Front Burner - The end of the Assad regime in Syria

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

 On Sunday, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, where he’s been granted political asylum. This comes after rebels seized Damascus, Syria’s capital city, on that same day.Assad’s fall from power marks the end of 50 years of brutal rule by his family. His father, Hafez al-Assad, a longtime military officer, was known for his iron fist.Joshua Landis is the head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and a leading expert on Syria.He explains the significance of Bashar al-Assad’s fall, and looks back on the Assad family’s half a century in power.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. On Friday, protesters in the Syrian town of Hama tore down a statue of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad's father. Then on Saturday, a similar scene in Syria's capital, Damascus.

People smashed a sculpture of Hafez into pieces and carried it through the streets, celebrating after rebel groups took hold of the city. By Sunday, Bashar al-Assad's entire regime and family dynasty would crumble too. As Syrians ransacked his residence, he fled to Russia, where he has been granted political asylum. Thank you, thank you, she says. The tyrant has fallen. The tyrant has fallen. Many of her family died under President Assad's rule, some in prison. My cousin, my son, my family, all. My family. All. All.

For 13 years, Bashar al-Assad has struggled to keep control of a fragmented Syria broken up by a brutal civil war that has killed almost half a million people and displaced around 23 million more. Joshua Landis is with me today to look back at the Assad regime's half century in power. He's the head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a leading expert on Syria. Joshua, hi. Thank you so much for making the time today. It's a pleasure being with you, Jamie. It's a pleasure to have you. I mentioned the statues toppling in the introduction. They were of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for almost 30 years prior to his son. And could you just tell me more about him? Take me back to 1970 and how he came to power.

Hafez al-Assad, an army officer in the Air Force, had become Minister of Defense. The Ba'ath Party, a secular party that was dominated by serious minorities, and in particular the Alawite minority, came to power in 1963. But then there was a further coup in 66 in which Saleh Jadid became the dominant person within the military. He was an Alawite. And Assad was his secretary of defense. That was during the time of the 1967 war in which the Golan was lost. And that was lost under Hafiz al-Assad's period as a minister of defense.

And then in 1970, Assad decided to take power for himself, and he shoved aside Jadid, who went into jail for a long time, and became the dictator of Syria for the next 30 years until 2000 on his death when his son took power after him. Yeah. And can you just tell me a little bit more about how he ruled? What kind of a political leader was Hafez? Well, Syria had undergone a period of real instability from the 1950s right through the 1960s. And in order to put a stop to that constant coups and revolving governments, Assad really set about to coup-proof his government. And in order to do that, even though the Ba'ath Party was supposed to be Arab

nationalists and it was supposed to suppress tribal, religious, sectarian identities, he used those traditional loyalties in order to bring himself into power and to stay there. And to do that, he elevated his own family members and most importantly, his brother, Rifat al-Assad, who became the head of a palace guard called Siraya al-Difah. And that was the instrument for helping him to stay in power. But he also set up a circle of intelligence agencies, a bunch of them, almost all of them led by Alawite officers who were loyal to Assad. And they were from the same religious group, the Alawites, a heterodox Shiite offshoot of Islam. 12% of Syrians are Alawite. And so he used the religious loyalties and communal loyalties of fellow Alawites, as well as family members. So these traditional

loyalties really locked him into power and helped him prevent another coup against him. and helped him prevent another coup against him. And that held the Assad's in power for 54 years because his son Bashar really copied that same model and did not change it very much. I want to get into that more with you in just a few minutes. But for Hafez, who were his political rivals? He had rivals on the left and the right. There were communists,

there were various socialists in the Jadid government, and he threw many of them into jail for long periods of time. He was respected in Moscow and Washington and feared at home. In 30 bloody years since seizing power, had jailed and killed tens of thousands, anyone who threatened his rule. But his biggest and most determined opponents was the Muslim Brotherhood. And 70% of Syrians are Sunni Arab Muslims.

