• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • MR (Castilian)
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays
 | Houmam al Sayed Syria Namle 2012 | MR Online Houmam al-Sayed (Syria), Namle, 2012.

How to understand the change of government in Syria: The Fifty-First Newsletter (2024)

By Vijay Prashad (Posted Dec 20, 2024)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on December 19, 2024 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |
Culture, Empire, Movements, StrategyMiddle East, SyriaNewswireTricontinental Newsletter

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

One of the most stunning events of the past few months has been the fall of Damascus. This fall had initially been expected over a decade ago, when rebel armies funded by Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States crowded around the edges of Syria and threatened then President Bashar al-Assad’s government. These armies, backed by rich and powerful countries, were comprised of a range of actors, including:

  1. swaths of people who were angered by the economic distress caused by the opening up of the economy and the subsequent devastation of small manufacturing businesses, which were suffering in the face of the emerging might of Turkish manufacturing;
  2. the peasantry in the north, frustrated by the government’s lack of a proper response to the long drought that forced them into the northern cities of Aleppo and Idlib;
  3. sectors of the secular petty bourgeoisie discontent with the failure of the Damascus Spring of 2000—01, which had initially promised political reforms stemming from the muntadayāt (forum discussions) held across the country;
  4. a deeply aggrieved Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, formed out of the pious petty bourgeoisie, which had been crushed in 1982 and re-emerged after being inspired by the role the Brotherhood played in the 2010—11 protests in Tunisia and Egypt;
  5. eager Islamist forces that had been trained by al-Qaeda in Iraq and wanted to fly the black flag of jihadism from the highest parapets in Damascus.

Despite the failure of these factions of the Syrian opposition in 2011, it was many of these same forces that succeeded in overthrowing Assad’s government on 7 December 2024.

Just over a decade ago, Assad’s government remained in power largely because of support from Iran and Russia, but also because of the involvement—to a lesser extent—of neighbouring Iraq and Hezbollah (Lebanon). Assad did not have the stomach for the contest. He became president in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who took office through a military coup in 1971. Bashar al-Assad had a privileged upbringing and studied to be an ophthalmologist in the United Kingdom. When the rebel armies neared Damascus in December of this year, Assad fled to Moscow with his family, claiming that he wanted to retire from politics and resume his career as an ophthalmologist. He did not make a statement to his people telling them to be brave or that his forces would fight another day. There were no comforting words. He left quietly in the same way he appeared, his country abandoned. A few days later, on Telegram, al-Assad released a text but was timid.

Hakim al Akel Yemen The Symbolic History of Arab Joy Arabia Felix 1994

Hakim al-Akel (Yemen), The Symbolic History of Arab Joy (Arabia Felix), 1994.

After being defeated by Syrian, Iranian, and Russian forces in 2014, the Syrian rebels regrouped in the city of Idlib, not far from Turkey’s border with Syria. That is where the main opposition force broke with al-Qaeda in 2016, took over the local councils, and shaped itself as the only leader of the anti-Assad campaign. This group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, or HTS), is now in charge in Damascus.

Originating directly from al-Qaeda in Iraq, HTS has not been able to shed those roots and remains a deeply sectarian body with ambitions to eventually turn Syria into a caliphate. Since his time in Iraq and northern Syria, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani developed a reputation of great brutality toward the large number of minority groups in Syria (specifically Alawites, Armenians, Kurds, Shi’ites), who he regarded as apostates. Al-Jolani is well-aware of his reputation, but he has remarkably altered the way he presents himself. He has shed the trappings of his al-Qaeda days; he trimmed his beard, dresses in a nondescript khaki uniform, and learned to talk to the media in measured tones. In an exclusive interview with CNN released just as his forces took Damascus, al-Jolani recalled past murderous acts committed in his name merely as youthful indiscretions. It was as if he had been trained by a public relations company. No longer the al-Qaeda madman, al-Jolani is now being presented as a Syrian democrat.

On 12 December, I spoke to two friends from minority communities in different parts of Syria. Both said that they fear for their lives. They understand that though there will be a period of jubilation and calm, they will eventually face severe attacks and have already begun hearing reports of small-scale attacks against Alawites and Shia families in their network. Another friend reminded me that there was calm in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003; several weeks later, the insurgency began. Could such an insurgency of former government forces take place in Syria after they have recomposed from their state’s hasty fall? It is impossible to know what the social fabric of the new Syria will be like given the character of the people who have taken power. This will be especially true if even a fraction of those seven million Syrians who were displaced during the war return home and seek revenge for what they will surely see as the mistreatment that forced them overseas. No war of this kind ends with peace. There are many scores yet to settle.

Safwan Dahoul Syria Dream 92 2014

Safwan Dahoul (Syria), Dream 92, 2014.

Without detracting attention from the Syrian people and their well-being, we must also understand what this change of government means for the region and the world. Let us take the implications sequentially, starting with Israel and ending with the Sahel region in Africa.

