He pledged, “There will be no imposition of the hijab on the Christian community or any other group because these matters are not a point of contention, and people are free.” It is not sure what he meant by “any other group.” If he meant “any other non-Sunni minority group,” then mandatory veiling could still be imposed on women of Sunni Muslim heritage.

When the fundamentalist, Salafi HTS was ruling the northern Syria province of Idlib earlier this year before they took over the whole country, it promulgated a law on public behavior that required all girls older than twelve to wear a veil in public, forbade public performance of music, demanded gender segregation, and established a morals police of the sort that used to patrol Saudi Arabia and still does police behavior in Afghanistan. It seems a little unlikely that its leaders have changed their minds about the desirability of any of these measures, though they also are not as strong in big cities like Aleppo and Damascus as they had been in small, rural Idlib.

Asked about whether women would be allowed to continue to serve as judges, as they did in secular, Baathist Syria, he replied that they would be allowed to go to law school, but maybe not to preside over courts: “”Women certainly have the right to learn and receive education in any field of life, whether in teaching, law, judiciary, or others. However, for women to assume judicial authority, this could be a subject for research and study by specialists, and it is too early to discuss this aspect.”

Women were 13% of judges in Baathist Syria, and had double that representation in the capital of Damascus.

Women comprised 46% of university students in the old regime, though they tended to major in fields such as education and literature and were underrepresented in medicine, economics, and engineering, according to Freedom House.

Arnaut hinted broadly that universities would be gender-segregated under the new government: “Syrian universities already exhibit many positive ways of proceeding, but these need to be reinforced to enhance the educational process and produce better outcomes than before. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen these ways of proceeding in a way that allows male and female students to focus their minds more fully on the educational process.”

Juan Cole, “Obeida Arnaut,” 2024.

Studies have shown that gender segregation in higher education harms women students and faculty. If they have to go to a separate all-women medicine or law school, and there are few women students in those fields, then they will suffer lack of resources. They will also be viewed as second-class citizens by the male portion of the university.

Then came the big issue, of women in politics. The one-party Baathist state was sectarian and dictatorial, not to mention genocidal, and so women’s participation does not tell us much (except that they were tainted by the atrocities committed by the government). But for what it is worth, 11 percent of the members of the phony “parliament” were women, and in recent years 3 of 31 cabinet members were women.

Arnaut was asked about whether women would be able to continue in these roles: “As for women’s representation in ministerial and parliamentary roles, we believe that this matter is premature and should be left to legal and constitutional experts who will work on rethinking the structure of the new Syrian state. Women are an important and honored component, so tasks must align with roles that women can perform. There will be no concerns regarding women’s issues.”

In other words, no, HTS does not envisage women being allowed to serve in parliament or on the cabinet or as prime minister.

That was bad enough. He went on to make a fool of himself by saying women are biologically unsuited to leadership roles: “There is no doubt that women have their biological and psychological nature, as well as their specific characteristics and composition, which must align with particular tasks. For example, it is not appropriate to suggest that women use weapons or be placed in roles that do not suit their abilities, composition, or nature.”

I read that the anchor interviewing him pointed out that hundreds of thousands of Syrians fled the Old Regime to safety in Germany, and that the leader who allowed them into the country and gave them safety was Angela Merkel, a female chancellor.

Al-Quds al-`Arabi quoted a reaction from Professor Milena Zain Al-Din from Damascus University: “We, the young women and women of Syria, are activists, politicians, human rights advocates, journalists, economists, academics, workers, and homemakers. We are revolutionaries, detainees, and fighters, and above all, we are Syrian citizens. Obeida Arnaout’s rhetoric is unacceptable. The Syrian woman, who has struggled and endured alongside millions of Syrian women, is not waiting for you to choose a place or role for her that aligns with your mindset for building our nation.”

The paper also quoted women who pointed to the countless modern Syrian women who have fulfilled roles as “politicians, judges, fighters, doctors, activists, and working mothers,” advising Arnaout to catch up on his reading about them.

Some women on social media demanded that Arnaout retract his remarks and resign.

On Dec. 10, I hastily convened the first public forum in the area on the events in Syria, “The Fall of the House of Assad,” hosted by the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, and the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of San Diego, to discuss the dramatic demise in Damascus of Bashar Assad’s presidency. As a Catholic university, on that very stage in 2013, I asked, as a Muslim, for the audience to grant a moment of silence for Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, an Italian priest who ran the Deir Mar Musa Monastery, an interfaith Syrian site for both Muslims and Christian. Dall’Oglio mysteriously disappeared in 2013. After more than a decade his fate may finally be known.

The Kroc School had invited me in 2013 to speak about America’s plan to bomb Syrian military sites after Assad’s chemical weapons attack outside of Damascus. I argued then that the U.S. would be dragged into another forever war in the Middle East. In 2024, on that same stage, I told students that American aircrafts were bombing Islamic State of Iraq and Syria sites, indicating that there was no end in sight to this war.

Besides geopolitics, I talked about the last decade of war, of Syrians who came to and from Southern California. They included Syrian Armenian power gangs from the streets of Glendale, who travelled as foreign fighters to the frontlines of Aleppo, filming themselves on social media in front of a destroyed home, fighting for the Assad regime to retake the rebel-held city.

In the other direction, after Yusra Mardini’s family home in Syria was destroyed, they fled as refugees, saving a drowning dinghy and all its passengers in the waters of the Aegean. It turned out she came from a family of Olympic swimmers. She enrolled at USC to study visual arts, the same subject I teach at UC San Diego, where, alas, she could have studied with me about herself in my “Art and the Middle East” course, as I show the harrowing and inspiring Netflix movie about her life, “The Swimmers.”

Nonetheless, I did have a student, Mohammad, who had also witnessed his house being destroyed back in Syria. He was 7 years-old. In February 2017, as a professor, I sat on a kindergarten floor at a grade school in City Heights next to him, part of an increasing number of adults volunteering to help refugees adapt to school in the U.S., resisting Trump’s “Muslim ban” that year.