And so for this minoritarian regime, a regime made up and supported largely by serious minorities, and we have to remember there were over 10% Christians at the time, Druze, 3%, Ismailis, and other smaller religious groups who largely supported the Assad regime because they were fearful of Islamist Muslims coming to power and pushing them to the margins of society. And that meant ruling over the majority of Syrian Sunni Muslims. And the Muslim Brotherhood spearheaded an attack on the regime. And that came to a head in 1982 in a very brutal showdown

in the city of Hama, in which the Muslim Brotherhood took over the town and called from the minarets of the mosques for a general uprising throughout the country. And about 50 Baathist officers were killed and the regime took a very brutal vengeance on the city and the Muslim Brotherhood, surrounding the entire city and bombarding the center of the city, killing perhaps 10,000, maybe more than that. Some people used 20. A lot of people were killed in this very brutal crackdown that was led by his brother, Rifat al-Assad. I was a student in Syria at the University of Damascus on a Fulbright scholarship during 1981-82, when the uprising in Hama took place. And I was able to drive

through Hama only a few weeks later with a French friend, and they led us into the city. We were surprised that we could just drive around Hama and see the ruins of the city. In many ways, we were welcome to see it because the Assad regime was allowing Syrians and the outside world to film this and to show this is what happens if you rise up against the regime. You will get destroyed. So it sent a very brutal message to all Syrians, and it cowed the Muslim Brotherhood for 30 years. The lesson Syrians remember took place in Hama, a city north of Damascus. Half the city was destroyed by government troops. Thousands died behind these walls.

But today, all opposition there is quiet, and President Assad's poster once again hangs in the city. of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you.

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And just tell me more about that and tell me how it came to be that Bashar al-Assad actually became the leader of Syria. He was an unlikely candidate. He had chosen to become an eye doctor. He was studying in London. His brother, Basr al-Assad, was the main, was the candidate for succession. He had grown up in the military. He was trained to be a military guy and he was tough, but he had a terrible car accident in 1994, killed himself on the way to the airport, driving a hundred miles an hour, very recklessly. And the brother was called back from London to become the heir, and then to ultimately, when his father died in 2000, to assume the throne, if you will, of Syria. And so he went through a very rapid education. He was

sent to Lebanon to be the pro-consul, in a sense, to try to learn how to rule over a very fragmented society. This was after the Lebanese Civil War. And so he got a very quick education. He was very different from his brother. He was shy, mild-mannered, not pretentious or showy. When he first came to power, he drove around in a fairly modest car. He would go out to restaurants in Damascus and try to be one of the people, this sort of look, which really surprised many Syrians. And for many Syrians, it was a relief because they thought he would be a kinder and gentler ruler. He and his wife, a glamorous former investment banker,

give every impression of modernity in a Syria that in many ways has stood still. And I think he tried to be that in the first year or so. At first, the new president agreed to modest reforms and released hundreds of political prisoners. But that brief moment of optimism, dubbed the Damascus Spring, ended abruptly. Very quickly, he ran into realities of Syria and to the realities of trying to maintain this Ba'athist rule, which required a lot of force. And then, Emma, is it fair for me to say that there was this real turning point around 2011 when protests erupted over his rule? This was during the Arab

Spring. We saw anti-government protests erupt across the Middle East. I was in Egypt at the time, actually, covering the uprising there. And what were Syrians calling for specifically? And how did this affect Assad's regime? Well, you know, Assad had carried out a rapid—well, it wasn't rapid enough, obviously, but it was a transformation of Syrian society. He allowed in the internet, which was banned under Hafez al-Assad. He allowed for satellite TVs, which was banned under Hafez al-Assad. He opened the country up to all kinds of imports that were banned. Syria had been a rather hard-bitten socialist country and he tried to let a lot of light in. But letting light in, of course,

was going to undermine this rather dictatorial regime because Syrians began to see how other people lived. They talked with their relatives outside of the country. They saw what was going on in international news. And this led in the Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia, but really just rolled like dominoes right across the Middle East. And it hit Syria in March 2011. And people began to demonstrate. The crowds were enormous, gathering all across Syria for the first time since a nearly 50-year-old state of emergency was lifted by Syria's President Bashar Assad. Protesters demanded the end of the regime, bracing to see the reaction of heavily armed government security forces. The answer came quickly and violently. And instead of trying to find some compromise,

which maybe would have been impossible because people were fed up with Alawite domination in an Assad regime. He used lots of repression and the repression grew harder and harder and it began shooting into big crowds of people. What do you think is the biggest misconception that my country has of what's happening here, if indeed there is a misconception? We don't kill our people. Nobody kills, no government in the world kills its people unless it's led by a crazy person. And this caused the opposition very quickly to arm up and begin to form militias, and it turned into a full-blown civil war with many countries jumping in to help both sides. And just if you could lay out for me that geopolitical chessboard. It took a very heavily religious overtone with Shiite powers helping Assad and Sunnis lining up against him.

