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The future of a country devastated by 14 years of civil war and 54 years of dictatorship now remains to be seen.
By YOAV SHUSTER DECEMBER 8, 2024 12:29 Updated: DECEMBER 8, 2024 12:32
A Syrian anti government fighter shoots against a large banner bearing a picture of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, hanging on the facade of a municipal building in the west-central city of Hama on December 5, 2024.
(photo credit: BAKR ALKASEM/AFP via Getty Images)
Just over 54 years ago, on November 13, 1970, Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria from the rival factions of the Ba'ath Party amid the chaos that ensued in the years following the Six-Day War.
Assad's coup represented the defeat of the leftist factions within the Ba'ath Party and the rise of more moderate elements.
However, few could have imagined at the time that the rise to power of a disgruntled army officer—just another in a long series of coups in Syria, a country infamous for its instability—would mark the beginning of a long family dynasty, the longest in modern Syrian history.
When Bashar al-Assad inherited power following the death of his father, Hafez, in June 2000, Syria entered an exclusive club. There are very few countries in the world where the presidency has been directly passed from father to son. Among them, only three countries have father-son pairs who have ruled uninterrupted for half a century or more: Togo, Gabon, and Syria.
In all these cases, the sons who inherited the presidency were "elected" and continued to be ostensibly re-elected through what appeared to be democratic processes.
The extraordinary longevity of the Assad regime also raises a question that has become even more relevant due to Syria's transformation since the outbreak of the civil war: what exactly has the Assad dynasty achieved in its fifty years in power?
When Bashar al-Assad assumed the presidency at the age of 34, his path was paved by a compliant parliament that quickly amended the constitution to lower the minimum age for the presidency, similar to the political "fatwa" (religious ruling) that had accepted the Alawites (the sect to which Assad belongs) into Islam back in the 1970s.
Bashar al-Assad inherited a country in a state of stagnation. Although his father was often praised for his strategic and diplomatic acumen, by the time of Hafez al-Assad's death in June 2000, his country had drifted into irrelevance in the global sphere.
Hafez al-Assad also failed in his lifelong aspiration to position Syria as a regional power and a key state influencing major issues in the region.
The theory of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that "You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt, and you can't make peace without Syria" was proven wrong with the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1979.
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That same year, Syria was added to the United States' newly established list of state sponsors of terrorism, a list on which Syria remains to this day (the only original member still on it).
During the 1980s, Hafez al-Assad attempted various diplomatic initiatives aimed at achieving a settlement between Israel and Syria, but none came to fruition.
A decade later, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 shifted the region's diplomatic center of gravity eastward to the Persian Gulf, pushing Syria even further to the margins of regional politics.
At the end of Hafez al-Assad's second term, just months before his death, former US president Bill Clinton became the last American president to invest diplomatic effort in attempting to mediate between Israel and Syria, but he too failed.
Hafez al-Assad's famed "strategic patience" may have exhausted his opponents, but it did nothing to advance Syria's interests, such as regaining control of the Golan Heights. Since then, this national aspiration has drifted away even further.
Bashar al-Assad's entry into the presidential office came during a bleak period in Syria's history.
The economic crisis that had paralyzed the country since the mid-1980s left Syria entering the 21st century with a collapsing economy, an inefficient bureaucracy, and a weak public sector, yet with an enduring sense of invincibility.
In the realm of security, Assad's presidency began at a low point. Hafez al-Assad had extended control over Lebanon and brutally suppressed a Muslim Brotherhood uprising, culminating in the massacre of civilians in the city of Hama in February 1982.
Hafez al-Assad was largely indifferent to economic matters, but his son could not afford such disinterest.
Like many dictators, Hafez viewed Syria’s public budget as a tool for the survival of his regime. He allocated resources and opportunities to cultivate networks of loyalists. These networks primarily favored regime insiders but extended far beyond them, encompassing significant segments of Damascus’s Sunni economic elite.
