Parting is such sweet Assadness

The second son of a military strongman and regional player, Bashar al-Assad led his nation to ruin and he became a puppet of its so-called allies.

A political dynasty that began 53 years ago ended in a process that took eleven days. Bashar al-Assad’s father, General Hafez al-Assad seized power in 1970 through a political maneuver called the “Corrective Revolution” that saw the military take a central role in the administration of the country. Under the elder Assad Syria was a major factor in Middle Eastern events, participating in the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel, invading Lebanon in 1976 to intervene in its civil war, and sponsoring various Palestinian terror groups. He ruthlessly crushed a rebellion by Islamist rebels in the early 1980s resulting in the killing of tens of thousands in the northern city of Hama. But the younger Assad, a British trained ophthalmologist, didn’t have the same skill set. As mentioned in the previous article Bashar was not meant to rise to his position. It was an accident of history caused by the death of his older brother Bassel in 1994, similar to how John F. Kennedy would go into politics as a result of his older brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr’s death in 1944 while serving in WWII.

But it is there that the similarities end. Unlike JFK, Bashar al-Assad’s rule meant ruin for his nation, chaos for his neighbours from the resultant refugee crisis, and dependence on powerful allies for the survival of the regime. Since 2011 it has been defined by the Syrian Civil War, a conflict that see sawed between bloody extremes before seemingly simmering down for good in 2019 with Sunni rebels becoming contained in what became known as the “Idlib pocket” near the Turkish border, the Kurdish controlled northeast, and a small US controlled area in the southwest that war oil rich but otherwise barren. The collapse of Assad that occurred tonight was so rapid, that every time I recorded a segment to upload later as commentary I had to hold off, because of new developments. On December 1 the country’s second city Aleppo fell, then on Dec. 5 Hama to the south of there, and finally today the last two dominoes Homs and Damascus.

Map of Syria on Nov. 26. Red is held by Syrian Arab Army (Assad), green by rebel groups, yellow by Kurdish SDF and grey by ISIS.

Map of Syria on Dec. 8 after the fall of Assad. The only areas under the control of his regime by that date were the coastal plain populated by his religious sect, the Alawites. It would fall later in the day without a fight.

During this period the biggest question became whether Iran or Russia would step in to prevent or delay Assad’s downfall, but it soon became obvious that neither could commit enough resources in such a short amount of time to forestall not only the advance of rebel fighters but also the complete disintegration of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) defending Assad. While I witnessed some clips of resistance prior to the fall of Aleppo, once that had happened the scenes were mostly replaced with those of rebels escorting surrendered troops, military equipment from small arms to aircraft abandoned, and prisoners being freed.

Regime uniforms discarded on the streets of Damascus. (Source: X user)

As mentioned this all happen within less than two weeks, making it more appropriate to call Assad a puppet of Iran and Russian than their ally. Here are some similar events from the past to compare:

• Fall of Moamar Gaddafi (2011) - A byproduct of the Arab Spring like the Syrian protests and civil war, this uprising began on February 17, and even with NATO firepower backing up the rebels it took until August for Tripoli the capital to fall. Gaddafi was murdered gruesomely two months later and Libya has faced constant strife since then. Duration: 8 months, 8 days.

• Fall of South Vietnam (1975) - The Spring Offensive by the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies began on December 13, 1974 and culminated five months later with the the capture of Saigon, widely regarded as a puppet regime of the US, on April 30. Duration: 4 months, 17 days.

• Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan (2021) - The collapse of the US backed government in Kabul was so fast that President Joe Biden had to reinsert forces into the country in order to evacuate its stranded citizens.

  Duration: 3 months, 2 weeks.

• Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine (2013-14) - What started as a series of protests concerning the trade policies of President Viktor Yanukovych in November 2013 ended on February 22, 2014 with his flight to Moscow. Duration: 3 months and 1 day.

