The Assad Regime Has Fallen 🇸🇾

 

(This is the current flag of Syria 🇸🇾 as of the time of this writing.)

 

Well guys, the day that no body thought would ever come has become: the Assad regime in Syria 🇸🇾 has fallen. The country is now under the control of the rebels. Now, I was originally going to talk about this in the foreword of a repost or first time post of an old thing that I haven't posted anywhere before. I was also going to do the same about the recent martial law order imposed in South Korea 🇰🇷 by its current president, Yoon Suk Yeol which ended after a few hours due to the huge opposition from the Democratic Party (the current opposition party) and the South Korean people 🇰🇷 themselves. But, I had so much to say about this, especially in light of the recent developments, that I decided that I couldn't wait any longer, and just decided to make this its own post. I'll probably end up doing the same for the martial law order in South Korea 🇰🇷 especially if I can't get Weekend in Taipei working on my PS4. Damn internet connection 🛜 😠. 

 

 

(This is the flag of the Syrian revolution and may become the future national flag.)

 

 

 

Now, when I was originally thinking about talking about this in a foreword of another post, the rebel group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham had taken the city of Aleppo, which is the second largest city in Syria 🇸🇾 and was relentlessly bombed by Russia 🇷🇺 during the civil war. Everyone was caught off guard by this, including Bashar al-Assad and his forces,  because no body saw it coming. It came out of no where and took everyone by surprise because Aleppo was firmly under the control of the Assad regime, they gained control of the city, largely thanks to the help of the Russian military 🇷🇺, and they thought they had a tight grip on the city. Everyone thought they had it locked down. 

But, Tahrir al-Sham completely shattered that illusion by taking the city within just three days. The Syrian military 🇸🇾 barely put up a fight, and the government forces as a whole there completely collapsed. Though, it should be noted that while the Western media started paying attention to this once Aleppo was captured, the rebel offensive did not start in Aleppo. The rebels had already taken several towns and villages before they marched into Aleppo as the government forces continued to put up token resistance before completely disintegrating. But, Aleppo really was when Assad and the whole world started to pay attention and take this latest rebel offensive seriously.

But, despite losing Aleppo, a lot of western analysts believed that the Assad regime would not fall, and that Assad would hold firm, maintaining his grip on power, even as Idlib, Hama, and Homs were taken. The one who I saw state this the strongest was Ian Bremmer, an American political scientist, entrepreneur, and author 🇺🇸 who often focuses on geopolitics and foreign policy. He said that despite what happened in Aleppo, Assad would not fall and that Russia 🇷🇺 and Iran 🇮🇷 would likely come to his aid. Or something to that effect. I don't remember exactly what he said, it's been a day or two since I've seen his video. 

 

But, then earlier today, the rebels took Damascus, meeting little-to-no resistance from government forces, and the Assad regime fell. So, I guess Ian has a bit of egg on his face for that prediction. Wouldn't be the first time he was wrong about something. To be fair to Ian though, the Russians 🇷🇺 and the Iranians 🇮🇷 did sort of intervene in the war, but their response to the rebels was token at best. They just did a few airstrikes in Aleppo, and then just called it a day. The IRGC did jack all to resist the rebels, I don't even know what they did which just goes to show how little they actually and how weak their response was. And as we saw, those Russian airstrikes 🇷🇺 and whatever the hell the Iranians 🇮🇷 did made absolutely no difference whatsoever, and the rebels just marched to Damascus, captured the city, and sent Assad packing.

So now, the Assad regime is no more, Assad himself has fled the country, likely into Russia 🇷🇺 just other disgraced pro-Russian leader 🇷🇺 Viktor Yanukovych, and Syria 🇸🇾 is now control of the rebels, more specifically, Tahrir al-Sham. Bringing the Syrian Civil War 🇸🇾, at least as we knew it, to an end. It ended rather anticlimactically I must say. Just like how President Yoon's attempt to declare martial law and become dictator ended in a wet fart, this war has gone on for 13 years ended so abruptly and with very little fanfare. There are actually people out there who have been speculating that Assad chose to flee to Moscow and not Tehran is because he's hoping that the Russians 🇷🇺 will help reinstall him back into power, but I don't think that's going to happen. I mean, the US 🇺🇸 didn't help Chiang Kai-shek retake the mainland after he lost the Chinese Civil War 🇨🇳🇹🇼 and fled to Taiwan. What would make Assad think Russia 🇷🇺 will help him retake Syria 🇸🇾? He's delusional if he actually thinks Vladimir Putin will do that for him. He's still got a war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 that he's still trying to win. He has no time to help a disgraced Middle Eastern dictator retake power.

