THE SYRIAN MELTDOWN AND ITS STRATEGIC IMPACT

We have just witnessed the first order effects of the Syrian meltdown, with glee in the streets of Damascus, people rushing to the infamous Sednaya prison to locate many of their detained relatives and President Elect Donald Trump announcing a hands-off Syria policy. The second, third and subsequent order effects will start manifesting in just a few days. In fact, they already have. Israel looks upon this as the opportunity to destroy the menacing stocks of chemical weapons and many other munitions that were stored in the Syrian Army depots, all under Israeli cross hairs. 300 strikes were announced against such sites many of which Syrian troops may have probably already evacuated. A meltdown offers opportunities of a lifetime in which strategic situations change by a natural course of events, or they are made to change by deliberate actions that have awaited decisions for long. In the next few months, we are going to witness much of both. Lots of people have been wondering why Syria and its meltdown are so important to the world. An explanation of that is necessary if the effects of the recent events in the Levant are to be understood. In fact, this is actually the second meltdown, the first having occurred as a result of the civil war which commenced in 2011 creating 5 million displaced people who filtered into Europe, Jordan, and Lebanon and wherever they could move to, by various means.

The Levant

Without going into much detail, it’s first important to appreciate how strategically important is the territory of Syria in relation to the aspirations of various great powers and other organisations. Firstly, this is the territory linking Europe and West Asia and lies between two major water bodies – the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. The lands of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine form the prime understanding of the Levant. Iraq is not usually included in this, and the term usually refers to the territories on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, although Jordan does not rest on those shores either. Any power or organisation which has control and influence over the majority of these territories has major strategic advantage as this forms the hub of several routes, faiths and ideologies, and controls connectivity into Europe. An appropriate example is the attempt by Iran to gain strategic advantage by the network of a potential Shia crescent extending from East Lebanon to Yemen through the Gulf region with majority of the Levant under its control. This is something similar to the territory of Central Asia where the Great Game involving spheres of influence was played out to prevent or facilitate Russian expansion towards South Asia, Tibet and Persia in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century.

Syria – Background

Syria with its Alawite affinity with Shiaism and its isolation from the rest of the Arab world became a ready and willing strategic partner of Iran as the latter, after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, sought the cultivation of strategic influence to counter the Saudi-US (read pan Sunni) influence in the region. Progressively, as the Israel-Iran standoff expanded, Israel became a part of the Saudi-US linkage which later expanded to the UAE too. Two other points of strategic inflection are appropriate to recall. First is the initiation of the Syrian Civil War after the failed Arab Spring uprising of 2011 and the second is the period of 2014-18 when ISIS (Daesh), a radical, transnational Sunni terrorist group battled for strategic space in the Levant leading to a period of chaos when none knew who friend or foe was. Since the decline of ISIS, the civil war had also reduced in intensity. Iran’s influence remained intact due to its strategy of employing proxy war and influence through powerful elements such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Syrian Army and Hamas in Gaza.

The strategy followed in the Levant gave Iran the ability to hugely threaten Israel’s strategic security environment and open a full-fledged front on the Israeli northern border through Syria and Lebanon. The supply chain of weapons and equipment to Hezbollah was maintained through this. Strategic analysts of eminence discounted any possibility of a dilution of this influence till as late as Nov 2024. Things are now set to change drastically.

