For years, many commentators inaccurately claimed that former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government had “won” the civil war. In truth, the Assad regime had, until a few days ago, merely survived the conflict, which froze in 2020.
The lightning offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and supported by a host of other armed groups, which began on 27 November, had toppled Assad’s regime by 8 December. The Syrian Arab Army quickly melted away, underscoring how hollowed out the Syrian state had become following years of warfare, western sanctions, and a widespread sense of hopelessness under Assad’s rule.
HTS and other anti-Assad groups’ ability to take over much of the country so rapidly also spoke to just how dependent Damascus had become on regional allies and Russia – without whose support the Assad regime was unable to stand on its own.
The end of 54 years of the Assad family’s rule and 61 years of the Syrian Baathist Party’s dominance marks the beginning of a new chapter in Syrian history. The reverberation effects will be felt all over the Middle East in countless ways, most of which will require much more time to fully realise.
Although many Syrians in Syria and throughout the diaspora have been celebrating the collapse of a family dictatorship responsible for decades of cruelty and widespread death at home, as well as next door during Lebanon’s civil war, Arab governments throughout the region are not necessarily overjoyed to see Assad fall.
While many Arab states had a history of problems with the Syrian regime, they have concerns about what the future may hold and the implications for their own interests.
Careful responses by concerned Arab states
The chances are good that regional actors will proceed with high levels of caution toward post-Assad Syria. Arab governments will most likely allow time to observe HTS’s conduct before making bold decisions about how to engage the country’s new authorities.
“They will wait and see how HTS behaves – does it keep its pledges not to target minorities or exact retribution on bureaucrats. Does it not refill the prisons as fast as it is emptying them. Will it support a coalition transitional government,” said Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center and a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University, in an interview with The New Arab.
A handful of Arab states have already been in contact with the new authorities in Damascus, trying to set relations off to a positive start with most Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan already being in communication with HTS’s Political Affairs Department.
As a former close ally of Assad’s government, Iraq has been relaying to the HTS administration that Baghdad will not interfere in Syria’s internal affairs albeit while warning that mistreatment of minority communities in Syria will have reverberations inside of Iraq.
Describing Assad’s ouster as “one of the biggest geopolitical tectonic shifts since the Sykes-Picot agreements in 1916 and the understandings reached at the end of the First World War,” Marco Carnelos, the former Italian ambassador to Iraq, told TNA that he does not expect Arab states to have a uniform response.
“Some countries like Iraq and Algeria for example will have a nuanced reaction while some Gulf monarchies concerned by Iran and its Axis of Resistance will breathe a sigh of relief,” he explained.
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Arab states should “carefully consider that the area is now defined by three main power brokers: Israel, Turkey, and what remains of the Iranian power, and none of them are Arab,” stated the former Italian diplomat. “This development should be food for thought for any Arab leader concerned for the Arab Umma,” added Carnelos.
In recent years, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have all invested diplomatic energy into shoring up Assad’s government. Abu Dhabi took the lead on this front beginning with its renormalisation with Damascus in December 2018.
The overall trend in the Arab world was towards the rehabilitation of Assad as a “legitimate” head of state, illustrated by his government’s return to the Arab League in May 2023, his visits to all Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, except for Kuwait and Qatar, starting in March 2022, and visits paid by high-ranking Arab officials to Damascus in recent years.
Now all these governments must contend with totally new realities on the ground and adjust their foreign policies vis-à-vis Syria.
A concern for officials in many parts of the Arab world, especially in Abu Dhabi, Cairo, and Riyadh, is that Islamist and jihadist groups throughout the Middle East will feel emboldened by the HTS-led coalition’s rise to power in Syria.
Viewing political Islam as a major threat, the leadership in Abu Dhabi and other Arab capitals have, in various ways, sought to diminish the role of Islamist groups in the region as much as possible. It could be particularly impactful having HTS, an organisation that emerged in the 2010s as an al-Qaeda offshoot, in charge of a country that has historically played a central role, politically, culturally, and ideologically, in the Arab world.
“The UAE looks already worried about Syria’s future, stressing the risk coming from non-state armed actors,” commented Eleonora Ardemagni, a Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Milan-based Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), in a TNA interview.
When asked how the fall of Assad and the ascendancy of the HTS-led coalition might affect Islamist and jihadist groups in other parts of the Arab world, Carnelos responded, “The least that I can say now is that it should be a significant confidence boost as the victory of the jihadists in Afghanistan against the Soviets was in the last two decades of the last century”.
In general, governments in the Arab world will not want to see events in Syria play out in manners that harm their interests. Any developments in Syria that could inspire rapid change in other parts of the region will unsettle officials in Arab states who favour gradual reforms rather than dramatic revolutions that suddenly upend political orders.
