regime and join the Russian-led 5th Corp in 2018, as the regime swept the south, as an alternative to slaughter. While for the majority, overthrowing this forced “reconciliation” in December was a genuine act of revolution, it cannot be ruled out that some elements – those most under Emirati-Jordanian influence – had actually reconciled, and now only came out in order to thwart HTS and to be used by the regional counterrevolution. The recent rise of suspicions among Syrians about the commander Ahmad al-Awda of the Eighth Brigade of the 5th Corp and his Emirati connections, could suggest a future UAE-backed ‘Haftar’ possibility, though at this stage that is rather speculative.
[Incidentally, this Southern Front of the FSA, whatever its divisions, should not be confused with yet another group that western media sometimes calls the ‘FSA’, based in the US al-Tanf base in the southeast desert region. The US-backed ‘Tanf boys’ actual name was the ‘Syrian Free Army’ (SFA), not FSA; they were an ex-FSA brigade which many years ago accepted the US diktat to fight only ISIS and drop its fight against the Assad regime; as such they cannot be called “rebels.” Since around 2016 they have been the minor Arab component of the US war on ISIS, alongside the Kurdish-led SDF. All FSA and rebel brigades fought ISIS, but rejected the US demand they drop the fight against the regime. The ‘FSA’ confusion has been exploited by some tankies on social media claiming the “US-backed FSA entered Damascus from the south;” in fact the US-backed SFA manifestly did not. They did begin moving in the final hours as the regime was collapsing by seizing Palmyra in the central desert to prevent its fall to ISIS after the regime had fled.]
And of course, more generally, the Arab regimes still most cautious about the new Syrian government – Egypt, UAE – are precisely those closest to Israel and its concerns in the region. Israel “behind” the overthrow of Assad? Nothing even remotely there.
Was the overthrow of Assad in Israel’s interests?
Clearly Israel had nothing to do with the rebel advance that overthrow Assad, and was deeply anxious about it. But despite that, was this result in Israel’s interests anyway?
However, the argument is that, since Israel had just emerged from a war against elements of the “axis of resistance,” these traditional Israeli calculations may have changed. The key point is not that the Assad regime offered “resistance” to Israel itself – it had not fired a shot across the Golan in 51 years – but that it played a passive role in the “axis” by allowing Iran to cross its territory to deliver weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon (in exchange for Iran and Hezbollah sending troops to bolster the genocidal regime against its people).
The regime was an odd geopolitical mix: the existence of the Assad regime was seen as crucial both by Israel for the protection of its Golan occupation, which included ensuring Palestinian factions were kept away, and by Iran, as the bridge to get weapons to Hezbollah, ostensibly to fight Israel, though no such fight took place for the 17 years between 2006 and late 2023, spanning the entire Iran-Hezbollah intervention in Syria (indeed, at the time, Nasrallah told Russian minister Mikhail Bogdanov to tell Israel that “Lebanon’s southern borders are the safest place in the world because all of our attention is focused on” Syria, as Hezbollah “does not harbor any intention of taking any action against Israel”).
As such, one may say, well, for Israel, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, whether or not Assad falls. However, what this ignores is:
Firstly, the significant changes in the Assad regime’s geopolitical orientation both before and during the Gaza conflict, and
Secondly, the fact that the Syrian rebels only launched their offensive after Lebanon and Hezbollah had agreed to ceasefire arrangements with Israel that effectively ended Hezbollah’s ability to lead resistance to Israel anyway, Iranian arms or otherwise.
Below both issues will be elaborated on. Plus, an additional claim now – that Israel’s destruction of Syria’s anti-aircraft weaponry leaves the path open for Israel to launch an attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear industry – will also be dealt with.
Changes in the geopolitical posture of the Assad regime
The fact that in the last half-decade or so, the ‘Abraham Accords’ countries (in its broadest sense, all who had relations with Israel) and the ‘Assad Accords’ countries were the same – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan etc, with Saudi Arabia supportive but more reticent on both – can be best understood as both an alliance for counterrevolution generally, and an anti-Muslim-Brotherhood (MB) alliance in particular. These repressive states are hostile to the MB’s populist project of mixing democracy and a moderate form of political Islam. As the MB had strong influence over a part of the Syrian rebellion, and Hamas was the Palestinian branch of the MB, the connections here are clear.
While Saudi Arabia was more reticent for some years, it did come round in 2023, restore relations with Assad, set up an embassy, and play a key role in getting Assad to the Arab League Summit in Riyadh. Moreover, while the Saudis were also hostile to the MB, they were equally hostile to the Iranian influence in Syria due to Saudi-Iranian regional competition (despite common perceptions, Iran was not a key concern of the Egypt-UAE axis); yet the Saudis and Iran also restored relations in 2023 in Beijing, which as I have analysed is a regional phenomenon more substantial than many realise. Ironically for much of the excitable western left and mass media alike, it is only Israel that Saudi Arabia still refuses to establish relations with.
What all this meant was that, alongside Russia and Iran, the Assad regime was now gaining a third leg to stand on, that of the Arab reaction, with which the regime felt ideologically most at home. Russia, despite its own relations with Iran, also saw Iran as a competitor for the domination of the Assadist corpse, and had collaborated for a decade with Israel, allowing it to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria; and Russia also has strong and growing relations with Egypt, UAE, Saudis and so on (indeed, the first two are BRICS members and the third a prospective one).
So from the beginning of the Gaza genocide, the Assad regime felt in a stronger position to resist pressure from Iran to do anything even symbolically to support the “axis of resistance.” It refused to open a front on the Golan like Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon, as has been widelynoted in many reports; the Syrian regime, according to the Lebanese al-Modon, instructed its forces in the Golan “not to engage in any hostilities, including firing bullets or shells toward Israel.” Palestinians were arrested for attempting to hold rallies in solidarity with Gaza. In fact, when recently revealed that the regime had killed 94 Hamas members in prison without trial, while this is not surprising in itself, it is notable that “even after Hamas reconciled with the Assad regime in 2022, the targeted executions continued unabated. Prominent figures like Mamoun Al-Jaloudi, a senior commander in Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, were among those executed.”
Several days after the October 7 2023 attacks, the Assad regime expelled the Houthi representatives from the Yemeni embassy in Syria, and restored representatives of Yemen’s internationally-recognised, Saudi-backed government. This was a serious blow to the Houthis, as no other government on Earth, except Iran, recognises them as Yemen’s government. The Assad regime also voted in the Arab League to support its closest Arab ally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) against its other ally, Iran, on the question of Iran’s occupation of three islands which the former Shah of Iran seized from the UAE back in 1971 (bothRussia and China have done likewise).
Moreover, from September, Israel was already engaged in a small-scale invasion of the Syrian-held part of the Golan. The Syrian opposition news site Enab Baladi reported on September 21 that Israeli forces “penetrated into Syrian territories in Quneitra province, accompanied by tanks, bulldozers, and trench-digging equipment,” to a depth of 200 metres and “began bulldozing agricultural land, digging trenches, and building earthen berms as part of the ‘Sufa 53’ road project,” establishing observation points five meters high. According to the Syrian media organization Levant24, in October “six Israeli Merkava tanks, accompanied by military bulldozers, crossed the border near the town of Kodna, seizing agricultural lands, bulldozing fields and olive groves, constructing “a barbed wire fence” along the ‘Sufa 53’ road, and digging trenches “as deep as seven meters.” Israeli forces established a “security fence” inside Syrian territory along a 70-kilometre stretch, according to the Syrian Observer. The width of the area varies between 100 meters in some sections to 1 kilometre from the border with occupied Golan, or even up to 2 kilometres in some areas.
An Israeli Merkava tank secures protection for a military bulldozer during the clearing of agricultural land in southern Quneitra near the occupied Syrian Golan – September 9, 2024 (Enab Baladi/Zain al-Joulani)
The Assad regime not only did nothing to confront the invasion, but denied it was happening. The pro-regime Al-Watan newspaper claimed “there is no truth to an Israeli incursion … in the countryside of Quneitra, and no Israeli movements in the area.” The Baathist governor of Quneitra, Moataz Abu al-Nasr Jomran claimed “the residents of the villages live their normal life safely.” Regime commanders “ordered paramilitary units to withdraw from areas close to Israeli forces.” As for Russian forces which have been on the Golan line protecting both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation since 2018, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Israeli incursions followed “the withdrawal of a Russian monitoring force in the area,” who stepped aside and made way for Israel.
In fact, this Israeli advance into the non-occupied part of Golan had been going on under the Assad regime’s nose since 2022, as widely reported by various Syrian oppositional news sites such as Enab Baladi, which reported that “in mid-2022, Israel penetrated into Syrian territories eastward,” surpassing the the 1974 armistice line, “and constructed a road called ‘Sufa 53’, which cuts through Syrian territories to a depth of up to two kilometers.” In November 2022, construction of the ‘Sufa 53’ road involved “bulldoz[ing] some agricultural lands of the border villages” and preventing farmers from approaching the area, even opening fire “on a daily basis to drive the farmers and shepherds away from the area.”
Military expert Rashid Hourani believes Israel intended to use this extra Syrian territory “to open up corridors for the entry of more forces, and to secure their route from Syrian territory into Lebanese territory east of the Litani River,” whereas former Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander and military analyst Colonel Abdul Jabbar Akidi, who calls Israel’s incursion “a continuation of the war of extermination in Gaza,” claims Israel aims “to keep the Iranian militias away and besiege them, and so cut off supply lines to Hezbollah.”
Whatever Israel’s purpose, it is clear the Assad regime, and Russia, were in cahoots with it; most people are only aware of Israel’s further incursion into non-occupied Golan after Assad’s overthrow (which the new government has condemned in the United Nations and demands withdrawal of). It was this regime that was brought down in early December. It was not in Israel’s interests to bring down a regime that had been moving so fast in “the right direction” from an Israeli viewpoint and had even been collaborating on renewed occupation of Syrian territory.
Why the Syrian rebels waited until November 27 to begin ‘deterring’ regime aggression
Of course, Israel could still demand more, that Assad completely cut off Iranian access across its territory to Hezbollah, as it was doing in its negotiations with Russia noted above offering US sanctions relief to Assad. But arguably this became irrelevant to any “axis of resistance” when the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement was made.
The fact that the rebel advance began on November 27, the same day as the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, is precisely the point: despite being under constant attack by the Assad regime since October 7, the Idlib-based Syrian rebels did not activate their Operation Deter Aggression before the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as to not help Israel against Hezbollah (despite their low opinion of Hezbollah). But this became irrelevant due to the substance of the ceasefire agreement. Let’s look at these two assertions in detail.
First, the offensive did not come “out of nowhere” as we hear widely; in May 2023, Jolani can be seen here promising an offensive on Aleppo, so we can probably assume planning had begun by then (likely soon after Russia got itself distracted in Ukraine). However, it was postponed after October 7 with the onset of the Gaza genocide.
From October 7 onward, the Assad regime, while maintaining complete quiet on its southern frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan, used the cover of Gaza to step up the slaughter of opposition-controlled Idlib. In October 2023 alone, 366 were killed or wounded by regime and Russian bombing. Attacks on schools sharply increased over the last year, with 43 attacks between September 2023 and November 2024.
Therefore, the rebels now had even more reason to launch an operation to “deter” this “aggression,” but instead, all this time, people in towns throughout opposition-controlled Idlib and Aleppo continually demonstrated in support of Gaza, with ongoing rallies, seminars, donation drives and the like. The campaign ‘Gaza and Idlib: One Wound’, was launched by the HTS-led Syrian Salvation Government soon after October 2023 with an international tele-conference broadcast out if Idlib. In November 2023, this campaign raised $350,000 for Gaza in eight days, a remarkable achievement for a poor rural province under constant Assadist siege. April 2024 saw the opening of ‘Gaza Square’ in the middle of Idlib. One year of genocide in Gaza was marked with actions throughout the region declaring ‘Our hearts are with Gaza.’ Meanwhile, the Assadist “resistance” regime apparently carried out its “resistance” against this extremely pro-Palestine population of the northwest.
Above: Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) Ministry of Religious Trusts and Endowments hands over $350,000 to the Palestinian Scholars Association, November 2023; Below: ; Idlib in solidarity with Gaza, anniversary of Syrian revolution, March 2024.
The question thus should not be why the two events occurred at the same time, but rather why the rebels waited so long to deter regime aggression. While the regime’s ongoing offensive made the necessity of their operation more acute, they refused to wage it as long as Israel’s war on Lebanon continued. As Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, explained, HTS waited for a ceasefire “because they did not want anything to do with Israel.” Hadi al-Bahra, head of the exile-based opposition leadership, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), also claimed plans for the offensive were a year old, but “the war on Gaza … then the war in Lebanon delayed it” because “it wouldn’t look good having the war in Lebanon at the same time they were fighting in Syria,” and therefore waited till the ceasefire.
However, there was no expectation their offensive to deter regime aggression would be so successful; surprised by the rapidity of regime collapse first in Aleppo, their aims then widened, to liberating the whole country from the regime.
The ‘coincidence’ of November 27 is the point: The ‘axis of resistance’ ceased being relevant before the rebels advanced
Now let’s look at the other event on November 27: the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, based on UN Resolution 1701, means Hezbollah must move its military forces north of the Litani River, while the Lebanese army must move into this region and replace Hezbollah near the Israeli border. What should be clear is that this means the end of any “axis of resistance” even in the most positive sense of the hyped term: Hezbollah no longer controls the Israeli border, so what would be the point of Iran sending more advanced weapons there? Unless Iran plans to arm the Lebanese army. So if the rebel advance “cut off” the Iranian route to Hezbollah, that was no longer relevant even to Lebanon, and certainly not to Palestine [a longer-term point is that the only reason the Syrian rebels would have for cutting this supply line was the actions of Iran and Hezbollah in support of Assad in Syria in the first place].
Besides, Israel is estimated to have destroyed between 50 percent and 80 percent of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, so what happened to the rest? We were constantly told that Hezbollah possessed “150,000 missiles aimed at Israel,” which we saw little of at any point. These Iranian-supplied rockets were not used, and Hezbollah in any case had no say in the matter: their purpose was not to defend Lebanon or even Hezbollah it turns out (and still less, to aid Palestine during a genocide), rather, they were there for Iran’s own forward defence. Iran didn’t want to waste them. If they were not used, how would it help Palestine or even Lebanon for Iran to send more advanced weapons to Hezbollah?
This is simply a statement of fact, not a childish jibe that Hezbollah “should have” unleashed full force on Israel. Doing so probably would have brought on Israel’s escalation even faster (though not doing so obviously did not prevent it). The point is simply: if the Iranian supply of advanced missiles to Hezbollah was aimed at aiding Palestine, or even defending Lebanon, but they were not used to anything close to full effect when, firstly, Palestine is suffering a holocaust, and, secondly, Hezbollah itself is engaged in an existential battle, then when would they ever be used? What is their purpose?
Of course, Hezbollah still possesses thousands of shorter-range missiles which would be useful if they were still on the ground in the south in the case of a future Israeli invasion, but the ceasefire agreement means they will not be.
Therefore, once the agreement was signed, the Syrian rebels could no longer see any reason to continue deferring their own struggle against their genocide-regime.
Israel’s ‘clear path’ to attacking Iran … err, remember October 26?
One more point: we have heard that Israel’s post-Assad destruction of Syria’s heavy weaponry, including anti-aircraft systems, means it now has a “clear path” to launching an attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear program. Of course, it destroyed these weapons now because does not trust the post-revolution authorities like it trusted Assad, so that is hardly an argument that the fall of Assad is in Israel’s interests, but the issue is simply the fact that Israel has been able to do this.
But this makes no sense at all. The S-300 anti-aircraft system that Russia had provided the Assad regime was of no use against Israel; as we know, Israel launched hundreds of attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria completely unimpeded. Even if this was less due to the uselessness of the S-300 and more due to Assad’s agreements with Israel, the fact remains the same: Assad’s missiles were no obstacle either way. However, what the regime did have was a Russian occupation, which possessed the world-class S-400 air-defence system; which, as we know, Russia never used against Israel when it bombed Iranian and Hezbollah targets, based on explicit Putin-Netanyahu agreements.
People making this argument perhaps forget that on October 26, Israel launched its attack on Iran; with both Jordan and Saudi Arabia banning their airspace to Israel, its F-35 warplanes flew over Syria, whose airspace was under Russian control, and Iraq, whose airspace is under US control. As in every other case, Russia’s air defence system once again gave Israeli warplanes a pass.
So, to conclude this section: Israel had long declared the survival of the Assad regime to be in its interests and certainly preferable to any of the alternatives, and far from this having changed, it was arguably now even less in Israel’s interests for Assad to fall than previously given the Assad regime’s trajectory; and in any case, the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, moving Hezbollah north of the Litani, had essentially made Iran’s traversing of Syrian territory to supply Hezbollah irrelevant to any regional “resistance” project and the rebels waited until that day, against their own interests, precisely so as not to help Israel; and Israel already had a ‘clear path’ to an attack on Iran if it had chosen, as it did on October 26.
However, did Israel’s damage to Iran and Hezbollah inadvertently aid the overthrow of Assad?
The final argument is even held by many who not only reject the idea that Israel was “behind” the Syrian revolution, but also the idea that the outcome is beneficial to Israel. They argue that even though it was not Israel’s intention, the fact that it did so much damage to Hezbollah and Iranian assets in the region inadvertently facilitated Assad’s fall. Due to their weakness, they were no longer able to defend the Assad regime against the rebellion. After all, since Israel had no more idea than anyone else in the region that the Assad regime was as hollow as it turned out, it is quite possible that their actions facilitated Assad’s overthrow without having that intention.
The law of unintended consequences is a thing; for example, when Japanese imperialism first weakened British, French and Dutch colonialism in Asia, and then US imperialism in turn defeated Japan, this arguably facilitated the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, certainly not the aim of either Japan or the US! However, looking at the argument piece by piece in this case, it actually makes little sense.
This argument goes together with the claim that Russia’s decision to plunge itself into the Ukraine quagmire likewise meant that most of its airforce was bogged down in Europe and thus also not in a position to provide the necessary support to the Assad regime.
The Russia argument has slightly more validity, as Russia’s role in saving Assad last decade was overwhelmingly with its airforce, most of which is indeed needed in Ukraine. The main contribution of the Iran-led forces, by contrast, was manpower (and money), not weaponry; they fought with the regime’s heavy weaponry arsenal, under regime and Russian air cover. They were not down on manpower as a result of the defeats imposed on them by Israel.
Either way, the argument remains weak for both, because once they could see the complete hollowness of the regime, that no soldier in Assad’s military was willing to raise a gun, that there was not even any popular resistance from frightened minorities, both Russia and Iran could see the complete futility of fighting on behalf of the empty Assadist shell, regardless of how ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ they were. As Iran began withdrawing its forces from Syria on December 6, Mehdi Rahmati, an advisor to the Iranian regime, told The New York Times that the decision was made “because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight.” On December 8, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi stressed that Iran was “never supposed to replace the Syrian army in fighting the opposition. Syria’s internal affairs and countering the opposition is an issue for the government and army of Syria, not us. The Syrian army did not carry out its duty properly.”
Moreover, given the scale of the actual or potential geopolitical loss for both – Russia of its Mediterranean bases, Iran of its land link to Lebanon – the best way to attempt to gain some future leverage in Syria with the new regime would be to not shed any blood in vain in the final hour.
Now let’s look in more detail at the common assertions. The most common is that Hezbollah’s smashing defeat by Israel meant it was too weakened to be able to come to Assad’s defence (the interesting thing about this argument is that often the very people making it promote Hezbollah’s “victory” over Israel when it suits a different argument).
The connection, however, is different: at the time most Hezbollah cadre were in southern Lebanon, where it exists, after all, doing what is supposed to be its raison d’etre, resisting Israel, ie, standing on the side of the region’s peoples resisting oppression; therefore it was not in a position to be engaged as a counterrevolutionary force in Syria at the time, with any more than a handful of troops, thus better allowing conditions for popular resistance in Syria too.
In other words, popular resistance against a genocidal regime in southern Lebanon = popular resistance against a genocidal regime in Syria facilitated.
The discourse that it was Hezbollah’s defeat by Israel, rather than its resistance to Israel, that enabled the victory over Assad, makes no sense; victory or defeat are both besides the point. If anything, the ceasefire (whether interpreted as defeat or victory or a bit of both) freed it to send forces back to Syria, had it chosen to. As noted, the Hezbollah/Iranian contribution to the Assadist counterrevolution was essentially manpower. While Hezbollah was certainly defeated by massive Israeli airpower, it was not in any sense “destroyed,” in fact the one aspect where Hezbollah could plausibly claim victory was that its cadres on the ground successfully kept Israel’s land invasion at bay, its fighting prowess was if anything enhanced.
Indeed, during Netanyahu’s November 29 security consultation with “defence” chiefs after the fall of Aleppo, it was assessed (wrongly as it turns out) that Hezbollah’s forces would now shift back to Syria, “to defend the Assad regime,” which would “bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding” (ie, keeps Hezbollah away from Israel’s own violations of the ceasefire), making these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term; similarly, the blows suffered by the Assad regime in Aleppo now “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by former Israeli intelligence official Nadav Pollak.
Hezbollah, however, had no intention of sending its bloodied troops back to aid Assad. On December 2 it stated, diplomatically enough, that it has no plans to do so “at this stage,” while a Hezbollah spokesperson told Newsweek that “The Syrian Army does not need fighters. It can defend its land,” which given what was happening to the Syrian army sounds almost mocking. Hezbollah had shed blood and honour playing a significant role as Iranian proxy in Assad’s genocidal counterrevolution. Yet when it was in its existential struggle in Lebanon against Israel, the Assad regime did not lift a finger to help or even offer much in the way of verbal solidarity, as outlined above. Why would they now rush troops back to Assad? More likely, those still in Syria would have been the first to withdraw.
In fact, there is some evidence that Hezbollah had told Assad over a year earlier that they would not be coming to his defence again. According to Amwaj.media, “shortly before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Assad, Nasrallah and Mohammad Reza Zahedi—the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander in the Levant—met for talks,” at which Assad requested the withdrawal Iranian and Hezbollah forces from several regions, including Hama and Homs, no doubt in line with his dealings with Israel described above. In response, Nasrallah allegedly warned Assad that any evacuated forces “will not return [to Syria], no matter how critical the threats become.”
Yes, Israel destroyed a lot of Hezbollah’s missile capacity in Lebanon, but these were rockets aimed at Israel; they had never been used in Syria to defend Assad in the past, why would they be now? This was no more their purpose than liberating Palestine or defending Lebanon was. And as we understand, significant missile capacity still remains in any case. This really is entirely besides the point.