Current Situation, the Players and the Factors at Play

The situation is just too tenuous to predict anything as many factors are in play. A few more need to be examined. Hayat Tehreek e Shams (HTS) as the new master of Syria has thus far given no indicator of which way it will go. It is leaving everything in the grey zone and perhaps for good reason. It does not wish to get targeted so early until some form of consolidation is evident. Its leader Abu Mohammad al Julani has professed a Syria for all. However, a bottom-line ideology should be expected. HTS will remain a Sunni oriented hardliner group. It is uncertain if HTS was sponsored by an external power, or it acted on its own. This factor plays an important role in determining the way things will pan out. Al-Julani’s stance on Iran is complex. While HTS has been critical of Iranian influence in Syria and the region, they have also cooperated with Iranian-backed forces in certain contexts in the past. It had fought against ISIS which too had emerged from Al Qaeda in Iraq just as HTS has. Will Iran attempt to befriend it or fight it; uncertainty exists there too? Then there is Turkey. In recent years, HTS has taken steps to distance itself from Turkish influence and present itself as a more independent and nationalist force. However, the two continue to interact and cooperate in various ways. It’s not certain whether the sponsorship of the current HTS campaign came from Turkey or elsewhere. Saudi Arabia has kept a distance from the developments, unsure of which way things will go. It too will enter the fray in some form or the other. Thus, on the Sunni side of the divide a fresh dispensation may arise, but the indicators do not yet reveal something as hellish as ISIS emerging from the prevalent conditions.

The actors most affected by the turn of events are those linked to Iran. The Syrian Army will probably cease to exist with several desertions with equipment, vehicles and weapons. Israel’s concern about chemical weapons existing in the Syrian Army depots is real and does not affect Israel alone. The various Gulf States should be concerned because it is they who will come under threat from clandestinely transported and insecurely stored chemical weapons by potential terrorist groups within their boundaries. There can be no guarantee that the 300 strikes (and continuing) on the chemical weapon depots have resulted in full destruction.

There is talk of return of refugees from Europe and elsewhere in the Middle East where they had been displaced to. It’s never easy for displaced people to return and resume normal lives; it is almost utopian to imagine that. Syria needs to brace itself for a round of instability as people attempt to return to a different and unpredictable environment.

The Developing Environment

The HTS has yet to reveal its ideological moorings and confrontations of the ideological variety have been strangely missing through this phase of change. Iran’s IRGC is far too involved with running only proxies and may not have the capability to militarily confront HTS, if at all. Hezbollah, Iran’s go to force is badly emaciated with its leadership decapitated and ground capability eroded by Israel’s military campaign. If HTS is a Turkey sponsored entity, then the only force left to confront it are the Shia militias of Iraq which gave battle to and defeated ISIS in 2018-19 albeit with assistance of a number of friends and foes alike through a period of confused and varied alliances. Last week there was word of the advance of the Iraqi militia towards Syria, but it seems to have fizzled out without strong Iranian backing. What appears quite evident is the unwillingness of Iran to enter confrontation. Will its adversaries therefore sense opportunity?

The immediacy of effect in the form of turbulence and disorder after the downfall of the Bashar Assad government may appear to be one of relative calm with Donald Trump advocating hands off. He is absolutely right but it could remain wishful thinking. As the situation pans further, stakeholder powers could attempt to obtain strategic advantage while the situation is still apparently favorable.

A regime change in Iran is being assessed as a possibility due to the weakening of Iran’s comprehensive power. It seems to be left with few friends in the Middle East, but the Russia linkage is strong. The Russian Federation is also the chief supplier of arms and weaponry to Iran while Iran has supplied drones and other equipment to Russia for use in Ukraine. With China, Iran has a 25-year strategic deal signed in 2021 and under implementation from 2022. Its ability to withstand US sanctions have been largely due to the sales of equipment to Russia and energy at discounted prices to China. There are no indicators yet of any dissonance in Iran’s armed forces, including the IRGC. However, given the manner in which recent cases of regime change have happened around the world without any warning, anything could be expected from this part of the world too. In all probability the Iranian leadership will wish to quiet and stabilize the environment. The battles for Lebanon and Gaza are virtually lost. It may not wish to create any conditions which could draw the next US administration into taking any drastic measures to exploit the current situation.

In conclusion, at this stage the one worry we should all be concerned about is the potential, however remote, of the HTS and its associates morphing into anything so radical or extremist that it causes a return of the Middle East to the turbulent days of 2014-19 when ISIS ruled the roost. Preventing that is the key along while ensuring an end to Israel’s campaigns on its northern and southern borders, to return to a modicum of peace in this most turbulent of conflict zones in the world.