The Dance of the Hyenas: Syria: The Collapse and Partition – Factors at Work: A Preliminary Analysis

The Dance of the Hyenas: The Partition of Syria

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The collapse of the Syrian government is a result of decades of U.S. efforts and billions of dollars to overthrow the Assad government. That U.S. officials take credit for regime change in Syria is not without validity. State Department Matthew Miller admitted in a December 9 press briefing that detailed plans to overthrow Hafez al Assad “was developed during the latter stages of the Obama Administration and has largely been carried through to this day.”

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1.

A number of commentators who I respect – among them former British intelligence agent, Alastair Crooke –  are suggesting that Syria as a political entity no longer exists, that it has already been partitioned de facto into three entities as the cartoon here suggests. As the dust from the Hayat Tahir al Sham (HTS) military offensive settles a new balance of power both in former Syria and the entire Middle East region is coming into play.

Interviews by Judge Andrew Napolitano, GrayZone commentator Max Blumenthal noted:

(With the collapse of Syria) we’ve witnessed culmination of decades of assault on Syria because it was a bulwark of Arab independence an stood practically alone as the last independent Arab state following a dirty war that lasted for 8 years of insurgency and then 3 years of ruthless economic warfare on the Syrian state.

And now a new leadership headed by a rebranded al Qaeda operative who used to brag about beheading people, but now donning sports coat, shirt and tie – along with his team of stragglers – walked into Damascus unopposed and ceased power. Yet it is an illusion that HTS has seized power as it is little more than a tool a proxy for more powerful global players – the USA, Turkey and Israel – whose coordinated efforts essentially strangled the Assad government to death.  Washington spent billions upon billions of dollars to achieve its goal, much longer than it took to pulverize both Iraq and Libya.

The U.S. has been “leading from behind” – another way to say it’s been working through proxies so as to deny its own responsibility for overthrowing the Syrian government. The Biden Administration – and a number of those prior – viewed Syria as nothing less than the strategic pivot on which the management of the whole Middle East depended.

Let us be clear, it was not HTS that brought down Hafez al Assad but the Washington orchestrated dirty war, Israeli incessant bumbling, plus sanctions. Faced with the pressures of 8 years of a U.S. sponsored dirty war and another 3 to 4 of some of the most repressive sanctions Washington has ever crafted, from 2011 to 2023 the Syrian economy imploded by 83%. by the end of this year (2024) there was virtually no economy left, the state institutions has crumbled as had much of the military. There are now reports that corruption of the military leadership was rampant (being bribed by Turkish, Qatari or Saudi money) With Washington having stolen Syrian wheat and oil – and given it to “its Kurds”, with the Aleppo industrial area dismantled by and removed to Turkey combined with Israeli incessant bombing, there was just no way with that sort of economic situation for Assad to be able to survive. He had nothing left to work with.

In the region the positions of Turkey and Israel has strengthened, stimulating in both cases their expansionist nature and wetting their appetite to swallow yet more land, a tendency which down the road could easily lead to enhanced Turkish-Israeli tensions as they wrestle for which country will dominate the defeated nation. Washington’s position has strengthened. At present, the situation being so fluid, it is difficult to predict Syria’s future at all. What stand out amidst the confusion of the past month are a few salient points that have emerged, among them:

