Syria: That took way too long

 On March 17, 2012, I wrote an article predicting the rapid downfall of Bashar al-Assad, the tyrant king of Syria.

Boy, was I wrong.

With help from Russia and Iran, two other autocratic states and international troublemakers, Assad brutally suppressed that rebellion. Unfortunately, he didn't stamp it out completely. Rebel groups remained active in regions of Syria, and the country has had to endure 12 years of back-and-forth violence between the government forces, backed by direct Russian and Iranian involvement, and the rebel forces, backed by direct American, Turkish, and other involvement.

And, of course, Israel was always there to stir the pot whenever it felt that its national security was threatened.

In addition, the Syrian government and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorist organization openly supported each other, with Hezbollah assisting the government forces at times.

ISIS also had a stake in the game, with a strong presence in Syria, but ISIS was playing for ISIS, not for Syria or for the rebels.

That all changed rapidly in the last week of November, this year.

On November 27th, rebel forces  led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former Al Qaeda affiliate, attacked the cities of Idlib and Aleppo in the north. After taking those two cities, they swept southward and took Homs, and finally Damascus on December 8th. (I think I got that day right.)

I MAY HAVE THE DETAILS OF THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH WRONG. I'LL HAVE TO CONFIRM THEM. THINGS HAVE BEEN HAPPENING FAST. Plus, I'm still grieving the loss of my son, and my mind is having trouble caring about what's happening in the rest of the world.

In the middle of the night, like at 2 a.m. on December 8th, just before the city fell, Assad loaded his family and much of his personal wealth (I'm talking about pallets loaded with cash and gold) onto a Russian transport plane and fled to Moscow.

The US assisted the rebels by suppressing an ISIS response. How did they do that? By bombing the crap out of ISIS camps, weapons caches, and other targets within Syria's borders. The US Air Force bombed literally thousands of ISIS sites in Syria.

Israel and Turkey took advantage of the Syrian government's helplessness to bolster their own national security. The Israeli navy destroyed the Syrian navy, tied up at docks in the port city of Latakia. The Israeli and Turkish air forces together destroyed 500 Syrian military targets over a two-day period, ensuring that Syria could no longer attack them or support attacks by other militant groups.

So here's the bottom line.

It didn't have to be this way. If Assad had responded differently to the May 2012 uprisings, he would still be in power, the country would be (relatively) at peace, and his people would enjoy the blessings of freedom, liberty, and prosperity.

But noooooooooo.

So he finally got what was coming to him. It's unfortunate that it took 12 years for it to happen.

Syria: and thus it begins

Update, 11 December 2024: The last sentence of this entry was "He has lost his country, and he has forfeited his life. It's only a matter of time, and he has only himself to blame." I didn't expect it to take twelve and a half years. See my update at "Syria: That took way too long."

Original article:

This week marked a major milestone in the nation of Syria. It has been exactly one year since the popular protests began, as part of the Arab Spring, and the government began its bloody crackdown. According to various news reports, Syrian military and paramilitary groups, acting under the direction of president Bashar Assad, have killed over 8,000 people since the protests began.

(Other reports say 9,000 and 10,000. Once you get into four figures, the accuracy of the numbers hardly matters anymore. By the way, is anyone keeping track of the names of the dead?)

The protests started as peaceful demonstrations in the streets. From the very beginning, they were met with clubs and bullets, with snipers and machine guns and torture and executions. Assad and his government thought that taking violent repressive (or was that supressive? opressive?) action at the beginning would silence the protests while they were still small, and frighten the people into obedience.

Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. Bashar Assad. You have been using 20th-century weapons against a people armed with smartphones, satellite communications, and so on. Your guns and bombs won't work anymore. All they will do is make a bloody mess out of innocent people, and bring about your own violent downfall.

As the world has watched in silent and not-so-silent anger and frustration, the government has continued its campaign of bloody repression. And Syrians rose up in anger. The protesters turned into armed rebels. Hundreds of members of the Syrian military refused the orders to fire on their countrymen, instead taking their weapons with them and crossing over to join the rebels. So far the government has had the upper hand, and it has continued to use that upper hand to crush the opposition

But all that changed yesterday.

