In the early hours of 8th December, Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus, and the former opposition declared control of the capital, ending the Assad family’s brutal 50-year rule. Under Ahmad al-Shara’ (formerly known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is now taking the lead on tentative steps towards a transitional governance in Damascus. However, myriad challenges remain. Although there is a semblance of order in Damascus, government ministries are not fully functional. There are also questions about whether—and to what extent—HTS-led efforts intend to reintegrate former regime officials and demobilized army units into new military/political structures in former regime-held territories. Even so, and despite the dire warnings from some western officials about a repeat of events in Iraq after 2003 or Libya after 2012, Syrians have—so far—demonstrated a genuine sense of hope about rebuilding their country.
Further compounding Syria’s current insecurity, Israel has abandoned the 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria and, after occupying additional territory in Quneitra, its forces have advanced so far as Rural Damascus province, putting Israeli forces within 25km of the capital. At the same time, Israeli forces are maintaining an unprecedented wave of strikes across central and south Syria—including in central Damascus—aimed at denying former opposition groups access to regime weapons stocks.
While work begins to build a post-Assad government in Damascus, fighting is continuing further east between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army’s Fajr al-Hurriyeh (Dawn of Freedom) operations room and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF has lost control of Manbij, and there are concerns about further military developments in Raqqa province. Concurrent advances by Operation Deterring Aggression factions into western Deir Ezzor have prompted clashes with the SDF and warnings from the US-led International Coalition for advancing factions to avoid the Euphrates frontline.
Damascus
The main change in Damascus so far has been the appointment of Muhammad al-Bashir as interim prime minister. Al-Bashir previously headed HTS’ Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) in Idlib before the advent of Operation Deterring Aggression in late November. Al-Bashir’s appointment on 9th December came as a surprise after an initial agreement stated that the regime’s outgoing prime minister, Muhammad Ghazi al-Jalali, would oversee state institutions until a transition was completed.
Despite rumors that he had fled to Tartous, former Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad handed himself over to the former southern opposition’s Military Operations Command at the Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus. Questions remain about whether—and to what extent—de facto HTS-led authorities will try to reintegrate some former regime officials. There is already talk of reconciliation centers for processing former regime military members, while HTS leader al-Shara’ has signaled his intention to kickstart some form of accountability process for regime officials responsible for human rights abuses, vowing “just punishment” for perpetrators.
Quneitra
Israel’s air force has launched hundreds of airstrikes targeting Syrian army bases, former regime sites and even government offices in the days since Assad’s ouster. Although initial statements from Israeli officials suggested strikes were aimed at destroying strategic regime weapons stocks and facilities—including chemical weapons and advanced missiles—so that they did not fall into the hands of HTS or other groups potentially hostile to Israel, strikes have also targeted army bases hosting tanks, ships and conventional arms in an apparent bid to erode all Syrian military capabilities.
In response to events in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled that Israel no longer recognizes the 1974 demilitarization agreement related to the occupied Golan Heights and Quneitra. Israeli forces then occupied the border strip for the first time since the 1970s; Israeli media reports now suggest that Israeli forces have advanced to within 25km of western Damascus. In clear contravention of Syrian sovereignty and international law, these developments demonstrate that, with Assad gone, Israel intends to maintain a hands-on and destabilizing approach to the presence of Islamist factions on its claimed borders.
Aleppo & North-East Syria
The SDF has lost control of Manbij, a highly strategic city in eastern Aleppo province home to some half a million people, following two weeks of clashes with the Syrian National Army’s (SNA) Fajr al-Hurriyeh operations room. The day before the SDF ceded the city, SNA factions initiated a wave of arbitrary arrests purportedly targeting individuals they accused of collaborating with the SDF. However, videos posted online in recent days suggest at least some of these SNA arrests—including those targeting women and girls—were retributive, consistent with endemic SNA violations against Kurds and other ethnic/sectarian groups in the past.
Political & Humanitarian Developments
Almost immediately after the Assad regime’s collapse, many relatives of the estimated 100,000 disappeared and missing prisoners detained by the regime after 2011 began the search for their loved-ones. With the support of the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets), they instead uncovered a labyrinthine infrastructure of unimaginably squalid underground cells, execution facilities and a mass grave at Sednaya, Syria’s most notorious prison, which is located in Rural Damascus. Even for those who have reported on the regime’s systematic torture practices for decades, the horrifying images emerging from Sednaya and other detention facilities are shocking. As Syria takes its next steps, its people must find genuine and lasting justice and accountability for the countless lives lost at the hands of the Assad regime.
