The View From India newsletter: Disaster or rebirth: What’s next for Syria? Today World News

(This article is part of the View From India newsletter curated by The Hindu’s foreign affairs experts. To get the newsletter in your inbox every Monday, subscribe here.)

Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the U.S., welcomed Afghan Mujahideen leaders in the White House in November 1987. After the meeting, he “expressed our nation’s continued strong support for the resistance”. The U.S., along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, were training and arming the Mujahideen against Afghanistan’s communist regime and its Soviet backers. In less than two years of Reagan’s Oval Office meeting with the Mujahideen leaders, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. Three years after the Soviet withdrawal, and months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in April 1992, the communist government in Afghanistan would collapse, giving a major victory for the Mujahideen. But for Afghanistan, it was the beginning of just another phase of the civil war, which would lead to the rise of the Taliban.

In 2002, the U.S. accused Saddam Hussein, then President of Iraq, of having weapons of mass destruction and helping al-Qaeda. In March 2003, the U.S. would launch its illegal invasion of Iraq and topple the Saddam regime. The invasion was portrayed as a “liberation” of Iraq from the clutches of a brutal dictator by George W. Bush administration officials as well as sections of Western media. However, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And al-Qaeda became stronger in the country after the collapse of the Saddam regime. In the subsequent years, Iraq spiralled into a bloody sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shias in which hundreds of thousands were killed. Iraq is yet to recover from the scars of America’s invasion.

In 2011, after the outbreak of Arab Spring-inspired protests in Libya against the rule of Muammar Gaddhafi, the U.S. got the UN Security Council’s approval to establish a no-fly zone in Libya aimed at protecting the armed rebels in the east from the regime. NATO turned the no-fly zone mandate into one for an all-out invasion of the North African country. After months of relentless bombing, in which thousands were killed, Gaddhafi’s regime was toppled and he was later killed. ‘Libya was liberated by NATO,’ claimed many. Today, Libya, which was one of the most stable countries in Africa, has two governments, two parliaments and multiple militias.

Cut to Syria. The civil war in Syria began almost at the same time as Libya. Protests broke out against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in 2011. When the protesters lacked the political capital, like in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, to uproot the regime, they turned to an armed insurgency. This provided an opportunity for Mr. Assad’s rivals to interfere in Syria’s civil war. In the subsequent months, the conflict in Syria would turn into a geopolitical civil war with the involvement of several players — Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, the U.S., Europeans, Russia and Iran. A direct western intervention in Syria was not immediately possible because of the Russian intervention in the country. Mr. Assad, with help from Russia and Iran, crushed most of his enemies by 2017-18. But Syria remained divided with a Turkey backed jihadist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), controlling a slice of territory in the northwest and the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) controlling the northeast.

It is this HTS that has captured Damascus on December 8. Many, from Washington to Paris, have welcomed the fall of the Assad regime. The HTS has promised a new beginning for Syria. But Syria still remains a complex case — with or without Mr. Assad. Before Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, captured power in 1971, Syria had seen multiple coups and counter-coups. It was Hafez and his Ba’ath party that stabilised the country and built its modern institutions. Today, the challenge the militants face is to rebuild the country once again, by demobilising the militias. But the HTS neither has ideological clarity for an inclusive Syria nor the resources to demobilise other militias. The HTS is a Salafi-jihadist outfit, which wants to remake secular Syria. If the HTS’s rule in Idlib is an example, the group is not any less dictatorial than Mr. Assad. The southern militias, backed by Jordan, would want to get their due share of power. And in the east, the SDF, the Kurdish militia, wants to keep their hard-earned autonomy. But Turkey sees the SDF as a terrorist outfit, and Turkish-backed militias have already started attacking the SDF.

Syria can learn from the examples of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and do better. But the examples draw a pattern about post-regime change dynamics in these societies. And the pattern is not encouraging for Syria’s future.

The Top Five

1. Won’t allow Sri Lankan territory to be used against India: Dissanayake

India converts a number of project loans to grants, agrees to expedite energy, connectivity and digital cooperation after Modi-Dissanayake meet in Delhi, reports Suhasini Haidar.

2. Yoon Suk Yeol | President’s gambit declined

The impeached leader of South Korea was able to manage a successful transition from state prosecutor to national politician, but could not learn the give-and-take of democratic politics, nor give up thinking like a prosecutor, writes Sampath G.

3. Luigi Mangione | ‘Popular’ suspect

The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, who allegedly shot the CEO of a medical insurance company in the U.S., has found support among many, while it shows the public’s eroding trust in institutions, writes Adithya Narayan.

4. Germany’s move to freeze Syrian asylum applications clouds celebrations of Assad regime’s fall

The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in Germany had decided to pause all applications for asylum from Syrians a day after militants forced President Assad to flee; While Chancellor Scholz has expressed solidarity, opposition parties have called for the exit of Syrians from the country, Nimish Sawant reports.

5. Bangladesh to hold elections in late 2025 or early 2026: Yunus

Interim leader says it would depend on the extent of reforms implemented, reports Rabiul Alam.