“Joy in Damascus,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

The staff told me not to speak to him in Arabic, so that he could learn English, but I ignored them. Together, we built a house from toy bricks, whereupon he said, “Let’s destroy it like my house in Syria.” I replied, “Nothing will happen to your new house.” During the cleanup, I asked the volunteer staff if we could leave his house standing until we left the classroom. I took the boy to his father, waiting at the entrance, who informed me that Mohammad would be meeting his new brother, born just an hour ago, a life made possible because the U.S. had let in a refugee family.

In 2013, the Syrians in the audience seemed despondent. This month, I recounted Mohammed’s story to a USD audience and two female students approached me, optimistic about the country’s future, as Mohammed must be, who should be 13 or 14 now.

Syria is at a critical juncture, as it forms a transitional government, either bringing stability or following the fate of Libya and Yemen, overthrowing a dictator only to witness the victorious rebels fight amongst themselves, not only preventing refugees from returning, but creating more of them. Mohammed’s story is also intended for America promising “mass deportations.”

As one tragedy hopefully comes to an end, President-elect Donald Trump should not follow the legacy of President Bashar Assad of further causing the dispersion of the desperate.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from the San Diego Union Tribune

(The Conversation) – Tens of thousands of minorities fearing persecution have fled Syria since its takeover by the Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham on Dec. 8, 2024.

While the group has promised to respect all ethnic and religious minorities under its rule, human rights advocates have urged caution. They cite the Islamic group’s poor history of respect for human rights in areas it has governed in recent years.

Syria’s population is predominantly Arab and Sunni Muslim, but minority communities have long been part of the region. Alawites, a Shiite sect and one of the largest minority groups, constitute about 10% to 13% of the population. The number of Christians, once another large minority group, has been dwindling since the start of the 2011 civil war. While accurate numbers are hard to come by, their population is believed to have shrunk to about 2.5% from 10%.

Druze, another religious group, constitute about 3%, while Kurds, an ethnic minority concentrated in the northeast, account for about 10% and are predominantly Sunni Muslim. Smaller groups such as Armenians, Circassians and Turkmen also contribute to Syria’s diverse mosaic.

As an expert on religious minorities, I believe that the future of these groups is central to discussions about Syria’s reconstruction. Their treatment will be a critical indicator of whether Syria can build an inclusive society, fostering trust among its diverse communities.

Syria’s complex minority landscape

The tensions surrounding Syria’s minorities are deeply rooted.

Sunni Muslims, the country’s most dominant faith group, have viewed groups such as the Alawites and Druze with suspicion for centuries. Though some Alawites consider themselves to be followers of Islam, other Muslim groups tend not to see them as part of the tradition, which exposes them to marginalization and persecution.

However, the rise of the Assad family, who are themselves Alawites, transformed the fortunes of Alawites. Under Hafez Assad – father of the ousted President Bashar Assad – who ruled Syria between 1971 and 2000, Alawites came to occupy key positions in the military and government. Concentrated primarily in Syria’s coastal regions such as Latakia and Tartus, Alawite communities viewed their alignment with the regime as a means of survival and advancement.

Photo of Latakia by Maria Turkman

At the same time, the Assad regime prioritized gaining the support of other minorities in ruling a Sunni majority country. The Druze, historically marginalized in Syria due to their beliefs that combine elements of Islam with pre-Islamic beliefs, found a degree of protection under the Assad regime in return for Druze support.

The Assad regime also developed mutually beneficial relationships with the Christian minority. Christians were provided access to government positions and economic opportunities, particularly in urban economic hubs such as Damascus and Aleppo. They were given preferential treatment in securing business licenses and trade opportunities. In return, most refrained from supporting opposition movements, contributed to the regime’s public image and cooperated with the government.

Conversely, the Kurds, with their own language and culture, faced discrimination because of their ethnic identity. The Assad regime marginalized them due to its broader nationalistic policies aimed at consolidating Arab identity and suppressing other ethnic groups.

The regime systematically undermined the Kurdish identity through measures such as banning the Kurdish language, refusal to register Kurdish names, replacing Kurdish place names with Arabic ones, and banning Kurdish books and materials.

Shifting dynamics after the civil war

The civil war that erupted in 2011 drastically changed the dynamics of relationships with minorities.

Assad’s violent crackdown on opposition groups led to the displacement of more than 13 million Syrians, including over 6.8 million refugees, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. The war resulted in almost a half-million deaths, about half of which were civilians, and a devastated economy and infrastructure.

Alawites, Christians and Druze, who had previously enjoyed relative protection under the Assad regime, faced increasingly difficult choices as the war intensified. The escalating violence left these groups with few alternatives for survival.

Islamist opposition groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist group, threatened and persecuted Christians, Druze and Alawites, often viewing them as collaborators with the Assad regime. In August 2015, IS kidnapped more than 200 Christians in a village in central Syria. In July 2018, IS militants attacked the southwestern Druze city of Sweida and killed more than 200 people.

In response, hundreds of thousands of minorities, particularly Christians, fled Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon and other countries.

Without viable alternatives guaranteeing their safety, many minorities saw the Assad regime, despite its growing unpopularity, as their protector from sectarian violence.

Yet minorities in Syria were not uniformly united in their support for the Assad regime during the civil war. Although limited in number, some Christians and Druze joined opposition movements or advocated for neutrality. The opposition figures included Christian leaders such as George Sabra, a prominent member of the Syrian National Council, a key opposition group against Assad during the early years of the war.

In August 2023, Druze in Sweida organized protests against the Assad regime.

The situation for Syria’s Kurds has evolved significantly during the civil war. The Kurds seized the opportunity presented by the regime’s weakening control over large parts of Syria to establish self-rule in the northeastern region in 2012. They gained more legitimacy after playing a critical role in combating IS, with substantial support from the U.S. military.