So Assad, for his support, got major support from Iran, Shiite-dominated country. Iraq, which had just become a Shiite country because America had invaded and cast the Sunnis out of power. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni and elevated the Shiites from the bottom of society to the top. And Lebanon. Lebanon is dominated by Hezbollah, a Shiite militia. One third of Lebanon is Shiite and they became the paramount force in Lebanon. So this was called a Shiite crescent, ruling over this big band of four countries, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and very much to the displeasure of the Sunni countries, the Gulf states, and Turkey, who all jumped in on the side of the rebels and supported by the United States, which took a very

important role in this, as well as Europe, all of whom wanted to see Assad out. We both agree that Assad needs to go. He needs to transfer power to a transitional body. That is the only way that we're going to resolve this crisis. And we're going to keep working for a serious... Israel, of course, wanted to see Assad out because this Shiite crescent was the access of resistance to Israel. And so those were the alignment of forces, and it had a deep religious overtone of Sunni countries against the Shiite countries. And then we know, and like his father, Assad cracks down brutally, right, during this 13-year civil war. Widespread use of torture, extrajudicial killings. His government was accused several times of using chemical weapons on his own people. The former eye surgeon became blind to the suffering of his own people,

inflicted by him and his henchmen. In his prisons, torture, including of children, became the norm, and hundreds of thousands of civilians disappeared. The UN found what it called massive evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state. Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. U.S. President Obama at the time said that this crossed a so-called red line, but they largely did nothing about that. That's not true. I think he gets a bad rap. I think he gets a bad rap for that because he did strike a deal with the Russians to get Assad to put tons of chemical weapons on American ships where they were incinerated at sea. So he got rid of most of the chemical weapons. He did not enter into the

war and overthrow Assad. I have therefore asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path. Meanwhile, I've ordered our military to maintain their current posture, to keep the pressure on Assad, and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails. America got caught in a very difficult situation, and Obama gave the CIA really an impossible job, which was to get rid of Assad, but without destroying the Syrian army and the Syrian state. America did not want to repeat what it had done in Iraq and collapse the state and allow for a full-blown chaos to then begin. So the CIA had an impossible task because the 40 top generals in the Syrian army were all Alawites and very loyal to Assad. So trying to get them to carry out a coup against Assad was really an impossible, is mission impossible.

And the CIA never could do it. And what happened during those early years of the uprising is that the rebel forces became increasingly dominated by Islamists. And particularly al-Qaeda, which is where al-Jolani, who's now ruler of Syria, appears because he was sent to begin a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, which he did. But the militias in Syria became increasingly Islamist, became dominated by Islamist militias, al-Qaeda and ISIS. And so America got spooked by the Sunni rebels. And ultimately, as ISIS became more and more powerful, decided they didn't want Assad to fall. And the United States allowed, if you will, Russia to come in and save Assad. And Russia began to help Assad reconquer Syria with the help of Hezbollah and other Shiite militias that came from Iran and

Iraq. But then Turkey jumped in and didn't want Assad to retake everything and drive all these rebels into Turkey. So it grabbed about 10% of Syrian territory in the northwest of Syria, Idlib province, northern Aleppo province, in which these militias were backed into by the Assad regime. And in Idlib province, Al-Jolani, who had been running Al-Qaeda, set up shop, renamed his militias. The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham became prominent in 2016 when he announced the rebranding

of his armed group Jabhat al-Nusra and its split from Al-Qaeda. His goal? To create what he said was an anti-regime front in Syria. And he began to really remake this rebel army into one that was loyal to him and that worked closely with Turkey and began to look to the international community to shed its jihadi nature and to try to become a more established power that the international community would not regard as a terrorist. And that he did very successfully in Idlib, and it's led to his conquest of Syria in the last 11 days.