  1. Israel. Taking advantage of the decade-long civil war in Syria, Israel has bombed Syrian military bases on a regular basis to degrade both the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies (notably, Iran and Hezbollah). Over the past year, during its escalation of the genocide against Palestinians, Israel has also increased its bombing of any military facility it believes is being used to resupply Iran and Hezbollah. Israel then invaded Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah, which it achieved by assassinating Hezbollah’s long-time leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and by invading southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah was rooted. As if coordinated, Israel provided air support to HTS as it moved out of Idlib, bombing Syrian military facilities and army posts to demoralise the SAA. When HTS took Damascus, Israel strengthened its Division 210 in the Occupied Golan Heights (seized in 1973) and then invaded the United Nations buffer zone (set up in 1974). Israeli tanks proceeded outside the buffer zone and came very close to Damascus. HTS did not contest this occupation of Syria at any point.
  1. Turkey. The Turkish government provided military and political support to the 2011 rebellion from its inception and hosted the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood government in Istanbul. In 2020, when the SAA moved against the rebels in Idlib, Turkey invaded Syria to force an agreement that the city would not be harmed. Turkey also enabled the military training of most of the fighters who proceeded down highway M5 to Damascus and provided military equipment to the armies to battle the Kurds in the north and the SAA in the south. It was through Turkey that various Central Asian Islamists joined the HTS fight, including Uyghurs from China. When Turkey invaded Syria twice over the past decade, it held Syrian territory that it claimed was its historical land. This territory will not return to Syria under the HTS government.
Fateh al Moudarres Syria Child of Palestine 1981

Fateh al-Moudarres (Syria), Child of Palestine, 1981.

  1. Lebanon and Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, Iran built a land bridge to supply its allies in both Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria. With the change of government in Syria, resupplying Hezbollah will become difficult. Both Lebanon and Iraq will now border a country ruled by a former al-Qaeda affiliate. While it is not immediately clear what this means for the region, it is likely that there will be an emboldened al-Qaeda presence that wants to undermine the role of the Shia in these countries.
  1. Palestine. The implications for the genocide in Palestine and for the struggle for Palestinian liberation are extraordinary. Given Israel’s role in undermining Assad’s military on behalf of HTS, it is unlikely that al-Jolani will contest Israel’s occupation of Palestine or allow Iran to resupply Hezbollah or Hamas. Despite his name, which comes from the Golan, it is inconceivable that al-Jolani will fight to regain the Golan Heights for Syria. Israel’s ‘buffers’ in Lebanon and Syria add to the regional complacency with its actions achieved by events such as its peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). No neighbour of Israel will pose a threat to it at this time. The Palestinian struggle is already experiencing great isolation from these developments. Resistance will continue, but there will be no neighbour to provide access to the means for resistance.
  1. The Sahel. Since the United States and Israel are basically one country when it comes to geopolitics, Israel’s victory is a victory for the United States. The change of government in Syria has not only weakened Iran in the short term but has also weakened Russia (a long-term strategic goal of the United States), which previously used Syrian airports to refuel its supply planes en route to various African countries. It is no longer possible for Russia to use these bases, and it remains unclear where Russian military aircraft will be able to refuel for journeys into the region, notably to countries in the Sahel. This will provide the United States with an opportunity to push the countries that border the Sahel, such as Nigeria and Benin, to launch operations against the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. This will require a close watch.
Djamila Bent Mohamed Algeria Palestine 1974

Djamila Bent Mohamed (Algeria), Palestine, 1974.

In July 1958, several poets organised a festival in Akka (occupied Palestine ’48). One of the participating poets, David Semah, wrote ‘Akhi Tawfiq’ (My Brother Tawfiq), dedicated to the Palestinian communist poet Tawfiq Zayyad who was in an Israeli prison at the time of the festival. Semah’s poem grounds us in the sensibility that is so sorely needed in our times:

If they sow skulls in its dirt
Our harvest will be hope and light.

Warmly,

Vijay

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
Tricontinental Newsletter
Annexing the West Bank: Why Israel might pounce now
Artists in Academia with Tim Ridlen
  • Also by Vijay Prashad

    • Waiting for a new Bandung spirit: The Sixteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad April 18, 2025
    • The Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated by Communist prisoners: The Fifteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad April 11, 2025
    • Andrée Blouin is our kind of Pan-African revolutionary: The Fourteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad April 04, 2025
    • What Rodolfo Walsh would demand we write in his place: The Thirteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad March 28, 2025
  • Also By Vijay Prashad in Monthly Review Magazine

    • The Actuality of Red Africa June 01, 2024
    • Africa Is on the Move May 01, 2022
    • Preface January 01, 2022
    • Introduction January 01, 2022
    • Quid Pro Quo? October 01, 2011
    • Reclaim the Neighborhood, Change the World December 01, 2007
    • Kathy Kelly’s Chispa December 01, 2005

