Assad's policies that destroyed him

What Syria witnessed were two major events, not one. The fall of the Assad regime and the rise to power of the Islamic “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” organization.

The fall of Assad is part of a series of the sunset of the fortresses of the fascist regimes of the sixties, Saddam in Iraq and Gaddafi in Libya.

The rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to power is also the third wave of fundamentalist waves. The first was Khomeini in Tehran in the late 1970s, then the second wave was born in the 2011 revolutions, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Ennahda Party led by Ghannouchi in Tunisia, the Houthis in Yemen, and now in Syria, which it is too early to judge.

Assad's fall was expected, delayed in 2014 by an emergency operation that granted him an additional 10 years, with Iranian and Russian support.

We saw the fall of the Assad regime as inevitable, given that it had turned into an individual, minority, socialist, Baathist, and Iranian-oriented regime, in addition to the fact that his state had become old and the capabilities of its institutions had eroded. Since assuming power, Bashar has not created an identity for his entity to build on, except that he was a “necessity for Iran,” and this in itself brought disasters upon him and led to his downfall.

His Baathist and Alawite gang had disbanded. His sensor capabilities were dead, and he did not pay attention to the dangers he had surrounded himself with when he made Syria the main corridor between Tehran and its areas of influence at a time when the confrontation between Iran and Israel was widening.

He did not realize the depth of the dangers of the repercussions of October 7 of last year, especially since Israel had a say against change in Damascus before that. In Idlib and Ankara, the Turks and the opposition realized that the scope for change was now permissible, so they attacked Damascus.

Assad's policies reflected his ignorance, as he allowed his crises to accumulate on three open fronts against him: with Turkey, the armed Syrian opposition, and an indirect confrontation with Israel. Challenges greater than Syria's ability to bear, and it was no surprise that they exploded in his face.

How did he manage his crises? For example, in dealing with the refugee file, he considered that the 3 million Syrians who had sought refuge in Turkey were a problem for Erdogan, and that he should make him pay the price for his positions and that war against him, and he rejected the Turkish president’s request for reconciliation and even receiving him in Damascus for negotiations and ignored his demands to facilitate their return. The refugees were indeed a problem for the Ankara government, but they were also a threat to the Assad regime.

The three million became a reservoir for the opposition, which had no difficulty recruiting thousands of them. I do not know how Assad could have overlooked the fact that the presence of these armed groups in vast areas of Syria means that when a moment of weakness comes, they will march on the capital.

The political relationship between Turkey and Syria has historically been a drama of love and hate. For a century, Damascus has been suspicious of Ankara’s intentions, but that has not prevented a smooth relationship on both sides of the border. The management of relations with Türkiye under Bashar has been different from that of his father.

In one of the crises between the two countries in 1989, when Ankara was fed up with Hafez al-Assad’s sponsorship of Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, it asked Syria to stop his activities and hand him over. When Hafez al-Assad refused, Turkey mobilized its forces at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.

Assad sent a complaint to the administration of US President Bill Clinton, who informed him that they understood and supported Turkey's demand. Assad bowed to the crisis and decided to deport Ocalan to Nairobi, where he was detained. He was aware that the balance of power was in their favor and that Israel and the United States were on Türkiye's side.

Today Bashar al-Assad is gone, millions of refugees will return to their homes, and the Turks’ influence in Syria has increased, benefiting from their long-standing sponsorship of refugees and the opposition. Turkey wants Syria as an ally, like Iraq for Iran, which it considers its geographical and strategic extension.

*Quoted from Asharq Al-Awsat