The Arabs cannot make war without Egypt. But they cannot make peace without Syria.—Henry Kissinger
SYRIA was my first ambassadorial assignment, so I have a special affinity for it and its people. On welcoming me, a Syrian official told me “You have served in Egypt. They are more charming. We are more honest.” Like all such sayings, there is a grain of truth in it. Nevertheless, I love Egypt and the Egyptians just as much.
I arrived in Damascus — reputed to be the oldest capital city in the world — just after President Hafez al-Assad had destroyed Hama in crushing an uprising against his Alawi-dominated regime. He was widely regarded as being as brilliant a strategist as he was ruthless a ruler. After the 1971 Arab-Israeli war and the Kissinger-engineered defection of Egypt from the frontline of Arab states against Israel, Syria emerged as the leader under Assad. Kissinger, while a strategic opponent, also admired Assad’s strategic acumen.
After 53 years of Alawi rule over Syria, it has suddenly ended. Depending on one’s inclination, Damascus has either fallen or is free. In truth, both descriptions are accurate.
Damascus, as the metropolis of Arab dignity and resistance to US and Israeli neo-imperial dominance over the region, has indeed fallen. And yet, given the brutal minority rule of the elder and younger Assad regimes that saw the brutal repression of any dissent, Damascus is indeed free — for the moment.
Setback for some, boon for others
There is no doubt that the latest developments represent a major strategic gain for the US, Israel, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia, and a major setback for Russia, Iran and Palestine. The regional picture, however, may in the short run be more important than the larger global picture.
Depending on one’s inclination, Damascus has either fallen, or is free. In truth, both descriptions are accurate
Turkiye, and especially President Erdogan, appear to be immediate winners. Turkiye has considerable influence over the Kurdish region of Syria in the northeast, and possibly with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which sees itself as an Islamic nationalist organisation, after having renounced its ties with Al-Qaeda.
Erdogan will now be able to repatriate Syrian refugees in Turkiye, and as a democratic country, will seek to moderate any authoritarian tendencies of the HTS. In this regard, Turkiye may be up against Saudi Arabia, which sees itself as the patron of Sunni regimes, even though it is apparently moving away from Salafi puritanism under Mohammed Bin Salman.
The immediate implications for Iran and Hezbollah are very negative. Iran’s influence over Syria, and Syria’s over Lebanon via Hezbollah, were significant obstacles to US hegemony and Israeli militarism in the region. The implications for the Palestinians, at first glance, may appear to be even worse. They depended heavily on the support of the apparent losers in the latest developments.
But Trump may turn out to be a wild card. His first response to the latest developments has been to call for a “hands-off” policy towards Syria. This may be out of deference to Putin; it may also be because he may now be able to tell Israel that a ceasefire in Gaza is far more feasible because Hamas has been effectively isolated from the assistance it needed to maintain its heroic resistance.
Accordingly, Israel is in a better position than ever to choose peace over security (read unending militarism), which would, in turn, enable the revival of the Abraham Accords to help Arab monarchs keep their people calmer over Palestine, and under control.
Great power dynamics
Eventually, though, the larger picture will shape the course of events in the Middle East and beyond. US strategic policy has been, in recent years, largely directed towards bringing about regime change in Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus. Now, they have done so in Syria. The deep state in the US would like to build on this success to explore what is possible in Russia.
As the Ukraine war has demonstrated, Russia has been considerably weakened since it was unable to come to the rescue of Bashar al-Assad. This is an enormous setback for the Putin regime. Iran’s inability to effectively come to the assistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon has added to Russia’s embarrassment.
However, Trump’s alleged soft spot for Putin is considered by some observers as a possible opportunity for Putin to save face. This is a dubious assumption. Much more important than Trump’s attitude towards Putin — and he seems to admire strong men who are in control, not strong men who may be losing control — are two other factors.
Firstly, the fact that with the fall of the Assad regime, the likely winding up of Russian military bases in Syria and Trump’s “hands-off” policy towards Syria, Russia may be able to pull its forces out of Syria and be in a much better position to regain the upper hand in Ukraine. This could restore the Minsk agreements, with Trump’s endorsement, as a basis for an end to the war there. This is still speculation, though, as Putin will not readily pay the price of distancing himself from Xi Jinping, as Trump might insist.
Secondly, and far more important, is the question of how China will respond to these dramatic developments. It knows the ultimate strategic prize for the US is to contain the Chinese challenge to its global dominance.
China cannot accept such hegemony, as it cannot allow its own global economic influence to rest on American sufferance. Accordingly, it can no longer afford to ignore developments in the Middle East, which sooner or later will feed into the attitudes of other countries closer to China.
Pakistan is the largest country in the Muslim heartland — and the least influential for reasons that are tragically obvious. The fall of the Alawi military-based dictatorship, however, shows that once a regime forfeits the support of the people, its demise is only a matter of time. As David Hume long ago observed, the force of an awakened people is far greater than anything a military can muster.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China, and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan.
Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2024
