Bashar al-Assad collapsed in a flash after the onslaught of anti-regime rebels – essentially jihadists – who within a week had broken out of their base in Idlib and captured Damascus.
Militarily it is what we expected to happen, he said, citing similar events in the civil war in Libya in 2011 and Iraq in 2014 — when Islamic State fighters “were at the gates of Baghdad within weeks,” the analyst noted. of Sky, Professor Michael Clarke
“We’re not dealing with densely populated areas here, so when a city falls or surrenders, the defenders fall back to the next city, so large areas are covered when there’s an advance,” he said. “In this case, I have been impressed by the fact that there has been very little fighting in the last day. We are talking about a complete collapse.”
Professor Michael Clarke said Assad’s dramatic fall came so quickly because he was fighting on three fronts.
He had Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) coming against him from the north, he had the Southern Front coming from the south and a Kurdish group in the east. “So they were under pressure from three fronts, three different groups. Much of the Syrian army defected, deciding they weren’t going to fight, and the groups as they moved forward were able to make deals,” Professor Clarke said.
Russia and Iran abandoned Assad
The professor also stressed that the advance was possible because the Russians and Iranians, Assad’s two main allies, essentially abandoned him. “The Russians provided air power, but no army on the ground in Syria, except for the Wagner mercenary group, which was effectively kicked out with Prigozhin’s coup in Russia in 2023,” he stressed.
“The Iranians are involved through the Quds Force. The militias are quite well trained, but there are only small groups of them – so neither Russia nor Iran really supported Assad.”
“When the regime is under constant pressure – and in this case it was pressure from three sides in three different places – suddenly, that limited engagement that Russia and Iran had was not enough,” Michael Clarke pointed out.
“Either they would have to participate much more, or they would have to withdraw. Both have decided to let the regime fall and will leave.”
Professor Clarke said there was little chance of a multi-party government in Syria because “all countries in the Middle East seem to require relatively authoritarian governments”.
“It would be nice to think that there would be some kind of multi-party group that could be formed,” he said. “Prime Minister, Jalali,” he said, “I’ll go ahead and work with anyone,” and HTS said “we’ll form a kind of national front but we’ll see.”
He added: “The stark truth is that if you look across the Middle East, all the countries in the Middle East seem to require relatively authoritarian governments.”
“Israel always says ‘we are the only democracy in the Middle East’ and there is some truth in that, even though democracy in Israel has been under tremendous pressure in recent years”
“But if you look in the Gulf, what you have are kingdoms, which rule with a kind of dictatorship – but they have a lot of money, they have cash, so they can buy off a lot of protests. In the Levant zone – in Syria, in Lebanon, in Egypt, in Iraq – you have very strong one-party governments. The closest we had to a multi-party government in an Arab state was in Tunisia after the Arab Spring – and that collapsed.”
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