The victory in Syria by rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—and other even more closely Turkish-backed groups—over the 50-year-old Assad family dictatorship opens a crucial new chapter in the history of this all-important Middle Eastern country. 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed Syria as “bloodsoaked sand”, insisting it is of no strategic importance to the United States, and—implicitly—the Middle East region which nevertheless remains critical to Washington’s foreign policy.

But his failure to understand the country’s pivotal role is the function of deep ignorance. In fact, as all savvy observers of the region know, Syria is the great hinge of the Middle East. Whatever happens in the region tends to depend heavily on what happens in, about, and to Syria. So, the outcome of the regime’s fall is of extreme importance to the Middle East and the global powers interested in it. These include not only the United States but also Russia, which was the Assad regime’s primary global backer, and China, which gets most of its outside energy from the Persian Gulf and ships much of its manufactured exports through the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

But the importance of Assad’s fall begins with, and falls mainly upon, the Syrians. They are suddenly free of a stifling and incredibly brutal dictatorship which all but destroyed the country in its vain effort to remain in power despite the rebellion which erupted during the 2011 Arab uprisings. 

Syria now stands on the precipice, with relative freedom, unity and tolerance, on one side, and renewed oppression (albeit of a different kind), greater conflict, and disunity and increased fragmentation, on the other. 

How the new powers, and their Turkish backers, proceed after their lightning victory over the bloodsoaked dictator—who fled in the middle of the night, without even informing most of his cronies and colleagues in the government—will determine in which direction the country moves. Any predictions at this time are pure speculation, but if Syria is to move toward greater tolerance, and therefore unity and stability, it will be bucking the trend in the region, which knows no democracy and little pluralism.

With the retreat of Tunisia’s democratic process—which was roundly rejected by the public in 2021 for failing to secure even the slightest economic stability in the country—the hopes for greater accountability and rule of law, as well as democracy, in the Arab world, essentially nose-dived. 

Into this entirely non-democratic Arab World milieu, one must add Israel, which rules over more than 6 million Palestinians in the occupied territories through a system that is arguably the most repressive in a generally repressive region. Its ethnically-structured “Jewish democracy” is restricted to Israel’s Jewish citizens and the small number (2 million) Palestinians who are Israeli citizens yet still suffer significant discrimination.

Meanwhile, Turkey maintains an “illiberal democracy” which resembles Hungary’s system of effectively phony openness and accountability. In Iran’s theocracy, elections and other political events are tightly controlled by a clerical authority that operates a system above the political zone and regulates it carefully, including by limiting those who may run for high office only to persons trusted by the higher ecclesiastical echelons of the regime.

This is a Middle East that is also largely bereft of tolerance. While it can be found in an ethnic and especially religious form in the United Arab Emirates, that country openly declares it isn’t a democracy and has no intention of becoming one. It promotes a socio-political governance model in the Middle East that is open, tolerant and forward-looking, but very much top-down in decision-making and lacks structured forms of accountability beyond neo-feudal diwans and other forms of essentially royal or connected patronage. 

So, in searching for a new system that involves tolerance and openness—and, if not democracy, at least a systematic form of accountability and the rule of law—Syria will be seeking to chart an entirely new path divergent from regional trends. If they can pull it off, although they have a remarkable and unusual opportunity to try, Syrians will be performing something of a major miracle in the current Middle East.

Syria will be Starting from Scratch 

But that’s no reason for pessimism. Genuine bottom-up change in the Arab world will have to begin somewhere, and post-dictatorship Syria is as good an opportunity as any in many years. The new system will, after all, be starting from scratch, and that’s an ideal starting point. 

There are good signs so far that Syria’s new power center understands the need for continued stability and security during a period of radical change. For example, HTS and their allies allowed the Assad regime’s Prime Minister Mohammed al-Jalali to remain the caretaker while the new system of governance begins to take shape. He recently handed stewardship to the former rebel’s new prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, and the atmosphere continues to remain impressively orderly given the rapid collapse of the former regime.

