Analysis: The crisis could allow Turkey to advance two long-held goals: the mass return of Syrian refugees and eliminating the Kurdish presence on its border.
Syria’s civil war has returned to the spotlight as groups opposed to President Bashar Al-Assad launched surprise offensives last week, capturing parts of Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, and gaining ground in the city for the first time since 2015.
The Syrian Arab Army is no more, an institution built to fight Israel that eventually ate itself due to rampant corruption and ineptitude.
Few analysts could have predicted the events that unfolded last week in Syria when a limited rebel offensive in Aleppo province led to the downfall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, 13 years after a revolution against his corrupt and authoritarian rule began.
Analysis: The end of the Assad family’s 54-year rule is the start of a new chapter in Syrian history, one that will have reverberations across the Middle East.
For years, many commentators inaccurately claimed that former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government had “won” the civil war. In truth, the Assad regime had, until a few days ago, merely survived the conflict, which froze in 2020.
The Islamic State has utilised the recent collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to intensify its ideological campaign. Through its latest issue of al-Naba (issue 473), released in recent days, the group has disseminated a narrative portraying these events as betrayals of Islamic principles and evidence of external manipulation.
Tehran and Moscow harbor no illusions – and are preparing accordingly. The war on BRICS is just getting started.
Syria as we knew it is being eviscerated in real time – in geographic, cultural, economic and military terms – by an appalling confluence of mercenary Rent-a-Jihadi mobs and psychopathological genocidals praying at the altar of Eretz Israel.
Many Western leaders have expressed their relief at the collapse of the dictatorship of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Cities such as Homs and Damascus were taken by the coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, or the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant) almost without combat. The reality is that the seemingly unshakeable fifty-four-year-old rule of the Assad dynasty had been rotting from within.
Téhéran et Moscou ne se font pas d’illusions et se préparent en conséquence. La guerre contre les BRICS ne fait que commencer.
La Syrie telle que nous la connaissions est éviscérée en temps réel – en termes géographiques, culturels, économiques et militaires – par une effroyable confluence de troupes mercenaires Djihadiste-à-louer et de génocidaires psychopathologiques priant à l’autel d’Eretz Israël.
On December 8, 2024, the 24-year reign of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad came to an end after a rebel coalition of Al-Qaeda offshoots, Turkish proxies, and other Islamist militants overwhelmed the capital of Damascus. In effect, a Sunni Islamist saturnalia brought an end to the Middle East’s last secular Arab government.
The Assad family, starting with Hafez al-Assad in 1971, has held an iron grip on Syrian politics for over five decades. As committed members of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, the Assads aligned with rivals to the West and Israel such as the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and later on the Russian Federation.
Following revolutions, we Americans have a touching inclination to ask: “Are the new leaders like us? Are they moderates who believe in tolerance and peaceful coexistence?”
Generally, the answer is no.
American officials are scrambling to head off a new nightmare scenario in Syria: a major terrorist jailbreak.
Thousands of Islamic State group fighters and their families remain in makeshift prisons, watched over by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces with limited weapons. The prisons were supposed to be temporary, but their home countries don’t want the fighters back.