Syria’s House of Cards
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I'm Andrew Schwartz, and you're listening to The Truth of the Matter, a podcast by CSIS where we break down the top policy issues of the day and talk with the people that can help us best understand what's really going on.

To get to the truth of the matter about some of the internal politics in Syria and some of the groups that led to this latest overthrow of the Assad regime, we have with us my colleague Natasha Hall, who's at CSIS in our Middle East program as a senior fellow. Natasha is a real expert on Syria. If you've read the news or watched TV this week, you've seen her. Natasha, welcome to the podcast. Thanks.

Thanks so much for having me, Andrew. So I want to ask you off the start, like, how did this actually happen? It happened really fast. I think we all assume that Assad was firmly in power, that this was a frozen conflict, but there had to be some rot within the Assad regime. How did this all come about?

Yeah, I mean, it turns out that the Syrian regime was a house of cards that was being primarily propped up by outside actors, namely Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, and other sort of Iranian-backed militias. And if you took those away, it all fell apart.

Of course, there's other aspects of this as well. It was a not-so-frozen conflict, I would say. There were still people sort of in limbo indefinitely in Syria's northwest enclave, which was not government-controlled and where this group Hayat al-Hirsham was governing amongst other sort of militia groups. You still had over a million people living in camps in this area, and two-thirds of the population were forcibly displaced from other parts of

of the country. So you had these people that were still waiting to return home. And then on top of that, you had these sort of fruitless negotiations between Ankara and Damascus to sort of reconcile with President Erdogan in Turkey. They had been at odds throughout the Syrian civil war. And actually, the Kremlin was pushing for these negotiations and pushing for this reconciliation. And those negotiations, by reports, fell apart again early last month. And so I

I would have suspected that what happened is that Turkey kind of green-lighted this. It would have had to, just to sort of push the Assad regime in the right direction. And potentially Russia just thought maybe the rebels will take back a few villages or something and also push them in the right direction. I think it must have been a surprise to...

almost everybody that there was really no one left willing to fight for this regime. Did it surprise you that Assad fell so quickly? Oh, yeah. I think, I mean, if anyone tells you that they haven't been surprised, I think they're probably lying. I mean...

I mean, you've actually lived in Syria. Yeah, I've lived in Syria. I've been working on this for 15 years. I was living in Syria before the conflict started. And I could not have told you that this was going to happen in such a lightning fast speed. I mean, essentially, the rebels captured in less than two weeks what it took the Syrian regime to...

Russia, a nuclear power, Iran, a maybe nuclear power in the future, and dozens of militias. And all of Iran's proxies. Exactly. To do in, you know, years of bombardment and siege. So, I mean, this is really quite an astonishing victory for the rebels.

And certainly there's various losers and external winners here as well. But no, it was quite shocking. And there's a lot of reporting on how this happened. Most likely in Aleppo city, there were sort of sleeper cells that came to life to aid this. There's also reporting that HTS intervened in a sort of a highly secure meeting. And as a result, sort of threw confusion in the air for a lot of the pro-regime groups. And then they just melted away. And then

the momentum of that rebel offensive kicked off, you know, rebellions in other parts of the country, in the southern part of the country and in the east. So it's really a stunning and historic moment that Syrians have been waiting for, but frankly, I don't think ever thought would come. How sophisticated is HTS as a fighting force and a political force? We know that

that the Syrian prime minister, for instance, is staying, hasn't fled the country. He has said as recently as this morning, we're talking on December 9th in the afternoon, he wants to try to help with a smooth transition to power. What are some of the internal politics of this? And really, who is HTS? I mean, a lot of us are thinking this is Al Qaeda.

or ISIS or some combination of both. And we're trying to hope for the best. I think we're all still hoping for the best and that might keep going for the next few weeks and months. But HDS is led by Abu Muhammad Al-Jolani, who's originally from the Golan Heights, or his name, Al-Jolani. He actually fought in Iraq, was arrested by U.S. forces there. He was meant to start up al-Qaeda in Syria, but had some differences with al-Qaeda.

He is, by all means, you know, a son of Syria. And a lot of the various more radical factions of al-Qaeda and later ISIS just rubbed against his worldview, I think.