    Books By Vijay Prashad

    • Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective November 15, 2022
    • Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations September 16, 2020

    Monthly Review Essays

    • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
      Sam-Kee Cheng  | A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory smoking a cigar The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS dollar imperialism | MR Online

      1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

    Lost & Found

    • Journalism, democracy, … and class struggle
      Robert W. McChesney  | Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism | MR Online

      Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

    Trending

    • National Museum of African American History and Culture
      Trump orders purge of Black History from Smithsonian, targets African American Museum
    • Refugees walk down a road in Gaza, surrounded by ruined buildings.
      War Above, War Below
    • Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2015. Greg Skidmore:Creative Commons
      Don’t Negotiate: Negotiation Strategy Notes for Law Firms Under Attack by the Trump Administration from Harvard Law Professor of Negotiation (April 13, 2025)
    • Cuban doctors arrive in South Africa in 2020 to support efforts to curb COVID-19. Credit: Flickr/governmentza (CC BY-ND 2.0)
      No, Marco Rubio, Cuban doctors are not victims of ‘forced labor’
    • The Elwha River, pictured here, is one of Olympic National Park's most important natural features. The illegal construction of two dams in the early 1900s blocked salmon from reaching their ancestral upstream spawning sites, but both are now gone, and the Elwha flows freely from its headwaters to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This is a view of the river from where the Glines Canyon Dam used to be. (Photo: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)
      America’s national parks are among the victims of Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s efforts to drown our government in a bathtub
    • The myth of the Western-maintained international rules-based order
      The myth of the Western-maintained international rules-based order
    • Israel has reduced Gaza to ruins. (Photo: UNRWA)
      Israel is about to empty Gaza
    • George Grosz’s Metropolis (1916-17)
      Comment | The 1930s all over again? Trump and ‘Entartete Kunst’ revisited
    • Hegel reading Heraclitus by Stephen Lahey 2021
      Hegel reading Heraclitus
    • Trump shaking hands with Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele. [Source: bbc.com]
      Trump Administration’s affinity for Salvadoran dictator shows authoritarian nature

    Popular (last 30 days)

    • Def. Ministry delivers Nasir cruise missiles to IRGC Navy. Source: Mehd News Agency - wikicommons / cropped form original / CC BY 4.0
      Trump’s war plans for Iran: opening the other gates of hell
    • Trump / Jinping
      Trump 2.0 and China – the real situation of the U.S. economy
    • Trump / Vance
      U.S. VP JD Vance admits West wants Global South trapped at bottom of value chain
    • National Museum of African American History and Culture
      Trump orders purge of Black History from Smithsonian, targets African American Museum
    • A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].
      US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    • Refugees walk down a road in Gaza, surrounded by ruined buildings.
      War Above, War Below
    • A crowd of protesters in a public square in Ankara, Tukey.
      What Is Happening in Turkey? The Rentier Opposition and the Resistance
    • Image of President Donald Trump and Brad Karp, Chairman of Paul Weiss. Steven Ferdman/Getty Images; Business Insider
      Trump exposes the elite classes
    • President Donald Trump / PM Benjamin Netanyahu
      ‘Let all Hell break loose’: The Gaza ceasefire and how we all got played
    • Illustration by MintPress News
      The Pentagon is recruiting Elon Musk to help them win a nuclear war

    RSS MR Press News

    • NEW! ROSES FOR GRAMSCI by Andy Merrifield (EXCERPT) April 7, 2025
    • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) April 4, 2025
    • Towards inclusive science and technology (Knowledge as Commons reviewed in ‘Counterfire’) April 1, 2025
    • A spirit both lyrical and angry (Paraguayan Sorrow reviewed in ‘The Prisma’) February 17, 2025
    • NEW! THE PHYSICS OF CAPITALISM, By Erald Kolasi (EXCERPTS) February 5, 2025

    RSS Climate & Capitalism

    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2025 April 10, 2025
    • Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World April 2, 2025
    • Will Mpox be the next global threat to human health? April 2, 2025
    • Under Trump, climate denial is official US policy March 26, 2025
    • Growth or Degrowth? Ecosocialism confronts a false dichotomy March 26, 2025

     

    RSS Monthly Review

    • April 2025 (Volume 76, Number 11) April 1, 2025 The Editors
    • The U.S. Ruling Class and the Trump Regime April 1, 2025 John Bellamy Foster
    • The Dialectics of Ecology and Ecological Civilization April 1, 2025 Chen Yiwen
    • Lao Socialism with Buddhist Characteristics April 1, 2025 Yumeng Liu
    • The Danger of Fascism in the United States: A View from the 1950s April 1, 2025 Paul A. Baran

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Creative Commons License

    Monthly Review Foundation
    134 W 29TH ST STE 706
    New York NY 10001-5304

    Tel: 212-691-2555