• Fall of Nicolae Ceausescu (1989) - The Berlin Wall had already fallen, and most of communist Eastern Europe had gone with it by December 16 when Romanians rose up during a speech by their totalitarian President Ceausescu. Six days later he and his hated wife Elena were executed after a kangaroo court rial. Duration: 9 days.

  All of these were considered catastrophic downfalls of what had until then been firmly entrenched regimes. Ceausescu’s fall was rapid owing to the lack of any support from the USSR (which he had always clashed with) or internal popularity. Transitions to democracy in neighbouring Hungary had already begun in 1988 and let to a chain reaction throughout the communist bloc that included Romania. One could say that Syria’s collapse mirrors that one. Like Ceausescu, Assad built a delusional cult of personality predicated on projecting strength like in the propaganda video below that in reality was shallow and fragile without the help of outside actors.

As explained in the previous post, there should be no celebration over who is potentially the new leadership of Syria will be. I am happy for those Syrians that suffered under Assad for their moment of jubilation, while at the same time I am anxious for the fate of the religious and ethnic minorities that are imperiled under Islamist rule. One small consolation was that the grisly killings of Ceausescu and Gaddafi did not occur this time. As this was being written Bashar al-Assad and his family arrived in Moscow and were granted asylum. While many would have liked them to face the consequences of his family’s five decades of tyranny, most precedents have only yielded more bloodshed like what happened in the Bolshevik Revolution with the murder of Tsar Nikolai II and the entire Romanov family in 1918. It’s not only OK but necessary to be wary of what tomorrow brings from HTS and the other hard core Islamists that now rule Syria.

What isn’t necessary is the whinging coming from the so-called anti-interventionist right and anti-imperialist left. Some of these people continue to call themselves “anti-war” and condemn the fall of Assad as more neo-con nation building, but they attribute all of the responsibility for the outcome to Turkey, Israel, and NATO without contemplating how incompetent Assad and his allies had to be for the entire country to collapse from end to end within two weeks such that not even the coastal enclaves populated by his Alawite minority put up a fight. Yet many western commentators and “geopolitical analysts” are providing their hot takes on why this is definitely not his fault at all and entirely some plot by western interests. Here are some of the most ridiculous ones.

Daniel McAdams

Featured in this post last fall, McAdams has decided that evangelical Christians worship the devil, presumably because they support Israel and he holds them responsible for Assad’s collapse.

Maram Susli (aka “Syrian Girl”)

This Twitter reply gal has been relied upon for years as an “alternative voice” to contrast with pro-war American opinions even though she has not lived there for decades, and she has denied the use of chemical warfare agents by Assad. On December 6 she actually said Syria should use chemical weapons against Israel as the regime was teetering on the edge of collapse. Like many other “geopolitical analysts” she was completely blindsided by the collapse and refuses to acknowledge that Russia abandoned Assad.

Jackson Hinkle

The former Bernie Bro turned pro-Russia TikTok influencer asked for prayers for the Assad family when it was rumoured he had died in a plane crash.

Ryan Dawson

The 9/11 hoax theorist wrote a screed branding the HTS forces “Salafist apes”, an appellation that if it had been applied to Hamas would have been called racist and Islamophobic.

George Galloway

The former UK member of parliament, head of the Workers Party of Britain, and longtime supporter of communist and Islamist regimes retweeted the last broadcast from Syrian state TV prior to the fall, which was a taped choir performance of the national anthem Humat al-Diyar (“Guardians of the Homeland”). Apparently the song did not make those guardians show up either. He made sure during today’s talk show to deny having “any relations” with Syria and distance himself from Assad. Galloway had once accused Israel of supplying chemical weapons for the Ghouta chemical attack while he hosted a show on Iran’s Press TV during his time as MP for Bradford West.

The reactions of these characters ought to illustrate how deluded the pro-Assad sector was over the civil war period, turning a cruel vindictive heir to tyranny into the defender of western civilization and even Christendom while he brutalized and tortured countrymen of all religious backgrounds.