Even Israel’s destruction of a lot of Iranian capacity in Syria means largely the infrastructure (missile sites, storage facilities, missile manufacturing plants etc) involved in delivering weapons across Syrian territory for Hezbollah. Take for example Israel’s September commando raid in the town of Maysaf in western Syria, killing 14 people, which the state recently took responsibility for. According to the Times of Israel, “members of the Israeli Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit raided the Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, in the Masyaf area on September 8, and demolished an underground facility used by Iranian forces to manufacture precision missiles for Hezbollah.” Why would the destruction of this centre affect the ability of Iran-led forces in Syria to defend the regime?
In fact, there were thousands of Iranian fighters in Syria at the time, and thousands more Iran-backed Shia fighters from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Al-Dalati, deputy commander-in-chief of Ahrar al-Sham, confirmed that “Iranian-backed militias were present on every frontline, and the party’s (Hezbollah’s) fighters were at certain points,” adding: “Other Iran-backed militias—whether Syrian, Afghan, or otherwise—were there as well. But they lost their motivation to fight when they saw how the regime was behaving. The regime’s troops are ethically deplorable. They are criminals.”
Iran simply ordered them all to withdraw; they did not fight at all. In addition there were the Syrian fighters in the National Defence Forces (NDF) that Iranian officers had armed, trained and led (distinct from the actual Syrian Arab Army, SAA); the NDF was estimated to have 100-150,000 fighters, more than the SAA. The NDF was simply disbanded on December 6 once Hama was lost.
Putin, blaming Iran for Assad’s collapse, claims that while in 2015 Iran had requested Russian intervention, “now they have asked us to help withdraw them. We facilitated the relocation of 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran from the Khmeimim air base. Some [other] pro-Iranian units withdrew to Lebanon, others to Iraq, without engaging in combat.” Iran began full withdrawal of its forces on December 6. Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, along with diplomats and families, fled towards Iraq “in large numbers over the past several days” it was reported on December 9.
Direct contact was made between Iran and HTS before Iranian forces began their withdrawal from the country. Citing Iranian officials, The New York Times claimed that HTS “promised that it would protect Shiite religious sites and Shiite minorities and asked Iran not to fight its forces,” while Iran asked HTS to allow safe passage of its troops out of Syria and to protect the Shia shrines.” Speaking on December 29, al-Sharaa, while noting that “Syria cannot continue without relations with an important regional country like Iran,” pointed to this protection of “Iranian positions” by the rebels during their offensive to oust Assad.
So, despite Israeli blows to its command and control system in Syria, Iran did not lack forces on the ground as the regime began to fall, but did not use them. Apart from seeing no point fighting for a regime that wouldn’t fight for itself, Iran, like Hezbollah, had deeper issues with the regime which made wasting troops on it no longer of interest to Tehran.
The Financial Times cites Saeed Laylaz, an analyst close to Iran’s Pezeshkian government, that “Assad had become more of a liability than an ally … Defending him was no longer justifiable … Continuing to support him simply didn’t make sense.” Claiming the frustrations with Assad had been growing “for more than a year,” Laylaz said “it was clear his time had passed.” He was not only a liability, “some even called him a betrayer,” referring to his complete inaction over the year of the Gaza crisis, which “cost us dearly,” his growing alignment with other “regional actors” (eg, UAE, Egypt and finally Saudi Arabia), but even more pointedly, the Iranian perception that “people within his regime were leaking information [to Israel] about the whereabouts of Iranian commanders. Assad turned his back on us when we needed him most.”
Iran’s suspicions had already surfaced earlier in 2024. According to Syria analyst Ibrahim Hamidi writing last January, “relations between the Syrian and Iranian militaries have been strained after Israel’s targeted assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders in Damascus. Iranian “experts” and former officials [claim] that these assassinations could only have succeeded if Israel had infiltrated Syria’s security apparatus.” A February 1 Reuters report claims Guard leaders “had raised concerns with Syrian authorities that information leaks from within the Syrian security forces played a part in the recent lethal strikes,” suggesting an “intelligence breach.”
Iran’s top-ranking general in Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati, likewise accused Assad of rejecting multiple requests for Iran-led militias to open a front against Israel from Syria after October 7, despite having presented Assad with “comprehensive military plans.” Esbati also claimed that Russia facilitated Israel’s attacks on Iranian targets in Syria over the past year, by “turning off radars.” While also blaming Russia for Assad’s fall, he nevertheless said it was inevitable given that the regime consisted of nothing but “a bunch of corrupt and decadent individuals disconnected from their society.”
Nicole Grajewski, writing for Diwan, also claimed that the movements of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force were “increasingly restricted by the Syrian authorities” throughout the Gaza conflict, especially in the Golan region, and that the regime had even “begun limiting Shiite religious activities throughout Syria.” We saw above that Assad was already making important concessions to Israel in obstructing Iranian arms deliveries to Lebanon even before October 7, in the direct intelligence cooperation Israel and the regime were engaged in.
Finally, both Russia and Iran were increasingly frustrated by the regime’s intransigence in relation to the long-term Astana agreements between Russia, Iran and Turkiye, which required some degree of compromise by the regime with the needs of both Turkiye and the opposition to reduce the risk of precisely the kind of destabilising outcome that eventuated. Both were rational enough to understand that if Assad did not salvage something through a political process, they were going to end up with nothing.
In conclusion, the assertion that Israel’s battering of Hezbollah and Iranian assets meant they were unable to save Assad, while a more rational assertion than the first above, and more likely than the second, turns out makes little sense when the specifics are examined. Hezbollah’s large-scale presence in its own country, Lebanon, carrying out resistance to Israel, rather than its defeat, was the reason it could not be in Syria in any numbers to aid Assad; the smashing of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal was completely irrelevant to Syria which they were never designed to be used for; the destruction of many Iranian assets in Syria was largely systems and facilities related to the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, not for defence of the Assad regime; in terms of manpower, the main asset contributed by the Iran-led forces over the years, there were thousands of Iranian and Iran-led troops from other countries, but they chose to withdraw rather than fight; and given Assad’s inaction and perceived betrayal over the year since October 7, neither Hezbollah nor Iran had much appetite to waste lives defending the regime, and even less so once they realised that if they tried, they would be defending a hollow corpse, which would be useless to them going forward.
Conclusion
The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain argues: “The liberation of Syria from the Assad family is the most positive development for Palestinian nationalism in decades. The reason that Palestinians bargaining position has been so weak vis a vis Israel and the U.S. is that the surrounding states – where the populations are broadly sympathetic to them – have been caged under absurdly dysfunctional and morally bankrupt regimes who have been unable to offer any effective material, economic, or diplomatic support for their position.”
While this may be optimistic, the basis of the Hussain’s argument is sound: the relationship between Israel and Arab dictatorships is symbiotic; a hyper-repressive Israeli occupation regime hates and fears democracy in the Arab world, as Palestinian academic and activist Amir Fakhory argues, and indeed the prospect of Syria’s revolution spreading to states like Egypt and Jordan is even more frightening to it. With the purely military option for the defeat of Zionism having just been shown to be an incomprehensibly fatal illusion, it raises again the need for better political options, by which I do not mean the moribund, non-existent “peace process,” but rather steps towards the political unveiling of the apartheid state.
At this stage, the impact of Syria is unclear. Within Syria, the struggle to maintain a democratic and non-sectarian course will be a hard one, with the ruling HTS showing both positive and negative aspects in that regard, but the key will be the ongoing mobilisation of the Syrian masses to maintain the course. Israel’s ongoing attacks on free Syria, including now proposals to divide Syria into “cantons,” demonstrate that it is determined to not let the revolution succeed, because even any half-successful democratic project in the Arab world is a threat to Zionism. It is also unclear whether the example of the Syrian revolution will spread to Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf, and pose a more direct threat to Israel, or whether the crushing of the Arab Spring has been more decisive elsewhere – in which case the new bourgeois regime in Syria will come more and more under the conservatising influence of the regional repressive regimes which it must now deal with for investment and indeed survival purposes.
But either way, to argue that the liberation of Syria from a genocidal regime is a bad thing for the struggle of Palestinians against genocide is to hold a deeply reactionary view on what liberation means. As Palestinian-American Ahmad Ibsais writes:
“The Palestinian cause has never depended on dictators who oppress their own people. Our resistance has never needed those who murdered Palestinian refugees, who imprisoned our fighters, and who maintained decades of cold peace with our occupiers. Those of us truly guided by the Palestinian cause cannot separate our struggle for justice from the wider liberation of all peoples. The love that emanates from an unwavering commitment to a just cause has sustained our resistance through eight decades of displacement and betrayal – not alliances with oppressors, not the support of dictators, but the unbreakable will of a people who refuse to accept subjugation.”
You’ve got to admit it, Putin’s got talent. After terror-bombing Syria for a decade – specialising on hospitals, even underground hospitals with ‘bunker-busters – on behalf of the ousted Assad tyranny, he now explains this was not a defeat for Russia at all. He says that Russia’s goal when it intervened in 2015 was to prevent a “terrorist” takeover of Syria. But since the rebels who were “terrorists” back then are no longer “terrorists,” because they have made “internal changes” (and Russia has also announced it is studying removing HTS from its “terrorist” listing), therefore this shows that Russia succeeded in its goals! Presumably all this aerial mass murder is what led to Jolani and the HTS leadership, as well as the Free Syrian Army and various Islamist brigades not associated with HTS (who were the vast majority of rebels that Putin bombed), changing their minds about their alleged “terrorism.”
This is very interesting spin, guided partly by wanting to save face given the defeat of decades of Russian investment in the Assad dictatorship which simply crumbled. But it is also because Russia wants to cozy up to the new authorities in Syria in order to maintain at least its naval base in Tartous, established in 1971, which is crucial to Russian imperialism’s Mediterranean presence, and from there into its African imperial ventures. Russia also has its massive Hmeimim airbase in neighbouring Latakia, which was established in 2015 when Russia intervened to save Assad. For the time being, it seems that Russia and HTS authorities have entered some kind of agreement to allow both bases to remain for now, under a pragmatic policy whereby HTS is even protecting the bases from possible revenge attack. With nuclear-armed Israel bombing and invading free Syria due to it missing its man Assad, Syrian authorities don’t want a military confrontation with another nuclear-armed superpower just at the moment. HTS had already made outreach to Russia during its offensive (claiming Russia is potentially a “potential partner” for the new Syria), which would seem counterintuitive, but the aim was presumably to try to neutralise Russia as victory approached.
However, the Latakia airbase (and a number of other airbases) was where Russia based its warplanes which savagely bombed and killed Syrians for a decade; clearly, Russia must know that they have no future in Syria and their presence would face massive popular opposition. Indeed, Russia has been moving its aerial assets, including its S-400 anti-aircraft system, as well as a lot of other military assets, from some 100 bases and military points in Syria, to its airbases in Libya, in the east of the country controlled by reactionary warlord Khalifa Haftar. But Russia clearly sees its Tartous naval base as having much greater strategic value, being its only real naval base in the Mediterranean. Although there is talk of moving its naval assets to Libyan ports under Haftar’s control as well, Russia is determined to try to maintain Tartous.
In this piece where Putin is cited making these claims, he also says that the fall of Assad was not Russia’s fault, but the fault of Iran. After all, while Russia did not massively intervene to save Assad, especially on the frontlines, it did engage in a certain amount of terror bombing of hospitals (five in Idlib), churches, refugee camps and so on during those ten days as the rebels advanced from Idlib to Damascus, presumably as pure revenge. While much has been made of Russia being unable to save Assad due to its airforce being bogged down in Putin’s Ukraine quagmire, it is likely that Russia could see that the situation was hopeless anyway with the complete collapse of Assad’s forces, so no amount of extra terror bombing would have done much good.
Nevertheless, even Russia’s savage revenge bombing was a lot more than the Iranian and Iranian-backed forces on the ground in Syria did – they did nothing at all. Of course, the main “fault” for the Assad regime’s collapse was the Assad regime – its own army refused to fight, the regime was completely hollow, no soldier in Syria thought they should lay down their life for their brutal oppressor. However, Putin is correct that there were thousands of Iranian or Iran-backed troops in Syria, who simply fled or withdrew; he says that while in 2015 Iran had requested Russian intervention, “now they have asked us to help withdraw them. We facilitated the relocation of 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran from the Khmeimim air base. Some pro-Iranian units withdrew to Lebanon, others to Iraq, without engaging in combat.”
This is a bigger issue deserving a separate post – but basically Iran itself has explained that it was angry that Assad had done nothing, even symbolically to aid the so-called “axis of resistance” since Israel’s Gaza war began, but even more, was aware that Assad was collaborating with Israel in its attacks on Iranian forces and likely even giving intelligence on its ‘Revolutionary’ Guard leaders that Israel killed. Declaring him a “liability” Iran made clear it would not fight for the regime. It is not surprising that Assad and family are in Moscow and others from the regime and the extended family in the United Arab Emirates rather than Iran.
But what does Putin mean it was the “fault” of Iran, or of the regime itself, if Putin now claims the rebels are no longer “terrorists” and thus Russia’s goals were achieved? Why did Russia not also try to be more “at fault” for Assad’s fall if therefore there was no reason to back him against the non-terrorists? What was the point of the last minute bombing and revenge-killing on Assad’s behalf, no matter how half-hearted? Did the rebels only cease being terrorists on December 8 due to these “internal changes”?
Air bases, weapons and defense systems, and intelligence and military buildings belonging to the former Syrian regime being destroyed.
by Michael Karadjis
It didn’t take long: from the moment the Assad regime collapsed and the rebels entered Damascus, Israel’s massive land and air attack began. As long as all these arms depots, military airports, intelligence centres, scientific research centres, air bases, air defence systems, ammunition manufacturing facilities, “small stockpiles of chemical weapons,” and Syria’s entire naval force were safely in the hands of the Assad regime, Israel never touched them. As Syrian revolutionary commentator Rami puts it, Israel has “known their location the whole time but felt safe knowing that they were in Assad’s hands, who uses them exclusively on Syrians,” and certainly never against Israel. “Now that Free Syrians are in control Israel panics and starts bombing them all,” in order to prevent, as countless Israeli leaders have declared, these weapons falling into the hands of the former rebels, who Israeli leaders have described as a “hostile entity.”
According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, since the rebels took control of Syria, “Israel says it has attacked some 500 regime targets, dropped 1,800 precision bombs, destroyed about half of Assad’s air force, much of the regime’s tanks and missile launch capabilities, 80% of its air defense systems, all its explosive UAVs and 90% of its radar systems as well as the chemical weapons still held in Syria.” The open source intelligence monitor OSINTdefender claims the IDF has eliminated some 70-80 percent of Syria’s military capacity, the locations including “anti-aircraft batteries, Syrian Air Force airfields, naval bases, and dozens of weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra,” resulting in the destruction of “Scud Tactical-Ballistic Missiles, Cruise Missiles, Surface-to-Sea, Sea-to-Sea, Surface-to-Air and Surface-to-Surface Missiles, UAVs, Fighter Jets, Attack Helicopters, Ships, Radars, Tanks, Hangars, and more.”
“Israeli warplanes bombed the intelligence and customs buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus.” The intelligence buildings? Wonder what deals between Israel and the Assad regime they did not want anyone to find there? The Golan sale, perhaps? The dealings between Israel and the Assad regime over Israel’s bombing of Iranian and Hezbollah targets? Indeed, it is feared that Israel may be destroying evidence against Assad that could be used by the new authorities to place charges against him in the International Criminal Court.
Israel then went right on to completely destroy Syria’s naval fleet, under the nose of Russia’s still present air and naval bases in Tartous and Latakia. The massive strikes Israel launched on Tartous on December 15 were described by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the “most violent strikes” in the region since 2012. A gigantic mushroom cloud fireball blew up over the region, “the explosion was so powerful that it was measured as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake on the seismic sensor.”
Mushroom cloud from massive Israeli bombardment of Tartous December 15.
Israel expands into the Golan
Israel has also invaded further into the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan to create a “buffer zone” (for its already Golan “buffer zone” 57-year occupation) against the Syrian rebel forces. While it is unclear exactly how much territory has been seized, this map from The New York Times shows the territory held by the IDF as of December 13.
It is clear Israel intends to keep much of the new territory it has conquered. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF would stay on “the Syrian side” of Mount Hermon “during the coming winter months as Israel aims to prevent the border region from falling into the wrong hands.” For Israel, a “temporary” stay has traditionally meant forever, as with the main part of Syria’s Golan Heights which Israel conquered in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981. According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, a senior Israeli military source said that Israeli troops “will not retreat until the threat to Israel’s border is removed, which could take “between four days and four years.”
According to Al Jazeera’s Muntasir Abou Nabout, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have also destroyed roads, power lines, and water networks in Quneitra province (the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan) when people refused to evacuate. “Israeli tanks are now stationed in towns and villages in Syria’s southwest as the Israeli military expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”
In the villages of the al-Rafid region of Quneitra, Israel cut water and electricity to pressure the people to leave, but they refused, and demanded all weapons be handed over. According to one local interviewed by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, “no one knows what their aim is, but for sure they have created a new enemy in the future for themselves.” The local also claimed “they [the IDF] removed the people of the village of Rasm al-Rawadhi under threats, and they prevented those who left the village of al-Hamidiya from returning.”
The IDF also invaded Daraa province, troops deploying in Ma’aryah village in Al-Yarmouk Basin, “patrolling and searching some residents.” They also attempted to enter Abdeen village, “but the residents confronted them and prevented them from entering the village.”
Arab League condemns, US supports Israel; Russia hands over posts to Israel
On December 13, the Arab League strongly condemned this Israeli aggression, and separately Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia Egypt and the UAE have issued strong statements.
Not surprisingly, the US has supported Israel’s aggression, National Security Adviser Sullivan claiming “what Israel is doing is trying to identify potential threats, both conventional and weapons of mass destruction, that could threaten Israel and, frankly, threaten others as well, and neutralize those threats,” as Israel destroys virtually the entire Syrian arsenal with its US-supplied weaponry. The US also supported Israel’s expansion into the Syrian Golan, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller explaining the collapse of the Assad regime “created a potential vacuum that could’ve been filled by terror organizations that threaten Israel.” Sure, he stressed that Israel’s stay should be “temporary,” but the world knows that US words mean nothing in relation to Israel’s actions – indeed Israel’s occupation of the rest of the Golan in 1967 was also supposed to be temporary.
Meanwhile, it was reported on December 9, just as the Israeli attack was mounting, that Russia, as it withdrew from the south, handed over to Israel two facilities in Daraa, and an observatory on Mount Tel Al-Hara. As Russian forces have been based in the Golan region since 2018 under a Putin-Trump-Netanyahu-Assad agreement to keep both Syrian rebels and Iran-backed forces away – to protect both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation concurrently – this story rings likely.
Most memes did not go past Israeli propaganda such as Netanyahu’s claim that these events are a “direct result” of Israel’s military campaign against Iran and Hezbollah and his assertion that “this is a historic day in the history of the Middle East.” Sure, who wouldn’t want to feign happiness and try to take credit for the collapse of such a monstrous regime. More important however was what Netanyahu also said: “We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.” On December 15, Netanyahu followed this up claiming that Israel’s actions in Syria were intended to “thwart the potential threats from Syria and to prevent the takeover of terrorist elements near our border”.
Katz also doubled down, declaring on December 15 that “The immediate risks to the country have not disappeared and the recent developments in Syria are increasing the intensity of the threat, despite the rebel leaders seeking to present a semblance of moderation.” On December 18, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel described HTS as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and stated “we are not going to be fooled by nice talk,” claiming “these rebel groups are in fact terrorist groups” and went on to remind about Jolani’s past al-Qaeda links.
Likudist Diaspora Affairs Minister Amachai Chikli made the case more openly, stating that “the events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration. Despite the rebranding of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Shara, the bottom line is that most of Syria is now under the control of affiliates of al-Qaeda and Daesh. The good news is the strengthening of the Kurds and the expansion of their control in the north-east of the country (Deir ez-Zor area). Operatively, Israel must renew its control at the height of the Hermon … we must not allow jihadists to establish themselves near our settlements.”
The Israeli calculus in the days before the fall
All of this was already discussed in the uncertain days between the first offensive that took Aleppo and the collapse of the regime ten days later. As we will see, Israeli leaders were not exactly “delighted,” as a somewhat unfortunate piece by Juan Cole claimed.
Israel has always supported the Assad regime against the opposition (see next section); this put it on the same side as its Iranian enemy, with the difference that it preferred the regime without Iran – hence Israel’s strong decade-long partnership with Russia starting with its 2015 intervention to save Assad; since then, the Israel-Russia agreement has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets anywhere in Syria at will, and the world-class Russian S-400 air defence system will not touch them. But Israel always left the Assadist war machine intact.
Since Israel had just come through a war with Hezbollah, it could see the opportunity presented by Assad’s treachery to pressure Assad for more, ie, to completely cut the Iranian weapons transfers to Lebanon. During his November visit to Moscow, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told his Russian hosts that Israel would propose to the US to lift or freeze sanctions on the Assad regime in exchange for any such efforts to prevent the flow of weapons to Hezbollah (indeed this demonstrates how outside of reality are the conspiracy theories that claim, with zero evidence, that Israel was somehow “behind” the HTS offensive that led to fall of Assad, whatever that even means).
As such, taken by surprise, like everyone else, by the rapid successes of the Syrian revolution, Israel tended to adopt a plague on both your houses view, ie, withholding support for Assad in order to pressure his regime for more in its moment of weakness, while warning of the dangers from the other side. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s view expressed on December 3 that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there” was probably closest to the mainstream Israeli view. Saar also said that Israel should “explore ways to increase cooperation” with the Kurds, “we need to focus on their interests.”
On November 29, Netanyahu held a security consultation with “defence” chiefs. He was told that Hezbollah’s forces will now likely shift to Syria, “in order to defend the Assad regime,” which they assessed would “bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding,” making these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term, but “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” The first point, that the blows suffered by the Assad regime “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” is likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, both sources suggest that Israel saw Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria, fighting for Assad, as a “positive” because they are thereby not focused on Israel.
Regarding the second point, the “military threats” which may arise, Channel 12, reporting that the meeting also raised concerns that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime, including “the remnants of [its] chemical weapons,” could fall into the jihadists’ hands, so the IDF “is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act,” ie to destroy this weaponry before it falls into rebel hands, which of course is exactly what has come to pass.