While the HTS-led government in Damascus may represent ideological and ideational threats to anti-Islamist and counter-revolutionary governments in the Arab world, states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE will have no choice but to try to make the most of the situation and find ways, if possible, to establish healthy relations with Syria’s post-Assad government.
Arab states will “make efforts to contain HTS and build alliances with an HTS-government primarily guided by the hope that what emerges will be friendly to them and their interests,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), told TNA.
When addressing the key concerns of Arab states regarding the fall of Assad’s government, Slavin said, “They will fear that a successful Islamist-led rebellion will inspire jihadis in their own countries and also draw attention to the human rights abuses of other Arab autocracies”.
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A region in turmoil
The GCC and other Arab states are chiefly concerned about Assad’s ouster and the rise of HTS exacerbating instability in the Middle East. With conflicts in this part of the world being contagious, underscored by the 14-month-old Gaza war’s expansion into other parts of the region, Arab leaders and statesmen do not want to see any chaos in Syria spill into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, or even the Gulf.
Israel’s actions toward Syria amid and following Assad’s fall have troubled Arab states, which do not welcome Tel Aviv’s decision to exploit the situation. In the first three days since Assad’s ouster, the Israeli military has waged more than 350 airstrikes in most governorates across the country, targeting many military installations.
The Israeli military quickly usurped control of more land in the occupied Golan Heights, claiming that Israel’s security needs required an expansion of the buffer zone. Syrian security forces have accused Israel of waging a military incursion that came within 16 miles of Damascus.
Although an Israeli military spokesperson denied this allegation, maintaining that Israeli forces have not entered any Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently posted a video on X in which he confirmed that his country’s troops had been waging operations beyond the buffer zone.
On the day of Assad’s fall, the Arab League issued a statement expressing the body’s “full condemnation of Israel, the occupying power, for its illegal attempts to exploit Syria’s internal developments, whether through seizing additional lands in the Golan Heights or declaring the 1974 Disengagement Agreement void”.
Saudi Arabia blasted Israel’s latest actions in the Golan Heights, warning that they will “ruin Syria’s chances of restoring security”. The UAE Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s land grab and reaffirmed its “commitment to the unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Syrian state.”
The Qatari Foreign Ministry also declared that the Israeli incursion represents “a dangerous development and a blatant attack on Syria’s sovereignty and unity as well as a flagrant violation of international law”. Similar responses came from Egypt, Iraq, Oman, and other regional states too.
It is reasonable to raise concerns about how extremist groups such as the Islamic State (IS) may stand to benefit from the breakdown of state institutions and resultant power vacuums. With many weapons in Syria, including chemical ones, there are extremely serious security dilemmas that regional states will need to address in this upcoming period of uncertainty and serious risks.
“Although HTS has cleaned itself up a lot in these months [and] years, we must not forget that it originated as an al-Qaeda cell…I would not be very serene if I lived in [parts of the region near Syria] not knowing what happened to the Assad regime’s weapons loaded with nerve agents, nor the Russian anti-aircraft weapons, nor the remnants of the nuclear program dismantled by Israel just in 2007 near Deir ez-Zour,” Dr Federica Saini Fasanotti, a Senior Associate Research Fellow at ISPI, told TNA.
“The country is in a dangerous period right now, and everyone should focus on ensuring the reestablishment of peace and security in the country, securing vulnerable communities including those perceived to be pro-Assad, and preserving the country’s state infrastructure that will be essential for governance,” explained Whitson.
The political transition
It was understandable how five Arab states – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia – along with Iran, Turkey, and Russia issued a statement calling for an orderly political transition in post-Assad Syria in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2254, which the body unanimously adopted in December 2015.
This statement “highlights how much the power equation in Syria can change: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE want to be part of the new power room in the country,” noted Ardemagni.
“This means overcoming the prominent role Iran has had so far, but it doesn’t mean however to automatically exclude Tehran from the new Syrian order, since the GCC states want first of all stability in the region, and the continuity of the de-escalation process in the Gulf,” she added.
“The fall of Assad is a geopolitical earthquake in the Middle East. Given Syria’s entrenched sectarian, ethnic, and regional divisions, Arab states will be keen to prevent a power vacuum from emerging, the rise of extremism, or spillover effects into neighbouring countries,” said Ferial Saeed, a former senior American diplomat, in a TNA interview.
With the stakes so high, she said that it is crucial for a UN-mediated political transition in Syria to succeed. “If managed effectively, this process could produce a legitimate and inclusive government, reducing the likelihood of renewed conflict. Balancing these concerns with their political interests will be a key challenge for Arab states,” Saeed explained.
Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics
Follow him on Twitter: @GiorgioCafiero
