Jonathan Spyer, director of research at the Middle East Forum and editor of its Middle East Quarterly, spoke to a December 9 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
What we are witnessing is “an attempt to create an authoritarian Sunni Islamic mode of governance in Syria in which Abu Mohammed al Jolani emerges as the new authoritarian leader.”
The Syrian regime has fallen to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the insurgent group whose offensive took Bashar al-Assad by surprise. With the rebels in control, rapidly unfolding events on the ground are happening on three related axes, the first of which is the “emerging political axis” of HTS. “No stranger to governance,” HTS selected Mohammad al-Bashir as interim prime minister. Al-Bashir served as HTS’s prime minister when it ran the “tight, well-organized” Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) in Idlib province in Northwest Syria for the last half-decade under the “patronage of the Turkish armed forces.” Behind the SSG’s governing body of the Shura Council stood the armed organization of the HTS under its authoritarian leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. What we are witnessing is “an attempt to create an authoritarian Sunni Islamic mode of governance in Syria in which Abu Mohammed al Jolani emerges as the new authoritarian leader.” It bears remembering that less than a decade ago, HTS “was the official Syrian franchise of the al-Qaeda network.”
Despite the rapid collapse of the Assad regime, fighting continues. The second axis to emerge is from a different rebel group allied with HTS and also located inside Northwest Syria, calling itself the Syrian National Army (SNA). The Turks launched the SNA, a “much less unified, much less disciplined” group than HTS, eastward against the Kurdish Syrian Democratic forces. The key goal of Turkish president Erdoğan is the destruction of the Kurdish autonomy east of the Euphrates River. He considers the area to be under the control of a wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, an organization engaged in an insurgency against Turkey.
The Kurds fell back as the SNA took the town of Manbij and other municipalities west of the Euphrates, but as long as the SNA has not crossed the Euphrates into the Kurdish heartland, a catastrophe is being averted. However, should the SNA cross the Euphrates, the Kurds “could well be facing disaster.” It means that “the Kurdish authority is probably in a more beleaguered position now” than at any time since it faced the ISIS threat a decade ago.
The third axis of continued conflict concerns Israel. Given that Israel’s Golan Heights is adjacent to Syria, the IDF has entered the buffer zone “established by the disengagement of forces agreement after the 1973 Yom Kippur/October war.” It has captured the high ground of Syrian Mt. Hermon, along with a number of towns and villages, “with the understanding that what’s about to emerge in Syria may well not be friendly to Israel, and therefore, there is a need for a buffer zone, to keep whatever it’s going to be a long way away from the Israeli Golan Heights.”
The key goal of Turkish president Erdoğan is the destruction of the Kurdish autonomy east of the Euphrates River.
Israel is engaged in airstrikes against military targets in Syria that include the former regime’s fleet of MIG- 29 fighter aircraft, ammunition dumps, surface-to-air missile storage locations, and chemical weapons sites. Israel’s aim is to take advantage of the time between Syrian regimes “to substantially weaken Syria’s military capacity” and slow any potential threat it poses.
Although Israel’s actions show it is hedging its bets against what the emerging Syrian government will become, it “wishes to judiciously avoid commenting on internal Syrian matters.” Israel eschews “political judgment” beyond its official expressions of concern for the well-being of Kurdish and Druze minorities in Syria.
While the Syrian Kurds are in a precarious position in that Turkey, their “greatest enemy,” is backing the SSG and the SNA, the Druze are likely to “give their allegiance to a powerful central government” as long as the new government does not threaten their “freedom of worship and their ability to stay on their lands.” The Alawis are hoping the Russians, who seek “to maintain their naval base on the Mediterranean coast,” will make a deal to guarantee their security with the new government while they “bide their time.”
The strategic implications of what has occurred in Syria constitute a “massive, historic blow to the Iran-led regional axis.” Iran’s achievement in establishing “territorial contiguity” by “taking over three contiguous Arab countries, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon” was ended by the loss of Syria, “the middle link in the chain.” Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, is weakened due to the loss of its land supply lines from Iran and its decimation in recent months by Israeli air attacks.
“Now that the tool of the proxies is largely gone,” it is more likely the Iranian regime will turn its attention back to “ballistic missiles and the nuclear program.” Presently, the opportunity exists for Israel to take further action “against other elements of the Iranian regime and its governance” while the regime’s proxies “are currently bruised and wounded.” Going forward, the Iranians and Lebanese Hezbollah “and their axis” will try to “make all kinds of mischief” in Syria because the sectarian interests they represent may be targeted by Syria’s new Sunni Islamist regime.
The Sunni jihadi track record in the Arab world is a poor one when it comes to “maintaining the semblance of sanity.”
While Iran is at its weakest point in over a decade, the troubling rise of Sunni Islamism bodes ill for the region. A decade ago, Islamism surged with the emergence of Islamist governments in Egypt and Tunisia, along with the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Tunisia and Egypt’s Islamists lost power, and ISIS was defeated by a U.S.-led coalition. Unfortunately, the current vacuum has not been filled by forces aligned with the U.S., “but rather movements associated with Sunni political Islam” aligned with Turkey and Qatar.
Turkey and Qatar “are aware of the sensitivities” surrounding relations with the West, and Turkey is “trying very hard to make sure that HTS behaves itself.” The Sunni jihadi track record in the Arab world is a poor one when it comes to “maintaining the semblance of sanity.” It remains to be seen if Syria under Jolani maintains stability or if it “turns into a Sunni Islamist nightmare.” On the “political and strategic level,” a Sunni Islamist government will likely “be deeply hostile to Israel,” further exacerbating the “deterioration in the relations between Israel and Turkey.”
Strategically, the recent events unfolding in Syria “constitute the abrupt return of Sunni political Islam into the front and center of regional political and strategic considerations.” The “remarkable speed” with which the Assad regime collapsed has shifted the positions of all the regional players, ushering in a “whole new era.”
