GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 430

Is Chaos Coming?

The Devil You Know

I’ve used the phrase that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t when talking about the fall of the Assad regime. And it fits to a point because the Syrian rebels aren’t telling us much about how they will rule the country apart from making an oblique reference to being like the Taliban. In an article from The Times Of Israel we’re told about what could happen in the area now that the axis of evil there is highly unstable:

The ouster of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after rebel forces swept into Damascus this weekend shattered Iran’s network of influence in the Middle East, but Israel, the United States and Arab powers must now deal with the risk of instability and extremism from the mosaic of forces that replaces him.

That statement is fraught with irony, though. The people in charge up until now were creating instability and extremism themselves. But I digress. It is true that Syria was in the hands very bad actors:

Chief among the rebel forces that ended 50 years of brutal dynastic rule by Assad and his father was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Muslim group previously affiliated with al-Qaeda that is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and the UN.

As I alluded to earlier, the HTS insurgents are not good people as well:

Western and Arab nations fear that the HTS-led rebel coalition may seek to replace Assad’s regime with a hardline Islamist government, or one less able or inclined to prevent the resurgence of radical forces, three diplomats and three analysts told Reuters.

“There is strong fear inside and outside the region of the power vacuum that Assad’s sudden collapse may cause,” said Abdelaziz al-Sager, director of the Gulf Research Center, a think tank focused on the Middle East. He cited the civil wars that followed the toppling of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003 and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

If not HTS, who will lead Syria? It appears that this happened so quickly that no one else knows, too, but they fear what happened in the past could happen again:

One senior Western diplomat in the region, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that with the rebel forces fragmented, there was no plan for how to rule Syria, a complex nation divided into various sects and ethnic groups, each with its own regional power base.

The senior diplomat expressed fears that lawlessness in Syria could allow the flourishing of extremist groups like the Islamic State, which in 2014 swept through large swaths of Syria and Iraq and established an Islamic Caliphate before it was eventually driven out by a US-led coalition.

But what will happen to Assad? Biden wants him to be taken to the wood shed metaphorically:

US President Joe Biden on Sunday welcomed Assad’s toppling and said he should be “held accountable” for his despotic rule but he warned that his departure was a moment of “risk and uncertainty.” US forces on Sunday conducted dozens of strikes within Syria against IS to prevent it reasserting itself.

Too Many Choices?

Yes, it happened quite quickly and now there are plans to find the new leaders of the country:

The speed of Assad’s ouster, just two weeks since the rebel offensive began, took many in the White House by surprise. A senior US official said Washington was now seeking ways to communicate with all the rebel groups, not just HTS.

So far, Washington had mostly thrown its support behind Syrian Kurdish groups, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose areas of control are in northeast Syria.

These groups, however, are in conflict with one of the main victorious rebels factions, the Syrian National Army, or SNA, backed by regional power broker, Turkey, which opposes Kurdish influence.

As we can see, there are many groups vying for power, but those who pulled the strings of the deposed leader are scrambling as well:

Assad’s allies in Tehran and Moscow, who propped up his rule for 13 years with military support, men and airpower, also face far-reaching implications from his precipitous downfall.

Moscow — which has given Assad and his family asylum — has two major military bases in Syria, its main footprint in the Middle East. Its naval base in Tartus on the Mediterranean has been a staging post to fly military contractors in and out of Africa.

The puppet master in the region, Iran is also having to make tough decisions now:

For Tehran, its alliance with Assad — a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam — was a cornerstone of its powerbase in a predominantly Sunni region wary of Shi’ite Iran.

Assad’s departure shattered a pivotal axis of influence, eroding Tehran’s ability to project power and sustain its network of militia groups across the Middle East, particularly its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday it had opened a direct line of communication with the rebels in an attempt to “prevent a hostile trajectory.”

How much of a loss is this for Iran? If they can’t get HTS to work with them it will be crushing:

Assad offered Iran a vital conduit for arms shipments to Hezbollah. Jonathan Panikoff, a former US deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East, said his ouster could make it more difficult for Hezbollah to rearm, increasing the prospects that a ceasefire with Israel agreed last month would hold.

In the meantime, Israel is taking advantage of the instability to destroy weapons in Syria:

Israeli forces carried out airstrikes against suspected chemical weapons and missile sites on Monday to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile actors, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said.

One source thinks that the rebels aren’t a big threat at the time, though:

Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank for Israeli security policy based in Tel Aviv, said that — despite the risk of a prolonged period of chaos and violence in Syria — Assad’s fall could benefit Israel.

“Despite concerns over the rise of extremist elements near the border and the lack of a clear authority in charge, the military capabilities of the rebels, in their various forms, aren’t comparable to those of Iran and its proxies,” she said.

A Path To Elections

There are those who have ideas on how to establish a new government in Syria:

Marwan al-Muasher, vice president for studies at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Assad’s exit could provide an opportunity for Syrians to establish an inclusive political governance through an orderly transition, rather than allowing extremist groups to gain ascendancy via a power vacuum.

Hadi Al-Bahra, the head of Syria’s main opposition abroad, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Doha Forum on Sunday that Syria should have an 18-month transition period to establish “a safe, neutral, and quiet environment” for free elections.

He went on to suggest other things that should be done:

Al-Bahra, president of the Syrian National Coalition, said Syria should draft a constitution within six months, on which the first election would be a referendum. He said the opposition had asked state employees to report to work until the power transition, and assured them that they would not be harmed.

The current people in charge want to stay in charge, though:

The leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, addressed huge crowds at the medieval Umayyad Mosque in central Damascus on Sunday, promising a new chapter for the region and that Syria would become “a beacon for the Islamic nation.”

There are religious and ethnic components as well:

There are, however, questions about whether Golani’s form of strict Islamist ideology would be accepted throughout Syria, a country where a moderate and liberal form of Islam prevails, with a mixed Christian, Alawite, Druze and Kurdish population.

Both Western and Middle Eastern officials expressed concern about the unity of Syria, with key territories, including those along borders with Iraq and Turkey, under the control of different sects and ethnic groups. These divisions, which were entrenched by a bloody 2011 uprising, present a growing threat to national stability.

The analysts and diplomats who spoke to Reuters warned of the risk of a free-for-all conflict — akin to those that followed the toppling of Gaddafi in Libya or Saddam in Iraq — in which armed groups from different Islamist, ethnic and ideological shades fight for supremacy over territory.

Some feel that it will get very ugly, very quickly with no apparent end in sight:

Such a failed state in Syria would have a major impact on neighbors Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, they said.

“Each one of these rebel groups is vying for supremacy; each one wants to be in charge. Each one thinks they can be Bashar al-Assad, and each one has allegiance to a foreign party funding his group,” said al-Sager, the diplomat. “They will clash unless there is an effort by the UN and some regional countries with influence to unify them.”

So everyone has opinions and no one has a tried and true solution for Syria’s future. I think Israel isn’t going to wait on the political solutions to unwind nor do I see that they can wait. For them they want safety for themselves and destroying the weapons in and around Damascus is priority one. Prophetically a path is already laid out. These prophecies make total sense now.