A number of prominent right-wing Israeli spokespeople or security spooks made the case for supporting Assad more forcefully. For example, on November 29, Dr. Yaron Friedman at the University of Haifa penned an article in Maariv claiming that HTS “controls internal terrorism over the entire province of Idlib” and “like Hamas,” receives the support of Turkey and Qatar. He notes that “the opposition consists mostly of Sunni fanatics from the Salafi Jihadi stream” who “look like Hamas terrorists.” He stressed that while “Assad is far from being Israel’s friend … he is the old and familiar enemy” under whom “Syria has not waged a war against Israel for more than fifty years,” while “Bashar al-Assad has not lifted a finger in favor of Hamas or Hezbollah since the beginning of the war in Gaza.” Therefore, “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy. The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view.”
Eliyahu Yosian, former intelligence officer from Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 – suspected of being behind Israel’s massive cyber-terrorist attack on Hezbollah members pagers which blew off people’s faces and hands – explained on December 5, “Personally, I support Assad’s rule, because he is a weak enemy and a weak enemy serves our interests. No-ne can guarantee who will come after Assad’s fall.” He noted that Israel can attack in Syria “every so often in coordination with Russia and without any threat.” Therefore “We must support Assad’s existence.”
This view was put forcefully by Lt.-Col. Amit Yagur, another former senior intelligence officer (who had earlier called for Israel to “drive Iran out of Syria”). On December 6, he claimed that what the rebels had achieved constituted “a tectonic collapse of the Sykes-Pilot agreement, a major collapse of the foundations of the old order,” and therefore “we need to ensure there is a buffer zone between us and the Sunnis.” This buffer zone “could be fully secured by IDF officers,” which however was “less realistic,” or “guarded by forces of Assad’s regime,” which presumably he thought was more realistic, “so that we don’t end up with a shared border with these guys,” making reference to October 7.
Not all Zionist commentators held these views. Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, explained that there are voices now challenging the “the traditional Israeli approach of preferring Assad — the devil we know,” with a view of delivering a blow to Iran by getting rid of the Assad regime. In fact, one of the problems for Israel was the same problem for Russia and Iran – if the despot you have relied on for decades to service your varied and even opposing interests can no longer maintain that “stability,” but on the contrary, his house collapses like a pack of cards, then continued support would not just be a bad investment, but be utterly pointless.
In this light, what is striking about all these views expressed above – even just days before the regime’s collapse – is how extraordinarily unrealistic they were; they all seemed to imagine that Assad still had a chance! Such blindness at such a late date suggests wilfulness, ie, Israel was so invested in the regime’s survival that it impossible to imagine it not being there, even if only running the buffer zone! Indeed, even Zisser notes of the move among some Zionists towards accepting Assad’s downfall as a defeat for Iran, “for the moment at least, the Israeli leadership is not considering such a possibility.”
Background: Israel and the Syrian revolution 2011-2018
Of course that does make them friends, but the “conflict” between Israel and Syria is quite simple: Israel seized Syria’s Golan in 1967 and has steadfastly refused to ever negotiate it back. That is not an Assad issue; it is a Syrian issue, the opposition has made continual statements on Syria’s right to use all legitimate means to regain the Golan. When asked if he would follow his close Arab allies – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan – in establishing relations with Israel, Assad’s response noted only the Golan, avoiding mention of ‘resistance’ or Palestine: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, it is possible when Israel is ready, but it is not and it was never ready … Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.” Assad, in other words, wanted to be Sadat, but Israel didn’t let him.
From 2012:
Israel’s intelligence chief, Major General Aviv Kochavi, “warned that “radical Islam” was gaining ground in Syria, saying the country was undergoing a process of “Iraqisation”, with militant and tribal factions controlling different sectors of the country”, and claiming there was “an ongoing flow of Al-Qaeda and global jihad activists into Syria”. He said that with the Assad regime weakening, “the Golan Heights could become an arena of activity against Israel, similar to the situation in Sinai, as a result of growing jihad movement in Syria.”
From 2013:
“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would erect a new security fence along its armistice line with Syria because “We know that on the other side of our border with Syria today, the Syrian army has moved away, and global jihad forces have moved in.” “We must therefore protect this border from infiltrations and terror, as we have successfully been doing along the Sinai border.”
“Israel’s military chief of staff has warned that some of the rebel forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may soon turn their attention southward and attack Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights. We see terror organisations that are increasingly gaining footholds in the territory and they are fighting against Assad,” Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz said at a conference in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. “Guess what? We’ll be next in line.”
Israel also “worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary” than Assad has ever been. “The military predicts all that (the 40-year peaceful border) will soon change as it prepares for the worst.” The region near the occupied Golan has become “a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests,” said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general, claiming Syria has now become “a big threat to Israel” over the last two years.
‘Israel’s Man in Damascus – Why Jerusalem Doesn’t Want the Assad Regime to Fall’ – heading in Foreign Affairs (May 10, 2013), article by Efraim Halevy, who served as chief of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002.
Israeli defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while Israel “is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons at present because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the Syrian government).”
[comment: as we can see, the Israeli view that chemical weapons were no problem in Assad’s hands but must be destroyed if he falls, being enacted now, goes way back]
From early 2015:
Dan Halutz, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, claimed that Assad was the least harmful choice in Syria, so western powers and Israel “should strengthen the Syrian regime’s steadfastness in the face of its opponents.” Allowing Assad to fall would be “the most egregious mistake.”
From 2015 (shortly before the Russian intervention to save Assad which Israel supported):
IDF spokesperson Alon Ben-David stated that “The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border;” as a result, military intelligence services are “working on the **preparation of a list of targets** that are likely to be struck inside Syria, **after a possible fall of the Assad regime**.”
[two points: first, clearly, that “list of targets” has come in handy now that “the fall of the Assad regime” has come about; second, this also suggests that Israel was not against Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria as long as they were only defending Assad, rather than delivering missiles to Lebanon]
From 2015 (after onset of Russian intervention):
At the time when Israel is getting ready for the first coordination meeting with Russia over their joint intervention in Syria, Israeli military sources have confirmed the existence of consensus within Tel Aviv’s decision making circles over the importance of the continuation of the Assad regime. Military affairs commentator Alon Ben-David quoted a source within the Israeli Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying “the best option for Israel would be for the Assad regime to remain and for the internal fighting to continue for as long as possible.” In an article published in Maariv newspaper, the military source pointed out that the continuation of the Assad regime, which enjoys international recognition, relieves Israel of the burden of direct intervention and of deep involvement in the ongoing war. He noted that Israel agrees with both Russia and Iran on this matter.
Israel will provide Russia with intelligence information about opposition sites in Syria to facilitate Moscow’s military operations, Channel 2TV reported, noting that a delegation of Russian army officials will arrive in Israel to coordinate the military cooperation.
From 2017:
The ‘Begin-Sadat Centre’ think tank published an article claiming that as Israel is “surrounded by enemies,” it “needs those enemies to be led by strong, stable rulers who will control their armies and prevent both the firing on, and infiltrations into, Israeli territory,” noting that both Assads had always performed this role. The fact that “Syria is no longer able to function as a sovereign state … is bad for Israel” and therefore“a strong Syrian president with firm control over the state is a vital interest for Israel. Given the Islamist alternatives to his rule, Syria’s neighbours, including Israel, may well come to miss him as Syria is rapidly Lebanonised.”
From 2018 (as Assad regime re-took the south all the way to the Golan “border” with Israel from the rebels, with the support of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu):
In case this was not yet clear enough, at a July meeting with his US counterpart, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border”.
After noting that “the Syrian front will be calmer with the return of the Assad rule,” the fascistic Lieberman stressed that “Israel prefers to see Syria returning to the situation before the civil war, with the central rule under Assad leadership.” Further, he noted that “we are not ruling anything out” regarding the possibility of Israel and the Assad regime establishing “some kind of relationship.”
It is clear from this summary that Israel’s attack today as soon as Assad was overthrown has been planned for years for precisely such a time precisely because Israel wanted his rule to continue.
Syria’s condemnation of Israel to UN Security Council – and demands that Syria “fight Israel”
In a joint letter to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly dated December 9, the new Syrian government stated that it “condemns in the strongest terms this Israeli aggression, which represents a serious violation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement … It also constitutes a violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, the unity and integrity of its territories, and contradicts the principles and Charter of the United Nations, the provisions of international law, and Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, and 497.” The letter then “renews its call on the United Nations and the Security Council to assume their responsibilities and take firm measures to compel Israel to immediately cease its ongoing attacks on Syrian territory, ensure that they are not repeated, and withdraw immediately.”
Much has been made of the fact that, while condemning the Israeli aggression in the UN, the new government has not been very vocal otherwise. There are also literal mountains of disinformation around in social media, in mindless memes and photoshop cut-up jobs, claiming the new government wants to “make peace” with Israel and so on (some useful rebuttals here). Many Assad-loving keyboard warriors are condemning the new government for not “fighting” the Israeli attack.
After 50 years of the Assad regime never firing a shot across the Golan demarcation line, these heroes now condemn a government for not “fighting Israel” in 10 days in power.
One might have noticed that the first thing Israel did was to destroy Syria’s entire military arsenal before it could do anything at all, a military arsenal that Assad never once used against the occupation regime. Presumably they expect Syria to fight the neighbouring genocidal military powerhouse, its warplanes and missiles, with sticks and stones.
As Jolani put it, quite logically, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts.” That is not a call for a “peace” treaty with the occupation, but a statement of fact. The Syrian people have just come through a 14-year war against their own genocidal regime, the regime of Sednaya-Auschwitz, but these western keyboard heroes now believe that the only way the new Syrian government can show its mettle to them (since this is what is important) is by plunging into war with another genocidal regime.
What they might also consider is that while it is Russia that has been bombing the Syrian people for a decade, the new leadership came to an agreement with Russia that it could keep its naval base in Tartous for now, committing itself to not allowing it to be attacked! That’s because they don’t want conflict with that nuclear-armed genocidal power either. This follows HTS’s overtures to Russia earlier in the offensive, when it declared “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia, calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime or the persona of Bashar, but rather with the Syrian people in its history, civilisation and future” as “ we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.” The government has also made direct contact with Iran, pledging to protect Shiite shrines, but also giving safe passage to exiting Iranian forces, despite their years of crimes in Syria.
If anything, Jolani’s statement that Syria is in no state to enter a new conflict just now due to exhaustion could well be interpreted by Israel as a medium-term threat. The statements by Israeli leaders justifying their aggression suggest that’s how they view it. Right now, the important thing is for Israeli aggression, destruction and occupation to end, and shooting your mouth off with jihadist slogans, where Israeli leaders and many world leaders and media keep reminding everyone of HTS’s distant past “al-Qaeda” links, would be extremely foolish. No doubt Israel would prefer they did, so it could then bomb Damascus and receive congratulations from its uncritical US backer.
For the entire year since October 7, the Assad regime and Russia had bombed the liberated enclave of Idlib where HTS was ruling, under the cover of Gaza. The entire time, people in Idlib and other opposition-controlled regions were out demonstrating their support for Gaza, while being bombed. The charges against HTS in particular make even less sense, given its strong support for Hamas and for October 7, for better or worse. Jolani has also been filmed boasting that “after Damascus comes Jerusalem,” but of course this kind of rhetoric, so reminiscent of similar Iranian rhetoric, should be taken metaphorically. Yes, any new regime can sell out – there are no guarantees about anything – but if it did, it would face a Syrian population overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, and there is little point in idle speculation now.
Rather, when Jolani says the focus right now is on stabilising the situation in Syria, this is completely logical. A fractured Syria, getting even more destroyed by foolishness, would have no ability to help Palestinians or to revive its place in the Arab world. More importantly, this is a very critical and dangerous time for the Syrian revolution, when putting a step wrong can have devastating consequences.
With Russia cutting off wheat supplies, Syria is looking for food; the search for literally hundreds of thousands missing is still going on, with the most horrific discoveries turning up in slaughterhouses like Sednaya; people are having to face the grim reality that the majority will not be found alive, as enormous mass graves are being discovered; hundreds of the released have lost their memories and their minds; basic services have had to be restored; the rush is on to preserve as much intelligence information as possible, before being stolen by looters or destroyed by Israeli bombs; the mass return of millions of Syrians has begun. This is what is important; this is what Israel is trying to disrupt with its aggression.
The way in which the Sunni-majority led revolution has made overtures to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds has to date been exceptional and has been key to the success of the revolution. The main fault line at present is in the northeast, largely controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Two things are happening. On the one hand, some of the Arab-majority regions within the SDF-run autonomous statelet have revolted against the SDF and joined the main body of Syrian governance, particularly in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa. On the other hand, Turkey, via its proxy SNA, is also attacking Kurdish regions aiming to destroy Kurdish self-rule; while Manbij, which they took from the SDF via a US-negotiated agreement, is a majority Arab city, they are now threatening to move on iconic Kurdish Kobani. To date, HTS has had a much better approach to the Kurdish question and to relations with the SDF than Turkey and the SNA have, but the future is uncertain.
This Turkey-Kurdish question cannot be dealt with in this essay, but how the government deals with it is crucial to the revolution. Israel sees division as a means of entry, Israeli propaganda projecting the Druze and Kurds as Israel’s natural allies. As seen in some of the statements above from Israeli leaders such as Amachai Chikli and Gideon Saar, supporting “the Kurds” is promoted as a key Israeli geopolitical interest; meanwhile, Israel is trying to get the Druze in the Golan to join Israel. There are even fantastic ideas of a ‘Druze state’ in southern Suweida, and a Kurdish state in the east, forming a bridge to Iraqi Kurdistan, with an oil pipeline joining them to Israel; “by leveraging ties with the Syrian Druze and fostering collaboration with Israel’s Kurdish allies, the foundation for this corridor can begin to take shape,” claims the Jerusalem Post. Both the main Druze leadership in Suweida – a key part of the revolution – and the Druze spiritual leadership in Hader itself, along with the Kurdish SDF leadership, completely reject such ideas. But this demonstrates how an increased Turkish-SNA attack on the Kurds, or any step wrong by HTS on religious minorities such as the Druze, could be exploited by Syria’s enemies.
Israel’s interests
This example suggests one important Israeli interest – using the instability and moment of weakness of a revolution to make a land grab – no need to explain why the permanent ‘Greater Israel’ project would want to do that – and extending its hegemony into a chunk of the Arab region via “minorities.” However, this exploitation of minority issues is not only about fostering its influence, but also a means to undermine the revolution. There is no mystery about Israel wanting to do this: genocidal colonial settler-regimes like Israel – like other imperialist states – hate popular revolutions, especially in the Arab world. Not only did Israel have a good working relationship with the Assad regime as demonstrated above, but more generally the mutual existence of apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has always been symbiotic.
Many “left” Assad apologists, who are embarrassed that Israel has only attacked after the downfall of Assad, are trying to save face by saying “see, Assad’s fall makes Syria weak and Israel can do what it wants.” Think of that for a moment: it is an argument that people should not overthrow dictators, even genocidal ones, because when you make a revolution you get attacked by imperialist powers or other powerful reactionary states. Perhaps Russians should not have made a revolution because Russia first temporarily lost a great chunk of territory to the invading German army at Brest-Litovsk, and then had to face another 20 or so western armies of invasion. The argument is ludicrous, and counterrevolutionary.
Let’s look at three aspects that make Israel terrified of the Syrian revolution.
Concern about ‘jihadists’ and ‘terrorists’
The first, the most superficial, is the one that Israeli leaders promote, and is most useful for mass consumption: as seen in so many of the quotes above, Israel does not want “terrorists” or “jihadists” to get their hands on weapons that were previously safely in the hands of the Assad regime, because they might use them to launch attacks “on Israel” (or more likely, the occupied Golan). This cannot be dismissed out of hand. At an immediate level, Israel would have such a fear, especially in times of “chaos,” when a new government does not have clear control of all armed forces and so on.
But any such attacks would do nothing to help Syria, let alone Palestine, whatever the illusions in certain quarters. On the contrary, it would simply be grist in the mill of Zionist propaganda about being “under attack by terrorists” and allow Israel to destroy the whole of Syria, with full US support. Whatever the past rhetoric of HTS, the fact that it has pledged not to do that is entirely logical, especially in current circumstances, and politically defangs Israel’s arguments.
Threat of spread of uprising via regional Sunni Islamist populism
The second aspect is the regional Sunni ‘Islamist’ aspect, not meaning fanatical ‘jihadism’ but more the populist Muslim Brotherhood-type connections between these activists in Sunni majority countries Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and the Gulf. HTS’s marked ‘softening’ puts it more in this camp than anything related to its distant past al-Qaeda connections. The support given by Hamas – the Palestinian MB – to the Syrian revolution both in 2011-2018 and now flows quite organicially from these connections, as does the support given to Gaza by HTS and other Syrian rebel groups and a year of demonstrations in Idlib and northern Aleppo. The MB has been a major opposition force in Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere, and in Jordan in particular it has played a major role in mobilising against the Jordanian regime’s collaboration with Israel.
Put simply, a popular revolution in one Arab country may be just too good an example for people suffering under other Arab dictators whose relationships with Israel are more out in the open than the one it had with Assad, and these religious-political connections may facilitate this. The fact that the ‘Abrahams Accord’ countries (in its broadest sense, all who had relations with Israel) and the ‘Assad Accord’ countries were the same – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan etc, with Saudi Arabia supportive but more reticent on both – can be best understood as both an alliance for counterrevolution generally, and an anti-MB alliance in particular. The overthrow of the Jordanian or Egyptian regimes in particular would be a huge boost to the Palestinian struggle.
In this light, we read that Israel’s Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director Ronen Bar and IDF Military Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder visited Jordan on December 13 to meet Maj. Gen. Ahmad Husni, director of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, “amid concerns the unrest in Syria could spill over to the Hashemite Kingdom.” According to the Jewish News Syndicate, “Jerusalem is worried that the overthrow of the Assad regime by Syrian rebel factions including terrorist elements led by the Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham could destabilize Jordan … The talks come against the backdrop of fears in Jerusalem that extremist groups in Jordan could try to replicate the swift ouster of Bashar Assad by attempting to remove King Abdullah II from power.”
According to the Jerusalem Post, “Arab diplomats have also expressed alarm over a potential “domino effect” in the region. … An Arab diplomat from the region said this week that authorities in Egypt, Jordan, and neighboring states are monitoring Syria closely. There is growing apprehension that the Syrian rebellion could inspire Islamist movements elsewhere.” Meanwhile, Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the UAE president, has stated that “the nature of the new forces, the affiliation with the [Muslim] Brotherhood, the affiliation with Al-Qaeda, I think these are all indicators that are quite worrying.”
In this light, the Biden administration has just asked Israel to approve U.S. military assistance to the Palestinian Authority’s security forces for a major operation they are conducting to regain control of Jenin in the West Bank. According to Axios, the PA “launched the operation out of fear that Islamist militants — emboldened after armed rebels took control of Syria — could try to overthrow the Palestinian Authority.” One Palestinian official said “It was a Syria effect. Abbas and his team were concerned that what happened in Aleppo and Damascus will inspire Palestinian Islamist groups,” also claiming that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia support the operation in Jenin to prevent “a Muslim-brotherhood style or an Iranian-funded takeover” of the PA.
At this stage it is unclear to what extent such ‘fears’ will eventuate, but these moves, visits, talks and statements suggest there is concern within the local ruling classes.
More dangerous threat of democratic, non-sectarian revolution to Zionist project
The third and most fundamental aspect is, once again, related to the spread of revolution, but not specifically the Sunni ‘Islamist’ connection. On the contrary, the extent to which the Syrian revolution can maintain its current popular, democratic and non-sectarian potential could have a dramatic impact on the region – including Israel. It was counterintuitive that a former Sunni jihadist organisation like HTS would lead with the outreach to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds, yet it happened. And while the complete hollowness of the regime was the main secret to the rapid success of the revolution, the other crucial ingredient was precisely this non-sectarian element; the descent into sectarianism, deliberately fostered by the Assad regime, was a crucial cause of the failure last time.
Israel’s bluster about being “the only democracy in the region,” while an obvious nonsense in relation to its subjected Palestinian population, holds some truth regarding the Israeli population. By being able to point at ugly dictatorships in the Arab and neighbouring Muslim world, Israeli leaders promote the idea that their anti-Israel agendas are the work of evil tyrants who want to drive out Jews. The fact that many are also run on a sectarian basis – including those are democratic such as Lebanon – further mirrors and is used to further justify Israel’s own racist, sectarian system.
The Arab Spring was the first region-wide attempt at democratic revolution, which however was largely destroyed. In 2019 there was a second round, in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Algeria. What was very pronounced in the first three in particular was their specifically anti-sectarian content. In both Iraq and Lebanon, the movements against sectarian rule were put down, in Iraq brutally crushed by the ‘axis of resistance’ Shiite militia at a cost of hundreds of lives, while in Lebanon Hezbollah also used violence against the movement, thereby saving the rule of all the sectarian elites; in Sudan the democratic opening was overthrown by the military; a few years later, we also saw the Iranian regime crush its own ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement. All of this made the region safer for Israel’s own racist, sectarian project.
By contrast, the victory of democratic, non-sectarian forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and elsewhere would have represented a far larger political challenge to Zionism than harsh but hollow words from ugly regimes, which only facilitate Zionist siege ideology.
It may well be a struggle for the Syrian revolution to maintain the course; the mobilised Syrian revolutionary population will need to fight all attempts to restrict democratic space or to stir sectarianism tooth and nail. But if their struggle does succeed, a democratic, non-sectarian Syria could likewise have an electrifying regional impact.
Israel is trying its hardest to make sure it does not succeed.
The lightning victories of the Syrian rebel coalition over the Assad regime forces in northwest Syria over a vast area – followed in quick succession by equally rapid victories first in Hama and Homs in central Syria, then the uprisings in southern Daraa and Suweida and the collapse of the regime in Damascus itself – all within ten days – demonstrates the complete hollowness of the regime, based as it is on little more than naked military and police violence. The subsequent revelation to the world of the real level of horror in the Sednaya ‘slaughterhouse’ demonstrates the breathtaking reality of this; one is reminded of Tuol Sleng and Auschwitz. Regime defences simply collapsed everywhere, the rebels facing neither popular nor military resistance.
The Aleppo offensive
Within a day or so of the offensive launched on November 27, the rebels had not only taken vast areas of rural eastern and southern Idlib and western and southern Aleppo, but most of Aleppo city as well; even in the 2012-2016 period, the rebels only ever controlled half the city. By contrast, it had taken large-scale regime, Russian and Iranian offensives, with airpower, missiles and overwhelming military power, several years to conquer the half-city from the rebels. They then advanced south into northern Hama province, where it is now contesting the regime for Hama city.