This transfer of power stands in stark contrast to the appalling mismanagement in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

Washington allowed law and order in Baghdad to collapse almost completely, with the Americans seemingly only interested in securing the Ministry of Oil. Ordinary Iraqis were forced to form a human ring around the National Museum to prevent criminals from looting the country’s world-famous and significant antiquities, and most valuable historical items. It was a disgraceful performance by the George W. Bush administration; at least in Syria, the rebels and others seem to have avoided that for now. Looting and disorder thus far appear to have been restricted to the rather well-mannered way in which Syrian citizens helped themselves to whatever was left inside former President Bashar Assad’s presidential palace, and an angry attack on the Iranian Embassy. 

Other potential targets, even including the Russian Embassy—considering that Russia and its air force were involved in some of the worst atrocities during the Syrian civil war, including the dumping of chemical weapons on civilians and other acts of horrendous brutality in the ruthless campaign to keep the dictatorship in power—have been thus far impressively spared from the kind of chaotic individual and criminal primitive accumulation of valuables that accompanied the US-engineered and critically mismanaged downfall of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. The less said about the misbegotten “de-Baathification” process that followed in Iraq, and its dire consequences for decades to follow, the better.

The biggest challenge in Syria is going to be creating a system that is tolerant enough of confessional and ethnic minorities to prevent the further fragmentation of the country into communal enclaves. Syria is already fragmented with a de facto autonomous Kurdish area in the north, U.S.-dominated areas in the Northeast (controlled in conjunction with the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces), an expanded Israeli area of control around the occupied Syrian Golan Heights (which Israel purports to have annexed) now including Mount Hermon, Syria’s highest point, and other pockets controlled by militia, including even small remnants of ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The rebels themselves burst out of the small Idlib Province in the northeast, near the Turkish border, where they had ruled a de facto mini-statelet, administered by al-Bashir, in recent years. Their record isn’t particularly inspiring. They imposed a degree of conservative “Islamic law” in the area, although it wasn’t nearly as reactionary as the many other exercises in Islamist control—Sunni and Shiite alike—elsewhere. 

Still, the system wasn’t particularly tolerant, and did not brook dissent, filling its own prison system with those who didn’t agree with the rebels as well as genuine criminals and others. They also reportedly used “Islamic taxation” for extortion and shakedowns when they needed money.

However, they did not have to deal with any sizable groups of ethnic or religious minorities, so their tolerance on that all-important front remains untested. However, they can reasonably claim that the province they controlled was not ruled as a trial run for national power but rather as a base for further armed revolution. This allows them to maintain that their approach to national power based in Damascus will look very different. That approach will now be subjected to the most rigorous practical test.

Furthermore, the successful offensive against Assad involved many other militia groups—most notably the Turkish-controlled Syrian National Army (SNA), as well as other Islamist forces, some more moderate and some more extreme. These groups will all want to have a say in what happens next.

Lastly, and because they now have to deal with a far broader sweep of Syrian society, including remnants of the former regime and many other constituencies in the country that did not exist in their former redoubt, they will perforce have to amend their approach to governance.

Potential Tremors and a Resurgence of “Nationalistic Jihad”

The SNA’s conduct is already a source of concern. Turkey wasted no time in unleashing them against the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF had been the primary force fronting for the international coalition that eventually crushed ISIS’s self-declared “caliphate” that ran for several years in territory between Syria and Iraq. The SNA has now driven them out of the strategically crucial town of Manbij. Other such battles may follow, given that Turkey regards the SDF not as heroic counterterrorism fighters but as terrorists who need to be crushed. It’s not a good start for the rebel coalition, particularly in terms of ethnic tolerance. In order to avoid being overrun by the SNA, the SDF has been strategically ceding control of crucial areas to the HTS. It bears all the hallmarks of the beginnings of another Kurdish tragedy and, quite possibly, betrayal by Washington.

