Bashar al-Assad has finally fled Syria. Since 2011, he had dug in as a proxy war developed against him. But 2024 was the year when his luck ran out. And it’s a big victory for the US empire and its junior partner in Israel.
NATO’s second-biggest army, however, isn’t too happy about the situation. So Syria is unlikely to have a lasting peace any time soon.
Assad falls amid Israel’s Middle-East rampage and Russia’s quagmire in Ukraine
Russia cared about Syria mainly because of its two bases in the country. That’s why it helped Assad to fight back against his opponents from 2015 onwards. But in 2024, Russia’s priority is Ukraine, where another proxy war has it bogged down and left it unable to invest enough resources into protecting Assad.
Israel, meanwhile, took advantage of the complete impunity the US empire has given it during its genocide in Gaza to go further afield. It has killed Iranians and dealt severe blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both Iran and Hezbollah were on the back foot. And that meant these two allies of Assad weren’t in a position to come to his aid either in the last week.
As Sky News defence analyst Michael Clarke said, Russia and Iran were only helping Assad with “very low-cost operations”, and they’d have to either “commit much more, or they were going to have to pull out”. In the end, he stressed:
Both of them decided they would throw Syria under the bus and pull out.
The US empire smiles over Syria today
Israel has always been an outpost, a station, a proxy, a tool, and a defender of the US empire’s interests in the Middle East. In particular, it helped to separate Arab territories that may well have united if there hadn’t been a divisive force between them. And specifically, that helped to ensure that a chunk of the region’s precious natural resources remained in friendly hands, and those that didn’t could become the target of covert or overt hostility.
The Assad dynasty in Syria was in the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, and then Russia’s. It also showed solidarity with the Palestinian cause, which put Washington’s junior imperialist partner in Israel at risk. All of that made it a target for US meddling. It wasn’t the fact that the Assads were bastards, because plenty of US allies are. It was the fact that they weren’t under the control of the US empire.
The US (and its allies) backed Assad’s opponents after 2011 because it knew that would be good for the empire.
Israel already occupied some Syrian land, but amid Assad’s downfall, it has now occupied even more. As Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi reported:
What is happening is certainly to the benefit of the Israeli military, of the Israeli government… They are getting what they have said they have wanted all along: weaker neighbours, so that they can push their regional agenda.
So although it’s an Al-Qaeda jihadist group the US considers to be terrorists which has led the final offensive against Assad’s regime, the empire is happy today.
NATO superpower Turkey, however, always cared more about crushing Kurds than Assad
Wars that don’t end in negotiations tend to go on for a long time, until conditions lead to one side clearly having the upper hand. And NATO superpower Turkey has its own war going on – but not against Assad.
The left-wing, Kurdish-led Rojava revolution emerged in northern Syria at the start of country’s conflict. Assad’s forces had retreated, and the local multi-ethnic (but largely-Kurdish) communities had to defend themselves from jihadist attacks. Turkey had long repressed its own Kurdish population, so it couldn’t accept an independent Kurdish-led revolution on its border. It thus ended its own negotiations and restarted its anti-Kurdish war, increasing its efforts to suppress the movement at home and abroad. In doing so, it committed numerous war crimes.
Turkey has long sought to demonise its opponents by calling them terrorists, but the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has actually been the victim of a Turkish terror campaign that has caused a humanitarian crisis there. This was part of a long campaign of ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation in northern Syria.
And it very much seems that Turkey isn’t going to stop its anti-Kurdish war in northern Syria any time soon:
Well there you have it. Without a miraculous change in Turkish priorities, the first act of the creation of the new Syria may be Efrîn-style ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish cities and communities that remain. https://t.co/Gd7HkTTHHq
— Meghan Bodette (@_____mjb) December 8, 2024
There is collective amnesia about what Turkey's been doing in Syria. TR took over the FSA (SNA now), put nationalist Turkmen in charge, ethnically cleansed Afrin, invaded Tel Abyad/Ras al-Ain, sent SNA to Libya and Karabakh. Is still fighting SDF.
Wasn't fighting Assad, though. https://t.co/iaKVwfxnC4
— Lindsey Snell (@LindseySnell) December 8, 2024
Syria: the proxy war continues?
A jihadist victory against Assad is like replacing one ill for another. The AANES, on the other hand, is the closest thing to a left-wing government in the entire Middle East. And if there was any cause the international left should now get behind, especially in Syria, that would be it.
Featured image via the Canary