As stated before, the Syrian military 🇸🇾 barely put up any sort of resistance to the rebels. From what I've read, it seems like in a lot of cases, they just dropped their weapons, dropped their uniforms and fled as soon as the rebels showed up. That's what happened in Damascus, the Syrian Army 🇸🇾 put up no resistance and largely just abandoned their posts and just ran, allowing the rebels to take the city with relative ease. And even though some news outlets have covered on this, it isn't making the waves that you'd think that it would considering how earth shattering this is, considering how big of a shift this is. This is as big as when the US 🇺🇸 and NATO withdrew from Afghanistan 🇦🇫 in 2021. This was a civil war that had been going on for 13 years since 2011. It had been going on in the background of our lives for the entirety of the 2010s and the early part of the 2020s. Of course for Syrians 🇸🇾 and anyone else living in the Middle East, it was at the forefront of their lives, they were being directly affected by it. And now, with the toppling of Assad, it seems that it's over. 

The Syrian Civil War 🇸🇾 was a brutal conflict. It created a humanitarian crisis that has only been rivaled by other such conflicts as the Yemeni Civil War 🇾🇪, the war in Gaza between Israel 🇮🇱 and Hamas, and the current civil war in Sudan 🇸🇩 which I like to call the Third Sudanese Civil War 🇸🇩 since it is the third civil war in Sudan 🇸🇩's entire history, can you believe that 😨? The Syrian Civil War 🇸🇾 claimed the lives of around 580,000 to 617,910 people 💀 which is about half a million people, making it one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century so far 💀. 

It also displaced close to 6.7 million people internally and about 6.6 million externally, causing a refugee crisis in Europe that ultimately led to Brexit 🇬🇧 and the rise of right-wing populism as a whole across the continent. It also empowered and emboldened Russia 🇷🇺 to continue its military adventures abroad, and may have even partially led to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 in 2022, escalating the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 to a level it hadn't been before and extending the war for another three years and still ongoing. And for what? So that this bozo can stay in power? That really blew up in his face now did it? 

 

 

 

(This is a photo of Bashar al-Assad, months before he was removed from power.)

 

 

 

Honestly, this couldn't have happened to a better guy ♂︎ than Assad. The guy ♂︎'s a piece of shit, he was a dictator, and he killed thousands of people of his own. He dropped bombs on them including barrel bombs (bombs made with barrels filled with nails, shrapnel, and explosives dropped by hand from helicopters 🚁), he gunned them down, fired tank rounds at them, and he used chemical weapons ☣️ on them multiple times. He sent thousands of people, people he considered enemies to his regime, to torture prisons such as the Saydnaya prison which was sort of equivalent to the Abu Ghraib prison in Saddam's Iraq 🇮🇶 or the Evin Prison in Iran 🇮🇷. The prisoners sent to Saydnaya have only just been freed now that Assad has fallen and the rebels have taken control. And the stories these former political prisoners have to tell about their experiences in Saydnaya are horrific 😰.

 

He was not a good guy ♂︎, and he pretty much deserved everything that has happened to him in the last couple of weeks, in the last 24 hours. He deserved to lose power. And yet, there are still people in the West (too many of whom are on the Left) who still defend this guy ♂︎ and say that he didn't do anything wrong and it was all just an American psy-op 🇺🇸, and will no doubt cry crocodile tears 😭 now that he's gone and they've lost. The fact that he ran, and fled to Russia 🇷🇺 as soon as the rebels took Damascus tells everything you need to know about him and his character. He didn't care about the Syrian people 🇸🇾, he just cared about himself and his own power. And he thought he had it. 