The revolutionaries began entering the city of Hama to sanitize up the wound that has been left in Syria for 40 years. I ask God Almighty that it be a conquest in which there is no revenge. take out this regime that has been in power for 50 years. I think maybe not to someone like you, but to a lot of people watching, it was quite surprising. That was surprising to me too. You know, everybody I think was taken really aghast at how quickly this could happen and how quickly the Syrian army melted away. The fact that the Syrian army just abandoned its positions. And I think there are many reasons for that, that there was no more fight left in the army. Bashar al-Assad had no more money. The country was bankrupt.

I can tell you an anecdote that was told to me by a friend from Aleppo who said that the soldiers in Aleppo, the officers in Aleppo from the Syrian army, an officer was being paid about $30 a month and an enlisted man was getting $10 a month. And so what officers did, because they couldn't feed their families or support themselves on $30 a month, they would let many of their soldiers go home and they would keep the soldier's salary for themselves to feed their families. And this meant that very few of the soldiers were left on the front lines. So that was the biggest reason, I think, that you saw this incredible collapse.

When the conflict became a frozen conflict in 2020, and the Civil War largely petered out, 2020 and the civil war largely petered out, Syrians were all waiting for some kind of a dividend, a peace dividend. They wanted electricity back. They wanted schools, roads. They wanted to have jobs and be able to rebuild their lives. And none of that happened. In fact, the Syrian economy continued to shrink. Poverty levels just went through the roof. 90% of Syrians, the UN estimates, are living below the poverty line. So nobody wanted to die for this regime, which could offer no promise of a better future for anybody. And it drained out. Now, there were other reasons that the regime collapsed so quickly, and that has to do with the geopolitics of the region. Right.

Hezbollah is weakened and Russia can't come to its aid. It's in Ukraine. Yeah. Exactly. Russia was completely preoccupied in Ukraine, had lost 160 jets. It couldn't resupply Syria. And Hezbollah, the main backer who had sent soldiers, professionally trained soldiers,

into Syria to reconquer Aleppo and others, had just been decimated by Israel. And Iran had had its ears pinned back by Israel as well. And so there was no, nobody was coming to help Assad. And the whole house of cards just came crumbling down. And the army fled in front of these rebels who just marched to Damascus. You know, I've heard many experts opine in the last couple of days that, of course, of course, this is good for the Syrian people that this brutal, terrible dictatorship has been toppled. But the alternative, this group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham HTS, what will they be like? You know, what might happen now?

What will they be like? You know, what might happen now? I think it's important, you know, first of all, to recognize that he has adapted to new realities in a way that Bashar al-Assad never did. Al-Jolani has. He seems to be quite smart and adept and reassuring minorities. And this, you know, the next, the last two days have been days of real celebration for Syrians. And I think we have to take a moment out to sort of recognize that this is a very happy moment for not only the six, seven million Syrians in exile, but for many Syrians who've lived many dark years of the last 14 dark years. But you're right. There are many anxieties for the future. This is going to be an Islamist regime. Some form of Sharia law will be probably

enacted. Most of the militias that joined in this uprising wanted more Sharia law and to move away from these religious minorities who had imposed a lot of secular law on Syria. So that has some people anxious. On the other hand, the vast majority of Syrians are Sydney Muslims and are religious. So it may be welcomed by a big hunk of the population. Clearly, the more cosmopolitan and secular elites are going to chafe under this kind of rule. What role women will have? Big question mark. None of the ministers are women in this new government. But we're going to have to see. Those are big question marks that are in the future. We're going to have to see. Those are big question marks that are in the future.

Okay. And just one final question for you, Joshua, is if we could come back to Assad. He's now in Russia. He has been given political asylum. And what will become of him now? He's going to clearly be preoccupied and just trying to save his life because the international community is going to demand that he be turned over. Tried for war crimes. Justice. Absolutely. Russia has accepted Bashar al-Assad and will have to now protect him, I presume. All right. Joshua, this was great. Thank you so much for your time. I'm really, really appreciative. Well, it's a pleasure being with you. Thank you so much for your time. I'm really, really appreciative.

Well, it's a pleasure being with you. Thank you for having me on. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.