Syrian social media accounts are full of scenes of joy as political prisoners are released, as people return to their towns and homes they were expelled from. As former mayor of East Aleppo Hagi Hassan writes, stressing the humanitarian aspects of the liberation, “The city’s liberation is allowing tens of thousands of families to return home after years of forced exile. These families, who lived in camps without essential needs, can now find a more stable and dignified life. … Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are still trapped in the regime’s jails, suffering unimaginable atrocities. The release of Aleppo has allowed the release of hundreds of prisoners, including women and children, marking an important step towards justice.” Fadel Abdul Ghany, of the Syrian Network of Human Rights, claimed that among the detainees and forcibly disappeared people who have been released were some who have been detained for 13 years, “and in one case a detainee that had spent 33 years in prison.”
According to Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss, “events so far suggest HTS [the leading rebel faction] is behaving pragmatically. Its militants were dispatched right away to safeguard banks from looting. On the first night of its occupation, HTS turned off the electricity for factories, thereby affording civilian residences 16 hours of uninterrupted power, something they haven’t enjoyed since 2012. Similarly, Kareem Shaheen writes of “fascinating messages from Christian family/friends in Aleppo about the restoration of electricity and water, garbage collection (apparently the rebels are paying garbage collectors a 1.5 million SYP wage), bread everywhere, active market.”
Aleppo citadel after liberation
Hagi Hassan also claims that “for the first time in years, the city knows some security. Infrastructure has been preserved, public institutions are functioning, and no civil rights violations have been reported since liberation,” stressing that “the military forces that have entered Aleppo have not committed any violations against civilians,” but rather, “they ensured their safety.” Another Syrian reporting from Aleppo, Marcelle Shehwaro, claims there have been violations, though “despite extensive networking around this issue, I’ve only been able to document three violations,” one an infamous Christmas tree incident, though she reports more serious violations between another rebel coalition, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
More seriously, Shehwaro noted that, apart from fear of regime and Russian airstrikes, the main fear at present is gun-related chaos, caused by the release of criminal prisoners in the rush to open jails to release political prisoners. However, she reports that “a complaints hotline was activated, and it appears the operations management room is taking this seriously so far. But this is far from a utopia.”
Importantly, she stresses regarding the head-scarf, given the radical Islamist ideology of some of the groups involved, “there are incidents happening related to being told, “Put a scarf on your head.” However, the scale is still very limited (compared to what might be expected). Wearing a hijab hasn’t yet become customary (and may God strengthen the women of Aleppo so it doesn’t become the norm). For now, women are still walking in the streets without hijabs—not as isolated acts of courage or rebellion, but simply because that’s how they dress.” However, she also stresses there should be no complacency on this.
She emphasises that both “alarmist narratives” and “reassuring narratives” should be avoided. This is sensible nuance for any such situation. Revolutions are typically depicted as unmitigated bloodbaths, or as heroic, romanticised utopias. No revolution in history has been one or the other. And from all the above, and more below, what I want to stress here is precisely that this is a revolution, a revival of the Syrian revolution which many considered crushed, warts and all, not simply a “military conquest by Islamists” as some have depicted.
Hagi Hassan notes that “Yes, Hayat Tahrir al-Cham [HTS] is present, but the true liberators of the city are its inhabitants, its youth who, exiled children, returned today as adults to liberate their city from the yoke of oppression.” Shehwaro also stresses the role of ordinary people:
“The grassroots Syrian effort is remarkable. Aleppo is boiling, inside and out. From bread to communications, burial initiatives, pressing the military to take responsibility for every issue that impacts civilians, supporting organizations, bolstering the Civil Defense’s presence in Aleppo, and tracking the conditions of children—there is extraordinary grassroots effort.”
On December 1, an example of such a popular initiative was the Initiative “People of Aleppo for the sake of the Homeland,” which congratulated the Syrian people for being freed from the regime, but made a list of people’s requests including advising “the brothers in military factions to fully discipline the instructions” of their leaders “not to engage in any violation,” recommending “the brothers in military factions to adhere to military fronts, cord holes, military barracks, and complete ban of any armed appearance among civilians,” while calling for “forming a civil administration from Aleppo’s competencies as a transition stage in preparation for the elections.”
As if on cue, on December 4 HTS commander Abu Mohammed al-Jolani stated that “the city will be administered by a transitional body. All armed fighters, including HTS members, will be directed to leave civilian areas in the coming weeks, and government employees will be invited to resume their work.” Here is the order:
Jolani even suggested that that HTS may dissolve itself “in order to enable the full consolidation of civilian and military structures in new institutions that reflect the breadth of Syrian society.”
The rebel operations room also announced a total amnesty for Syrian regime troops, police and security forces in Aleppo, calling on them to submit their paperwork to receive their official clemency and identification cards.
And the surprise is that, after years of brutal suppression of the revolution, after the regime’s genocidal bloodbath of hundreds of thousands of people and its destruction of its own country with its airforce, after the degree of cooption of the popular uprising – either by the Turkish regime or by the hard-Islamist HTS now leading this operation – that such repression inevitably led to, we might have expected the results of a new offensive to be more retrograde, with more violations, more bloody, more divisive, than in the past. Yet so far, we can say that there were far, far more violations by rebel groups in Aleppo in the past compared to what is ensuing at present.
Before going on to look at the rebel forces involved, and then the wider geopolitical framework, it is worth looking at the question of “return” of thousands, and perhaps soon hundreds of thousands, to their homes, which was touched on above.
If we just consider the 7 million plus displaced Syrians in northwest Syria or Turkey (and not even the millions in Lebanon and Jordan), they come from all parts of Syria, including from a string of Sunni-majority towns around Damascus in the south that were ethnically cleansed via starvation sieges in 2015-17, but also from these very regions now being liberated in Idlib and Aleppo provinces, especially after the regime and Russia reconquered about half of these provinces from the opposition in 2018-2020, leading the population to flee. Now, as a result of this current offensive, all the historic revolutionary towns of the region – Saraqib, Maraat Al-Nouman, Khan Sheikun, KafrNabl – which were captured by the regime in this final stage, have been liberated.
Even for those most cynical of the current HTS leadership of the offensive, what we need to recognise is that this has the potential to be a Gigantic March of Return!
The offensive beginning on November 27 is being carried out by a wide coalition of rebel groups under the Military Operations Command, which arose from the Fath al-Mubeen Operations Room in Idlib. The leading force is the hard-line Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), while the other two major components are the National Front for Liberation (NFL) and Jaish al-Izzeh, both of which are independent ‘secular-nationalist’ Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades, while the Islamist factions Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Shamiya also joined the offensive.
According to the New Arab, “participation of fighters from the secular nationalist Syrian National Army (SNA) factions, which is closely aligned with Turkey,” has been confirmed, but “while the SNA has supported the operation rhetorically, it has not officially confirmed its participation, which is likely due to the influence of Turkey.” That was written before the SNA did step in on November 30 with its own ‘Dawn of Freedom’ operations room (of which, more below), which at the outset was aimed more at the Kurdish-led SDF forces in northern Aleppo than at the regime.
Very broadly, we may divide the rebel groups in this region into three broad categories: HTS itself, which has become the dominant force in Idlib, and which dominates the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG); the factions of the SNA closest to Turkey, including both secular-nationalist and Islamist factions, which is dominant in parts of northern Aleppo province near the Turkish border, and which dominates the Syrian Interim Government (SIG); and organisations like Jaysh al-Izza which are independent, while the NFL, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Shamiya have operated both as allies to the HTS-led command and as loose members or allies of the SNA, while maintaining operational independence.
Overwhelmingly, people join these groups not due to some ideological affiliation, which is more an obsession of western leftists, but to defend their liberated towns and regions from encroachment by the genocidal dictatorship. Who they join depends more on who is dominant in a certain region and thus can better effectively defend that region, who has money to pay wages and for better weaponry and so on. These people are mostly fighting in support of the original aims of the revolution, ie the overthrow of the dictatorship and the institution of a democratic Syria for all. What this means in practice is that, while the politics of the leaderships are not irrelevant, they are also not set in stone; to an extent they reflect the ideals and pressures of their fighting base.
And in a revolutionary situation such as this, many of these divisions break down again, are reconstituted along different lines; leaderships will try to dominate, but their need to keep leadership in a revolutionary struggle also means they will be carried by it. As seen above, popular initiatives play a big role. Even the question of government may end up having little to do with the two ‘governments’ discussed above which have ruled so long in their besieged de-facto statelets.
For example, one resident returning to the northern Aleppo town Tel Rifaat after “a forced absence of around 3205 days” was asked whether the town now will be run by the SSG or the SIG, after being liberated by “many of the Free Army’s factions.” He responded that “the people of the town of Tel Refaat have prior administrative experience, and they elect their council through a general commission composed of all the town’s families. This council administers the town’s affairs, whatever its affiliation.”
On the nature of HTS
Many observers are understandably nervous about both HTS, an authoritarian Islamist group which many years ago was affiliated with al-Qaida, and the SNA, given its control by Turkey and Turkey’s anti-Kurdish policy. There is no question that as a result of being bombed for years, driven into a corner, overwhelmed with displaced from all over Syria, and with virtually no support from anywhere in the world, the civil and military formations of the Syrian revolution have been heavily co-opted for years now, especially since the heavy defeats from 2018 onwards. In fact, all the famous revolution-held towns run by popular councils that continually resisted encroachment by HTS, such as Maraat al-Nuuman, Saraqeb, Karanbel, Atareb and others, were overrun by Assad in the final 2019-2020 offensives, removing important strength from the more independent sectors of the revolution.
People need to survive; and they need protection from the regime. Fighters need wages to feed their families. Western leftists often discuss these issues as if it were a market for different socialist and anarchist ideas on a western campus; it couldn’t be more different. In fact, there is much evidence that many of the fighters in HTS’s ranks today were previously fighters in FSA brigades that its predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra, crushed at various times – they may not like it, but they still need to fight to regime. Nusra’s forces never constituted any more than 10 percent of the rebels’ armed forces; yet now HTS is overwhelmingly dominant, meaning the bulk of HTS fighters had no past in Nusra or al-Qaida.
HTS’s own rule in Idlib has been mixed to say the least. The leading cadre of HTS are mostly derived from the former Jabhat al-Nusra, which in 2012-2016 was affiliated to al-Qaida, a relationship it severed that year, before moving on to form HTS as a coalition with a number of other Islamist groups. On the whole, its rule is seen as repressive, if effective, but in practice this has gone back and forth. It has adopted a number of pragmatic positions, both in theory and in practice (eg in relation to social restrictions) since leaving the jihadist cloak behind. Part of this is simply due to the needs to running technocratic government effectively. On the whole HTS has tended not to use repression against popular protest, but it has been quite repressive against political opposition, probably more so than any other rebel group.
According to a recent report on Syria by the UN Human Rights Council:
“Starting in February [2024], unprecedentedly large protests, led by civilian activists and supported by military and religious figures, spread across HTS areas. Protestors called for the release of political and security detainees, for governance and socioeconomic reforms and for the removal of HTS leader Abu Mohammad Al-Julani. Demonstrations were triggered by reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by the HTS general security service, following months of arrest campaigns by HTS targeting their own members, as well as members of other armed groups and political parties, such as Hizb al-Tahrir.”
It notes that Jolani acknowledged the use of “prohibited and severe means of pressure on the detainees” and “pledged to investigate and to hold those responsible accountable.” It also noted that while demonstrations mostly proceeded without HTS state violence used against them, later HTS did begin using force against them.
Despite repressive rule and co-optation by both governments, the populations have engaged in mass popular demonstrations both against Turkey and against HTS at different times, suggesting that, while militarily defeated, the revolutionary masses still believe they have something to fight for and remain committed to the ideals which they rose up for in 2011. Indeed, while some of the demonstrations against HTS were simply against its attempt to impose its rule over areas it does not control, or against its repressive actions, others were against HTS attempting to open a trade connection with the regime; and similarly, the demonstrations against Turkey were against the growing convergence between Erdogan and Assad as they move to ‘bury the hatchet’. And now, just as repression and siege can lead to such co-optation, new revolutionary advances can again liberate popular energies.
It may well be that one of the secondary reasons for the offensive was indeed for HTS to attempt to break out of this increasing unpopularity. If so, there can be no doubt that the offensive has been massively popular, above all by allowing hundreds of thousands to return to their homes.
HTS overtures to Christians, Druze, Shiites, Alawites and Kurds
With this hardline past, it might therefore come as a surprise that HTS has actually come out with some very positive overtures towards the populations in the regions it is advancing into, and towards minority groups in particular, towards religious minorities – Christians, Druze, Shiites and even Alawites – and the ethnic Kurdish minority, despite previously bad relations with all five.
As the rebels advanced towards Aleppo, Jolani addressed his troops:
“We urge you to show mercy, kindness and gentleness towards the people in the city of Aleppo. Let your top priority be the preservation of their properties and lives, as well as ensuring the security of the city. Do not cut down trees, frighten children, or instil fear in our people of all sects [emphasis added]. Aleppo has always been – and continues to be – a crossroads of civilisations and cultures, with a long history of cultural and religious diversity. It is the heritage and present of all Syrians. Today is a day of compassion; whoever enters their home, closes their door, and refrains from hostility is safe. Whoever declares their defection from the criminal regime, lays down their weapon, and surrenders to the revolutionaries is also safe.”
This sounds nothing like the old Nusra, or like any kind of ‘Sunni jihadist’ organisation. Neither does the following declaration from Bashir Ali, Head of the Directorate of Minority Affairs, Department of Political Affairs, of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), made as the rebels advanced:
“As many regions are liberated from the criminal regime, I want to assure all minorities, including Christians, that their lives, property, places of worship and freedoms will be protected. … This is your city too, and you are free to stay and live here in freedom and dignity, knowing that your safety and rights are a priority to us just as all other Syrians.”
The Department issued another statement aimed specifically at two Shiite villages of Nubl and al-Zahara, to the north of Aleppo city:
“Out of faith on our part in the principles of the Syrian revolution that are based on justice and dignity, we affirm the necessity of protecting civilians and guarding their property and lives. In this context, we emphasise that the people of the localities of Nubl and al-Zahara’, like other Syrian civilians, must not be targeted or threatened in any way on the basis of sect or ethnic affiliation. We also call on the people of Nubl and al-Zahara’, and all the Syrian regions, not to stand alongside the criminal regime and aid it in killing the Syrian people and deepening its humanitarian suffering.”
Traditionally, Sunni jihadists like Nusra saw other Muslim sects like Shiites and Alawites as worse than Christians and Jews, as they were considered apostates in Islam; this statement was therefore very significant. Given the extreme divisions from the past (caused by both sides) however, it appears that many of the Shia in these two towns decided to leave, but those that have stayed are reporting that there has been no looting or revenge attacks by the rebels.
Perhaps even more stunning for a formation arising from a Sunni jihadist background, on December 5 HTS issued a statement proclaiming the Alawites to be an indispensable part of Syrian society, calling on them to abandon the Assad regime which it claims “hijacked” the Alawites to conduct a sectarian battle against the opposition:
An as the rebel offensive was approaching victory, Alawite leaders responded in kind:
“Given that the regime, during its years of rule, has regularly sought to prevent any form of societal representation of the Alawite sect, we, the sons of this sect in the city of Homs, renew our call at this critical stage:
“First, we address our call to the revolutionary forces entering the city of Homs. We call on you to maintain civil peace and protect all societal components in the city with all their different spectra. We also urge you to spare the city of Homs, which has been exhausted by violence, from entering a new round of revenge, and to work to preserve public and private property. We hope that you will show the responsibility that you have shown in many cities that you have previously entered, to be an example to be followed in strengthening the unity of the national fabric.
“Secondly, we address our Alawite sect in the city, calling on them to beware of being drawn into the false propaganda and plots that the regime has been spreading with the aim of sowing fear and terror among you. We stress the need for you to stay in your homes, and not to allow the regime to use you again as fuel for a battle that it has in fact been losing since the first day of this revolution.
“Homs was and will remain a symbol of diversity and civil coexistence, and today, as we are on the verge of its liberation, we aspire for it to become a model to be emulated in affirming the unity of the Syrian people and their ability to overcome the wounds of the painful past.
“Long live a free and proud Syria.’ December 6, 2024 – Homs Media Center”
So far, reports from the ground suggest there have been very few violations, though of course some are inevitable in any war. Aleppo’s churches have continued their services and celebrations as normal this past week. Here is the first Sunday mass in Aleppo under Syrian rebels/HTS rule, for example:
However, as Syrian Christian Fadi Hallisso returning to Aleppo notes regarding the fears of many Christians, the assurances that the Islamic dress code will not be imposed on them and that there is no threat to their churches are “not helping at all,” because he claims, these are not the main concerns of Christians, but rather the fear of becoming second-class citizens in a new “Ottoman millet” system. Interestingly, Hallisso states that “the only way to reassure Christians in these circumstances is for Aleppo to be run by a civilian administration of the city’s notables after all armed groups retreat from the city” – ie, precisely what has just been announced by the rebel leadership.
The Arab-Kurdish issue in the current conflict
Marcelle Shehwaro claims that “the Arab-Kurdish situation is catastrophic” and that “the polarization is costing lives, displacement, and a lack of any civil structure with even a minimal level of mutual trust.” She blames both “sniper fire from the SDF that claims civilian lives daily,” and “displacement, abuse, and violations [of Kurds] by the National Army [SNA].” It is very important here to distinguish the SNA from HTS.
As the HTS-led coalition approached Aleppo, Turkiye initially ordered the SNA not to take part. This is likely because if Turkiye gave any green light to the offensive (see below), the aim was for a limited operation in the Idlib/Aleppo countryside to pressure Assad; by all accounts, Turkiye was as blindsided as everyone by the speed of the fall of the city. But when the city did fall to the rebels, the SDF moved into some eastern and northern parts of Aleppo that the regime had fled from, which then linked up Aleppo to the SDF-controlled Rojava statelet in northeast Syria, obviously not Turkiye’s plan.
Therefore, Turkiye the next day sent in the SNA with its own ‘Dawn of Freedom’ operation, which began seizing territory from the SDF – it is important to underline that this was an SNA, not an HTS, action, and should not be confused with the main rebel operation. This demonstrated Turkiye’s anti-Kurdish priorities (though the SNA has also since taken former Assadist territory).
However, even with the SNA’s anti-Kurdish policy, it is not as simple as “Turkey-SNA attacking the Kurds,” as much media, and the SDF, suggest, although there clearly have been violations. The problem is that the main areas of northern Aleppo province that the SNA first seized from the SDF – around the Tel Rifaat region – were not Kurdish regions at all, but Arab-majority regions which the SDF had dishonourably conquered from the rebels in early 2016 with Russian airforce backing, uprooting 100,000 people who have been living in tents in Azaz to the north ever since! For the tens of thousands of expelled residents, this is now a homecoming. However again, even this reality is altered by the fact that two years later, in 2018, Turkiye conquered Kurdish Afrin, northwest of Aleppo, so much of the Kurdish population there fled to these now empty homes in Tel Rifaat, and it is now these people having to flee again.
It is striking that HTS – a former jihadist group which, when its core was Nusra, tended to engage in conflict with the SDF more than any other rebel group – is now engaged in “back-channel dialogue and negotiations with the SDF” which are “far more constructive and effective than with the SNA itself.”
On December 1, HTS issued a statement telling the SDF that HTS’ fight was against the Syrian regime, not the SDF, promising to ensure the safety of Aleppo’s Kurds, and describing the Kurds as “an integral part of the diverse Syrian identity” who “have full rights to live in dignity and freedom,” calling on them to remain in Aleppo; notably also is HTS’s condemnation of “the barbaric practices committed by ISIS against the Kurds:”
HTS then called on the SDF to withdraw from Aleppo, promising to take care of civilians in the Kurdish-held neighborhoods, and offering safe passage to the SDF fighters, possibly to avert an SNA-SDF clash; and the SDF quietly withdrew from the parts of Aleppo it had taken, while remaining in the actual Kurdish-populated regions it had long controlled in Aleppo city, Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh, where they have the support of the population. Any attempt to drive them from here would be a massive violation. At the time of writing, the SDF still controls these two neighbourhoods, and much of the population has also remained.
Background: the evolution of HTS on minority issues
I don’t include all these quotes in order to suggest HTS will necessarily live up to all this, the future simply cannot be known; and the concerns that many Syrians have, including many who are ecstatic about the fall of the regime, are absolutely justified [indeed, some point precisely to what happened after the Iranian revolution of 1979]. Rather, the fact that HTS found it necessary to issue these statements is evidence at least of understanding what a revolutionary situation requires of it. The fact that so far it has been living up to this in practice is a very encouraging sign. Rather than declare in advance either that HTS will throw off all this “re-badging” once it has power and return to its dark past, or that it will surely lead a democratic utopia, it is better to cautiously watch and hope that the spread of the revolution continues to dilute HTS power and older HTS ideology; the broader it is, the more difficult it would be for a militia to put popular power back into a box.
However, the discourse stating that HTS is only saying all these things now to “re-badge” for western consumption to be taken off western “terrorism” lists and so on has the problem that very significant changes in relation to minorities have been taking place for a number of years now in Idlib. The oppression of the Druze minority under Nusra rule for example was particularly appalling; they were basically subjected a program of forced Sunnification, one of the ugliest features of Nusra rule.
However, as well-informed Syria-watcher Gregory Waters explains:
“ … the SSG has spent more than six years engaging with both the Christian and Druze communities in Idlib. An independent, region-wide administrative body was created to serve as a focal point for all communities, including those of minorities. Gradually, this body worked to address complaints and return the homes and farmland that had been seized by a variety of opposition groups in past years. This author has met with some of these community leaders, who told him that, while slow, significant progress has been made for their community in relation to security, property rights, economy, and religious discourse.”
This stepped up in 2022, when Jolani visited the Druze centre, Jabal al-Summaq, after which HTS began returning homes and land earlier seized; and visited Christian residents of Quniya, Yaqoubiya, and Jadida, which was followed by the reopening of the St. Anne Church in Yaqoubiya village, for the first time since the rebels entered Idlib in 2015, attended by dozens of people, and then another large mass at the Armenian Apostolic Church, a decade after it was closed.
Just as surprising has been HTS’s outreach to the Kurdish community. After taking over the Kurdish region of Afrin in 2022 from the SNA, HTS declared that it “confirms that the Arab and Kurdish people… or the displaced are the subject of our attention and appreciation, and we warn them against listening to the factional interests… We specifically mention the Kurdish brothers; they are the people of those areas and it is our duty to protect them and provide services to them.”
While this may sound like rhetoric, in March 2023, HTS confronted the SNA after five Kurdish civilians were killed by members of a Turkish-backed faction during a Nowruz celebration in the town of Jenderes. Jolani met with the residents and HTS forces deployed in the town and seized control of headquarters of the military police and the SNA’s Eastern Army, which was accused of the killings.