I think Assad began to believe in his own myth, he believed that he was invincible, that he was untouchable, and he was going to rule Syria 🇸🇾 for the rest of his life until he was a frail old man ♂︎ just like his daddy, Hafez. And if things really did get bad for him, Russia 🇷🇺 and Iran 🇮🇷 would protect him. He thought that they could come in and save him just like they did in 2015. But, because Russia 🇷🇺 is completely distracted by the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦, Iran 🇮🇷 is distracted by what's going on in Gaza and Lebanon 🇱🇧, and Hezbollah has been severely weakened by Israel 🇮🇱's ongoing war in Lebanon 🇱🇧, they didn't. Assad was all on his own, and as many experts suspected, once he was on his own, he wouldn't be able to protect himself and his regime and he would quickly fall. Of course, we can't forget Russia 🇷🇺's complicity in all this. 

 

 

(This is the flag of Russia 🇷🇺.)

 

 

 

They helped Assad throughout this war, they directly intervened militarily to save him when it looked as if his regime was going to fall, they defended him diplomatically when he was doing things that were indefensible (using chemical weapons ☣️ on his people), and they took part in some of his crimes. They helped Assad retake Aleppo by bombing it into smithereens, just pancaking city blocks with precision guided missiles and bombs just like Israel 🇮🇱 has been doing to the cities in the Gaza Strip and in cities in Lebanon 🇱🇧, just like the Russians 🇷🇺 themselves did to Grozny in Chechnya in the 90s and 2000s, and just like the Russians 🇷🇺 have been doing to cities in Ukraine 🇺🇦 for the past three years. It was because of Russia 🇷🇺 that Assad was able to stay in power as long as he did. But he didn't control the whole country, there were still parts of the country that were out of his control like the northern half which was controlled by the Kurds, and then you had pockets of the country (big and small) which were controlled by various rebel factions including Tahrir al-Sham. So, he was essentially ruling over a divided country, the civil war had caused Syria 🇸🇾 to break apart, which meant that his total rule over the country was tenuous at best. 

So, with Assad gone, Putin just lost a major ally in the Middle East, and it is further sign that his global influence is waning as a result of his decision to invade Ukraine 🇺🇦. A decision he had made himself with very input from anyone else, and has no one to blame for disastrous results of but himself. The Iranians 🇮🇷 have also lost a bit of influence as a result of Assad being kicked out by the rebels. Assad was both the Russians 🇷🇺 and the Iranians' 🇮🇷 project, he was their joint venture, as we saw today, he failed. It's funny really in a morbid kind of way 😄, Assad started this war so that he could hold onto power, and yet it ultimately ended with him having none at all. 

 

 

 

(These are the flags of Iran 🇮🇷 and Hezbollah. The flag on the top is the Iranian flag 🇮🇷, and the flag on the bottom is the Hezbollah flag.)

 

 

In the end, he made the same mistake Muammar Gaddafi did, by fighting back, by resisting his own people and their calls for change. It just took longer for him than it did Gaddafi for the chickens 🐓 to come home to roost. Had he just stepped down during the height of the Arab Spring instead of killing protesters 🪧, thousands of people wouldn't be dead, millions of people wouldn't have been displaced, and there wouldn't have been a refugee crisis that fueled the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, and the UK 🇬🇧 wouldn't have left the EU 🇪🇺, and Assad himself would've been a better position politically. He could've stayed in Syria 🇸🇾, living out the rest of his days in cushy retirement, instead of fleeing to Russia 🇷🇺. 

I guess that is one way he got off easier than Gaddafi, he's still alive and didn't get brutally killed. He even got off easier than Saddam Hussein since he was put on trial, wasn't found guilty, wasn't sentenced to death, and then hung. But all honesty, he belongs in prison for the rest of his life for all the war crimes and crimes against humanity he committed during the war. Crimes that many on the Right and the Left in the West still deny to this day. So, while he did get his comeuppance a little bit by losing his power, he won't to be held accountable for his horrible crimes, and will ultimately escape justice. That is one of the sad parts of this story, and why this isn't a perfect happy ending for Syria 🇸🇾 but rather a bittersweet one. At least we can celebrate 🥳 knowing that Assad is no longer in power to terrorize anyone ever again. 