The biggest question mark will be regarding the treatment of Syria’s Alawite minority, from which the Assad family hailed. Alawites formed the core constituency of the former dictatorship, and were perceived to be, and to some extent really were, the primary beneficiaries of its brutal mismanagement. Other remnants of the regime, including many Christian, Druze and urban Sunni constituencies could also possibly face score settling, vengeance, repression, and other abuses. The Alawite community is also one of the first that could seek a new autonomous zone of self-protection and self-rule, ushering in a new level of national disunity resembling the disintegration of Iraq after Shiite-led governments in Baghdad marginalized and persecuted Iraqi Sunnis to the point that Al Qaeda found a new foothold in that country’s western regions. Score settling and vengeance against Alawites could produce an analogous process of increased fragmentation.

Following the rise of intolerant Shiite-dominated governments in Baghdad, the version of Al Qaeda that took hold in western Iraq was led by the infamous Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi. It eventually morphed into ISIS, but not before it pioneered a new version of Sunni Islamist “jihad” that specialized in spectacular acts of public and theatrical cruelty such as the notorious beheading videos and bombing of Shiite mosques. The pre-ISIS Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia became internationally reviled for this unparalleled brutality. 

In fact, their tactics were so barbaric that they even provoked a rebuke from Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of central Al Qaeda. 

When the group finally transformed itself into ISIS, it developed a reputation for viciousness and savagery unrivaled in modern history, including the enslavement—often for sexual purposes—of Yazidi women and girls, and the wholesale slaughter of that community’s men and boys.

The unfortunate truth is that HTS grew out of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In 2011, the latter’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, dispatched a number of fighters to Syria in order to take advantage of the chaos of the Arab uprisings and the growing civil war in that country. One of those fighters was Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (a Syrian who had been fighting with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia). 

In Syria, Jolani formed his own organization, the Nusra Front, which was originally an outpost and affiliate of ISIS. When al-Baghdadi tried to assert his authority over Jolani and Nusra, they broke with ISIS and affiliated themselves with the traditional leadership of Al Qaeda. It’s hardly an impressive and inspiring resume.

However, realizing that this affiliation was restricting their ability to function in Syria and severely limiting their chances of growth and power, Jolani and his organization began a series of name changes and efforts at moderation. They eventually joined with a set of other Syrian Islamist groups to form HTS. The most important aspect of this transformation was an embrace of “nationalistic jihad,” similar to that attempted in Algeria in the early to mid-1990s. They also attempted to recruit as many Syrians, and limit or dismiss foreign fighters, as possible in order to bolster this nationalistic image.

This nationalistic shift bears a striking similarity—as does the rapidity of their victory over what proved to be very hollow existing regimes once they launched their final offensives—to the performance of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which seized power as the United States withdrew in 2021 with the same degree of relative ease and speed. The affiliation of HTS with Turkey has been crucial in the organization’s efforts to clean up its image and present a new, more moderate, and more nationalistic profile that proved more effective than both the internationalist jihad of Al Qaeda and the transnational caliphate project of ISIS. Sunni Islamist revolutionaries around the Middle East and beyond will certainly be taking note of these two apparent success stories and, in many cases, seeking to follow suit.

Could Syria Fragment?

The extent of HTS’ genuine moderation will now be tested in practice and at the national scale for the first time. The emerging attitude towards Alawites and other communal minority groups, especially those with ties to the former regime, will be by far the most important initial challenge facing the new power center in the country. One option Assad did not attempt—beyond his failure to try to fight for control over the strategically crucial city of Homs and, of course, Damascus itself, where he still retained considerable military strength (assuming the armed power behind the regime was still expressing a willingness to fight for him)—was a retreat to the traditional Alawite heartland in Syria’s coastal and mountainous northwest.