Hafez al-Assad's coup was built on a partial dismantling of the radical economic policies favored by his predecessor, Salah Jadid.
However, Hafez offered Syrians modest economic security in exchange for political silence, a form of coerced dependency that maintained a fragile social peace.
The modest economic reforms introduced during the final decade of his life proved insufficient to rescue Syria from its economic decline. Instead, these reforms opened new avenues for deepening corruption.
When Bashar al-Assad assumed the presidency in July 2000, the economic situation began to improve. GDP finally returned to the levels of the early 1980s, and GDP per capita doubled between 2000 and 2010. However, below the surface, the regime was steering Syria toward a breaking point.
The social and economic costs for Damascus continued to mount while the world's attention focused on the elimination of internal rivals, the open-door policy for jihadists, Bashar al-Assad's role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and Syria's subsequent humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon.
Despite Bashar's efforts to modernize authoritarianism in Syria, the economic growth felt only by the upper classes left the overwhelming majority of Syrians behind.
During Assad's first decade in power, poverty deepened, and unemployment rates soared, particularly among the youth.
In 2006, a severe drought affected Syria's agricultural regions, and its impacts were further exacerbated by mismanagement and corruption.
Over the following years, hundreds of thousands of farmers were forced to abandon their lands, becoming refugees who settled on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, and other provincial cities such as Daraa in southern Syria.
Regime insiders, led by members of the Assad family, became increasingly ruthless, directing their anger at the population. This alienated the Syrian business community, which had previously supported the regime.
Bashar believed that his loyalty to the Arab states and the "axis of resistance" was sufficient to shield his regime from the wave of protests sweeping the region starting in late 2010.
He was wrong. By March 2011, inspired by events in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, Syrians joined mass demonstrations demanding economic and social justice and an end to Assad's regime. The regime responded with force, triggering the start of a bloody civil war that lasted nearly 14 years.
Assad desperately clung to power, employing a range of brutal methods to crush his opponents. These included bombarding population centers and using chemical weapons against his own people.
Crossing the red line set by then-US president Barack Obama almost led Western countries to actively intervene in the Syrian war.
When it seemed that Bashar al-Assad's fate was heading in the same direction as other Arab leaders in the region, his two loyal allies—Russia and Iran—came to his rescue.
Russia's entry into the war shifted the dynamics, successfully halting both the practical and psychological momentum toward the regime's collapse. Assad was saved, but the war's devastation, foreign involvement, and the rise of jihadist groups like ISIS left Syria with a shattered economy, a fractured society, and a reality of daily violence that persisted for nearly a decade and a half.
In recent years, the war has taken on a different form, evolving into regional struggles between groups fighting for control over their respective areas. Four years ago, a ceasefire agreement was reached between the warring factions and Assad's regime, brokered by Russia and Turkey, creating the impression that the war was slowly winding down.
Just as in the late 1960s, when Hafez al-Assad and his allies exploited the chaos in Syria following the Six-Day War to seize power by force, the current lightning coup by rebel groups has also followed Israeli activity in the region.
Impact of Israel's activities in region
The rebels identified signs that the regime had been significantly weakened due to the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and launched an offensive.
The number of attacks carried out by Israel in Syria over the past year has nearly tripled compared to previous years. Iran's activities in Syria have been significantly impacted, as have the Islamic Republic's military infrastructure. Adding to this, Hezbollah, which in the past mobilized to save Assad, has been paralyzed.
It is likely that the rebels identified this as an opportune moment and decided to strike at the regime, though initially not with the explicit aim of toppling it.
The rebels' initial goal was to halt the ongoing airstrikes by Assad's army and the Russian air force in the Idlib region. Rebel factions effectively controlled this area, primarily the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, which managed the governing institutions in Idlib, home to three million residents and about one million refugees.
The future of a country devastated by 14 years of civil war and 54 years of dictatorship now remains to be seen.
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