Kurdish autonomy has provoked concerns, however, especially from Turkey, which is against the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish entity on its border. While the new leadership in Syria welcomed a partnership with the Kurds, it remains to be seen how the Kurdish demands for autonomy will be balanced with Turkey’s security concerns and Syria’s territorial integrity.

The fall of the Assad regime marks a turning point in Syria’s history. But, I believe, it also opens a chapter fraught with peril for the country’s minorities. The fate of these minorities will offer a glimpse into how inclusive the new Syria could become.

Ramazan Kılınç, Professor of Political Science, Kennesaw State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

I will present a commentary on his observations about Syria:

Mr. President. . . With 900 troops in Syria, are you planning to withdraw when you leave office?

Trump: “We had 5,000 troops along the border, and I asked a couple of generals: So, we have an army of 250,000 in Syria, and you had an army of 400,000 — they have many more people than that. Turkey is a major force, by the way. And Erdogan — he’s somebody I got along with great — has a major military force. His military has not been worn out with war. It hasn’t been exhausted like others. He’s built a very strong and powerful army.

I am not sure, but I think Mr. Trump is saying that the former government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria had had 400,000 men in the Syrian Arab Army before the Arab Spring revolts of 2011, but that the numbers declined to 250,000 with desertions thereafter. My own guess is that when Trump was in office the numbers of Syrian troops had declined to more like 100,000.

I think he is recalling that he thought the 5,000 U.S. troops, which were there to coordinate the Kurdish and Arab militias of the Syrian Democratic Forces in fighting ISIL (ISIS, Daesh), were not necessary because Syria’s own 250,000 troops should have been able to handle ISIL.

If that is what he thought, it is incorrect. The Baath government of al-Assad relinquished the eastern Raqqa Province to ISIL and used its remaining troops to dominate the west of the country, what the French colonialists had called “Useful Syria” (la Syrie utile ). It had been the 5,000 US troops and the fighters of the SDF, mainly drawn from the leftist Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the northeast, who took Raqqa and defeated ISIL on October 17, 2017. That was on Trump’s watch. Perhaps he meant to say that by October, 2019, two years later, he felt that the US troop presence was no longer necessary to ensure that there wasn’t a resurgence of ISIL.

He is right about the Turkish army. which Global Fire Power ranks as eighth in the world. Turkey, a country a little more populous than Germany, has some 355,000 active duty military personnel and a similar number of reservists. It has 205 fighter jets and 111 attack helicopters. It has over 2,000 tanks and 1,700 or so big pulled artillery pieces. It is ranked above both Italy and France.

Trump: “So, we had 5,000 soldiers between a 5-million-person army and a 250,000-person army. I asked the general, ‘What do you think of that situation?’ He said, ‘They’ll be wiped out immediately.’ And I moved them out because I took a lot of heat. And you know what happened? Nothing. I saved a lot of lives. Now, we have 900 troops. They put some back in, but it’s still only 900.

My guess is that Trump’s mention of a 5 million-person army is a reference to the military of the Russian Federation, which actually has 3.7 million military personnel including reservists. The 250,000-man army is likely that of Syria, though I believe it is an over-estimate for 2019. Most authorities had the Syrian Arab Army at 141,400 at that time.

However, the size of the Russian and Syrian armies was a little irrelevant, since the US special operations forces supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces were fighting the remnants of ISIL and were not in active combat against the Syrian or Russian armies. Moscow and Damascus had left Syria’s far east and its ISIL problem to the US and the Kurds. The US and Russia seem to have had excellent deconfliction mechanisms in Syria.

The major battle between US forces and Russian ones was not with the regular Russian military but with Wagner group mercenaries. It took place in February 2018, when Wagner irregulars attempted to seize oil fields that the US was using to fund the Kurds.

So there wasn’t really in my view much chance that the 5,000 US troops in Syria in October 2019 would have to take on either the Russians or the Syrian Arab Army, or that they would be crushed, since they had excellent air cover.

I’m sure, on the other hand, that Russian President Vladimir Putin very much wanted the US troop presence in Syria to end.

Trump (Flash-forwards to the present:) “At this point, one of the sides has essentially been wiped out. Nobody knows who the other side is, but I do. You know who it is? Turkey. Turkey is the one behind it. He’s a very smart guy. They’ve wanted that territory for thousands of years, and he got it. Those people that went in are controlled by Turkey, and that’s okay — it’s another way to fight.

“No, I don’t think I want our soldiers killed. I don’t think that will happen now, because one side has been decimated.”

Trump’s estimation that the HTS sweep across Syria was made possible by Turkish backing is correct. The “smart guy” here is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is probably true that Turkiye exercises a certain amount of control over the new government. Using such proxies to dominate Syria and unseat the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party is indeed “another way to fight.”

Trump’s isolationist instincts are sometimes salutary. I can’t imagine what good it would be for the US to get involved militarily in the new Syria, and I hope he pulls out the remaining US troops at Tanf.

The only statement here with which I would quibble is the assertion that Turkiye has wanted Syria for thousands of years.

Turkiye only came into being on October 29, 1923. It was preceded by the Ottoman Empire, which defeated the Mamluks in 1516 at Marj Dabiq and conquered Syria that year. It ruled Syria until World War I, when the Arabic-speaking population allied with Britain during the war and expelled Turkish troops from Aleppo on October 25, 1918.

The Turkic Seljuks, who ruled part of what is now Turkiye along with Iran and Iraq, held part of Syria in the eleventh through thirteenth century. The Turkic peoples only came into the Middle East from East Asia in a big way with the Seljuks in the 1000s, the same period when the Norman French conquered England.

Before that, what is now Turkiye was inhabited by Armenians, peoples who spoke Iranian languages, and Greek speakers. So “Turkey” hasn’t existed for thousands of years, to want Syria all that time.