There was always the option of attempting to create an “Alawistan” enclave centered around either the city of Latakia, or the smaller but crucial port town of Tartus. Latakia could have proven problematic, because it has only a 50% Alawite majority, with 40% Sunnis and 10% Christians, and is surrounded by a mixture of Alawite, Sunni and and Christian villages. Tartus, however, is 80% Alawite and 20% Christian, with the surrounding villages similarly being almost entirely composed of those two communities. 

It is, therefore, a much smaller—but potentially relatively safer—area for such a project, if communal fragmentation takes hold in the country. Moreover, assuming that Russian support is crucial for such an enclave, Tartus would make sense as its central hub, since it is the Russian Mediterranean naval port that is Moscow’s most important military asset in Syria. Gaining control over such a warm water port was a Russian ambition going back to Catherine the Great and other leaders of the czarist Empire. Should the Alawites and other regime elements seek to form a new protected enclave in Syria’s northwest, they could offer Russia a stronger guarantee of long-term control of that naval port, as well as possibly the Hmeimim airbase somewhat to the north of Tartus, and even Russian signals intelligence gathering facilities further south.

This kind of fragmentation, should it happen, would probably only be the beginning of a deeper and more widespread national disintegration, creating many other smaller areas of self-controlled, armed communal refuge. Under such circumstances, Israel would probably try to grab an even larger buffer zone around the Occupied Golan Heights (possibly with an eye to keeping hold of it indefinitely), the Kurdish self-rule area in the north would attempt to strengthen and possibly expand itself not only against the new government but also against Turkey and the SNA, and numerous other possible autonomous zones could emerge. The new regime may be able to maintain control over Damascus, Aleppo and some of the other major cities, but it could sentence itself to ruling over an even smaller rump of the country than the “necessary Syria” that the regime tried—and with that salvation provided by the 2015 joint intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah—succeeded in maintaining control over until November 2024. It would also bode very badly for the style and nature of rule in whatever part of Syria the new regime may end up controlling.

Syria at a Crossroads

Whatever happens in Syria, there are two most likely scenarios. The first, is the emergence of a post-dictatorship order, likely under some degree of Turkish influence, that is essentially inclusive and tolerant enough to prevent further national disintegration. This system of governance would enable a significant degree of reconstruction, reintegration, and stabilization of the country and allow Syrians to work together to begin to build a better future.

The second scenario is the further fragmentation of Syria, likely beginning with the Alawite heartland in the northwest, that looks a lot more like Iraq in the second decade of this century than anything else. Given the importance of Syria to events throughout the Middle East, the direction that the country takes in the aftermath of the downfall of the Assad family dictatorship will have a tremendous influence on the region as a whole.

A more stable, tolerant, and unified Syria could prove tremendously beneficial to neighboring Arab countries, most notably Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. A destabilized, more fragmented and chaotic Syria could spread further unrest into those three countries, revitalize terrorism and extremism, and prove a disaster rather than a boon to Turkey and its dreams of renewed regional hegemony. 

Whether Trump realizes it or not, the United States also has tremendous stakes in what happens in Syria. A precipitous U.S. withdrawal from northeastern Syria is the kind of enormous blunder Trump was dissuaded from undertaking during his first term, but might well attempt again early in his second term. It’s easy to imagine him citing the downfall of the regime and declaring ISIS long defeated as ample grounds to abandon this supposedly, as he sees it, unimportant and hopelessly war-torn country.

An over-hasty US abandonment of Syria, its oilfields and the crucial M2 Highway that links Baghdad and Damascus—and is currently effectively controlled near the Iraqi-Syrian border by the U.S. garrison at At-Tanf—would be a solid American contribution to a potential nightmare scenario in post-Assad Syria. Syrians have a golden opportunity to point the way for a better future for all the Arab republics, and indeed the Arab world as a whole. But it’s going to be a heavy enough lift without Trump’s instincts to make an already totally inadequate US Syria policy even worse. And the pitfalls, within Syria and thanks to outside powers, ahead are deep and profoundly dangerous. Yet it is, and must remain, a moment of profound optimism. Such opportunities are fleeting and precious in the Arab world.