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Four days after the fall of the Assad dynasty in Syria, the foreign powers that have carved the Arab-majority country up into competing fiefdoms are still trying to come to terms with a dizzying situation. The Syrian people are in the same boat. While nobody is mourning the fall of Bashar al-Assad—even Iran, Assad's most prolific backer, was getting tired of his intransigence—there are fears about what a post-Assad Syria might have in store.
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is saying all the right things. Instead of dismissing Assad regime bureaucrats wholesale, he's ordering them back to work. Syria's minority communities are being reassured that they have nothing to fear. Conscripted Syrian soldiers have been granted amnesty, both to maintain security in Syria's major cities and to nip any potential armed opposition in the bud.
At the same time, it's lost on no one that Jolani still has a $10 million FBI bounty on his head. HTS, which ruled Idlib with an iron fist, remains designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and United Nations. Although the Biden administration is debating whether to de-list HTS, U.S. officials are also cognizant that Jolani's words of inclusiveness don't mean anything until they're backed up by action.
The only thing we know today is that Assad's regime is gone. Other than that, there are more questions than answers, including how or even whether HTS, newly-ascended, will share power. HTS officials are trying to establish an interim administration to fill the power void in Damascus; on Dec. 10, it announced that Assad's last prime minister agreed to hand over his administrative powers to Mohammed al-Bashir, the man who ran HTS' so-called Salvation Government in Idlib. The group has also promised a unified cabinet, but whether this actually comes to path is unknowable at this stage.
In the meantime, Syria's external stakeholders are using the Assad regime's demise to press their own interests. As the Greek historian Thucydides once said, "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." And let there be no doubt that Syria, a weak state even when Assad was in the lavish presidential palace, is weaker still.
Israel has been especially busy. Over the last several days, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have not only taken more land in the Israel-Syria disengagement zone but have also unleashed air strikes against Syrian army infrastructure. Israel reportedly struck 500 Syrian military targets since Assad's overthrow in what Israeli officials say is a campaign to ensure strategic weapons systems don't end up in the hands of bad actors. Some of those attacks involved the Israeli Navy, which destroyed what was left of the Syrian naval fleet, including boats containing ant-ship missiles. Israel, which opposed Assad due to his strategic partnership with Iran but nevertheless appreciated his ability to keep the Israeli-Syrian border quiet, is now facing the prospect of a Sunni extremist coalition ruling next-door.
Turkey is also active. Although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was no fan of Assad—he once called him a butcher and a terrorist—the Syrian dictator was never his biggest concern. That went to the Syrian Kurds, whom Erdogan views as direct threat to Turkish security. Turkey has launched three operations inside Syria to push Kurdish fighters away from its border and block the consolidation of a de-facto Kurdish state. Turkish-backed fighters have controlled stretches of the border region ever since, a presence that separates Kurdish cantons in the north and provides Ankara with significant influence as to how Syria will be governed in the future.
Erdogan has used the last several days to take the initiative further. The north-central city of Manbij, held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) since 2016, is now in the hands of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army after Washington helped negotiate the evacuation of Kurdish fighters. Turkish-backed Syrian fighters are now fighting the SDF in Kobani, a city that became famous after the Kurds resisted a deadly ISIS offensive in 2014.
The United States is in the picture as well. The Biden administration is taking a hands-off approach on the formation of a new Syrian political order, communicating with HTS through Turkey, and escalating bombing missions against ISIS in the Syrian desert. Even as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted that Washington would support any Syrian government that respects all of the country's people, the U.S. has made it known that the roughly 900 U.S. troops stationed in eastern Syria won't be leaving. On Dec. 8, the U.S. Air Force conducted one of its biggest strikes against ISIS locations in recent times, hitting 75 targets in central Syria. The U.S. position right now can best be summed up as—we'll respect whatever government the Syrians come up with but reserve the right to take military action inside Syria even if the new government disapproves.
Syrians will need time to get their act together. Foreign powers aren't waiting in the interim.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
