The Fall of the Ba’athist Terrorist-Sponsoring Tyrannical Assad Regime in Syria

I have been posting about the tyrannical, terrorist-sponsoring regime of Bashar Assad from early on since I launched this blog, especially since the popular uprising against his dictatorship began in 2011, as part of the Arab Spring. Syrians had been inspired by the movement across the Arab world for liberty and representative government, which was inspired to a significant degree by the Liberation of Iraq of the fellow Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein and the replacement of his brutal autocracy with a constitutional parliamentary republic with broad representation. I had remembered in my childhood how his father Hafez Assad’s regime, which had come to power in 1970, had put down a rebellion by shelling Homs and Hama, killing tens of thousands of civilians in 1982. I have been concerned how Syria, as Iran’s only Arab ally, was a conduit for Iranian arms to the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization, Hezbollah and how Assad had undermined the United States in the War on Terrorism in Iraq by sending jihadists into it, although they were among those defeated by the American-led coalition. With the opposition to Assad from various ethnic, religious and political groups in Syria, it appeared that his regime might fall by the mid-2010s, despite support from Iran and Hezbollah and Assad’s brutality, which included targeting civilians with chemical weapons. But the support of Russia, which has a naval base in Syria, proved critical and propped the regime. Instead of focusing on targeting Islamist terrorists, like al-Qaeda and its offshoot, the Islamic State, as Russia had announced it would, the Russians and Assad focused their firepower on freedom-loving opponents and deliberately struck civilian residential areas and even hospitals and first responders. All the while, in addition to the usual far-left isolationists, far-right isolationists in the West opposed overthrowing Assad, claiming that supporting his non-Islamist opponents was supporting “terrorists,” like Assad and Russia claimed. The U.S. maintained sanctions on the regime and had backed the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which at least allowed the Kurds to exercise autonomy in their part of Syria, but they were abandoned by the Trump Administration and there was little subsequent international effort to free Syria, despite its sponsorship of terrorism. It appeared that Assad had won the 14-year Civil War that killed a half million people and displaced millions, except for failing to regain control over the Kurdish and Turkish-backed areas and a few areas held by Islamists, as fighting had decreased sharply over the last eight years, with little movement of the battlelines and Western focus mostly on the Islamist terrorists. The war had major global implications, as it gave rise to the Islamic State, which took advantage of the power vacuum and declared a caliphate with its capital in Syria before being destroyed by an American-led coalition, while the record 5 million external refugees provoked an anti-migrant backlash in Europe and the rise of right-wing authoritarian nationalists. Even while Syrian allies were being weakened, as Israel continued to devastate Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syrian and Iranian forces in Syria and even in Iran, and while Ukraine was weakening Russia by defending itself against Russian aggression, the Assad regime appeared stable outwardly. I nevertheless continued to post about Syria, both about anti-terrorism strikes by the U.S. and Israel, but also to remind readers about the regime’s tyranny and threat from its terrorism sponsorship and its alliance with Iran and Russia, in the hope of encouraging the overthrow of the Assad regime. I had last posted November 17 about Syria’s manufacturing of an illicit narcotic, captagon that funds the Assad regime and Hezbollah. I was planning another post about another round of U.S. strikes in Syria against an Iranian-backed militia in Syria. But starting on November 27, in a stunning 11-day blitz, a Turkish-backed coalition of Islamist and allied rebels began a drive simply to push back on Syrian regime forces who were shelling rebel-held towns in northwestern Syria. Assad’s troops put up little resistance while Russia bombed civilians, which was ineffective in stopping the rebel advance that turned into a major assault against the heart of the Ba’athist regime. While other rebels, including the SDF and ordinary Syrians rose up across Syria, the Turkish-backed forces drove into the Syrian capital, putting an end to the Assad regime after 54 years of oppression, with Bashar Assad fleeing to Russia. Although the takeover from the Assad regime of the Syrian government apparatus by Islamists is concerning, the end of the tyranny of the last remaining Ba’ath socialist party Arab government is good for Syria and the region in many ways and of such significance that I will post additional observations. It is glorious that Syrians have been liberated from a despotic regime after 54 years of oppression, and worth celebration that Hezbollah, Iran and Russia are deprived of a major ally.