The rulers of Asia Minor, what is now Turkiye, included the Roman Empire. Augustus took Ankara in 25 BC. The Romans had already annexed Syria in 64 BC. So in that case, it was Italians based in Syria who took what is now Turkiye rather than the other way around.

The eastern Roman Empire lost Syria to Muslim forces in the 630s. The Muslim Umayyad caliphate based in Damascus attempted on several occasions to take Asia Minor away from the Byzantines or Eastern Rome, but failed. So too did the Abbasid caliphate after it.

I mean, if you want to consider “Turkey” anyone who lived in Anatolia, then I suppose there were ancient kingdoms based there that wanted Syria. The ancient Hittite kingdom in what is now Turkiye, which spoke an Indo-European language, conquered Syria on more than one occasion in the 1600s through 1400s BC. But before the Hittites, in the 2000s BC, the Hattians ruled Anatolia and they don’t seem to have been interested in Syria.

Saying that a “people” has wanted to do anything for thousands of years is essentialist and we historians don’t approve of that sort of language. Things change. “Peoples” go in and out of existence. State ambitions change.

A reporter asked Are you concerned about more unrest in that region, or do you think it will stabilize?

Trump: “Nobody knows what the final outcome will be in the region. Nobody knows who the final victor is going to be. I believe it’s Turkey. Erdogan is very smart, and he’s very tough. Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost. I can’t say that Assad wasn’t a butcher — what he did to children. You remember, I attacked him with 58 missiles. Unbelievable missiles coming from ships 700 miles away, and every one of them hit their target.

Mr. Trump is correct that Turkiye’s Erdogan is likely the final victor by virtue of his allies now controlling Damascus. However, the likelihood that Syria will stabilize seems to me low, given the regional rivalries, internal divisions, poverty and displacement. Also, Israel has destroyed the Syrian government weapons stock with hundreds of bombing raids in the past week, which leaves the new government with no means of fighting challengers such as a resurgent ISIL.

Mr. Trump is also correct that Bashar al-Assad was a butcher responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, for thousands of prisoners tortured to death, for striking children’s playgrounds with barrel bombs. He also did use chemical weqpons, to which Trump responded with a missile barrage in 2017.

Trump: “Obama had drawn the red line in the sand, but then he refused to honor it. Assad killed many more children after that, and Obama did nothing. But I did. I hit him with a lot of missiles. I remember the night President Xi was here; we were having chocolate cake at dinner when I explained what we were doing. Those missiles were shot, and it was amazing how precise they were —- every one hit its target.

“Had Obama enforced his red line, you wouldn’t have even had Russia there. But they are there now, and I never understood why. Russia isn’t getting much out of it. Now, their time is taken up with Ukraine, and we want that to stop too. It’s Carnage.”

I do not believe that Mr. Obama’s having declined to bomb Syria over chemical weapons use in 2013 had anything to do with the continuation of the war. Mr. Obama was refused support for this move both by the British Parliament and by the Republican-controlled Congress, and was politically forestalled from launching missiles. Those missiles would not have had any affect on the civil war. Nor did Mr. Trump’s 2017 missile barrage have any material impact on the course of the last stages of the Syrian Civil War.

Jeff: You mentioned the wars. Can you tell us what you said to Prime Minister Netanyahu in your call on Saturday? And have you spoken to President Putin since your election?

Trump: “I’m not going to comment on the Putin question, but I will comment on Netanyahu. We had a very good conversation. We discussed what’s going to happen moving forward, and I made it clear that I’ll be very available starting January 20th.

“Beyond that, it was mostly a recap call. I asked him about the current situation and where things stand. Mike Waltz, by the way, is doing a fantastic job. Everyone is very happy with him, and he was very involved in the call as well. . . “

Let’s hope the remaining Israeli hostages are indeed returned within a month. However, all hell broke loose in Gaza a year ago and has been ongoing and it is difficult to see what more Trump could do to Gaza short of killing off the remaining 2 million people entirely.

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Video:

PBS NewsHour: “WATCH LIVE: Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago”

(The Conversation) – The lightning-fast collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has sent shock waves across the Middle East. The disposal of the dictator whose family had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than half a century has triggered a potentially seismic shift in the balance of power in the region.

But there are also important repercussions beyond Syria and its neighbourhood – with Russia one of the more significantly affected powers.

Back in 2015, Assad’s regime had been on the brink of collapse. It was saved by a Russian intervention – with support from Iran and Hezbollah. Launched in the context of a growing threat from Islamic State, Russia enabled Assad’s regime to push back other rebel forces as well.

Over the years that followed, it enabled Assad to consolidate control over the capital, other key cities, and in particular the coastal region where Russia had two military bases.

The future of these bases is now uncertain. The Russian naval base in Tartus – which dates back to Soviet times – as well as an air base at Khmeimim, established south-east of Latakia in 2015, were vital assets for Russia to project military force in the Mediterranean sea and bolster the Kremlin’s claim to Russian great-power status.

Given the importance of the bases for Russia and the significant investments made over the years in propping the regime, Assad’s fall reflects badly on Russia’s capabilities to assert credible influence on the global stage.

Even if Russia somehow manages to negotiate a deal with Syria’s new rulers over the future of its military bases, the fact that Moscow was unable to save an important ally like Assad exposes critical weaknesses in Russia’s ability to act, rather than just talk, like a great power.

There are clear intelligence failures that either missed or misinterpreted the build-up of anti-Assad forces by Qatar, and Turkey’s tacit support of this. These failures were then compounded by diminished Russian military assets in Syria and an inability to reinforce them at short notice. This is, of course, due to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

The depletion of the military capabilities of two other Kremlin allies in the region — Iran and Hezbollah — further compounded the difficulties for Assad and exacerbated the effect of Russia’s overstretch. This also raises the question of whether Russia strategically misjudged the situation and underestimated its vulnerability in Syria.

