You Cannot Be Syria
More than five decades of brutal leadership by the Assad family came to an end in a historic blink of an eye. But the fall of Syrian regime in thirteen days was connected to a chain reaction of global events—beginning with the October 7th attack—that rube goldberged their way to a new era in Syria. Even in the Arab world that just weeks ago was welcoming Assad back into the fold, the latest turn of events comes as a shock. No one can be quite sure how things in the newly freed Syria will play out, but for now, Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on what a Kremlin source calls … wait for it … “humanitarian grounds.” What we do know is that the fall of Assad is bad news for Putin and the latest piece of really bad news for Iran. David Leonhardt in the NYT (Gift Article) on Iran’s Very Bad Year. “Most questions about Syria’s future don’t have clear answers. Will the Islamist rebels who have taken over the country create a harsh Taliban-style government? Or do the rebels’ recent hints of moderation point toward something gentler? The situation remains uncertain. But one implication of President Bashar al-Assad’s downfall seems clear: It caps a remarkably bad year for Iran.”
+ “When Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel on October 7, 2023, he intended to deal a decisive blow against a powerful nation-state—and he succeeded. But the state his attack has devastated turned out not to be Israel, but Iran, his key sponsor.” Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic: Khamenei Loses Everything.
+ “As Hemingway once wrote of bankruptcy, the collapse of autocratic regimes tends to happen gradually and then suddenly—slowly, and then all at once. This is not just a literary metaphor. A tyrant’s followers remain loyal to him only as long as he can offer them protection from their compatriots’ wrath.” Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Syrian Regime Collapsed Gradually—And Then Suddenly. “Many of the regime’s defenders abruptly stopped fighting. Assad vanished. The scenes that followed today in Damascus—the toppling of statues, the people taking selfies at the dictator’s palace—are the same ones that will unfold in Caracas, Tehran, or Moscow on the day the soldiers of those regimes lose their faith in the leadership, and the public loses their fear of those soldiers too.”
+ BBC: What just happened in Syria and who’s in charge?
+ “People around them were asking ‘what’s your name’ and ‘how old are you?’, but they could not even answer those questions.” BBC follows crowds to the liberated Saydnaya military prison where thousands were killed over the years.
+ Israel, US and Turkey launch strikes in Syria to protect interests.
+ Photos: See the fall of Damascus after Syrian rebels topple Assad’s regime
+ And here’s the latest from The Guardian.
