Dec. 10, 2024, 4:16 p.m.
After 13 years of civil war, one of the Middle East’s most brutal dictators, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has been forced out of power in a swift and unexpected rebel uprising. Now, just one month before a new administration enters the White House, threatening to dramatically upend U.S. foreign policy, officials in Washington are grappling with whether they should celebrate the downfall of a cruel and deeply entrenched regime or worry about what will replace it.
With the support of both Iran and Russia, Syrian strongman Assad had convinced the world that he had won the Syrian civil war. Countries such as the United Arab Emirates and even Italy began moving to normalize ties with Assad despite credible evidence he used chemical weapons against his people and committed numerous other atrocities.
Syria regained full membership in the Arab League last year. But with Russia tied up in Ukraine and Iran and its proxies exhausted after a year of fighting Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, the frozen conflict in Syria thawed, opening the door for Assad’s undoing.
However, Washington, currently in lame-duck season and preparing for Donald Trump's reentry into the White House, doesn’t have a clear idea of how to respond to events in the Middle East. Trump contends the U.S. should remain uninvolved, and the Biden team has released mixed messages on how it plans to respond to the dramatic events. Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the nonprofit Syrian Emergency Task Force, said the Biden administration lacks clear policy goals for Syria and has failed to meet the moment.
“Syria has not had a strategy by the administration for the last four years,” Moustafa said. “The White House, the National Security Council, [they] have been on a path that’s different from stated U.S. policy. Whenever the rebels liberated Aleppo city, it was the NSC that put out the first statement that said we need to de-escalate the liberation of Syria from Russia, Iran, and Assad, and America has nothing to do with this. ... When our adversaries are losing and we’re not taking advantage of this, we’re disengaged.”
In the days after the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham unexpectedly entered Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, Biden administration officials were cautious. They noted that HTS is a known terrorist group and called for de-escalation. But around one week later, as it became clear that HTS had taken over the capital, Damascus, some in Washington began to see opportunities in Assad’s historic downfall.
President Biden called the events “a fundamental act of justice” that would weaken Moscow, Tehran, and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Syrian people now have a reason to feel hope and that the U.S. would support a peaceful transition of power.
Still, Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he is “concerned by what may come next.” Meeks said he is celebrating the end of Assad, who “perpetrated countless crimes against humanity and engaged in years of barbaric violence against his own people.” Still, he is mindful of the concerns of many ethnic minorities, including Syrian Kurds, Yazidis, and Chaldeans, who worry about what life might look like with a Sunni Islamist group running the country.
The international community has had a similarly mixed reaction to the news that HTS is now the dominant force in Damascus. The group was previously an al-Qaida affiliate operating under the name Jabhat al-Nusra. It landed on the list of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations in 2018.
However, HTS has since renounced its ties to al-Qaida and rebranded. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, has worked over the last several years to rehabilitate his image. In an interview with CNN on Friday, al-Jawlani argued that “no one has the right to erase another group” and that Syria’s diverse religious and ethnic groups “have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years.” He also began using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in official HTS communiqués.
This new rhetoric has been reflected in the group’s actions over the last week as it swept across the country. HTS leadership has demanded that its militants protect the rights of minorities and refrain from asking women to cover up for religious reasons, arguing that the group will protect personal freedoms in Syria despite its Islamic beliefs. In a speech in Damascus on Sunday, al-Jawlani declared that a “new history” is being written for the Middle East.
Some worry this is merely a propaganda push to bolster the group’s legitimacy as it seizes control. The militants aim to govern, and some observers are concerned that HTS could revert to its old ways. Rights groups pointed out that the group ruled with an iron fist in the northwestern Idlib province in recent years.
Still, there have so far been no reports of atrocities carried out in ethnically diverse cities. People in Aleppo were initially anxious when HTS seized control. But the group worked to convince the city’s diverse population they were safe. Residents say they are now getting more electricity than they did under the regime. Christians are allegedly preparing to celebrate religious festivals in public.
“The last few days have been very shocking and surprising,” Hanna Jallouf, a Catholic bishop in Aleppo, told reporters on a video call. “Initially, some of us in our community were a little bit fearful. We didn’t know what was going to happen. None of us left our homes. But very quickly, we realized that there is nothing to fear and that things were getting better even from days ago before the liberation of Aleppo.”
Videos have also emerged of HTS releasing political prisoners from Assad’s notorious prisons. Some advocates argue that the United States and its allies, rather than denouncing HTS as a terrorist group, should celebrate Syria’s liberation from Assad, Iran, and Russia.
Natasha Hall, an expert on Syria at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the group’s leader, al-Jawlani, is a “pragmatic actor.”
“Of the groups, HTS is by far the most powerful, the most disciplined, and the most independent. They control many of the financial sectors within Idlib, which has allowed them to be a little more independent,” Hall said. “We do know that they’re saying the right things. They immediately went around Aleppo city, which is a very heterogeneous place, as well as Hama, which is also very heterogeneous ethnically and religiously, to reassure minorities, Christians, even those who lived in western Aleppo city, which was regime-controlled throughout this war, that they would not be harmed.”
“I’ve also heard from people living in the city that they’ve been invited to join a governing council, which shows an element of concern for inclusiveness for the future, which is a positive sign,” Hall added. “They’ve been doing the right thing in a way the U.S. government didn’t quite do in Iraq, immediately preventing looting, trying to protect government institutions, ensuring that government employees remain in their posts. These are all really essential institutional elements for a peaceful transition.”
Still, the situation on the ground remains hazy. The Syrian National Army, a hodgepodge group of anti-regime fighters, some of whom are backed by Turkey, has been operating on the ground. There are also still a few hundred U.S. forces in Syria’s northeast region supporting the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in their mission against the Islamic State.
Turkey and its allies are deeply concerned that the Syrian Kurds, who have used the chaos to seize new towns in the Deir ez-Zor region, will pose an existential threat to Ankara. Some experts are concerned that more fighting could break out between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, potentially leading to the release of Islamic State prisoners that the Kurds hold and pitting Washington against its NATO ally, Turkey.
There are also questions about what will happen to Assad’s stockpiles of chemical and conventional weapons.
Both the Biden administration and Israel have kicked into high gear on this front in the wake of the events. CENTCOM carried out dozens of precision strikes against the Islamic State strongholds in central Syria over the weekend, making clear it will not allow the group to reconstitute. Israel also carried out strikes against weapons depots and military bases, ostensibly to ensure weapons don’t fall into the hands of extremists. A senior Biden administration official who briefed reporters on background Sunday said that it is a “top-tier priority” for the U.S. to destroy Assad’s stockpiles of chemical weapons.
So far, HTS and the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces appear to be keeping the Islamic State at bay. While HTS was loosely affiliated with the Islamic State around a decade ago, today it operates prisons filled with ISIS fighters.
There are now significant questions about whether Washington will remove HTS from its terror list. If HTS remains in control of the country and under U.S. sanctions, that could have devastating economic consequences. Nevertheless, experts argue that Washington should extract concessions in exchange for lifting sanctions, including demanding fresh elections.
“I don’t think that they should govern,” said Hall at CSIS. “The hope is that there will be some kind of transition to a power-sharing agreement.”