 

 

 

 (This is the flag of Turkey 🇹🇷 AKA Türkiye 🇹🇷.)

 

 

No doubt the big winner in all of this is Turkey 🇹🇷. Turkey 🇹🇷 supported the rebels, Tahrir al-Sham is a Turkish-backed group 🇹🇷, and many other Sunni Islamist groups ☪️ that make up the current Syrian opposition 🇸🇾 right now are backed by the Turks 🇹🇷. So, by the rebels removing Assad from power and winning the civil war, Turkey 🇹🇷's foreign policy interests in the Middle East at least (that rhymed) have been served. While Russia 🇷🇺 and Iran 🇮🇷's influence in the Middle East is starting to wane, Turkey 🇹🇷's influence is growing. 

And if you know anything about Turkey 🇹🇷, you'll know that's not necessarily a good thing as the country is being led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Erdoğan is a bit of a dictator himself. Very similar to Viktor Orbán in Hungary 🇭🇺 or Narendra Modi in India 🇮🇳. But, this may lead to relations between Turkey 🇹🇷 and Russia 🇷🇺 becoming strained, which is possibly the one silver lining in all this. The more countries that turn against Russia 🇷🇺 the better. Israel 🇮🇱 is also getting something out of this, as Assad was very hostile towards Israel 🇮🇱, and with him gone they have one less enemy to worry about. 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Israel 🇮🇱.)

 

 

They also invaded Syria 🇸🇾, yeah that's right, they invaded Syria 🇸🇾, taking full advantage of the chaos and power vacuum created by Assad's fall from power and occupying parts of southern Syria 🇸🇾. I didn't know about this until I started writing about this. Right now, from what I've read on Wikipedia, it seems like this invasion is mostly just to secure the Golan Heights, which Israel 🇮🇱 already controls, and to grab more Syrian territory 🇸🇾 within the Quneitra Governorate. They say that they're just creating a buffer zone, but the Israelis 🇮🇱 are known liars, Benjamin Netanyahu is a liar, and they could easily be lying about this that they're just "creating a buffer zone." I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the territory they captured, and you shouldn't be surprised either. They did the same thing after they captured the Sinai peninsula during the Six Day War. They didn't relinquish the Sinai peninsula after they captured it, no, they kept it until 1982 two years after they signed the peace treaty with Egypt 🇪🇬 in 1979. They've also conducted air strikes in Damascus and in other parts of Syria 🇸🇾. 

 

All those fears that the war in Gaza would spark a larger war in the Middle East have largely come true as the war has now expanded to Syria 🇸🇾 after expanding to Lebanon 🇱🇧 a couple of months ago, and it seems like at the moment at least, Israel 🇮🇱 is winning that war. Which isn't good for the Palestinians 🇵🇸, or the Syrians 🇸🇾, or any other Arab people, or for the stability of the Middle East 😞, but it's also not good for Iran 🇮🇷, which is a plus I guess 🤷‍♂️. You take what you can get with these kind of things. Netanyahu really has no idea what he started, and has no way to stop it 🤦‍♂️. 

 

 

(This is the flag of Tahrir al-Sham.)

 

 

 

That brings us to the last question on everyone's mind following Assad's fall from power, and that's what will happen to Syria 🇸🇾 next? It is important to note that these were not the secular pro-democracy rebels that the US 🇺🇸 and many other Western countries rhetorically supported that defeated Assad and won the war. As I said before, it was the Islamist rebels ☪️, mainly Tahrir al-Sham, that led the charge against Assad in this recent offensive and won the day. So, it'll be them that shape the future of Syria 🇸🇾, not the pro-democracy rebels who we were all rooting for and who we all wanted to win, but the US 🇺🇸 didn't support and kind of fizzled out as a result of the US 🇺🇸 not supporting them militarily or materially. Thanks, Obama, thanks, Trump 🙄👍.