This outreach has even proceeded to discussions with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), HTS hosting several delegations from Hassakeh in 2023. An agreement for the SDF to supply oil to HTS-controlled refineries was reached (the SDF already has a large-scale agreement of this kind with the regime). Intriguingly, HTS also proposed participating in the SDF’s anti-ISIS fight, and for the establishment of a joint civilian administration between HTS and the SDF if HTS could gain control of areas currently held by the SNA!
Apart from the needs of technocratic government getting the better of ideology, the evolution of HTS’s Kurdish policy was also partly driven by its rivalry and clash of perspectives with the Turkish-backed SNA. As Turkey’s priorities turned more to confronting the SDF in Syria, it held back the rebels it controlled from confronting the Assad regime, and continually made overtures to the regime for a joint war against the SDF as a basis for restoring relations. HTS however, whatever its past clashes with the SDF, and also the more independent FSA militia groups, continued to see the conflict with the regime as having priority, and were furious with Turkiye’s attempts to reconcile with the regime. This created a cautious, low-level convergence between HTS and SDF priorities.
Why now? ‘Deterring’ regime’s year-long ‘aggression’ waited for Lebanon ceasefire
This offensive did not come out of the blue; by all accounts, the rebels have been planning this for up to a year. However, there was little expectation their offensive would be so successful; the name of the offensive – Operation Deter the Aggression – instead informs us of the original aim: to push back against over a year of renewed aggression, mostly by regime and Russian bombing, against the opposition-controlled regions of Idlib and Aleppo provinces in the northwest.
However, surprised by the rapidity of regime collapse, the aims then widened, to liberating as much territory from the regime as possible.
From the onset of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, the Assad regime, while maintaining complete quiet on its southern frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan, used the cover of Gaza to step up the slaughter of opposition-controlled Idlib right from the start, a stunning example of this part of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ lacking a compass. According to the Syria Response Coordinators, “266 educational facilities in northwestern Syria have been put out of service over the past three years,” with attacks on schools sharply increasing over the last year, with 43 attacks between September 2023 and November 2024.
All this time, people in opposition-controlled Idlib and Aleppo have continually demonstrated in support of Gaza, with ongoing protests, seminars, donation drives etc Gaza (while the Assad regime bans pro-Palestine demonstrations). Assadist “resistance” to the Zionist onslaught was apparently carried out against this extremely pro-Palestine population of the northwest, demonstrating one of numerous examples of the use of phoney “resistance” language by repressive and reactionary regimes who in reality have no interest whatsoever in “resisting” Israel’s genocidal campaign.
People in Idlib have continually demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza, despite being under regime and Russian bombing themselves.
These attacks continued on a daily basis, systematically targeting villages, civilian infrastructure and agricultural zones, impacting some 55,000 families. This has led to new waves of displacement as people fled their homes to escape the bombardment; in late October, the Syrian Response Coordinators “recorded the forced displacement of over 1,843 people from 37 towns and villages in just 48 hours.” According to Ibrahim Al-Sayed speaking to the New Arab, about three-quarters of the residents of Sarmin have fled the town, which is “the largest displacement the city has experienced since the ceasefire agreement was signed in March 2020,” due to “daily artillery and missile shelling.”
It has been widely pointed out that Assad’s Iranian and Hezbollah backers have been weakened due to defeat in Lebanon by Israel. In reality, this makes little sense, and hardly explains the complete rout that the Assadist armed forces have undergone, the fact that virtually no Syrian soldier in the whole country considered it worth laying down his life to save the genocidal dictatorship. No amount of extra Iranian or Hezbollah reinforcement would have made any difference.
In reality, the connection is somewhat different: it is precisely the fact that Hezbollah had to stop being a counterrevolutionary force in Syria but rather return to its resistance origins in its own country Lebanon – ie, return to standing on the side of the region’s peoples resisting oppression – that allowed for similar developments in Syria, ie, the Syrian peoples’ offensive against the Assad regime. Hezbollah is, after all, a Lebanese organisation, and its raison d’etre is supposedly defence of southern Lebanon. It was not Hezbollah’s defeat in Lebanon, but rather its resistance in Lebanon, that meant it couldn’t protect Assad’s tyranny. If anything, its defeat ad the signing of a ceasefire could have freed it to send forces back to Syria, had it chosen to. Yes, Israel destroyed a lot of Hezbollah’s capacity in Lebanon, but that was rockets aimed at Israel; they were never used in Syria to defend Assad in the past, why would they be now? Hezbollah’s role in protecting Assad was essentially manpower. Even Israel’s destruction of a lot of Iranian capacity in Syria means largely the infrastructure involved in delivering weapons across Syria to Hezbollah.
Much has also been made of the fact that the rebel offensive began at almost the same time as the Lebanon ceasefire came into effect, as if the defeat of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon was the signal for the rebels to launch the attack, even leading to conspiracy theories that Israel greenlighted the attack. However, as demonstrated above, it is the regime that has been attacking the rebels for the past year rather than using its forces to open a front on the Golan to aid Palestine or even to aid its ally Hezbollah, while the rebels were trying to ‘deter’ this aggression. The question is rather why the rebels waited so long to deter regime aggression.
In fact, the rebels purposefully waited until the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as not to be seen breaking any transit of arms between Iran and Lebanon across Syria while the war lasted. While the regime’s ongoing offensive made the necessity of their operation more and more acute, they were reluctant to wage it as long as the conflict continued. As Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, explained, HTS waited for a ceasefire “because they did not want anything to do with Israel … HTS is against Israel, it has praised the October 7 attacks, it is for the Palestinian cause, Israel has nothing to do with what HTS is doing.”
According to Hadi al-Bahra, head of the exile-based opposition leadership, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), plans for the offensive were a year old, but “the war on Gaza … then the war in Lebanon delayed it” because “it wouldn’t look good having the war in Lebanon at the same time they were fighting in Syria,” and therefore waited till the ceasefire. While the SNC itself has no control over the fighters (especially HTS, which is not part of the SNC), the article further notes that “Rebel commanders have separately said they feared if they had started their assault earlier, it might have looked like they were helping Israel, who was also battling Hezbollah.”
This also raises an interesting question about Hezbollah and Iranian intentions now. Hezbollah played a significant role in Assad’s counterrevolutionary genocide, acting as a proxy for the Iranian regime. Yet when it was in its existential struggle in Lebanon against Israel, the Assad regime did not lift a finger to help. The regime’s silence was stunning, it took it 48 hours to even issue a statement about the killing of Nasrallah. Meanwhile, the regime has been closing Hezbollah recruitment centres. Even in its statements on Lebanon it mostly didn’t mention Hezbollah.
Assad’s message to Hezbollah was: thanks for the help back then, was nice knowing you.
How likely then is it that Hezbollah or even Iran will send its own battered troops back to save Assad’s arse again? Hezbollah has already stated, diplomatically enough, that it has no plans to do so “at this stage,” while a Hezbollah spokesperson told Newsweek, comically enough, that “The Syrian Army does not need fighters. It can defend its land.” And this was probably an added incentive for any Hezbollah cadre who did happen to still be in Syria, and even other Iran-backed forces, to flee with the rest rather than stand and fight; and on the whole, there has been surprisingly little action by these Iran-led forces over the last week.
The other “why now” question relates to Russia. While Russian warplanes did bomb the advancing rebels, this was not at a very decisive level. Bombing civilians all year while the population remained largely passive was easy enough for a ramshackle bully state like Russia, but is less effective against an advancing revolution when not used in full force. Of course, some of this is due to Putin’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, where most of the Russian airforce is needed to bomb Ukraine in order to maintain its illegal conquest of one fifth of that country, while Putin had thought that Syria was pacified. But, as with the Iranians, there has not been much to show for even the Russian air capacity that is present in Syria, apart from stepping up barbaric attacks on the civilian infrastructure in Idlib, such as the bombing of five hospitals, including a maternity hospital and the university hospital.
But the relatively low profile of both Russian and Iranian backers in the defence of the regime also has two other causes: firstly, the collapse of regime defences itself means it is not just difficult but pointless to fight for a regime which will not fight for itself, indeed, as Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent Iranian analyst who advises officials on regional strategy put it, “Iran is starting to evacuate its forces and military personnel because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight;” and secondly, it may also be related to frustration with the Assad regime itself, which in turn relates to their long-term work with Turkey on the Astana process.
The role of Turkiye
While Turkiye was a major backer of the rebels in the early years, by around 2016 it began prioritising its conflict with the SDF in Syria over support for the uprising. Its series of agreements with Russia and Iran under the Astana process between 2017-2020 to freeze the frontlines in the northwest can be seen in this context. While Turkiye guaranteed rebel compliance, Russia supposedly guaranteed regime compliance. With the frontline quiet – well, quite on the rebel side – Turkiye invaded northeast Syria in October 2019 to drive the SDF from the border region, with the acquiescence of Trump and Putin; the reliance of the rebels on Turkish protection of their remaining enclave allowed Turkiye to coopt some in the SNA to take part in this invasion. The invasion in turn forced the SDF to allow the regime to send troops into part of the ‘Rojava’ region they controlled, especially the border region, thus extending regime control in Syria.
But the reason Turkiye could not simply betray the rebels outright and allow full Assadist reconquest of the northwest in exchange for alliance with Assad against the SDF is because Turkiye already has 3.6 million Syrian refugees within its borders, the largest refugee population on Earth; allowing Assad to completely take all of Idlib and Aleppo provinces would lead to another few million refugees pouring in, at a time when Turkiye actually wants to try to send as many as possible back to Syria. Refugees will not return to regime-ruled Syria as long as Assad remains in power. Therefore, Turkiye has to maintain support a certain amount of territory remaining under opposition control, and has to continue to push Assad to open a dialogue with the opposition under the terms of the Astana process and of UN Resolution 2254, which calls for a Syrian-led ‘political solution’ process, because such a political process, based on compromise, could also open avenues for safe refugee return.
However, while Russia and Turkey, together with Iran, had agreed to certain frontlines in 2017 under the Astana dialogue, between 2018 and 2020 the regime launched several gigantic offensives which cut the region controlled by the opposition in half, losing all of western Aleppo province, southern Idlib province and the parts of northern Hama and Latakia it had controlled. This added an extra 1.4 million displaced people to the 2.2 million already under opposition control, now squeezed into half the area. While Turkish action finally put a stop to the Assadist offensive in early 2020, this could not be satisfactory for Turkey: how could it begin sending refugees back into Syria when the liberated region was smaller than before with even more displaced?
Despite this, the Erdogan regime has continued to push for normalisation with Assad for several years now, with proposals for launching a joint offensive against the SDF in the east, despite US forces stationed there who work with the SDF against any re-emergence of ISIS. Both Erdogan’s ultra-rightist ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the opposition Kemalist CHP, have been strongly pushing for normalisation with Assad, a joint war with Assad against the SDF, and expulsion of Syrian refugees, on the absurd grounds that peace with Assad would allow refugees to return! [Interestingly, a number of European countries, led by Italy’s far-right Meloni government and Austria’s FPO, have been pushing much the same line, that refugee return requires reconciliation with Assad, with Italy recently sending an envoy back to the Assad regime].
Erdogan better understands the contradiction between those two stands: that refugees cannot be sent back if there is no opposition-held territory, that the only way to send them back to Assad would be violently, causing enormous upheaval, and that either expanding opposition territory, or reaching the compromise ‘political solution’, or both, are essential requirements for sending back refugees. Yet Assad, while open to normalising with Turkiye, demands withdrawal of Turkish forces as a precondition – which would likely mean Assadist reconquest – and resists all pressure to engage with the political process of UN Res 2254.
This is why much speculation has it that Turkiye gave the green-light to the offensive, to pressure Assad on these issues.
However, on November 25, just days before the rebel offensive began, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan stated that the withdrawal of Turkish troops was no longer conditional on either the regime reaching an agreement with the opposition, or the opening of the ‘political process’; seemingly, Turkiye was still making concessions to get the normalisation process happening. The fact that the offensive was led by HTS, rather than the SNA which Turkey initially held back, also suggests that Turkiye had nothing to do with the operation.
Others note however that several days after that statement, Fidan stated that Assad is clearly not interested in peace in Syria, so perhaps exasperation did lead to Turkey giving a green light to a “limited operation.” Either way, once the operation began, Turkiye could see its value in terms of pressuring Assad on the issues dividing them and returning non-regime territory to 2017 lines.
Since then, Turkish statements have been cautious. Erdogan has said nothing, while Fidan said that Turkiye had no involvement, declaring pointedly that “We will not initiate any action that could trigger a new wave of migration [from Syria to Turkiye],” and telling US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Turkiye was “against any development that would increase instability in the region.” On November 29, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that “the clashes experienced in recent days have caused an undesirable increase in tension in the region. It is of great importance for Turkey not to cause new and greater instabilities and not to harm the civilian population.”
One might think, OK, this was not Turkiye’s plan, but if the offensive does lead to the overthrow of Assad, then refugees would be able to return, and Turkish influence extended all over Syria. However, Turkiye has no control over HTS, nor will it be able to control a Syria after a successful revolution. With its main goal still to “leverage[e] the situation to push Damascus and its allies toward negotiations” via pressure from Russia and Iran, and to jointly fight the SDF, the Turkish regime would prefer a more controlled situation. On December 2, Erdogan stressed “the Syrian regime must engage in a real political process to prevent the situation from getting worse,” and that unity, stability and territorial integrity of Syria are important for Turkey.
For HTS, on the other hand, the very threat of a Turkish agreement with Assad, Russia and Iran in which it would be sacrificed was probably another reason to launch the offensive, and the independence it has gained by going so well beyond Turkey’s limited plan will be jealously guarded.
Furthermore, there is also the possibility that Assad, with Russian and Iranian support, may launch a furious counteroffensive if the rebel advance does not stop; Russia has vital strategic interests on the Syrian coastal region, and Iran in parts of the centre and south, and it is unlikely they would give them up without a massive fight beyond a certain line. And if that happened, it could lead to a further refugee outflow into Turkey.
Both Russia and Iran appear to be bending towards the Turkish position, and indeed, frustration with Assad’s intransigence, which led to this explosion, could well be a reason for the lack of Russian and Iranian response. On December 1, Russia emphasised the importance of “coordinated efforts within the framework of the Astana Format with the involvement of Turkey.” On the same day Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi “held a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara, where both agreed that foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Russia should meet soon.” Both are rational enough to see that if they don’t try to salvage something through a political process, they may end up with nothing [update: somewhat comically, as Daraa and Suweida and Homs were falling, and hours before Assad and family fled and Damascus fell, and the whole of Syria was celebrating, that Astana meeting did place, with Russia, Turkiye and Iran demanding “an end to hostile activities” in Syria!].
An interesting side-point here is HTS’s unexpected November 29 appeal to Russia, aiming to neutralise support for the regime. While condemning Russia’s bombing, the Political Affairs Administration of the SSG affirmed that “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia, and it is likewise not a party to what is happening in the Russia-Ukraine war, but rather it is a revolution that was started to liberate the Syrian people from … the criminal regime,” calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime or the persona of Bashar, but rather with the Syrian people in its history, civilisation and future” as “we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.”
Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Iraq: Go Assad!
As is well-known, three of the ‘Abraham Accords’ states – UAE, Bahrain and Sudan – restored relations with the Assad regime during much the same time period as they established relations with Israel, while Egypt, which has had relations with Israel for decades, also established strong relations with the Assad regime following the bloody military coup of al-Sisi in 2013.
Not surprisingly therefore, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty reiterated Egypt’s support for “Syrian national institutions” to his Syrian counterpart, stressing “Syria’s vital role in fostering regional stability and combating terrorism.” Similarly, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) told al-Assad that his country “stands with the Syrian state and supports it in combating terrorism, extending its sovereignty, unifying its territories, and achieving stability.” MBZ also recently put forward the idea to US officials of lifting US sanctions on the Assad regime if it cut off Iran’s weapons routes to Lebanon (an idea also put forward by Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer during his early November discussions with Russian leaders in Moscow). Jordanian King Abdullah II similarly said that “Jordan stands by the brothers in Syria and its territorial integrity, sovereignty and stability.” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani of the US-Iran joint-venture Iraqi regime also stressed that “Syria’s security and stability are closely linked to Iraq’s national security,” while a number of pro-Iranian Iraqi militia groups declared they are sending forces to Syria to bolster the regime – curiously after not having sent forces to aid their Hezbollah co-thinkers in Lebanon when under existential attack by Israel.
Juan Cole runs the often very useful ‘Informed Comment’ site, but like everyone, he has his areas of expertise … and not. One of the problems with Syria is the tendency of people who know little about it to make up for its alleged “complexity” by making sweeping statements and buying to crass stereotypes that they normally wouldn’t. In his first piece on this uprising, while correctly discussing the alliance of states like Egypt and UAE with Assad, he then proceeds, based on nothing at all, to claim “these anti-Iran forces include Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, and, outside the region, the United States. All are delighted at the news.” He then goes on to warn them that in reality, this may not be good news for them – as if they don’t already know, since they do not hold the view he so groundlessly ascribed to them!
Saudi Arabia was slower than its main allies (Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan) in restoring relations with Assad, just as it was with Israel. Despite constant media declarations that Saudi Arabia was about to normalise with Israel, it still hasn’t, but in the meantime it fully normalised with the Assad regime, and even with its great rival Iran, and it played the key role in getting Assad back into the Arab League in 2023. On December 2, Saudi leader MBS met with UAE leader MBZ, for the first time in years – their alliance has been replaced by rivalry – to discuss the Syria situation. There is little doubt MBS shares his partner’s concerns. As for Bahrain, it was one of the first Arab states to normalise with the Assad regime, just after UAE in late 2018, and like Egypt, UAE, Jordan and Israel, Bahrain welcomed the Russian intervention in 2015 to save Assad, as did Saudi Arabia secretly. Cole’s confident speculations are clearly baseless.
“In general, GCC states are supportive of the Assad regime and are firmly against it being challenged or indeed replaced by a coalition of Islamist and jihadi factions formerly associated with al-Qaeda,” according to Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with Chatham House, while Andreas Krieg, of the defense studies department of King’s College London, stressed the angle of them protecting growing Gulf, especially Emirati, investment in Syria.
USA – rebels “terrorists”
As for the US, on November 30, National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett released the following statement:
“… The Assad regime’s ongoing refusal to engage in the political process outlined in UNSCR 2254, and its reliance on Russia and Iran, created the conditions now unfolding, including the collapse of Assad regime lines in northwest Syria. At the same time, the United States has nothing to do with this offensive, which is led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist organization. [emphasis added]. The United States, together with its partners and allies, urge de-escalation, protection of civilians and minority groups, and a serious and credible political process that can end this civil war once and for all with a political settlement consistent with UNSCR 2254. We will also continue to fully defend and protect U.S. personnel and U.S. military positions, which remain essential to ensuring that ISIS can never again resurge in Syria.”
So, the opposition is terrorist, and we want de-escalation at a time it is winning. Doesn’t sound “delighted” to me. On December 2, the US, France, Germany and the UK released a joint statement urging “de-escalation,” claiming the current “escalation” underlines the need to return to the “political solution” outlined in UNSC Res 2254.
Israel: Collapse of Assad regime could lead to military threats
Israel has always supported the Assad regime against the opposition; throughout the Syrian conflict, Israeli leaders (political, military and intelligence) and think tankscontinually expressed their preference for the Assad regime prevailing against its opponents, and were especially appreciative of Assad’s decades of non-resistance on the occupied Golan frontier. This put it on the same side as its Iranian enemy, with the difference that it prefers the regime without Iran – hence Israel’s strong decade-long partnership with Russia starting with its 2015 intervention to save Assad; since then, the Israel-Russia agreement has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets anywhere in Syria at will, and the world-class Russian S-400 air defence system will not touch them.
But since Israel has just come through a successful war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Assad regime betrayed its ally, Israel can see the opportunity to put even more pressure on Assad, to completely cut the Iranian lines into Lebanon. As such, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s view that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there” is probably closest to the mainstream at present. Saar also said that Israel should “explore ways to increase cooperation” with the Kurds, “we need to focus on their interests,” which also seems to be a common view in Israel.
On November 29, Netanyahu held a security consultation with “defence” chiefs. He was told that Hezbollah’s forces will now be shifted to Syria, “in order to defend the Assad regime,” which will bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding, meaning that these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term, but “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” Channel 12, reporting on the meeting, also claimed concerns were raised that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime, including “the remnants of [its] chemical weapons,” could fall into the jihadists’ hands, so the IDF “is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act,” ie to destroy this weaponry before it falls into rebel hands.
So, not exactly “delighted.” This raises the question of why Israel apparently has no problem with these chemical weapons currently being in the hands of the regime! As far back as 2013, Israeli defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while Israel “is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons at present because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the Syrian government).”
It is interesting that the first point, that the blows suffered by the Assad regime “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” is likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria, fighting for Assad, is no problem for Israel, as long as they are not focused on Israel. This corresponds to the times when Israel’s support to the Assad regime against the uprising was something stated openly by Israeli political, military and security chiefs, except for the Iranian factor – yet at times it was even let slip that Israel supported Iranian and Hezbollah actions as long as it was focused on support for Assad.
For example, in 2015, IDF spokesperson Alon Ben-David stated that “The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border;” as a result, military intelligence services are “working on the preparation of a list of targets that are likely to be struck inside Syria, after a possible fall of the Assad regime” [clearly, that “list of targets” has come in handy now that “the fall of the Assad regime” has come about].
Other prominent spokespeople in the Israeli media include Dr. Yaron Friedman at the University of Haifa, who penned an article in Maariv which claimed that HTS “controls internal terrorism over the entire province of Idlib” and “like Hamas,” receives the support of Turkey and Qatar. He notes that “the opposition consists mostly of Sunni fanatics from the Salafi Jihadi stream” who “look like Hamas terrorists.” He stressed that while “Assad is far from being Israel’s friend … he is the old and familiar enemy” under whom “Syria has not waged a war against Israel for more than fifty years,” while “Bashar al-Assad has not lifted a finger in favor of Hamas or Hezbollah since the beginning of the war in Gaza.” Therefore, “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy. The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view.”
“The collapse of the regime in Damascus would pose a threat to the whole region, including Israel,” according to Yehuda Balanga, at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Nevertheless, Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, while largely agreeing, thinks there are voices now challenging the “the traditional Israeli approach of preferring Assad — the devil we know,” with a view of delivering a blow to Iran by getting rid of the Assad regime, but, “for the moment at least, the Israeli leadership is not considering such a possibility.”