But even more so, it highlights Russia’s own dependence on allies who do not simply acquiesce to Moscow’s demands — as Assad did when he provided Russia its military bases — but who actively support a wannabe great power that lacks some of the means to assert its claimed status – as Iran and Hezbollah did in 2015.

Where’s China?

Missing from this equation is China. While Beijing had sided with Assad after the start of the Syrian civil war, this support was mostly of the rhetorical kind. It was mainly aimed at preventing a UN-backed, western-led intervention akin to the one in Libya that led to the fall of Gaddafi and has plunged the country into chaos ever since.

A high-profile visit of Assad to China in September 2023 resulted in a strategic partnership agreement. This seemed to signal another step towards the rehabilitation of the Syrian regime, in Beijing’s eyes at least. But when push came to shove and Assad’s rule was under severe threat, China did nothing to save him.

This raises an important question about Chinese judgment of the Syrian regime and the evolving crisis. But there is also a broader point here regarding Russian great-power ambitions.

“Diminished,” Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

For all the talk of a limitless partnership between Moscow and Beijing, China ultimately did nothing to save Russia from an embarrassing defeat in Syria. Where Russia needed a military presence to bolster its claims to great-power status, Chinese interests in the Middle East are primarily about economic opportunity and the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

This has clearly limited Beijing’s appetite to become more involved, let alone to bail out Assad.

Putin diminished

Russia’s position in the Middle East now is in peril. Moscow has lost a key ally in Assad. Its other main allies, Iran and Hezbollah, are significantly weakened. Israel and Turkey, with whom the Kremlin has not had easy relations over the past few years, have been strengthened.

This exposes the hollowness of Russian claims to great-power status. It is also likely to further diminish Russian prestige and the standing that it has in the eyes of other partners – whether they are China or North Korea, members of the Brics, or countries in the global south that Russia has recently tried to woo.

The consequences of that for Ukraine – arguably the main source of Russia’s over-stretch – are likely to be ambivalent. On the one hand, the ease with which Assad was deposed demonstrates that Russia is not invincible and that its support of brutal dictatorships has limits. On the other hand, there should be no expectation of anything but Russia doubling down in Ukraine.

Putin needs a success that restores domestic and international confidence in him —and fast. After all, Donald Trump does not like losers.

Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The officers of the new government have said various things. BBC Monitoring reports that on December 14, the new minister of defense, Col. Hasan al-Hamada, said on Telegram that the new Syria would not enjoy security until it terminated the “separatist schemes” of what he termed the “PKK” (Kurdistan Workers Party or Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan), which he said held sway over the east of the country. The PKK began as a Marxist separatist faction in the late 1970s and is still viewed as a terrorist organization by the US, Turkey and some European countries.

Since the PKK is based in Iraq and Turkey’s eastern Anatolia, al-Hamada was likely instead referring to the YPG or People’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel) in northeastern Syria, the paramilitary for AANES, which denies any relationship to the more radical PKK. His words were ominous for the Kurdish regions, and reflected the desires of the patron of the ruling faction in the new Syria, Turkey, which wants to see the YPG disarmed.

In contrast, the leader of the new government, Ahmad al-Shara (nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), has been more conciliatory. BBC Monitoring reports his remarks this weekend to Istanbul-based Syria TV, which is Qatari-owned. He made a distinction between the “Kurdish community” and the “PKK organization.”

On Sunday on a Syrian Telegram channel, al-Shara said that Kurds are a fundamental component of the coming Syria. He added, “The Kurds are a part of the homeland, and were exposed to tremendous injustice, as we were. With the fading of the regime, it may be that the injustice that befell them will fade as well.” He stressed the importance of “justice and equality for all,” such as would ensure “new regulations and a new history in Syria.”

The sweep of HTS forces from Idlib to Aleppo had caused the displacement of some Kurds in the Afrin region. Al-Shara pledged, “We will seek to return our people there to their villages and regions.” If he is sincere and has the power to make this happen, it would be a significant development and would cross his Turkish patrons, who want to break up the band of Kurdish habitation along the Syrian-Turkish border in the north.

Al-Shara’s remarkable statements on Sunday were hailed by the Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, head of that country’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which rules the Kurdistan Regional Government or super-province of northern Iraq.

Barzani said, “We have seen a statement by Ahmed al-Sharaa about the Kurdish people in Syria, in which he described the Kurdish people as part of the homeland and a partner in the future of Syria.” He added that “this vision of the Kurds and of the future of Syria is a source of joy and is welcome to us, and we hope that it will be the beginning of a correction of the course of history and of ending the wrong and unfair actions that were taken against the Kurdish people in Syria.”

Barzani continued that “such a perspective represents a starting point that paves the way for building a strong Syria; and the Kurds, Arabs and all other components of Syria must seize this opportunity to participate together in building a stable, free and democratic Syria.”

Barzani’s reaction is important for a number of reasons. Kurds in Iraq have had their own experience in reintegrating into a largely Arab country after the fall of a Baath regime, and have found ways to be influential in Baghdad while keeping some semi-autonomy. They are sometimes portrayed as the Quebec of Iraq.

Additionally, if the HTS were to move aggressively against the Syrian Kurds, Barzani could push back militarily. Both the KRG military force, the Peshmerga, and the thousands of PKK fighters hiding out in Iraq’s Qandil mountains could make a lot of trouble for the new Syria if it moves aggressively against the Kurds, as new Defense Minister al-Hamada seems to have envisioned. Further, Iraqi Kurds have influence in Baghdad, where Shiite leaders view al-Shara and his colleagues as little better than ISIL.

Moreover, the European Union, individual European countries and the US are watching the HTS-led government carefully to see if it takes the route of human rights, before they will consider lifting sanctions on Syria. The country desperately needs sanctions relief, and avoiding the Arab nationalist mistakes of the past with regard to the Kurds may be one of the prices Damascus has to pay. It won’t make Turkey happy, but Turkey itself would vastly benefit from a lifting of Syrian sanctions, since otherwise Ankara will have to carry the Syrian economy itself and Turkish firms could face sanctions for investing there.