Because they're an Islamist group ☪️ that has ties to al-Qaeda and had its origins in al-Qaeda being a splinter group of sorts to that organization, people are worried that we may see something similar happen in Syria 🇸🇾 that happened in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 after the US-backed government 🇺🇸 there collapsed and have a theocratic regime be formed where a strict form of Sharia law is imposed and women ♀︎ are stripped of all their rights being forced to walk around covered head-to-toe, and being forced to walk around while being accompanied by a man ♂︎ and all that. 

For the Syrian people's sake 🇸🇾, I really do hope that doesn't happen and that Tahrir al-Sham and the other rebel groups have moderated their positions and that the secular forces within the opposition take hold, and that they allow Syria 🇸🇾 to have democracy instead of holding power for themselves. Maybe something like current-day Iraq 🇮🇶, Iraq 🇮🇶's not perfect, it still has a lot of problems but it is in a much better place than Syria 🇸🇾 is right now or has been under Assad and during the civil war. Even something similar to post-Gaddafi Libya 🇱🇾 would still be preferable to what Syria 🇸🇾 had during the Assad years and what it has now in the devastation of the civil war. Of course, Libya 🇱🇾 had a second civil war after Gaddafi was overthrown because there were two rival governments, but I'm talking after that civil war was over. 

The worst case scenario would be something like a Taliban-type regime being established in Syria 🇸🇾, but the other worst case scenario would be that the civil war continues or another one starts where the rebel groups start fighting amongst themselves for power now that their common enemy has been defeated. Just like what happened after the end of the Soviet-Afghan War 🇦🇫☭, once the Soviets ☭ were gone, the Mujahideen broke apart and the rebel groups that made up the Mujahideen started fighting each other in what became known as the Afghan Civil War 🇦🇫 (or the Second Afghan Civil War 🇦🇫 as it's also known since there was more than one Afghan Civil War 🇦🇫), a war that led to the Taliban taking control of the country for the first time. 

 

Maybe, the rebels do form a relative secular and moderate government with perhaps a limited form of democracy, but they end up facing Israeli aggression 🇮🇱 next in a new war for however long Netanyahu is in office and the world continues to let Israel 🇮🇱 do whatever the hell it wants with no repercussions. It's hard to say what the future holds for Syria 🇸🇾, we'll just have to wait and see, but right now, it doesn't look great. Like I said, this wasn't the perfect happy ending we all wanted to the Syrian Civil War 🇸🇾, it is more of a bittersweet one. 

—

Update (Sunday December 15, 2024): 

🇮🇱🇸🇾

 

 

(This is a screenshot of an article from BBC News that I found on Apple News talking about Israel 🇮🇱's plans to expand the Golan Heights settlements to the newly acquired territory that they’ve occupied in Syria 🇸🇾, specifically in their Quneitra Governorate. Here is a link to the article itself.) 

 

 

Yep, I called it, Israel 🇮🇱 is indeed keeping the territory it seized from Syria 🇸🇾 after the fall of Assad. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, and yet, it will be to those who still think that Israel 🇮🇱 is still capable of doing the right thing or that Israel 🇮🇱 always has the best intentions with everything it does 🙄. 

 

 

(This is a map created by the BBC themselves showing the Syrian territory 🇸🇾 that Israel 🇮🇱 currently occupies. The territory that they recently acquired were part of a UN buffer zone 🇺🇳 until Israel 🇮🇱 moved in and took control of it, and made it clear that they have every intention of annexing that territory just like they did with the Golan Heights. I know that they haven't officially annexed it just like they haven't officially annexed the Golan Heights, but they're pretty much saying that they plan on occupying that territory indefinitely just like they've been occupying the Golan Heights indefinitely for 57 years since 1967 after the end of the Six Day War. It pretty much amounts to an annexation without actually saying it's an annexation and making it official.

