The West’s hurrah for the jihadists
Western politicians and media celebrated the surprisingly quick fall of the Assad regime and the victorious rebels, a new generation of Islamist “freedom fighters” who launched the attack on Syria on November 27 and captured Damascus on December 8. They did not mention that the attack was led by a jihadist group that has even been classified as a terrorist group by the United States. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is considered a terrorist organization by several countries and international bodies. It was classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department in May 2018 during the first Trump administration. It is also on the European Union’s blacklist. HTS has its roots in the Syrian civil war and was originally founded as an affiliate of al-Qaeda under the name Jabhat al-Nusra. For tactical reasons HTS claims to have severed ties with al-Qaeda, but it shares the same Salafist ideology.
Syrian journalist Kevork Almassian quoted the groups who said they wanted to establish an Islamic state: “Our fight against Assad was to remove a secular, infidel regime and establish an Islamic state.” Almassian, who is a Christian of Armenian descent, says he is frustrated that his country is “no longer multicultural — Syria was a melting pot for different civilizations, cultures, religions and ethnicities” — and that “my country is occupied by this internationally designed terrorist group,” he adds.
If it serves its power political interests, the US is working to overthrow a secular regime that protects minorities and replace it with an Islamist terror regime that slaughters minorities. (Headline Responsible Statecraft)
The European politicians and media were particularly stupid and cheered the removal of Assad, who had protected minorities such as Christians, Shia, Alawites and others from the Islamist butchers, as Syria is likely to face dark days and waves of refugees will come to Europe.
The European politicians and media were particularly stupid and cheered the removal of Assad, who had protected minorities such as Christians, Alawites and others from the Islamist butchers, as Syria is likely to face dark days and waves of refugees will come to Europe.
Reliable information from independent Russian sources instead of propaganda from Western media
On Telegram and elsewhere on the internet, discussions are taking place about the reasons for the fall of the secular Assad regime:
The sanctions have severely weakened the Syrian economy and played an important role, some argue, but other countries have also survived heavy sanctions. The theft of Syrian oil by the United States and the Kurds have deprived Syria of an important and steady source of revenue, others add, but Syria had other sources of income. Israel bombed the country, but not to the extent that it could no longer survive.
The United States uses human rights primarily as a propaganda weapon against countries that do not submit to its rule, while creating and funding the worst human rights abusers. (Headline Los Angeles Times)
So what were the main reasons for the collapse? To find out, we need to take a look at the independent media such as the Telegram channels, the blogger channels and the various well-informed reporters and commentators in Russia who have been discussing the conflict over the last two weeks, some of whom have also expressed their anger that Syria, the country that Russia strongly supported between 2015 and 2024, has collapsed with minimal resistance.
It is important to point out that President Putin’s decision in 2015 to send an expeditionary force to Syria at the request of the Syrian government (to fight ISIS and other jihadists who were also seen as a threat to his country with a significant Muslim population of 20 million people) was controversial in Russia, even though it only comprised 5,000 troops at its peak.
Corrupt Assad cronies render Syria’s army ineffective
The jihadists’ first assault on Syria began in the summer of 2012 and lasted until 2020, when a ceasefire was agreed. It seemed incredible that the Syrian army and the Syrian state, which fought so tenaciously for their survival for eight years between 2012 and 2020, would collapse so quickly and unexpectedly in just two weeks without a single shot being fired. Syrian commanders claimed that they would occupy defensive positions outside Aleppo and then Dara and Homs and finally Damascus, and they made powerful statements in public that they had created impregnable defenses and that they would hold out and push back the jihadist fighters to prepare for the counterattack they always said was coming. The Syrian commanders who made these bold and strong statements were only pretending to defend these cities, but in reality they were just waiting for the jihadists and basically bribing them with large sums of money to submit.
So the Syrian army has not put up any resistance. This is because it has undergone a transformation since 2020. Assad had replaced many battle-hardened commanders with loyalists and cronies who turned the armed forces into a corruption machine to enrich themselves. The older officers who had built the regime and the army together with Assad’s father Hafez Al-Assad were fiercely loyal to the regime and proved to be ruthless and tenacious fighters, while the people Bashar Al-Assad would have put in their place had neither the same sense of loyalty nor the fighting spirit of their predecessors.
Assad’s serial blunders
In 2018, Russia was prepared to offer the Syrian government a massive loan that would have enabled it to reorganize and re-equip its armed forces and take measures to revive the Syrian economy. In return for repaying this loan, however, the Syrians would have had to make economic concessions to the Russians that would have allowed the Russians to set businesses in Syria itself, develop Syria as a destination for Russian tourists and develop other aspects of the Syrian economy in a way that would have suited Russian interests.
A few years ago, the Chinese also sent a strong economic delegation to Syria, led by a member of the Chinese Politburo, to look into Syria joining the Belt and Road Initiative and joining the BRICS. Assad received this Chinese delegation and nothing further happened, and again it is hard to understand why Assad did not work harder to convince the Chinese to come and invest in Syria. The Chinese wanted assurances that Syria would take steps to ensure a politically stable and peaceful situation in Syria.
In order to achieve this, however, some kind of dialog had to be established with Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan wanted to talk to Assad, but the latter again refused to meet him. Even Russia and Iran tried to persuade Assad to talk to Erdogan, but failed.
Erdogan wanted to find a mechanism with Assad to send refugees back to Syria. That was in Syria’s interests. Erdogan could have closed the sanctuary in Idlib province, he could have allowed Damascus to regain control of its eastern territories and expel the United States from eastern Syria, if Syria, Turkey and Iraq had joined forces and agreed to expel the Americans from eastern Syria, it probably would have worked.
A dialog with Erdogan to find common ground and solutions for Syria and Turkey would have been the way to secure peace.
Assad would not have been alone if he had spoken to Erdogan: the Russians would have been there, the Iranians would have been there, and probably the Arab states would have been there too, and a solution to the refugee crisis could have been found. The Russians expected Assad to attend the BRICS meeting where he could have met Erdogan. Assad did not go.
In response to Assad’s stubborn refusal to talk, Erdogan used his trump card: he had the jihadist fighters trained, organized and equipped in Turkey itself, as this enabled them to march into Idlib in Syria.
After the jihadists conquered Aleppo, they were able to switch the power back on where there were power cuts. They could not have done this on their own, so they will undoubtedly have needed the help of the Turks. It shows that Erdogan had it in his hands to switch the power back on in Aleppo, he also had it in his hands to bring the situation in Idlib back under control. Assad could have prevented the attack and his demise if he had talked to Erdogan, but he was too stupid and too stubborn. The ophthalmologist trained in London may have been able to run an eye clinic, but not a country.