The autonomous Kurdish AANES is for the most part civilly administered by the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat), which follows the left-wing cooperativist philosophy of Brooklyn thinker Murray Bookchin. It rules over roughly 2.4 million of Syria’s 24 million people.

As noted, the paramilitary of the Democratic Union Party is the YPG or People’s Protection Units. They form the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which have been backed by the US Department of Defense and which played the major role in defeating the ISIL (ISIS, Daesh) terrorist group that briefly ruled parts of Syria and Iraq 2014-2018. US special operations troops embedded among them.

In 2019, President Donald J. Trump was widely blamed for giving Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade the Kurdish regions of northern Syria and to establish a military buffer zone, which led to the displacement of tens of thousands of Kurds and the deaths of SDF fighters who had saved America’s bacon in the fight against ISIL.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces kicked the Baath Party of Bashar al-Assad out of the northeast in 2011 and in recent times had an uneasy truce with it, as long as it respected their semi-autonomy. Arab nationalist Syria had never known what to do with the country’s Kurds, who are not Arabs, and had stripped them of citizenship in 1963.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – After tenaciously holding on to power for more than a decade of war, the government of Bashar al-Assad crumbled in two weeks of limited fighting. Overwhelmed by a surprise blitzkrieg assault, the Syrian army seemed to melt away in the face of a surprisingly well-armed and well-organized coalition of disparate “rebel” forces that rapidly conquered Aleppo, Hama, and finally Damascus, sending Assad and his family into exile in Moscow.

Assad’s sudden downfall has drastically shifted the facts on the ground in the Middle East. It has compromised the interests of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah (Syria’s primary protectors over the past decade), while bolstering the positions of the three states that stand most to gain from Assad’s fall: the United States, Israel, and Turkey, whose leaders were quick to celebrate —and take some credit for—Assad’s fall.

The United States, which has sought regime change in Syria since the first Obama administration (if not far longer), has clear reasons to cheer the removal of an ally of Moscow and Tehran—as does Ukraine, which reportedly provided modest support to anti-Assad forces. Israel, for its part, has long sought the overthrow of Assad, and has been accused of partnering with various opposition forces over the years. Having finally achieved their objective, Israel wasted no time initiating a massive bombing campaign to destroy Syrian army equipment, while grabbing more territory in Syria’s southwestern Golan region, an unprecedented seizure of territory that has been reported as “indefinite.” With Syria having been an important conduit for weapons, cash, and materiel for Hezbollah, Israel has also won a tactical victory against the political party and military force with which it had signed an (almost immediately violated) ceasefire deal just prior to Assad’s overthrow.

Although the interests of the United States and Israel in Assad’s ouster are apparent, the role of Turkey is more complex, and arguably more consequential. All evidence points to Turkey having played an integral role in the operation that overthrew Assad’s government, with the Turks likely providing training and material support to at least two of the main rebel forces: The Syrian National Army (SNA) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist group  that had previously been aligned with al-Qaeda. That the assault on Assad’s government began out of Idlib province, which has been under Turkish protection since the start of the Astana Process in 2017, has given further credence to claims of significant Turkish involvement, with accusations proliferating online that many of the rebel forces crossed into Syria from the Turkish border.

In the initial days of the assault, Turkish officials initially denied, and then downplayed, their country’s involvement. Nevertheless, speculation immediately flooded both traditional and social media that this was a Turkish-backed regime change operation—speculation that became difficult to discount after the fall of Aleppo, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly called for the rebels to march on to Damascus and topple Assad. Though the full truth of Ankara’s involvement may never be known, the belief that Turkey— with American and Israeli support—was substantially involved appears to be widespread in the Middle East and beyond.

Longstanding Relationship

Under Erdogan, Turkey has had a complicated relationship with Assad’s Syria, training anti-Assad forces early in the civil war and later sending its military into Syria for multiple campaigns against Kurdish, Islamic State, and Syrian government forces. Having repeatedly called for Assad’s ouster in the 2010s, however, Erdogan had recently appeared to take a more conciliatory tone with Damascus, calling for new negotiations with Assad (though these overtures were allegedly rebuffed) and expressing “hope” for improved ties as recently as three weeks ago.

Apart from Erdogan’s public statements, there were other reasons to doubt that Turkey would actively push for regime change in Syria. Among these, a primary factor was the aforementioned Astana Process, which had set up a series of “de-escalation zones” in Syria, each of which would be under the protection of the Process’ three signatories: Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Under the terms of the agreement, there was to be “no military solution to the Syrian conflict” and Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity were to be respected. Although numerous problems arose after 2017, Russia, Iran, and Turkey had remained committed to the terms of Astana. Indeed, mere weeks before the start of the assault, at a scheduled meeting for Astana Process states in Kazakhstan, Turkey reaffirmed its commitment to Syrian “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity.”

Turkey’s apparent violation of its Astana Process obligations, with no prior warning, has almost certainly enraged both Moscow and Tehran, both of which have spent much of the past decade protecting their interests there and fighting to keep Assad in power. Given both countries’ central role in the BRICS economic union, furthermore, Erdogan’s actions in Syria may have jeopardized Turkey’s bid for BRICS membership.

Perceptions of Turkish involvement may pose serious problems for Erdoğan’s domestic standing, too. Most Turks are deeply opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza, which many view as a genocide. Should Erdogan be perceived domestically as having aided the aims of Israel and America, the sincerity of his increasingly bellicose rhetoric towards Israel will be further questioned, with many Turks highly critical of Ankara’s reluctance to take more forceful action against Tel Aviv.

Given the risks to his own domestic standing and to Turkey’s historically close relations with Russia in particular, what could have motivated Erdogan to push for regime change in Syria, going against both his own public statements and his government’s official policy?