One of the problems for Israel is the same as the problem for Russia and Iran – if the despot you have relied on for decades to service your varied and even opposing interests can no longer maintain that “stability,” but on the contrary, his house collapses like a pack of cards, then continued support would not just be be a bad investment, but be utterly pointless.
On possibility discussed is for Israel to invade and establish a “buffer zone” in southern Syria if the rebels take Homs. Apparently the Golan Heights is not enough of a “buffer” for Israel [update: this has come to be in a big way!]
With events moving rapidly, the rebels walked into Hama, again the regime simply melting away, with massive scenes of celebratory welcome by the population. Hama was where Hafez Assad slaughtered 40,000 people and bombed the city to suppress another uprising back in 1982, a dress rehearsal for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands and the bombing and destruction of all Syrian cities by the regime airforce during the 2011-2018 round.
For those who don’t know the significance of Hama falling to the rebels, this video is from Hama in 2011, when millions rose against Assad. As Syrian revolutionary Rami Jarrah says, “they were quickly silenced by Assad’s killing machine, these are the people who have just been liberated and this marks the end of the Assad regime.”
The rebels then moved onto Homs and again took it at lightning speed. Just as with Hama, we were warned that the rebels’ victory streak would finally meet resistance because, unlike the north, this is part of regime core areas, and there are more minority (Christian, Alawite and Ismaeli) populations in the region. Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, claimed “we will see more hardened lines in the core areas where the regime is strongest,” referring to Tartous, Lattakia, Homs, Hama and Damascus. Even Exile-based Syrian opposition leader, Hadi al-Bahra, declared he was ready to start negotiations with Assad on December 4 [postscript: talk about being out of touch with the people he claims to be a leader of!].
No such luck for the regime. Homs had been a very important centre of the 2011 revolution, in fact was called the ‘cradle of the revolution’, though it is true that there was sectarian division, which however was deliberately created by the regime. The regime bombed the city to the ground, as we see here:
Here is what the regime had done to Homs by 2013. Really, a regime ‘core’ area? The regime popular here?
Meanwhile, former rebels in the southern province of Daraa launched a new front called the Houran Free Gathering, which stormed police stations and local intelligence headquarters, disarmed regime checkpoints, seized weapons, and launched attacks on regime troops.” On December 6, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) took control of the Nassib border crossing with Jordan for the first time since 2018, leading Jordan to close the border, and the same day, these FSA fighting groups announced the establishment of a Southern Operations Room for the south of the country. By December 7, the whole of Daraa had fallen.
Daraa had been the birthplace of the revolution in March 2011; here is some footage from Daraa then showing peaceful protest and massacre. The movement was galvanised in April following the regime kidnap, murder and mutilation of 13-year old Daraa child Hamza al-Khatib and torture of other children for writing anti-Assad graffiti. For several years, Daraa was controlled by the democratic-secular FSA Southern Front, containing some 35,000 troops at its height, in over 50 brigades, but as Assad’s forces rolled in in 2018, as part of a Trump-Putin-Netanyahu agreement, many fighting units underwent forced ‘reconciliation’ with the regime under Russian auspices. These fighters have now reemerged, thrown off their ‘reconciled’ uniforms and were joined by other people rising against the regime.
The neighbouring Druze province of Suweida was something of a prequel of the new revolution when the people rose against the dictatorship back in August 2023, which at the time also echoed around the country; now again people took to the streets and demanded the fall of the regime. On November 28, the ‘Local Forces in Suweida’ issued a statement supporting the “battles to regain the lands in northern Syria against the regime.” On December 1, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Syria, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hajri, declared that Syrians were “at a historic turning point to end the conflict and stop the killing machine of Syrians and those who caused their displacement and migration over the years,” vowing support for the “the right of the owners of the land to return to their lands” mentioning Aleppo, Idlib and parts of Hama.” Meanwhile, a Druze militia called the Syrian Brigade Party issued a statement calling on Druze soldiers to defect and return home to Suweida, and soon police station and governent buildings were seized. In coordination with neighbouring Daraa, Suweida was also under the control of the revolution by December 7.
In the east, the Arab-led Deir ez-Zour Military Council in the SDF launched the ‘Battle of Return’ and captured seven villages on the eastern side of the Euphrates from which regime militias had been launching daily attacks on the SDF. According to the SDF, this offensive was in “response to the appeals of local residents amid escalating threats from ISIS, which seeks to exploit the unfolding events in the western part of the country.” Now the SDF has taken control of the west side of Deir ez-Zour city from the regime and Iranian forces (it already controlled the east side).
By early December 8, the combined southern forces from Daraa and Suweida had entered Damascus. All the previously revolution-held towns of the southern and eastern Damascus – Darayya, Moademiya, Madaya, Rabadani, Ghouta and so on – once again fell to revolution, despite the expulsion of their populations to the northwest when they were defeated in 2016-18, and their repopulation by the regime with supporters, including many Iraqi and Pakistani Shia, in a sectarian engineering program, which clearly did not save the regime. Then Damascus itself fell to the southern revolutionaries.
That still left Tartous and Latakia, the two provinces of ‘the Alawite coast’, which were considered very unlikely to fall to the revolution, both due to it allegedly being the strongest base of the regime (some 80 percent of military and security officers were Alawite) but also because this is where Russia would most likely put its foot down to defend its naval bases and airbases. Nevertheless, they collapsed, and as Assad statues came down in Tartous and Latakia, the revolution declared “The city of Tartous has been liberated, we are here with our people from all sects, Christians, Alawites, Sunnis, Druze and Ismailis, the Syrian people are one, to our people in Tartous, work with us to build our country, we will present a model to be proud of”. As one Alawite who was previously in a pro-regime Alawite militia appealed:
“Do not blame us and do not resent us. We were deceived for 14 years. Our awful life was under the delusion that if he [Assad] lost authority, we would be massacred and slaughtered. Our life was filled with great fear about the prospect of our being subject to genocide if he left. No one ever told us that you [the insurgents] would enter in such a peaceful way and without bloodshed. By God we have never treated anyone on a sectarian basis, but rather with all humanity and love. We lost martyrs, and you lost martyrs. God have mercy on all the martyrs. And let’s work together to build a new, free Syria: one hand and one people in all its sects and religions. To the dustbins of history, oh traitor [Assad]!”
The regime disappeared into history in 10 days. The speed of collapse demonstrates that the regime’s base even in what were considered its core areas had disappeared, that no-one is willing to fight for a genocidal and uber-corrupt hereditary monarchy any longer, and the markedly positive attitude of the rebel leadership towards minorities – supposedly one of Assad’s bases – has removed the fear that the acceptance of the dictatorship rested upon. There will be many struggles ahead, but today is the day for Syrians and people fighting oppression the world over to celebrate one of the most decisive and popular revolutions ever.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, Al Jazeera
By Michael Karadjis
The Lebanese people can feel some relief now that Israeli bombing has stopped – well, mostly, despite ongoing violations – and they can move back to their wrecked towns and homes. It is a good thing Hezbollah agreed to the ceasefire because there is no more to be gained against such a violent enemy.
However, there should be no doubt that Israel has just won a smashing victory in Lebanon with its wanton brutality, despite the heroism of the fighters in the south that kept its ground invasion forces at bay.
Many observers claim this is a partial “victory” for Hezbollah and partial defeat for Israel; if these tracts merely aim at morale boosting, that is understandable, but this is not useful for cold analysis, which is badly required at this time. On the other hand, there have also been statements from Israeli leaders, not only on the far-right but even in the centre,and frm many ordinary Israelis interviewed, that this was a “defeat” for Israel and that Netanyahu gave up a chance to “destroy” Hezbollah. These statements are not only the opportunist words of oppositionists, but also an indictment of current Israeli society at large, which remains united to an unusually large degree around insatiable lust for war and killing, around the idea that any war that doesn’t result in total holocaust for the enemy is a defeat for Israel.
Let’s look at the outcome. The ceasefire is based on UN Resolution 1701 of 2006, ie the Lebanese army will move in Lebanon south of the Litani river to replace Hezbollah, which has remained there since 2006 in defiance of the resolution; implementation of this has been demanded by Israel since then; clearly a victory for the Israeli position.
Worse, now there is a direct US (and French) role, alongside the long-term UN role, in the implementation. Pretty obvious whose interests this serves.
Further, in a special US letter to Israel that is attached to this agreement, the US has given Israel an on-paper guarantee of its right to attack targets inside Lebanon for “defensive” reasons, and as we know, for Israel, everything is “defence.” While the Lebanese government and Hezbollah are obviously not signatories to this letter, they obviously know of it as it is the basis on which Israel agreed to sign.
Next, this also means the end of the so-called “unity of arenas”, meaning Hezbollah’s earlier assertion that it would only agree to a ceasefire if there were a ceasefire for Gaza also. Of course, this “unity” was in fact limited to Hezbollah on the south Lebanon border, and the Houthis’ Red Sea blockade, and had no real echo in the actions of the Iranian regime, let alone the Iraqi or Syrian regimes, or the Iraqi Shiite militia. But now even that largely symbolic solidarity – with a heavy price in Lebanese blood – on the Israel-Lebanon border “arena” has ended.
Hezbollah itself has had its communications network, much of its capacity and nearly all of its leadership and command destroyed, while Lebanon has once again been laid to waste, with some 4000 killed and a quarter of the population uprooted.
So, in what senses can it be claimed that it was also at least a partial Israeli defeat or Hezbollah victory?
First, if we think that Israel’s aim was to re-occupy or annex Lebanon south of Litani (or that it in effect became its aim as it became intoxicated with its rapid victory), then Hezbollah’s defeat of the invading forces can certainly be considered a victory. The sacrifice of the south Lebanese resistance was in any case heroic and effective. However, this was never spelt out as Israel’s aim, it even explicitly denied it at times; the idea was just dangled by the some of the Israeli uber-right, either as an ambit claim to be easy to withdraw from, or to be ‘oppositional’ in some cases. Hezbollah’s actual victory over Israeli occupation in 2000 still sets the terms, and I see no reason for Israel to want to return there. Israel sent in troops to aid in its destruction of Hezbollah assets rather than to occupy, in other words, if the conflict was not already there, I don’t think there would have been an invasion (the border was quiet for 17 years).
Second, some say the fact that Hezbollah is still standing is a victory, because Israeli leaders claimed they wanted to “destroy” Hezbollah. But like with the mythical “destruction of Hamas,” these leaders know themselves when they say it that they are talking nonsense, and that a guerilla force rooted in the population cannot be “destroyed,” merely weakened – and no-one seriously denies how much Hezbollah has been drastically weakened (or Gaza has been genocided). These fantastic aims are merely a cover to keep killing and destroying (this being the actual aim in Gaza).
Third, some Lebanese argue that Israel had aimed to divide and rule, by widespread killing and destruction, hoping to put the non-Shia Lebanese (Sunnis and especially Christians) against the Shia, who live in the south facing Israel and form the base of Hezbollah. It is fair to say that Israel failed to do this at a community level; in any case, recklessly murdering people en-masse was never going to gain Israel any friends, no matter what they thought of each other. Acts of solidarity across communities on the ground were very important.
However, I think Hezbollah has a hard job ahead explaining to Lebanese what exactly they achieved in any sphere, from their decision to begin strikes in solidarity with Gaza on October 8 last year, that warranted thousands killed and the country again turned to rubble. While solidarity itself is good, do most Lebanese people believe it was Hezbollah’s decision to make? What will they say? That they beat back an invasion that was not happening before the border was activated? How do they explain resisting 1701 for 17 years then suddenly signing on? How do they explain no ceasefire without Gaza then dropping this?
Of course, they were right to drop these conditions and sign on, because they correctly recognised the sacrifice of Lebanese blood was too great. But many will question then why they didn’t make their concession on these two fundamental points loud and clear weeks ago, when Israel suddenly turned on Lebanon in full force?
We also have the harsh reality that a year of largely symbolic attacks on military targets across the Israeli border – which from the outset were met by much more murderous Israeli attacks – made no difference to the genocide in Gaza. Sure, it kept some troops stationed in the north to bomb Lebanon, though it is doubtful they would have removed them in any case. But the Gaza genocide has hardly relied on troop numbers, but rather on massive destruction of virtually everything in Gaza using warplanes and missiles. So, while the Palestinians no doubt appreciated the solidarity, there is nothing concrete in Gaza to show for it. I’m not happy to say that, but it is what it is.
It is very important also that Israel has not let up in Gaza at all while it escalated in Lebanon, on the contrary, it has pretty much carried out the Generals Plan for the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza to completion in the most barbaric fashion while the world was looking away at Lebanon. Whether we like it or not, this really does demonstrate the military power of Israel and belie the illusions many have had about the ability to militarily defeat it. So, on one hand, almost a year of small-scale Hezbollah attacks in the north of Israel made zero difference to the genocide in Gaza; then when Israel decided that it had decimated both Gaza, and Hamas, adequately to look elsewhere, it simply turned around and smashed Hezbollah’s capacity and leadership in about 10 days, then just kept wanton killing there more or less aimlessly because it could, yet all the while actually escalating its genocidal brutality in Gaza at the same time!
For the record, I don’t think destroying Lebanon or Hezbollah was ever a fundamental aim of Israel in this war (and still less is the Iran issue, which is essentially a spectacle/sideshow for the Zionist regime – and vice versa). I think Israeli leaders figured their state had to show its “deterrence” capabilities, with Hezbollah on its back for a year, so they turned around and demonstrated it with flying colours.
After all, what is Israel’s use to world imperialism if it cannot demonstrate “deterrence” to someone rudely firing on it, even if at a symbolic level? And while slaughtering in Lebanon a militia it claims is run by a brutal Iranian regime as “the head of the snake,” and global media can echo this nonsense, the real Israeli aims of completing the genocide in Gaza, total ethnic cleansing and annexation of the north of Gaza, and annexation of much of the West Bank, could go ahead with less coverage.
Incidentally, we heard for years that Hezbollah had “150,000 rockets aimed at Israel,” so it will not be a pushover like Hamas (actually, while I reject the idea that “the Palestinian fighters are winning” in a holocaust, I would say they have actually been much less of a pushover than Hezbollah ultimately). What happened to them? We’ve seen a few thousand. We’ve seen nothing remotely like capacity. I’m not condemning them for this, or saying they should or shouldn’t have used them fully. Maybe there are good arguments to not use them, to avoid “escalation”, though eventually that was not avoided. But if the … “axis resistance” concept was supposed to have something to do with Palestine, then wouldn’t full-scale genocide be precisely the time to use them? If not, when? What are they for? And if not for Palestine, then surely when Lebanon itself is under attack, and Hezbollah itself is being decapitated, would the time, right? So if not, what are they for? And whose decision would it have been to use them, or to not use them? Would it have been a sovereign decision of Hezbollah in Lebanon, or was it instead a decision to be made by the Iranian regime which sent them?
But Iran did not send them to Lebanon for the sake of Palestine, and apparently, not even for Lebanon or even Hezbollah. Oh, that’s right, the 150,000 missiles are just Iran’s forward defence, in case of an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities, placed in someone else’s backyard, where those people cop it sweet from Israel. Let’s be clear: there was no way Iran was never going to waste these rockets on Palestine, which has purely a symbolic value for the mullahs, or on Hamas, which had defied it by correctly siding with the Syrian uprising, and which did not warn Iran of October 7, and apparently, there was no way they were going to waste them even on Hezbollah itself.
As the Israeli attack was rapidly escalating, leading to Nasrallah’s assassination, Iranian president Pezeshkian, speaking at the UN in New York, responded “We don’t want war [with Israel]… We want to live in peace.” Nasrallah was told “the timing isn’t right” for Iran to come to Hezbollah’s aid, which raises the somewhat obvious question of “when is”, for a regime forever parading its “resistance” credentials. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi claimed, laughably, that “Hezbollah is fully capable of defending itself independently” at the moment when its communications network, its launching capacity and most of its historic leadership were being destroyed.
Of course, the Assad regime in Syria never lifted a finger for Palestine – that has never happened historically, and so was not expected – but notably also didn’t lift a finger for Hezbollah just across the border, despite Hezbollah – in sharp contrast to Hamas – having come to the regime’s aid as it was brutally suppressing its people in another genocide. Assad waited three days to even make a statement about the killing of Nasrallah, and meanwhile the regime closed Hezbollah recruitment offices, while turning a blind eye to Israeli expansion inside the Syrian-controlled part of Golan to link up to its war in southern Lebanon. While Israeli-Russian meetings, in both Israel and Russia, have discussed a mechanism whereby the Assad regime prevents Iranian arms crossing to Lebanon for Hezbollah. Of course, Russia has no relation to any “axis of resistance” so cannot be accused of “betrayal,” while the Assad regime is also not a real “member” of the “axis” but rather a kind of semi-partner which kept one foot in (due to Israel refusing to negotiate on the occupied Syrian Golan), however, one with zero “resistance” credentials and with solid alliances also with the most pro-Israel Arab regimes (Egypt, UAE, Bahrain). Iran, however, is supposed to be the real thing, the head of the “axis.”
Let the reality sink in. Hezbollah fighters sacrificed on the ground, the Lebanese people paid with rivers of blood, but the alleged “axis” behind them was always a myth, and a catastrophic one. Even more catastrophic for the Palestinians, whose leadership apparently formed illusions, after reconciling with Iran the last few years, that someone was going to come to their aid in a decisive way, even despite Iran and Hezbollah telling them, honestly enough if indirectly, “now is not the right time” (ie, forget it). Perhaps Hamas imagined they would be shamed into action.
The worst defeat for Palestine since 1948 is not the “end of Palestine.” Palestinian people still live and so will find another means of struggle against the colonial, apartheid reality between the river and the sea. But this round is done, this ‘paradigm’ is done, and hopefully the illusions with it. No repressive capitalist states, whether labelled “resistant” or otherwise, are ever going to give a fig about the Palestinians while they brutally oppress their own peoples. Their relationship to Israel is symbiotic. Towards the new liberation struggle.
Chief of staff of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces Fayyad Al-Ruwaili meets his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Bagheri in Tehran to discuss defence ties, November 10.
by Michael Karadjis
Global media:
2005: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are approaching the establishment of diplomatic relations to counter Iran.”
2010: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are approaching the establishment of diplomatic relations to counter Iran.”
2012: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are approaching the establishment of diplomatic relations to counter Iran.”
2015: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are approaching the establishment of diplomatic relations to counter Iran.”
2017: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are approaching the establishment of diplomatic relations to counter Iran.”
2020: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are approaching the establishment of diplomatic relations to counter Iran.”
2022: “Israel and Saudi Arabia are approaching the establishment of diplomatic relations to counter Iran.”
And then …
March 2023: Saudi Arabia and Iran restore diplomatic relations, under Chinese auspices (still no sign of these famous Saudi-Israel relations)
After this: Ongoing Saudi-Israel normalisation discussions via the US: while Israel ruled by the most right-wing regime ever which would never even consider a Palestinian state, this is Saudi Arabia’s absolute condition for normalisation:
June 13, 2023: Saudi Arabia:Normalisation with Israel based on 2002 Arab Plan for full Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders and establishment of Palestinian state “still on the table”:
Fahad Nazer, chief spokesman of the Saudi Embassy in Washington: “Saudi Arabia’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been clear and has been consistent for many years. In fact, it was the late King Abdullah, who, way back in 2002, introduced what is now known as the Arab Peace Initiative at the Arab League Summit in Beirut in that year. And the proposal, the initiative, does offer Israel normalization with all members of the Arab states in return for a just and comprehensive peace with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution … that offer really still remains on the table,” the core issue of Palestinian rights is still a must before normalization can truly continue.
August 14, 2023: Saudi Arabia appoints ambassador to State of Palestine and attempts to put office in East Jerusalem (which is prevented by Israel):
Saudi Arabia has given its ambassador to Jordan, Nayef al-Sudairi, an extra portfolio of ambassador to Palestine in East Jerusalem. “He presented his credentials to Majid al-Khalidi, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Saudis did not coordinate this appointment with the Israelis … The Saudis may have hoped to open a consulate in East Jerusalem, but the current extremist government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu truculently batted away any such prospect, saying that al-Sudairi may meet as he pleases with officials of the Palestinian Authority, but he may not have an office in East Jerusalem.
Yes, with occasional vague statements meant such as MBS’ September 20 statement that “Every day, we get closer” to an agreement with Israel, as long as we “solve” the Palestinian issue in a way that “will ease the life of the Palestinians,” which has been widely cited to mean the above conditions were dropped. No doubt aimed at ‘testing the waters’ for betrayal. Yet same conditions re-stated firmly within days:
September 26, 2023: Saudi Arabia: 2002 Arab Peace Initiative for Palestinian state fundamental pillar of any agreement with Israel
Saudi ambassador to Jordan and Palestine, Nayef Al-Sudairi, told reporters in Ramallah his visit “reaffirms that the Palestinian cause and Palestine and the people of Palestine are of high and important status and that in the coming days there will be a chance for a bigger cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the state of Palestine. … the Arab initiative, which Saudi Arabia presented in 2002, is a fundamental pillar of any upcoming agreement.”
All the above was before October 7, 2023, which much fanfare has claimed hardened the Saudi position and prevented an alleged “imminent” Saudi-Israel normalisation. Statements afterwards may appear harder, but are fundamentally similar to those before; the idea of “imminence” seems highly questionable:
February 6, 2024: Saudi Arabia: No diplomatic relations with Israel without Palestinian state on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital:
Blinken: To normalise with Israel, Saudi Arabia requires “a clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.” Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs: There has been a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state” for the past 30 years, called the Oslo Accords, which however has gone nowhere. “The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
16 October, 2024: Saudi Arabia wants to permanently close chapter on differences with Iran:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian: Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia are “our brothers.” Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan: Saudi Arabia seeks to “permanently close the chapter on our differences [with Iran] and focus on resolving issues, developing relations as two friendly and brotherly countries”
October 19-20: Joint Saudi-Iranian naval exercises
November 11, 2024: Saudi Arabia denounces ‘genocide’ committed by Israel at Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Conference which it organised:
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman at joint summit of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Conference in Riyadh: “The kingdom reiterates its denunciation of the genocide perpetrated by Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people, which resulted in more than 150,000 martyrs, wounded and missing, the majority of whom are women and children … and the extension of aggressions on the brotherly Republic of Lebanon.”
A point of clarification: in outlining the plain facts of the matter above, I am not even remotely trying to put a good face on the uber-repressive Saudi monarchy, and still less the ‘modernising’ tyrant Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who, as anyone who understands his politics knows, would probably sell his mother for any dirty deal with anyone if he thought he could get away with it. Principles simply don’t come into it with MBS. There are even rumours – denied by the Saudis – that MBS secretly met Netanyahu with American officials in Saudi Arabia in 2020, though nothing came of it.
