After a decade of labelling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as the butcher of Syria, Türkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has revived efforts to mend relations with Syria’s dictator. On the 28th of June 2024, after performing Friday prayers, Erdogan announced: “There is no reason to not re-establish ties with Syria. We have no intention to interfere in Syria’s internal affairs.”[1] The Syrian revolution continues to grind on slowly and inexorably like the uprising in the 1980s. It remains unfinished business and the al-Assad regime has survived, albeit as a vassal of the Russians and Iranians and the rebels exist precariously at the mercy of Türkiye and its thawing relations with al-Assad’s genocidal regime. From an auspicious start where al-Assad’s government was teetering on the edge, the revolution was all but extinguished by early 2020.
For aspiring revolutionaries, there are several important lessons to be learned from this evident failure which may steer any new attempt to remove the regime to a more successful outcome.
The single most important reason for the failure of the revolution was the lack of any ideological underpinning for the revolution. The lack of ideology aligned the revolution for failure and all other issues were predicated on this single issue. This is unlike successful revolutions in Europe, Russia, and China, where a consensus on what would come after the revolution was complete. The participants of the Syrian revolution were fragmented intellectually and politically. The spectrum of opinion varied from the Western-inspired liberals seeking a liberal democratic state to the jihadi Salafists fighting for an austere Islamic theocracy. Often there existed as much animosity between revolutionaries as that which existed between the revolutionaries and the al-Assad regime.[2] When faced with the proposition of either sticking together or hanging together bitter rivalry ensured rebels often chose to hang together. Without a clear road map, the revolution was rudderless and open to subversion from foreign entities which did not have the best interest of the Syrian people at heart.
Leadership
At the heart of every successful revolution lies a cadre of dedicated ideological revolutionaries who create and steer a political and sometimes military movement against an entrenched regime according to the ideological principles and values that they adopt. They will unify the opposition against an often-unyielding regime and effectively overthrow it.
With the absence of a clear ideology the emergence of unified and effective leadership became impossible. Leadership was ineffective, fractured and often contradictory. Leadership became local and personal. When the intransigence of the al-Assad regime led to armed struggle a multitude of local paramilitary groups were formed. Rather than sincere adherence and commitment to a revolutionary cause the lack of any ideology resulted in a narrow focus on their locality and their own survival, often transforming groups into criminal enterprises exhorting extortionate fees for travel and access to basic amenities.[3] With local truces and patronage al-Assad was able to secure Damascus and then the rest of the country.
In talks sponsored by the US and other powers there existed a plethora of different organisations claiming to represent the Syrian people who in fact represented nothing more than themselves and their entourage, allowing the US and al-Assad the opportunity to create the façade of international negotiations whilst buying al-Assad valuable time to reorganise his security forces and create the National Defence Forces (NDF) as a wholly sectarian alternative to the ineffective Syrian National Army (SNA).[4]
Knowing Your Real Allies
An ally is someone who desires one’s victory, not one whose very existence is threatened by the success of your revolution. Without ideological underpinnings, pragmatism often leads to political expediency when what is required is a commitment to one’s cause. Autocratic monarchical Arab regimes and their Western patrons for their own interests were loathed to see the successful overthrow of a fellow autocratic regime.[5] Their alliance with the Syrian opposition was not based on a desire to see the overthrow of al-Assad’s regime rather it was designed to exercise a degree of control and prevent the downfall of the al-Assad regime.
Foreign support came with ropes rather than strings attached. Rebels were prevented from a sustained campaign to take Damascus, rebels were prevented from attacking the Alawite heartland[6] and rebels were only given light and ineffective weapons. Despite horrific civilian casualties, air defence weapons were prevented from reaching rebels. The lack of a clear ideology and lack of political acumen clouded the minds of rebels and they failed to see that behind a façade of belligerence, the West and its client regime were tacitly working for the survival of the al-Assad regime rather than its downfall.
Rebels, in their desire to placate Western sensibilities, failed to understand the nature of the conflict. They downplayed the sectarian nature of the conflict when the essence of the regime was an Alawite-dominated security service. The very nature of the conflict was Alawite control not necessarily regime control. Disrupting Latakia and the Alawite heartland to deprive Assad of his most loyal acolytes should have been a priority. Taking the battle into Alawite territory would have forced an Alawite retreat from the rest of Syria. Instead, rebels chose to fight local battles whilst leaving Alawite areas in peace and security that maintained a deep reserve of manpower for Assad to draw upon.
Knowing Your Real Enemies
Formed in the US-Iraqi prison system, incubated in the US-initiated sectarian conflict, and propelled to prominence by the gift of a battalion’s worth of equipment surreptitiously left by the US-controlled Iraqi army, ISIS effectively saved al-Assad. ISIS exclusively attacked rebels whilst leaving al-Assad untouched. They deprived rebels of oil revenues by which they could buy a degree of independence and to add insult to injury they sold the oil to al-Assad, oiling his war machine. Most of all they allowed al-Assad and his Western and Eastern supporters to paint al-Assad as the lesser of two evils whose removal was highly undesirable.
The Syrian revolution and in fact the whole of the Arab spring is unfinished business. Rather than just the Arab world, the broader Muslim world is ripe for radical change. Prospective revolutionaries would be well served to learn the lessons from the failure of the Syrian revolution, its lack of ideology and the realisation that the West in general, the US and now Erdogan are not allies in this endeavour.
[3] Combatting Criminal Gangs in Northern Syria – Politics Today
[5] Ex-IDF chief: Israel prefers that Assad stay in power | The Times of Israel
[6] Latakia Is Assad’s Achilles Heel | The Washington Institute