• A power vacuum has been created with the collapse of the Assad government. That although rebranded al Qaeda, HTS  is in power in Damascus, that it controls little else in the country where foreign elements control large swatches of territory: Israel in the southwest, Turkey in the northwest – Idlib Province and the region around Aleppo, the U.S. and its Kurdish allies in the northeast in the wheat and oil producing region of Syria east of the Tigris River. With different goals and interests in Syria the three, U.S., Turkey and Israel could easily clash and probably will down the road. Israel and Turkey risk Syria becoming a Vietnam type quagmire in the not too distant future.
• That none of the regional powers involved were in the least surprised with the collapse of the Syrian government. Washington admits that it had been preparing HTS and its scurrilous allies for this offensive for more than a year. 
• While the world at large was surprised by the thoroughness of the Assad government collapse, that key global players were not only “in the know” but actually coordinated events so that it could be more of a “controlled demolition” than a more violent process. The collapse of the Assad government was a relatively peaceful affair, compared to the blood bath it could have been. The Syrian Army, exhausted and poorly equipped and funded was ordered not to fight. In the main it did not offer much resistance. There appears to have been considerable coordination of this surrender between Turkey, Russia and Iran – along with SOME cooperation from the United States and NATO, this largely a result of the knowledge that given the impact of the dirty war and what were referred to as the punishing Caesar sanctions, the government was on the verge of collapse, its gdp having shrunk by 83% since 12011 (when the dirty war started).

2.

No doubt the Syrian collapse is a serious blow to the Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank, to Hezbollah whose supply lines with Iran through Iraq and Syria have been cut and to the Axis of Resistance itself. The Israelis are crowing – as is the Biden Administration – that the Axis of Resistance has suffered an irreparable strategic defeat; more like the set back is more tactical that strategic.

Time will tell.

• Israel is biting off chunks of Syria in the southwest, including consolidating its hold over Mt Hermon which overlooks Damascus, now 95% of the Golan Heights. Israel’s military incursion is taking on the aspect of a full scale invasion.  Al-Mayadeen  stated that the Israeli army has seized 440 square kilometers of Syrian territory. Reports further indicated that, within the past week alone, the Israeli military carried out 450 air strikes targeting 50 military sites in Syria. Additionally, as the Middle East Monitor points out, Israel forces had taken control of the Yarmouk riverbed and the Al-Wahda Dam, which supplies water to Jordan for drinking and agriculture, and hydroelectric electricity to Syria. Taking control of the dam gives Israel control over one of the main water sources in Syria.
• In the Syrian collapse, Turkey has been Washington’s “ace in the whole” all along. It  has de facto absorbed Idlib Province in the northwest with Turkish troops moving into Aleppo and carting off whole factories in what was Syria’s industrial heartland. It has never forgotten how, as a result of the implementation of Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1917, the British and French allies had ripped both Mosul and Kirkuk, major oil producing regions, away from what was left of the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan’s Turkey is a classic example of a nation functioning with two maps of its borders – the map recognized by international treaties and law that determine Turkey’s borders on the one hand, and the neo-Ottoman map in the drawer as I call it that Erdogan  drools over in which Turkey’s current borders are expanded into Syria, Iraq and probably beyond.
• In the short run it appears that the different hyenas ripping Syria to shreds are trying to find a modus vivendi so that Syria does not descend into the chaos that resulted in the over throw of Khadaffi’s Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Some are criticizing Russia and Iran for letting Syria collapse. Such charges are nonsense in every way. Both are facing major strategic challenges to their own sovereignty. They helped the Assad government as much as they could. Both offered all kinds of aid but Assad, under pressure from the conservative Arab governments trying to woe him away from Syria’s Russian and Iraqi allies, could not accept their offer. No one that I am aware of mentioned the fact that Assad’s ability to maneuver politically was always limited if not restricted by the power behind the Syrian presidency – the country’s intelligence agency.

Caught between all these contending forces – Washington, Israel, Turkey, the Arab reactionary governments – and his inability to institute liberalization and reform blocked from the beginning to the end of his rule by his country’s all powerful intelligence agency,  Assad’s last contribution to his country was to attempt to insure that his government’s collapse, the power transition, be conducted relatively peacefully. That was his last contribution to his people, his nation, and no small one at that from where I’m sitting.

Hafez al Assad has been granted political asylum in Russia and has already picked up where he left off to serve his country so long ago after his father died. Apparently, a few weeks into his exile, he’s practicing ophthalmology again. I for one, wish him will.