Explaining Turkish Moves

Turkey hosts more than three million Syrian refugees, which has created significant, and sometimes violent, socioeconomic tensions between refugees and native Turks. With a turbulent and highly inflationary Turkish economy, that is suffering from years of ballooning prices and insufficient government support, these tensions have coalesced into a substantial problem for Erdogan’s government, pushing it to seek ways of repatriating Syrians to their home country. With Assad gone, Erdogan almost certainly hopes to have more control over Syrian affairs, allowing him to send Syrians out of Turkey.

A second likely reason for heightened Turkish involvement in Syria concerns the Kurds. The largest ethnic minority group in Turkey, Kurds have had an infamously difficult relationship with the Turkish state since its founding in 1923. Since then, there has been a sizable minority of Turkish Kurds—most notably the members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—who have sought not only greater rights and recognition but a nation-state of their own. In the eyes of the Turkish state, the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, presiding over a large swath of territory along the Turkish border, constitute an existential threat to Turkish sovereignty.

The Kurdish issue is made more salient by the coming inauguration of Donald Trump. Just last week, the president-elect strongly stated that the United States should not get involved in events on the ground in the Syria, giving further credence to past reports that Trump intends to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, which Trump had previously stated were there primarily to extract Syrian oil. Should Trump make good on his promises, it would leave the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces unprotected by the presence of American boots on the ground.

The possibility that Trump will indeed remove U.S. troops may have been pivotal to Ankara’s calculations. Indeed, just a few weeks before the assault on Aleppo, Turkish media reported top officials in Erdogan’s government predicting a Trump-led withdrawal, suggesting that this could open up new opportunities for driving out Kurdish forces near the Turkish-Syrian border. Driving out Kurdish forces poses risks for Turkey’s relations with the United States and the broader West, where Kurdish militias have been positively represented throughout the Syrian war. But Erdogan may be expecting that, under Trump, the United States will not get in his way.

Erdogan may also see an opportunity to expand Turkey’s borders, which many in his base see as having been unfairly drawn after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps Ankara will attempt to make its foothold in northern Syria permanent and expand that area by taking over areas currently held by the Kurds. Yet Turkey’s presence in the north, along with its close relations with HTS and SNA, provides Erdogan with leverage in future negotiations with various regional players—including Russia, which is surely scrambling to negotiate the future of its military bases in Syria.

Whatever the motivations, Turkey will now be expected to take a central role in whatever government emerges out of the current chaos. Success in repatriating Syrians from Turkey back to Syria will be a critical test for Erdogan’s approval at home, as will be how he navigates the expanded Israeli occupation of Syrian territory. Abroad, Erdogan’s ability to maintain relations with Moscow and Iran will likewise be critical for the future of Turkey’s application to both BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Yet with a frustrated population at home, a multitude of nation states and non-state actors jostling for power in and around Syria, and a potentially difficult-to-control political force in charge of Syria, Erdogan may have this time bitten off more than he can chew.

(The Conversation) – After more than a decade of brutal civil war, it took Islamist militants just 11 days to sweep through Syria and topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The offensive, which has been driven by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has forced many residents in western Syria to flee their homes in search of safety.

Meanwhile, others are celebrating the end of the Assad family’s five-decade rule. There are long queues of people and cars at Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing as displaced people return to Syria, and there is also significant congestion at the border with Turkey.

According to Ali Yerlikaya, Turkey’s interior minister, the monthly average of Syrians crossing the border nearly doubled in a single day after Assad was overthrown.

While these events have been unfolding, the situation in a de facto self-governing region in the country’s north-east called the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (also known as Rojava) has not received much attention in the international media. Emboldened by the success of the rebel offensive, the SNA is looking to gain ground in the region.

The region’s governing body has called the fall of Assad a significant moment and expressed hopes for a new chapter in Syria. And Rojava’s powerful armed groups, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have both also expressed optimism about the fall the Assad regime.

These statements reflect a shared sense of hope and a commitment to constructive dialogue and collaboration in shaping Syria’s future. But Rojava, which has been a beacon of Kurdish self-administration and democratic governance since the early 2010s when several districts declared autonomy, is under significant threat both from internal and external forces.

Internally, there are tensions between the SDF and Arab tribes over political influence and Rojava’s abundant natural resources. In Manbij, a city to the west of the Euphrates river in northern Syria, there have been heavy clashes between the SDF and the SNA since the start of the rebel offensive. The SDF reported successfully repelling multiple attacks, but eventually withdrew from the city.

Offensives have also reportedly begun in Kobane, which is seen as the birthplace of the Rojava revolution and a symbol of Kurdish resistance. The town is the site of a key battleground where Kurdish fighters defeated Islamic State (IS) in 2014.

In other cities in the region, such as Raqqa, Tabqa and the key desert city of Deir ez-Zor, Arabs are demographically more numerous than Kurds. The future of cooperation between the two groups in these Arab-dominated areas remains uncertain.

Over the past week, SDF fighters have captured Deir ez-Zor and have taken control of Syria’s main border crossing with Iraq. More recently, however, there have been reports suggesting that HTS fighters are gaining control of the city.

Externally, Turkish military operations aimed at weakening Kurdish control of the region are a constant threat to Rojava. Turkey views the SDF and YPG as extensions of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ party and acts to prevent the Kurdish autonomous region along its border from gaining political status, which Turkey views as a direct threat to its national security.

So, in cooperation with allied jihadist groups, Turkey has carried out several operations in northern Syria in recent years to establish a “safe zone” to push back Kurdish forces. Turkish forces previously seized control of the city of Afrin in the north-western reaches of Syria in 2018, which was then under Rojava’s control.

These actions have drawn international criticism, with accusations of human rights violations and war crimes. Sweden, along with several other European states, halted its arms trade with Turkey in 2019. However, Sweden later lifted the restrictions during its application process to join Nato.

