Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Syrian Revolution of 2024 has succeeded in deposing the al-Assad dynasty, in power since 1970, throwing off the rule of the once mighty Syrian Socialist Baath Party, a feared and murderous one-party state. Rebel forces streamed into the capital, Damascus, Sunday morning, facing no significant resistance from government troops, amid rumors that dictator Bashar al-Assad had departed the country for parts unknown a day or two ago.
The tip of the spear of the revolution was the fighters of the Levant Liberation Council (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS), a hard line fundamentalist organization that had run the province of Idlib in an authoritarian manner in recent years. It is not ISIL (ISIS, Daesh), though that is one path the victors could take if they were so inclined. So far, their behavior in Aleppo has presented a mixed picture, with some killing of Kurds but less turmoil, including for Christians, than some had feared.
The revolution has, however, now become a mass movement, and despite the Fundamentalist Vigilante (“Salafi Jihadi”) shape of the more effective militias, all sorts of people have joined in. Many of the expatriate supporters of the revolution are businessmen and liberals, who had hoped to come to power in 2011 before al-Assad deliberately provoked a civil war and drove the opposition into the arms of Turkey and the Gulf.
Syria is not well placed for a democratic transition, though stranger things have happened. It would be a shame if the people had to trade one form of authoritarianism for another, as happened in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Sudan. Overthrowing a dictator is very difficult, but it is no guarantee of liberty.
Al-Assad is the seventh long-ruling Arab dictator to fall since January, 2011. The strongmen of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen fell in 2011-2012. The Bahrain monarchy, however, managed to stay in power, as did Al-Assad in Syria, though the cost to the Syrian people was a years-long civil war that left hundreds of thousands dead and half the country homeless….
https://www.juancole.com/2024/12/syrians-pitfalls-democracy.html
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