 

That's how Israel 🇮🇱 has expanded its territory since it came into existence in 1948, that's what they did with the Sinai peninsula until they were forced to give it back to Egypt 🇪🇬 in 1982 after they signed a peace treaty with them in 1979. They didn't take the Russian approach 🇷🇺 which is to occupy a territory, and then officially annex it after a sham referendum because they know that comes from with some stigma. People didn’t like it when Russia 🇷🇺 annexed Crimea, and they didn't like it when Russia 🇷🇺 annexed the Donbas region and other oblasts in the eastern part of Ukraine 🇺🇦. So, Israel 🇮🇱 doesn't do that, instead they do what they've always done where they just occupy a territory indefinitely, placing it their de facto control and allowing them to build settlements there without actually saying that they've annexed it.)

 

 

I also found another article, this time from The Times and Sunday Times saying that Assad was literally indebted to Iran 🇮🇷, meaning he owed them $50 billion USD 💵 in exchange for them protecting him. And with him being ousted, all that money 💵 has gone up in flames 🔥 or "in smoke 💨" as the article says, and Iran 🇮🇷 is pretty upset about it 🤬. Will Iran 🇮🇷 be aggressive and less forgiving to the new regime in Syria 🇸🇾 (whatever it maybe) and to the region as a whole now that they've lost all that money 💵 that Assad owed them? Maybe. 

 

Considering how they've behaved towards Israel 🇮🇱, I wouldn't be surprised if Iran 🇮🇷 was more aggressive towards the new Syrian state 🇸🇾 whenever it's established and will lash out at other states too that it may blame for why Assad fell and why they lost all their money 💵 as a result, such as the US 🇺🇸 and Turkey 🇹🇷. I would say Israel 🇮🇱, but they're already mad at Israel 🇮🇱 so this won't make them even more mad at Israel 🇮🇱 than they already are. 

 

I guess Assad was like Saddam where had accumulated millions or this case billions of dollars 💵 of ill gotten gains and was stashing away for himself. Only Assad wasn't stashing it for himself, he was stashing it away to give to Iran 🇮🇷, one of his two biggest benefactors. Saddam was nicknamed "the Godfather" after the movie The Godfather because of all the money 💵 he accumulated (according to the movie War Dogs), but what would Assad's nickname be? "The Goodfella" 🤷‍♂️? 

 

I also found another article on that same website talking about how Assad funded his regime with drug money 💵. He built a massive drug empire, a narco state if you will, to not only keep his regime afloat but also to fund the war effort against the various rebel factions that he was fighting against, and also probably to enrich himself and his family 🤑. Some of that drug money 💵 also probably going to Iran 🇮🇷 as well since Assad was indebted to the regime there in Tehran. The drug he was mainly producing and selling was the drug known as Captagon which is an illegal drug that is banned in the US 🇺🇸 and has been banned there since the 1980s. He was producing several tons of this stuff inside of Syria 🇸🇾, the rebels have discovered factories with thousands of pills, some of which were stashed in fake fruit and electronic devices. 

 

After the drugs were produced in Syrian drug labs 🇸🇾 under the control of the regime, he would ship them to various countries in the Middle East and Europe with the help of drug traffickers. So, Assad was funding his regime with drug trafficking, that's something we already kind of knew. It was covered in The Equalizer 3, it was a large part of that movie's plot. We just didn't know the full extent of it until after Assad fell. It reminds me a lot of how North Korea 🇰🇵 funds its regime and its military with money laundering 💵 and other criminal activities due to massive international sanctions that have been imposed on it, or how the Taliban funded themselves with opium grown from the poppy fields in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 during the war against the US 🇺🇸, NATO, and the US 🇺🇸 and NATO-backed Afghan government 🇦🇫. You can go read both articles by clicking here and here. 

 

 

(This is a screenshot of the article I found on The Times and Sunday Times talking about Assad's debt to the Iranian regime 🇮🇷 on Apple News. It's on Apple News+ meaning it's behind a paywall, which means that I had to find this article on the Internet 🛜 using my iPhone 📱 and then having it sync with my laptop 💻 so it would appear on the browser on my laptop 💻. They use the same browser, Firefox, so it worked.)