Turkey plays a crucial role as an ally to Syrian opposition movements, particularly the SNA. It served as a vital support system for the rebel forces during the recent offensive, as it has done consistently in the past.

Rojava’s future hinges on its ability to navigate these complex dynamics. Maintaining US support is critical, as American military presence provides a deterrent against Turkish aggression. However, the region must also address internal divisions and work towards greater Arab-Kurdish reconciliation to ensure long-term stability.

The path forward

Syria’s opposition groups are highly fragmented, and we do not yet know how power struggles will unfold among them. One thing we do know is that HTS and its leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani have historic links to al-Qaeda and IS. The group is now presented in a more moderate light, but many uncertainties remain.

Rojava, on the other hand, has fought fiercely against IS, protected Yazidis during the genocidal campaign against them and established humanitarian corridors for their evacuation, and aspires to implement a multi-ethnic society based on the principles of direct democracy, ecology and gender equality.

The Charter of the Social Contract of Rojava safeguards these principles and ensures the representation and rights of Kurds, Arabs, Yazidis, Syriac-Assyrians, Turkmens, Armenians and others.

It is perplexing that, despite the apparent “confidence” in Jolani – a figure who was once branded “the world’s most wanted terrorist” – as a moderate revolutionary leader, there is scant recognition of the democratic model Rojava has offered since its establishment.

Instead of receiving the support it merits, Rojava is being targeted, raising questions about the international community’s priorities and the prospects for sustainable peace in the region. The Syrian people, in all their diversity and voices, must determine ways to build a truly inclusive and democratic Syria where all people can coexist in peace.

Pinar Dinc, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science & Researcher, Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Kurds caught in crossfire of Syria ‘power vacuum’ • FRANCE 24 English

(The Conversation) – When Hamas strategist Yahya Sinwar ordered the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis, he was planning to deal a mortal blow to an Israel weakened by internal divisions.

Sinwar, killed by Israeli forces in Gaza a year later, likely did not imagine that he was instead setting in motion a cascade of events that would bring down longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and weaken the Iranian “Axis of Resistance” alliance to which Hamas belongs.

Yet to understand the timing of Assad’s fall at the hands of rebels from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (the “Movement for the Liberation of the Levant,” or HTS), we need to consider the war triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel. That conflict has escalated into Israel’s invasion of Gaza, its war with Hezbollah and direct confrontations between Israel and Iran.

As we consider Syria’s future, we must also consider how it might be affected by the ongoing regional war in Gaza.

Gaza war set the HTS wheels in motion

So how is HTS’s stunning advance on Damascus linked to this regional war? HTS forces had planned their offensive six months ago and received tacit approval from Turkey, which shares a northern border with Syria.

At that time, the Lebanese Shi’a militia, Hezbollah, was still deploying thousands of troops in southern Syria to protect the Assad regime. Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, had long viewed Syria as a key link in Iran’s regional alliance because it was a crucial transfer point for Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah. Any HTS attack at this point would have faced stiff resistance.

Hezbollah, with tens of thousands of trained fighters and an arsenal of well over 100,000 missiles and rockets, was widely considered to be the world’s most powerful non-state army. But Hezbollah — whose daily rocket fire at Israel since Oct. 8, 2023, forced the evacuation of more than 60,000 Israeli citizens — overplayed its hand.

Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah would only stop firing rockets once Israel had reached a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. Suddenly, in September, Israel launched an offensive in which it killed Hezbollah’s military leadership and Nasrallah himself, followed by an invasion into southern Lebanon in which over 3,000 Hezbollah fighters were killed.

On Nov. 27, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire with Israel and began to withdraw its forces from Syria. That same day, HTS launched its invasion of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

A weakened Iran

Hezbollah was the capstone of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, a collection of militias in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria backed by Iran’s own military power. But after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Oct. 1, Israeli airstrikes a few weeks later damaged sensitive military facilities and wiped out Iranian air defences, exposing the country to further attack.

With Hezbollah weakened and Iran’s territory vulnerable, Syria’s Assad regime was the next domino to fall.

Syria fought wars against Israel in 1948, 1967, 1973 and 1982. How will its new government perceive Israel? HTS leader Mohammed al-Julani has said HTS, unlike al-Qaeda or ISIS, will not pursue anti-western violence. HTS praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks and supports the Palestinian cause, but since seizing power, HTS leadership has made no pronouncement specifically about Israel.

On Dec. 8, a group of HTS fighters in Damascus declared they will attack Israel next, but this does not necessarily represent the aims of the broader movement. Hezbollah’s recent battlefield setbacks would presumably deter other armed groups from confronting Israel, at least in the short term.

“New Flag,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Questionable Israeli, American moves

Yet recent Israeli moves risk starting off relations with a new Syrian government on the wrong foot. As Assad fled Syria on Dec. 7, Israel began waves of airstrikes targeting Syria’s remaining air force, missiles and navy, along with remnants of its chemical weapons program, to deny them to future hostile entities.

The United States similarly launched airstrikes against ISIS targets in northeast Syria. Since Dec. 8, Israel has also seized Syrian territory facing the highly strategic Golan Heights that the Israelis captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

The Israeli government claimed this capture of Syrian territory to be a “temporary defensive” move to ensure it would not fall into jihadist hands, but it was condemned by the United Nations and several Arab states.

On Dec. 10, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel does not want to “meddle in Syria’s internal affairs” or provoke war with HTS rebels, but that Israel is prepared to fight if attacked.

But the risk is real that Israel’s pre-emptive moves could spiral into a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the hostile forces Israeli authorities seek to deter could instead be provoked into attacking Israel.

And although Assad’s fall has struck a serious blow to the Axis of Resistance, it’s possible that weak governments in Lebanon and Jordan could fall next, creating a jihadist axis that would pose an entirely new security challenge to the region.

Daniel L. Douek, Faculty Lecturer, International Relations, McGill University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.