In any case, since I am pointing to the growing Saudi-Iranian convergence, one might say that is not much better. The Iranian regime, for example, played a key role alongside Russian imperialism in drowning Syria in the blood of hundreds of thousands to keep the Assad family dictatorship in power, uprooting half the Syrian population; almost a third of Syrians remain in exile in the world’s largest ‘Nakbah’. But then, even that point falls flat because the Saudi monarchy is hardly better with its own multi-year barbaric air war in Yemen which has likewise led to hundreds of thousands of deaths; Saudi Arabia and Iran – both highly repressive, theocratic and misogynist regimes – suit each other, and suit Israel – so to be clear, we are talking here about interests, not principles or who is ‘better’.
In other words, good they are not warring with each other, but nothing to celebrate either: the Saudi-Iran convergence is a new counterrevolutionary alliance formed on the grave of the Arab Spring revolutions, which they both actively participated in drowning in blood.
Likewise, speaking of interests, I am not doubting that the Saudi ruling class can see great benefits of normalising with Israel, the wealthiest, most technologically advanced capitalist state in the region. The Saudis’ massive ‘Vision 2020’ modernising project can greatly benefit from Israeli trade and technology; and likewise the Saudi repressive forces can benefit from Israeli weapons technology, surveillance equipment and so on – which Arab ruling classes wouldn’t? And one widely touted impetus, the proposed India– Middle East–Europe Corridor’ (IMEC) – would bring significant infrastructure development to Saudi Arabia, yet virtually implies Saudi-Israeli normalisation, at least de facto.
Abraham Accords: Why not Saudis?
However, there are good reasons why some Arab ruling classes have normalised with Israel – Egypt in 1978, Jordan in 1994, then UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in the Abraham Accords of 2010, and, effectively, Oman – while the majority, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Algeria – have not. Despite the fact that those who have normalised are more or less ‘Saudi allies’ in a loose sense, Saudi Arabia did not join the Abraham Accords. These accords gave Israel recognition from these states while the Palestinians got nothing in return. Why can’t Saudi Arabia do the same?
Principally, because Saudi Arabia is not just any Arab country, but the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Mecca & Medina, and a state which projects itself as head of the entire Sunni Muslim world – these two related facts are central to the very legitimacy of the Saudi state. It would be no small thing for this state to recognise Israel while Jerusalem of all places, where the third Holy Mosque is located, remains under Israeli occupation; in fact the two things are virtually irreconcilable. Additionally, the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative for a sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital was precisely a Saudi initiative, signed in Riyadh; it is known interchangeably as the Saudi Peace Plan and so betrayal would in effect be a blow to its own prestige.
And this Saudi raison d’etre goes well beyond the autocratic regime. According to a report in The Atlantic, MBS told US State Secretary Blinken back in January that he “personally doesn’t care” about Palestine, but his people do – indeed, 96 percent of Saudis are opposed to normalising with Israel and believe those Arab states that have established ties should sever them. MBS was not kidding when he said that he does not want to end up like Jordanian King Abdullah I, assassinated in 1951, or Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, assassinated in 1981, in both cases for betrayal of Palestine.
The point here is not that Saudi Arabia is about to put up any active “resistance” to Israel’s ongoing occupation and genocide, but rather that official symbolism can be as necessary for regime survival as it is meaningless in practice. After all, the Iranian regime, which preaches “death to Israel” rhetoric, has offered no more “resistance” in practice to the Gaza genocide than have the Saudis; indeed the Iranian regime didn’t even lift a finger to assist its own proxy, Hezbollah, when it came under existential Israeli attack in October. So pointing out that a Saudi-Israeli deal is mostly in the realm of fantasy has nothing to do with illusions that the Saudi regime might actually do something to help Palestine.
The differing bases of Saudi-Iranian and Israeli-Iranian conflict
Meanwhile, the motivations for Saudi Arabia to push on with its detente with Iran are just as compelling as are those for detente with Israel, but currently without the same dangers. Indeed, if regional stability is essential for MBS’ Vision 2030 transformation project, then establishing relative peace with Iran is just as important as with Israel. Indeed, at this particular juncture, it is not hard to see that Israel’s actions are vastly more destabilising to the region than are Iran’s, which may have been different a decade ago. Moreover, despite the potential benefits of IMEC, the project may take decades to complete, and meanwhile Saudi Arabia can also see benefits of economic expansion into the Iran-Iraq-Syria space.
Far from being a US ‘proxy’ as sometimes depicted, the sub-imperial Saudi regime has built powerful political and economic relations with both Russia and China. Its partnership with Russia in OPEC+ goes back to 2016, as the two major oil exporters have coordinated on global supply and price issues; and just before this, Saudi Arabia’s flooding of the world oil market to force down prices is widely viewed as being aimed at US shale oil, as the US now joined these states as a major oil exporter and hence competitor for the first time; the Saudis again attacked US shale oil with an engineered price collapse in 2020. In contrast, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and US attempts to sanction Russia, the Saudis have snubbed Washington’s entreaties to increase supply; continual Saudi-Russian agreements to reduce supply, thus keeping prices high, have helped bankroll the Russian war. Meanwhile, following Chinese leader Xi’s lavish welcome in Riyadh in late 2022, where the two countries signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” and Chinese and Saudi firms signed 34 investment deals, Saudi-Chinese economic relations have boomed; these agreements partially align Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The Saudis have even agreed to trade oil to China in renminbi rather than the dollar – a potential future hole in the historic ‘petrodollar’ hegemony – although this has not proceeded very far yet. Saudi Arabia’s main ‘ally’ in terms of arms provision remains the US, of course, but it clearly has no interest in being boxed in by one potential future project, still less one imaginary ‘camp’; ‘proxy’ it definitely is not.
The ironic thing about the Israel-Iran tension escalating while the Saudi-Iran tension eases is that it is precisely the Saudi-Iran tension that had a real material reality, based on actual rivalry for domination of the Arab-Muslim region between these two sub-imperial giants. Their geopolitical/sectarian-coloured rivalry, which took on an active form in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen in particular, was aimed at gaining a larger sphere of influence within the region for one or the other, which potentially meant more trade, more investment, more goods sold, more economic deals and links, more profit. Erdogan’s Turkey, using the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood as his tool, was the third sub-imperial rival of both. In addition, Saudi Arabia and Iran are both major oil exporters, and therefore rivals in this sphere as well – and rivals of both the US and Russia. As such, historic US sanctions on Iran, regardless of motivation, have benefited Saudi Arabia – and Russia.
The Israel-Iran hostility, by contrast, has no such basis, as Israel has zero potential for either popular legitimacy or even any serious economic penetration in that region (as I have explained in detail here); while high-tech Israeli capitalism is spread far and wide throughout the rest of the world, it is effectively locked out of this region, widely hated by the people, with very little trade taking place even with countries like Egypt and Jordan that normalised with it decades ago. It is not an oil competitor with Iran or Saudi Arabia, and neither country sells it anything (Israel’s oil mostly comes from Azerbaijan, Kazakhistan and Russia). But state regimes also have to maintain support of their own populations, or at least consensus to rule; and this is achieved through hegemonic ideologies which can be based on ‘nation’, ‘race’, religion or other ideologies, which can take on a life of their own and not always correspond neatly to economic interests abroad.
As such, the more symbolic Israel-Iran ‘conflict’ is rooted in hegemonic mobilisation: the Zionist and Iranian ethno-theocratic projects both need the “great enemy” of each other to justify themselves. The Iranian “threat” to Israel – whether in its “liberatory” face projected by the Iran-led so-called “resistance axis,” or its expansionist-genocidal face projected by Israel – is an entirely manufactured promise/threat, but the need for such a major “threat” is crucial to the ideological foundations of the late Zionist state, as it is likewise to the ‘Islamic Republic’ state, especially for influence in the mostly Sunni Arab region where it is somewhat of an outlier as a Persian-based and Shiite regime. Importantly, this great ideological ‘enmity’ is mediated by safe geographic distance.
Saudi motivations for Iran detente: Mutual exhaustion in rivalry
The reason for the Saudi-Iranian détente derives from the same material reality as did their regional rivalry; it reflects mutual exhaustion and the desire to now get on with peaceful capitalist expansion within the spheres of influence their decade of rivalry has defined. On Syria, Saudi Arabia effectively gave up its attempt to influence the anti-Assad uprising soon after it launched its bloody intervention in Yemen in 2015, and Russia likewise launched its bloody intervention to save Assad the same year, which Saudi leader MBS silently supported; the Saudis had been motivated more by rivalry with Iran, which backed Assad, and also with the Qatar-Turkey-Muslim Brotherhood axis, which backed the anti-Assad uprising, than genuine opposition to Assad, so Russia’s intervention to save Assad was seen as a means to getting an Assad regime less dominated by Iran – MBS’ secret support to Russian intervention thus coincided with the open support given to it by Israel, Egypt, the UAE, Jordan and Bahrain.
While the centre of their ‘hot’ rivalry then turned to Yemen, by 2022, both the 7-year Houthi attempt to conquer southern and eastern Yemen, and the Saudi attempt to reconquer northwest Yemen from the Houthis, had come to nothing, as the different governing bodies held on where they had their bases of support. This led to the ceasefire which has held from early 2022 to the present, and the Saudis have no interest in reigniting the war.
As for Iraq, there we have a regime dominated by Iranian-allied parties, where the Iranian-backed Shiite militia under the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) umbrella are part of the Iraqi armed forces, yet which withdrew its ambassador from Iran, and filed a complaint with the UN Security Council, when Iran attacked the Iraqi Kurdish region in January 2024, which just signed a defence pact with Saudi Arabia, and which still has US occupation troops on its soil and is an official out-of-area ‘NATO-partner’! A true joint-venture state! And since Iranian rivalry was the only real problem the Saudis had with Assad, patching it up with Iran also allowed them to join their Abraham Accords allies – who had re-established relations with Assad at much the same time they did with Israel – in re-establishing relations with the Assad regime and inviting Assad to the 2024 Arab League summit. Also worth noting is that the Arab League, led by Saudi Arabia, dropped its characterisation of Hezbollah as a “terrorist” entity in 2024.
It is interesting that their ‘hot’ rivalry coincided with the ‘hot’ period of the Arab Spring revolutionary uprisings. While Iran played the key role in smashing it in Syria and Iraq, Saudi Arabia the main role in Bahrain and Egypt, and both played awful roles in Yemen and Sudan (yet both, ironically, supported the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya), they also both used the ferment to attempt to co-opt forces inimical to the other and compete in arming fellow tyrants to bend to their side in their rivalry. One may expect that the crushing of Spring would exacerbate rivalries, because what they had in common – hatred of popular revolt – had been put down. Yet in fact, the crushing of Spring also coincided with both the mutual exhaustion of their rivalry, and hence a counterrevolutionary convergence could be formed over the graves of hundreds of thousands of Arabs they buried.
To be clear: Saudi Arabia’s dedication to its new convergence with Iran does not in itself reduce its motivation to normalise with Israel, if Israel were ever to concede on the Palestinian state; on the contrary, creating ‘peace’ with both would seen by the Saudi rulers as the ultimate measure of their regional power. Yet this is precisely where Israel’s more symbolic, ideological mobilizational conflict with Iran becomes more intense: the idea that there can be peaceful coexistence with Iran, depicted as some kind of ‘Fourth Reich’ by Israel, cuts directly across this ideological picture. Furthermore, even though Israel cannot hope for any major economic penetration into the region as explained above, by drumming up the Iranian “threat,” Israel’s major military and “security” industries aim to profit via cooperation with the military and repressive forces of the Gulf regimes, including Saudi Arabia; Saudi/Gulf détente with Iran is not good for Israeli business.
Will this change with Trump?
All that said, it is not out of the question for things to change again – much speculation concerns the difference the newly elected Trump regime in the US will make. It has been pointed out that MBS was on better terms with Trump than with Biden, who in the beginning aimed to ‘shun’ Saudi Arabia’s viciously anti-democratic rulers, whereas Trump never made any pretences over ‘human rights’ concerns; and that the Abraham Accords were Trump’s legacy, so he may try to continue them with a vengeance.
However, Biden dropped all that ‘shunning’ stuff once he decided that extending the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia would become his legacy. And what conditioned his failure – an extremist Israeli government officially opposed to any concept of Palestinian state, combined with such a state being the key Saudi condition – remains the same under Trump. Even more, in fact, given that the Trump regime is essentially ideologically identical to the Netanyahu regime on the question of Israeli annexation of the West Bank – Biden at least made nods towards the ‘two-state’ concept. How would the Saudis reconcile recognising Israel with the politics of Trump’s Christian fundamentalist-messianic Zionist ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee – who believes there is no such thing as a Palestinian, and no such things as the West Bank – not to mention the rest of Trump’s assemblage of the most pro-Zionist administration in US history?
So Trump would have a job on his hands trying to push Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords, no matter how chummy he may be with MBS. Could he perhaps bribe MBS with enough money and weapons and promises of a ‘US security pact’ to convince him to recognise Israel with no Palestinian state and put his regime and life at risk? Could his radical anti-Iranian position perhaps get the Saudis to change tack, drop the Iranian détente and join a US attack on Iran in the hope of getting in a ‘knock-out punch’ against Iran that overcomes the mutual exhaustion that led to détente, to instead achieve more complete Saudi hegemony?
Perhaps; I don’t claim to be a seer. But there are good reasons to doubt such unlikely outcomes. In addition to the points above, there is also the fact that when push came to shove, Trump did not come to the party last round. In 2019, a massive Iranian attack (laughably attributed to the Houthis) on the Saudi oil industry put half of it offline, cut 5 percent of world crude production and led to the biggest spike in oil prices for decades; Trump’s response was, first, to declare the US was “locked and loaded” to respond, but the next day, that “I’m somebody that would like not to have war.” Nothing happened. So the same hawkish Trump who ripped up the JCPOA in deference to Israel, imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran and assassinated head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp, Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad, now turned on his dovish face when it came to defending its Saudi ally. The Saudis, therefore, have every reason to consider him a bad investment.
Besides, it is unclear that is even the direction the highly unpredictable Trump regime will go. While giving 100 percent support to Israel for its maximal goals in Palestine appears a given, it should not be assumed that Trump will necessarily be as accommodating with regard to issues of a fundamentally secondary nature to Israel; and we should be clear that Iran is in this class, a symbolic, diversionary, mobilisational ‘issue’ for Israel rather than anything fundamental. In fact, these Iranian and Israeli attacks on each others’ soil this year have been about ‘demonstrating deterrence’ but had essentially nothing to do with Palestine.
So, on the one hand, the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump “plans to drastically increase sanctions on Iran and throttle its oil sales as part of an aggressive strategy to undercut Tehran’s support of violent Mideast proxies and its nuclear program,” and, when Biden pressured Israel to not hit Iran’s nuclear facilities in its October 26 air attack, Trump retorted “that’s the thing you want to hit right?”; while on the other, Trump has also said he aims to be “friendly” with Iran and opposed to any US involvement in ‘regime change’, his billionaire advisor Elon Musk met Iran’s UN ambassador in New York to discuss how to defuse tensions, and Trump said that the US “has to make a deal” with Iran, “because the consequences are impossible” – just a deal that Trump can somehow pass off as “better for the US” than the one he ripped up. His vice-president, JD Vance, was even more explicit, stating following Israel’s October 26 Iran strike that while this was a case of Israel legitimately defending itself, “sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran.”
Even more intriguing is that Ron Dermer, a Netanyahu aide, told Trump and his Zionist nut-job son-in-law Jared Kushner that Israel aims to deliver a ceasefire in Lebanon in order to “gift something to Trump,” which strongly implies that Israel has been continuing its seemingly aimless and endless murderous rampage in Lebanon, long after calling Hezbollah’s bluff and wiping out most of its leadership, only to first embarrass Biden and help him lose the election, and then further so that a ceasefire coincides with Trump assuming the presidency as a “gift.” Though that may depend on whether or not the highly intoxicated Zionist regime decides that southern Lebanon is in fact ‘Israel’, and whether or not Trump will go that far or draw a line.
So perhaps Trump won’t even attempt to challenge the Saudi-Iranian relationship. And perhaps Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran will all emerge victorious in their own right under a Trump regime, with only the Palestinians losing out. I‘m not putting money on it: Trump may well decide an attempt to destroy Iran will be his ‘legacy’, though I wouldn’t put money on that either. Even then it is highly doubtful the Saudis would be drawn into it, or into relations with Israel without at least a Palestinian mini-state to show for it.
There may seem an obvious contradiction between Trump’s calls for Israel to be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza, and his statements that he wants Israel “end the war quickly,” both of which he has made over the last year or so. The easiest way to explain it is simply that he is a liar, simply says what his audience wants to hear, and is smart enough to word these statements vaguely enough so that they are open to interpretation. In that sense, the circle is easy to square: Trump wants to allow Israel to go even harder, as hard as humanly possible, in order to “finish the job” (ie genocide), and that way, he can “end the war quickly.” “Peace through strength” and all that.
However, there is another way of looking at this. Israel has already won the war in Gaza, we must regretfully admit, notwithstanding many illusions to the contrary. A recent UN report showed that Gaza had been set back 7 decades, while another claimed that it would take 350 years to rebuild to what was there before. It would take at least 14 years just to clear the 42 million tonnes of rubble. Everything necessary for human existence has been destroyed. Probably several hundred thousand over time, “by hook or by crook,” have crossed over into Egypt, and from there “to some other corner of the world,” according to Professor Norman Finkelstein, and can never return; the numbers of dead are estimated to be many times the official 43,000 count. Sure, Netanyahu has not been able to drive all 2.3 million Palestinians into Egypt as initially hoped because the Egyptian al-Sisi dictatorship hates Palestinians as much as Israel does, and so shows … “resistance” to the new Nakbah. And sure, the second plan, the currently under-implementation ‘Generals’ Plan’, to push everyone remaining in northern Gaza into the absurdly crowded south, across the Netzarim Corridor which cuts across the middle of Gaza that will remain occupied by Israeli troops, and hence annex the norther half, is not complete, but has been in operation for the last 6 weeks and there are only estimated to be 75-95,000 Palestinians remaining in the north, and they are under immediate threat of mass starvation; Israel now admits it will not allow anyone to return.
Just to clarify, we often hear that Israel has not achieved any of its “stated aims,” namely to “destroy Hamas” and get the hostages home, “all it has achieved is genocide.” Genocide, however, has been precisely Israel’s aim all along; the “stated aims” are just smokescreens. It never had anything to do with the absurd idea of “destroying Hamas”, because everyone, especially Israeli leaders, knows that a resistance movement cannot be “destroyed” as long as people are under brutal occupation; one might claim therefore that Israel is removing the people themselves in order to destroy the resistance movement based among them, but even that is putting things in reverse: the aim is to remove the people, and having a “stated aim” that is absurd and unachievable allows Israel to just keep on carrying out the actual aim. Though of course a resistance movement like Hamas can be drastically weakened, and this has been achieved, alongside its leadership being wiped out. As for the hostages, if returning them alive was the goal, Israel would have agreed to a ceasefire and hostage exchange long ago; no rational person thinks this can be achieved via genocidal bombing, which has already killed plenty of Israeli hostages.
Why then has Netanyahu resisted calls by a host of Israeli political leaders of the Zionist “centre” (who would not be “centre” anywhere else in the world, eg, hard war criminals like former prime minister Ehud Olmert), and, toothlessly, by Biden, to wind up the war – as Olmert assessed back in May that “we have seen a genuine, impressive and unprecedented victory” – and do a deal to get Israeli hostages back? Seems to me it has a lot to do with Netanyahu wanting to get Trump back into power. Keep the war and killing going, know that Biden/Harris will do nothing except issue statements of concern, Trump returns. Indeed, Trump even asked Netanyahu to not sign any ceasefire/hostage exchange deal before the US elections as it might ruin his election chances.
So, now that Trump has returned, well, kill a while longer, especially to complete the Generals Plan in northern Gaza, so by the time Trump assumes full office in late January, he will be able to say “OK Bibi, that’s enough for now,” and Bibi will (perhaps) be in a position to finally sign on to a ceasefire as he has “finished the job,” and Americans and the world see that Trump “ends the war”.
OK, but in that case, if Israel has indeed finished the job, why would it need to continue it just to help get Trump elected, because in that case, why would it even need Trump? Since Biden/Harris already quite happily let Israel “finish the job” as Trump requested of them, without even needing his requests?
Yes, absolutely, but Gaza is not the prize. For Israel, the prize is the West Bank, which is about 17 times the size of Gaza, despite having an almost similar number of people. Gaza needed to be destroyed, because it is a giant refugee camp from 1948 Israel; a living embodiment of the first Nakbah. In itself though, its value is limited, though of course Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has stated that once the population is removed from Gaza by driving them into Egypt or the desert, it will be prime real estate as its “waterfront property could be very valuable.” But the West Bank is the real deal.
Netanyahu therefore has good reason to believe that Trump and his far-right team (and on the issue of Israel/Palestine, there is no difference between the Trumpist/nativist far-right and the neoconservative far-right in the Republican Party) will allow Israel to outright annex the West Bank, or at least annex about half of it, where the Israeli “settlers” and their settler-only highways, cutting up the Palestinian population centres, are located. Indeed, as soon as Trump’s election victory was announced, Netanyahu appointed an extreme right-wing supporter of West Bank “settlement,” Yechiel Leiter, as new Israeli ambassador to the US. Leiter has called for Israeli ‘sovereignty’ over the West Bank, and is a former member of the extreme right-wing Jewish Defense League, founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, which was designated a terrorist organisation by the US and even by Israel in the 1990s; now Itamar Ben-Gvir, another Kahanist, is Netanyahu’s Minister of National Security.
Outright annexation of the West Bank, or the parts colonised by Israel, would leave the major Palestinian population centres as mere reservations, towns with no economy and no land, to rot, its people merely cheap labour at best for Israeli bosses. Of course, that is already the de facto situation, but if Netanyahu were to formally annex the region and Trump were to recognise it, then perhaps Trump and even Netanyahu may be happy to call these disconnected towns a “Palestinian state” and demand Palestinians accept this as the “deal of the century” if they really want “peace.”