At the beginning, the protesters were just calling for reform. They weren't interested in toppling the government, just changing some things they didn't like. After enough innocent people got killed, and bombed out of their homes, their calls changed from "reform" to "revolution." However, the rebels have always been outgunned and out-brutalized.

The rebels aren't the ones who laid seige to a town, bombarded it into rubble, then went in and tortured, raped, and killed the survivors. The rebels haven't chased anybody across the border, into refugee camps in neighboring states like Turkey. Nor have the rebels engaged in the use of land mines to kill innocent women and children trying to escape the terror. Again, the Assad government did all this, and just because the people had the gall to speak their minds.

Yesterday, the violence was laid at the government's doorstep.

Two suicide bombs, car bombs actually, exploded in the capital city of Damascus, only 30 minutes and a few miles apart. One struck the air force intelligence building, and one the criminal security building. According to reports, 27 civilians were killed in the twin blasts.

The government quickly blamed the rebels, calling them "terrorists" as it has in the past. The rebels responded with a quick "You're crazy," claiming that they don't have the resources it would take to assemble an attack as sophisticated as that, pointing out that killing civilians has never been part of their strategy, and suggesting that the government did it themselves and tried to blame the rebels.

(For what it's worth, I'm inclined to believe the rebels. They are armed, it's true, but only with handheld weapons and whatever the rebellious Syrian troops brought with them. Despite the rebels' pleas for outside assistance, they have gotten nothing from other nations. And besides, the rebels have literally, honestly, gone out of their way to protect civilians and foreigners from getting hurt.)

Somebody this week stole and published more than 3000 email messages exchanged by president Assad, his wife, and other top government officials. These messages reveal the depth of contempt that Assad has for  his people. He would just as soon kill all of them in order to shut them up, as swat an annoying fly. He laughed about his promised reforms, saying that he only announced them to shut the people up, and had no intention of following through with them. At first, the authenticity of these messages was (rightfully) doubted. But they have been verified by the (non-Syrian) senders and recipients of some of the messages.

The U.S. claims, based on its own intelligence-gathering networks, that the terrorist organization al-Qaida in Iraq is behind these attacks. They claim that al-Qaida have seized on the opportunity afforded by the government crackdown and the resulting confusion, to infiltrate Syria. I'm not as trusting of U.S. intelligence agencies as I used to be, but this claim has some merit. Al-Qaida don't care who they kill. And al-Qaida aren't opposed to killing their brother Muslims, in order to further their aims. And if al-Qaida can destabilize the Syrian government, then when the government falls they can rush in and exert control over Syria to whatever degree they want. To them, 27 civilians is a small price to pay. Pocket change, even.

And Israel is right next door to Syria.

So the battle has now reached the streets of Damascus, although it's unclear who's doing the fighting. In less than a year, the Assad government will fall. As in Iraq, his generals and bureaucrats will do their best to disappear into the landscape. As in Libya, his soldiers - the ones doing the killing and committing all the other atrocities - will shed their uniforms and try to blend into the surrounding crowd. It's not clear yet what will happen to Assad.

Will he seek asylum with one of his neighbors, as Idi Amin did?

Will he be arrested and tried by his own people, as Pervez Musharraf was? And executed, as Saddam Hussein was?

Will he be captured in the streets (fleeing the country, like a coward) and killed by an angry mob, as Muammar Gaddafi was?

It would have been so much different if Assad had seen the writing on the wall when the protests first began, if he had taken a lesson from what was happening in the other Arab states, paid attention to what the protesters were saying, and made some changes - for the better - in his nation. Had he done so, 8,000 innocent people would still be alive, there would be peace in the streets of Homs and Damascus, and Assad's days would not be numbered, as they now are.

He has lost his country, and he has forfeited his life. It's only a matter of time, and he has only himself to blame.