So he became Jabhat al-Nusra and then later renounced all sort of links to al-Qaeda. That later became HTS, this kind of rebel group in the northwest that absorbed some of the fighters from other parts of Syria. But at many times during the war, his group actually fought ISIS. And he's actually coordinated to a certain degree with outside powers to eliminate more extreme elements from the northwest.

including those with links to ISIS and other more extreme groups. Now, all of that said, he has ruled with an iron fist in northwest Syria. There were protests just a few months ago against him and his leadership because of people who had apparently died in HGS custody. But that said, it seems like they've learned from past mistakes going by not just words but actions.

When they moved into Aleppo city and other areas that are much more heterogeneous, you know, religiously, ethnically, they reassured minorities. They maintained government employment there. So sort of the opposite of what we saw with debathification in Iraq. And those sort of momentous mistakes accepted defections and amnesties for regime soldiers.

So, I mean, I think so far so good on that side. And I can tell you in speaking with people in these areas, some of them, even those who had been living in regime-controlled areas this whole time, had been brought in for counsel for whatever new local governance entities are created. Now, I'm not saying there's not challenges ahead in terms of power struggles, but right now we're seeing positive signs.

The big thing that the United States and the UK and others can do is to really use this moment of strength but also vulnerability on the part of HTS to extract major long-term concessions from them in terms of power sharing, but also how they treat minorities and others, external actors as well. I think the big mistake would be to sort of lift that designation without...

without doing any of that. - Natasha, you mentioned his name is Nomdegher, as Golani, Jolani, Golani, considering where he's from.

He has had a violent past, obviously. Are you concerned with how he's going to treat the Syrians and particularly treat women? Yeah, I mean, this was a huge concern, I think, for all Syrians, both within Syria and outside. You know, he has said that he's going to protect minorities. And under Islam, you do protect al-kitab or people of the book. So that's not a crazy statement to make.

From the likes of Al-Jolani, the big question for a lot of people was, will he protect lifestyle choices? For those of the listeners that had never been to Syria, Syria is a quite open place. Damascus, especially parts of Aleppo, quite liberal as far as a lot of the Middle Eastern countries go. I mean, Aleppo is an artist country.

city, wasn't it? I mean, everywhere across the board. I ran an NGO called Art in Exile, where I predominantly worked with Syrian and Syrian-Palestinian artists. So, I mean, this was really a hub of activity prior to the war. Recently, it seems like we've seen a statement from HTS actually ordering its members and fighters not to interfere in the looks or attire of women. Interesting. So that's interesting. I mean, they're still trying to make these

these positive steps, I think the next issue is how the international community sort of negotiates with that. And, you know, this brings me to another question. The international community, of course, led by the United States, the United States is in a period of transition. The Biden administration is on the way out. The Trump administration is on the way in. I think so far they've both expressed differences in how they think the United States should address this.

It's hard to assess an administration that doesn't exist yet, but it will shortly. What do you think the United States approach should be? Well, yeah, this is the big question, because amongst the nominees, you have everyone from Tulsi Gabbard as the DNI who met with Bashar al-Assad.

To Marco Rubio, who's quite a hawk on Iran and potentially, I think, would want to have more influence over what happens in Syria, I would say that the United States probably needs to do no harm in this scenario, first and foremost.

Foremost of mind for me would be continued U.S. support to the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces that are primarily sort of Kurdish-dominated in the Northeast because they guard ISIS prisons where there's still thousands of ISIS fighters.

So the ongoing clashes that we've seen between Turkish-backed militias and the SDF are really concerning because it could kind of destabilize a really fragile situation. So I think first and foremost, deal with the ongoing attacks going on in northern and northeast Syria to stabilize that situation. I also think that the U.S. presence along Abu Kamal

crossing between Syria and Iraq is really vitally important for security and to ensure that Iran cannot be a spoiler in all of this as well. And then I think in the long term, there really needs to be some kind of peace agreement between Kurds in Syria and Turkey, or there would just be continued cycles of violence

for the foreseeable future. I mean, most pertinently right now, I think there needs to be an increase in aid. I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be wanting to stream back into Syria and go to their homes. And many of them don't have homes to go to or have been completely gutted and looted by regime forces previously. And we're in the middle of winter as well. So, you know, all of that combined with the fact that the humanitarian appeal is only funded about 30% this year,

is really concerning. And so I think the international community and the Gulf states can come together to really assist with that. Now, again, you know, reconstruction and further investments could also be another carrot for whoever governs Syria in the future. But I think those are the sort of the most immediate steps that need to be taken in order to avoid any immediate crisis. Natasha, this is

Really great insight. Really appreciate it. We're trying to understand this in real time, and I think you've really put your finger on a lot of the issues we need to understand. So thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me.

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