Not that Biden, Harris and the Democrats would have done a thing to stop Netanyahu if his regime did go ahead an annex all or half the West Bank; but it is very unlikely that they would give it formal recognition. Throughout the past year, even while continuing to arm the genocide and allow Israel to cross every ‘red line’, Biden and his ministers have continually said that after Israel was done “defending itself,” there would need to be a settlement based on the “two-state solution,” that Palestinians also have some rights and so on. Of course, Biden’s “two-state solution” is not the international consensus two states, ie, based on a Palestinian state in all of the territory occupied by Israel in 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital; but nevertheless, any idea of “two states” with at least enough basis for the reactionary Arab states to sign on to is still based on the international legality of UN resolutions, rather than by formalising the violation of them as Netanyahu and Trump prefer. Even on Gaza, while allowing Israel to do everything, the Biden government has still said there can be no annexation or re-settlement of Gaza or part of it.
So, while it would do nothing if Israel formally annexed the West Bank, and would probably continue to arm Israel to the teeth anyway, a Harris-led government would however express a lot of “concern” about the move, declare that it does not help the “peace process,” tut-tut a lot about it, keep talking about the need for a half-baked “two state solution,” talk about “diplomacy” and “international law,” refuse to give it formal recognition. With Trump, Netanyahu doesn’t need to listen to such sermons; he gets full recognition of the annexation of the West Bank, and then everyone can blame the Palestinians for rejecting “the best ever offer.”
The global media unanimously and lazily claims that Hezbollah initiated “attacks on northern Israel” on October 8 (in response to Israel beginning its genocidal attack on Gaza), which Israel “responded” to. Yet strictly speaking, this is not correct.
On October 8, Hezbollah attacked Israeli military facilities in the Shebaa Farms, a piece of territory claimed by Lebanon under illegal Israeli occupation since 1967, not recognised as “Israel” by the UN or almost any country internationally (Israel’s claim, which the UN agrees with, that it is part of the illegally occupied Syrian Golan rather than of Lebanon hardly justifies Israel’s position!). Resistance to occupation is legal in international law. Indeed, alongside solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah also declared its operation was “On the path to liberate the remaining part of our occupied Lebanese land.” Hezbollah in other words did not attack Israel on October 8! Israel responded with attacks into Lebanon, thus Israel was the first to attack the other country’s sovereign territory, not Hezbollah.
The next day, October 9, Palestinian militants – not Hezbollah – based in southern Lebanon slipped across the Israeli border and killed an Israeli soldier, wounding several others; Hezbollah had no involvement. There are some half a million Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon, who aim to return to their country; they will join a battle involving Palestine whether Hezbollah does or not (for example, as they did earlier, in April 2023, when Israel attacked the al-Aqsa mosque). Israel retaliated with a helicopter-gunship attack on Lebanon which killed three Hezbollah militants; Hezbollah then responded to these killings later that day with guided missiles aimed at Israeli command centres in northern Israel, the first actual attack by Hezbollah into Israeli territory, only after two Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Following this, Hezbollah “calibrated its attacks in a way that [has] kept the violence largely contained to a narrow strip of territory at the border,” and initially at least, Israel did likewise. In December 2023, Andrea Tenenti, from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), said both Israel and Hezbollah “unfailingly accepted messages passed through UNIFIL in procedures designed to deescalate potentially dangerous misunderstandings.”
But if it was Israel that in fact struck first – twice – then on what basis can the claim be made that Israel had to “defend itself” against Hezbollah, which just wouldn’t stop its attacks over the border, by blowing up the whole of Lebanon? Who was responding to whom?
OK, one might say, that was the beginning, but Hezbollah has insisted since that it would keep up some level of attacks over the border until Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza.
However, Israel’s responses became far bloodier over time: not only vastly disproportionate in sheer number, but also far more targeted at civilians; until September, Israel had launched 8313 attacks on Lebanon, to Hezbollah’s 1901 attacks on Israel; Israeli attacks had killed 752 Lebanese, including hundreds of civilians, to only 33 Israeli deaths, overwhelmingly military – a ratio of 23 to one! Israeli attacks had already displaced 90,000 Lebanese before the current massacre began in late September. In July, the BBC reported that over 60 percent of Lebanese border communities had suffered “some kind of damage as a result of Israeli air and artillery strikes,” and 3,200 buildings had been damaged; Human Rights Watch verified that Israel has used white phosphorus in its attacks on some parts of southern Lebanon.
So if you consider this data, the notion that it was Hezbollah insisting on attack while Israel merely defended itself makes little sense in practice – if Israel has been attacking Lebanon at a rate of over 4 times that of Hezbollah attacks on Israel (and with 23 times the numbers of deaths, indicating that Hezbollah mostly fired to make a statement and avoid casualties), then when was the moment that Hezbollah could have paused or stopped firing anyway if there is simply so much more Israeli firing at them all the time? The bare numbers suggest it was Hezbollah responding, not Israel.
Despite occasional flare-ups – in early January, in June and in August – when Hezbollah briefly responded more forcefully following Israel’s killing of top Hezbollah commanders – this pattern of low level tit-for-tat, with Israel’s attacks far more murderous and escalatory, continued through till late September.
OK, again, but perhaps Hezbollah could have agreed to a ceasefire, to end the attacks and discuss UN Resolution 1701 and so on at the last moment, in order to avoid being decapitated, and to help prevent Lebanese civilians being massacred by Israel’s savagery since last September.
Again, however, it appears that Nasrallah did agree to a “complete ceasefire” just hours before he was killed. There is no dishonour in recognising limitations, in recognising that the blood paid by innocent Lebanese civilians and children is just too high, that you have attempted to do what you can (and the reality is that Israel has essentially completed its genocidal goals in Gaza, with nothing Hezbollah has done making any difference).
But if Nasrallah agreed to it, why did Israel still proceed to kill him? Even if it “just had to” kill him as a war trophy, why continue the horrific war against the Lebanese people after that? Why continue the mass killing after the new Hezbollah leader, Naim Qassem, also said on October 8 that the organisation was supportive of the Lebanese government’s moves to reach such a ceasefire? If that’s what Israel wanted, wouldn’t it have paused to see what came of such negotiations?
In other words, Hezbollah’s alleged “refusal” to end its side of the conflict was never the issue – neither at the outset, as outlined above, nor during the year, given the reality of who was attacking who in practice, nor at the end, when these concessions are ignored and Israel continues to bomb, kill and invade. There was simply never a chance.
Think what you want of Hezbollah politically – the above is all separate to the question of whether or not Hezbollah was doing the “right” thing, whatever that may mean in the context of Israel’s holocaust against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Many argue that, regardless of who shot first, keeping up some level of fire at Israel in solidarity with Gaza was an honourable thing to do; many others, especially many Lebanese who may hate Israel but not like Hezbollah, argue that Hezbollah did not have the right to put Lebanese civilians in danger of the horrific Israeli “retaliation” now taking place; still others may argue that Hezbollah’s attacks were too symbolic, and that it should have attacks on a level that could have actually helped Gaza; others that it could not do this, as neither the Lebanese people, nor Hezbollah’s Iranian paymaster, wanted such escalation; some may argue that Hezbollah had already burnt too many bridges with non-Shia communities in Lebanon to be able to act, and be accepted, as a vanguard for Lebanon (or that it had committed vastly more crimes in Syria to be accepted by the Arab world more generally); while some might say that was precisely why it had to do something, symbolic or otherwise, to rescue its credibility, and whether it had successfully done so or not would also be debated.
More generally, some things are probably undeniable: that Hezbollah greatly overestimated its own strength, underestimated Israel’s immense power, technological advantage and ability to “do Gaza” on another country while still in Gaza itself, and overestimated the likelihood of its Iranian sponsor doing anything at all to defend it in its hour of need.
All of this is a valid discussion, which needs to be had, but is outside the question here. Right now, Hezbollah cadres on the ground – and others allied to it that have never been its political allies – is resisting Israel’s new invasion of southern Lebanon in its own country, while Israeli state terror has killed over 1200 Lebanese civilians; over 2000 Lebanese have been killed by Israeli attacks over the last year, 60 percent of them in the last week of September and first week of October 2024, and this includes 127 children, and, for good measure, by the beginning of October, 96 Syrian refugees, while it attacked and killed 24 in the Christian town Aitou in northern Lebanon far from the border, and has even bombed a town council and killed the local mayor. Some 1.2 million Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes – given that Lebanon’s population is only about 4 million, with up to 2 million Palestinian and Syrian refugees, this is around a quarter of the population.
What is the end-game? It appears that, intoxicated after having been able to essentially destroy Hezbollah’s communication networks, much of its launching capacity, and most of its command structure and leadership, all within about a week, Israel’s sights may be set on re-occupying, perhaps effectively annexing, Lebanon south of the Litani, until just recently only an idea entertained on the far-right fringes.
The Australian government, like a number of other western governments, lists Hezbollah as a “proscribed terrorist organisation.” This led to a great deal of hysteria among Australian politicians of both major right-wing parties and among talking heads throughout the monochrome Australian media after Hezbollah flags and photos of its dead leader, Hassan Nasrallah, were displayed by some of the crowd at last Sunday’s weekly rally against Israel’s Gaza genocide. The display of such symbols, aside from being illegal, allegedly causes great “distress” among Jewish-Australians, who do not feel “safe”, and all “antisemitism” must be rejected and so on and so forth.
Just as an aside on that rally: it is worth noting that from the beginning last October, organisers of the weekly rallies asked marchers not to bring symbols associated with proscribed “terrorist” organisations, for legal reasons, to prevent the rallies being closed down, while not making judgements on the politics of these organisations. However, it was to be expected that with emotions high just after Israel had killed about 1200 Lebanese people in around a week, sent over a million fleeing, and also killed Nasrallah, that some members of the Lebanese community who supported Hezbollah might bring Hezbollah symbols, and it would have been difficult for rally organisers to prevent this in the circumstances. However, it was not their choosing, and many at the rally, who were happy to rally for the Lebanese people as well as the Palestinians, were not so happy with the focus of part of the rally being turned to Nasrallah. But let’s get back to the point.
I hold no brief for Hezbollah, at all, as I will explain below, and much less for its reactionary Iranian paymaster. However, at this moment it is the Israeli state, backed by the Australian government and other western governments, that has carried out a virtual holocaust in Gaza over the last year, is actively stealing land and killing with impunity in the Palestinian West Bank while the world looks away, and has just carried out a devastatingly murderous attack on the neighbouring sovereign state of Lebanon, bombing entire city blocks in the capital Beirut with 2000 pound bombs in the process of killing a handful of Hezbollah leaders. If “terrorism” means killing civilians as part of a political action, then the Israeli regime is one of today’s arch-terrorists. However, let’s put that aside for the moment and classify that as “state terrorism,” and focus instead on the “terrorism” of non-state actors.
In that case, Hezbollah is not a “terrorist” organisation in any conventional sense. It is unclear why its flag should create “distress” among Jewish Australians. When has Hezbollah ever planted bombs in cafes or on buses, when has it shot up civilians in shopping malls, when has it specifically targeted Jews as Jews? This is quite simply not how Hezbollah has ever operated. The “terrorist” label therefore is simply driven by the political views of the US and Israeli states; it is worth looking at where it comes from.
The source of the bogus “terrorist” label: legitimate national resistance
The first source of the “terrorist” labeling was the US itself rather than Israel. Following the end of Israel’s horrific 1982 invasion of Lebanon, when it killed 20-30,000 Lebanese and Palestinians in an unprovoked 3-month Blitzkrieg, the entire time with the full support of the US government of Ronald Reagan, an agreement was signed for a Multi-National Force (MNF) consisting of US, French and Italian troops to move in and supervise the forced withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the goal of Israel’s war.
Given the total US support for Israel, much of Lebanon’s Muslim population viewed the “peace-keeping force” as occupiers. As soon as the PLO withdrew, Israel facilitated the slaughter of 2-3000 defenceless Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps by the right-wing Lebanese Christian Phalange/Lebanese Forces militia. In such conditions, the election, in an unfair sectarian system, of Phalangist leaders Bashir, then Amin, Gemayel to the presidency was rejected by Sunni, Shiite and Druze communities. Yet as civil war soon re-erupted around Beirut, the supposedly neutral US forces bombed Muslim and Druze forces in the nearby Shouf mountains. It was in these conditions that Iranian-inspired Shiite suicide bombers bombed the barracks of the MNF in October 1983, killing 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel.
This killing of so many US troops is the origin of the particular US hatred of Hezbollah and its “terrorist” labelling. However, even if we exclude all the context above, there are two problems. First, regardless of one’s view of such an action as a method of struggle, “terrorism” refers to the targeting of civilians, not of military personnel, however one views their mission. Secondly, Hezbollah was not officially formed until 1985, and it is little more than conjecture that the shadowy pro-Iranian ‘Islamic Jihad’ (not to be confused with today’s Palestinian Islamic Jihad) group which claimed responsibility was a precursor of Hezbollah. Even according to Reagan’s Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, speaking in 2001, “we still do not have the actual knowledge of who did the bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut Airport, and we certainly didn’t then.”
The second source of the “terrorist” labeling is even more dishonest, stemming merely from Hezbollah’s leadership of the Lebanese national resistance against the Israeli military occupation of southern Lebanon, an entirely legitimate struggle. Following its 1982, Israel remained in occupation of southern Lebanon all the way up to Beirut, and so a national resistance movement began fighting to drive them out. By 1985, they had been driven from Beirut and much of the south, but remained in a significant swathe of territory closer to the Israeli border. While the resistance included a range of political forces, including leftists, nationalists and Islamists, from both Sunni and Shiite communities, ultimately the south is largely Shiite populated, and the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah became the dominant force. There were no Israel civilians in southern Lebanon; and Hezbollah never bombed Israeli civilians across the border. Israel merely regards legitimate resistance against its brutal military occupation to be “terrorism” in Lebanon just as it does in occupied Palestine.
Israel was driven from Lebanon by the resistance in 2000. However, it remained in a 25-square kilometre piece of land called the Shebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims but Israel says is part of the illegally-occupied Syrian Golan (as if that justifies the Israeli position!), and this is part of its justification for remaining a “resistance” militia separate to the Lebanese Armed Forces after 2000. When Hezbollah kidnapped some Israeli troops on the border in 2006 aimed at freeing several Lebanese prisoners in Israeli prisons and liberating this final piece of land, Israel unleashed massive bombing against Lebanon, killing 1500 people and devastating the country again. Nasrallah admitted its actions had been an error, and Hezbollah’s position looked very weak politically; then Israeli arrogance trumped common sense when it attempted a ground invasion, allowing Hezbollah to route the invaders as an on-the-ground resistance again, not only saving but boosting Hezbollah’s resistance credentials.
More generally, since the 1990s, Hezbollah has engaged in parliamentary elections and been part of coalition governments with parties representing other sectarian interests. That’s why even some countries that call the military wing of Hezbollah “terrorist” do not classify the political organisation as such. Far from challenging the sectarian system, Hezbollah has largely bought into it, and despite rhetoric about “the dispossessed,” has emerged as a key party of the Shiite bourgeoisie. Soon after its 2006 triumph, Hezbollah showed itself to be little different to any of the other sectarian militias in Lebanon, when it invaded mainly Sunni-populated West Beirut in 2008 and seized control from the Sunni Future Movement. And in 2019, when Lebanese from all backgrounds rose up against the sectarian system as a whole, targeting all historic sectarian leaders and warlords, Hezbollah came to the defence of the system by helping violently crush the movement.
Hezbollah becomes a state-terrorist partner of the Assad regime
Despite its close relationship to the Iranian dictatorship, Hezbollah had its own origins as a legitimate national resistance movement in a Lebanese context and cannot be viewed as a mere proxy. However, ultimately, Iran is its paymaster, and this side of the organisation came upfront following the outbreak of the April Spring uprisings in 2011. Its opposite views on Libya and Syria is instructive.
When the Libyan revolution began, both Iran and Hezbollah hailed the revolt against Gaddafi’s oppressive rule; despite the image of Iran and Libya being both anti-Israel “rejectionist” states (in both cases reflecting safe geographic distance from Israel, allowing lots of loud rhetoric from afar), there is a dispute going back decades, when Musa al-Sadr, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite movement Amal, disappeared while on a trip to Libya. Lebanon in 2011 was on the UN Security Council, and its vote in support of the UN resolution to dispatch a NATO operation against Gaddafi was decisive, a vote that Hezbollah had to give its support to. Following the 6-month NATO intervention, the rebellion triumphed, and when Gaddafi was killed, celebrations were organised in Iran and in Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese communities.
In contrast, when the people’s uprising began against the tyrannical Assad dictatorship in Syria, Iran sent forces in to support the regime, both its own ‘Revolutionary’ Guard forces, and Iranian-backed Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani Shiite sectarian militia. This was necessitated by the defection of a large part of the Syrian army to the uprising, forming the Free Syrian Army (FSA). While the Assad regime’s own sectarian ‘Shabia’ death squads were the most notoriously bloody militia taking part in Assad’s sensationally brutal and bloody repression of the Syrian people, the Iranian-backed militia were not far behind.
There seems some evidence that Hezbollah was initially hesitant about Iran’s demand that it enter Syria. During the 2006 war, Syrians took in thousands of Hezbollah supporters and Lebanese Shiite refugees, seeing them as heroes. One of the places this occurred was in the town of Qaysar near the border, which was now in rebel hands. When Hezbollah decided to enter the war as an Iranian proxy, the first place it helped the regime smash the rebellion was in Qaysar.
The irony of supporting the uprising against Gaddafi, despite it being backed by a direct US and NATO armed intervention, while taking part in crushing the anti-Assad uprising, where there was never any US intervention against Assad (indeed the US actively blocked the rebels from receiving essential anti-aircraft weaponry from neighbouring states), is surely too great, when Hezbollah and Iran and their western “anti-imperialist” flunkeys justify their support for Assad’s perennially anti-Palestinian regime on the basis of … “anti-imperialism.”
If Hezbollah had merely taken a back-seat role out of necessity due to its Iranian paymaster, it would have been bad enough, but perhaps understandable. However, once in, it went in with a vengeance. Particularly in southwestern Syria, Hezbollah played a prominent role in the Assad regime’s starvation sieges of various rebel-held towns, especially in Madaya and Zabadani, as well in Aleppo in the north. According to al-Jazeera, “Zabadani and Madaya, both located near the capital Damascus, are besieged by the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and allied fighters from Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group.” They even took part in the regime’s siege of the Palestinian Yarmouk camp south of Damascus. The largely Sunni and anti-Assad populations of these towns were eventually forced out and dispatched to a region of northern Syria still under rebel control.
According to an Amnesty report: “The Syrian government and allied militias destroyed local food supplies by burning agricultural fields in Daraya and Madaya. Amnesty International’s analysis of satellite imagery shows the massive decrease in agriculture over the years and an obvious dead zone around Daraya. ‘The government and Hezbollah forces burned the agricultural fields, just as a form of punishment, even though we couldn’t access them’, a former teacher in Madaya told Amnesty International.”
Therefore, while Hezbollah is no “terrorist” organisation in the manner meant by hypocritical western governments, it certainly was responsible for large-scale killing and starving of civilians in Syria (along with its Iranian paymaster). However, it did so in the service of the Syrian state machine; in other words, like Israel, and the Assad regime itself, Hezbollah engaged in state terrorism. But that is not what the West and Israel care about. Indeed, when Biden congratulated Netanyahu for killing Nasrallah, he claimed it was justice for Hezbollah’s “many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians,” whatever that may even mean (mostly US and Israeli occupation troops). He managed to not mention any victims from Syria, the country with the vast majority of its civilian victims!
The Assad regime is the most similar to Israel in the region in the degree of mass murder and devastation it uses against its population, with some 700,000 killed in the conflict, including at least 300,000 civilians, overwhelmingly victims of the regime, most cities destroyed by regime and Russian bombing, and an industrial-scale torture gulag. Hezbollah and Iran are so widely hated for their role in backing the regime that, despite Syrians in rebel-held zones demonstrating against Israel in support of Gaza for the entire year since October, there were expressions of joy when their former killers were killed. They did not thank Israel, but they viewed it as a conflict between two of their enemies, two occupiers of Syria, wishing ‘good luck’ to both. For Syrians, Hezbollah and Iran acted as the IDF in their towns.
One does not have to share this perspective to understand it. For Lebanese living under Israel’s terror bombing and massive devastation now, their reality is that, whether or not they love Hezbollah, at this moment most Lebanese are united against the Zionist killing machine. Moreover, for southern Shia, Hezbollah is the organisation that led the 18-year struggle for freedom from brutal Israeli occupation. From afar, we need to be able to understand both perspectives.
So, where is the “terrorism”? On the border?
Returning to now, the point is that “terrorism” is a meaningless label in the case of Hezbollah to justify massive Israeli state terrorism and the support to it given by our government. When asked if Lebanon had the same right to “defend itself” as he claimed Israel does, prime minister Anthony Albanese immediately responded “of course we regard Hezbollah to be a terrorist organisation.” This sleight of hand allows him and other leaders to simply avoid the issue of Israel’s massacres and its blatant violation of Lebanese sovereignty. “Terrorism” justifies all. It has extraordinarily sweeping use. “What else can Israel do?” when confronted by a “terrorist organisation” on its border?
Yet the border itself belies this labeling. In sharp contrast to its massacre of civilians in Syria when engaged in the regime’s state terror, Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks since October 8 have been meticulously aimed at Israeli military facilities. No-one can seriously deny that, and the data speaks for itself. In contrast, Israel’s attacks over Lebanon’s border (ie, before the flare-up in the last 2 weeks) have not only been vastly disproportionate in terms of sheer number, but also far more targeted at civilians; until September, Israel had launched 8313 attacks on Lebanon, to Hezbollah’s 1901 attacks on Israel; Israeli attacks had killed 752 Lebanese, including hundreds of civilians, to only 33 Israeli deaths, overwhelmingly military.
Think what you want of Hezbollah politically – but right now it is resisting Israel’s new invasion of southern Lebanon in its own country, while Israeli state terror has killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians; some 2000 Lebanese have been killed by Israeli attacks over the last year, 60 percent of them over the last two weeks, and this includes 127 children, and, for good measure, by the beginning of October, Israel had already killed 96 Syrian refugees (including 36 children) who are only in Lebanon in the first place to escape the atrocities of the Assad regime, which was aided by Hezbollah! Over 100,000 refugees have fled into Syria, both Lebanese and Syrian refugees – and the Syrian regime has already begun arrests. Christian and Sunni towns in the south have been bombed alongside the Shiite civilian population; mostly Sunni regions of Beirut are being devastated alongside the Shiite regions which are Hezbollah’s base. Israel did want to decapitate the Hezbollah leadership, to re-establish its “deterrent” power, but it is also waging a war on Lebanon and the Lebanese people.
To cite Syrian writer Robin Yassin-Kassab: “I oppose Hizbullah absolutely when it is murdering and expelling Syrians on Iran’s orders. And I support absolutely its legitimate resistance to genocidal Zionist fascism.”
Their Anti-imperialism and Ours 
