In Syria, history is being made on the ground

You know the multiverse theory, that there are many parallel universes, and that they may contain alternate versions of ourselves and our conditions in this universe … Well, the last couple of days feel like we’ve jumped from one existence into a parallel universe, one in which a lot more is possible.

This universe is a flexible, more cheerful place, in which the Syrian revolution may even be resolved. (As it happens, we went the day before yesterday [30 November—ed.] on a trip to Edinburgh to see my son. He bought us tickets to the Museum of Illusions. We walked through an arrangement of swirling lights called The Vortex, and we lost our balance. Was that when it happened? When we got home we heard the news that Aleppo city had been liberated.)

The rebels advanced out of the narrow strip of Idlib in which they and millions of Syrians from around the country had been crammed for over four years. “The rebels” here means a military alliance under the umbrella of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—the greatly moderated and better organised reincarnation of Jabhat al-Nusra. It’s still an authoritarian Islamist militia, but it’s not at all “like ISIS”, as the uninformed are saying.

It broke definitively from the ISIS stream in 2014. It has a much more positive policy towards sectarian and ethnic minorities than ISIS. It allows far greater space for pluralism, disagreement and consultation than ISIS did (though it still arrests and detains some political opponents and tortures them). Unlike ISIS, it doesn’t field a Hisba Diwan (morality police) to interfere in people’s daily lives. Its focus is Syrian rather than transnational. It doesn’t threaten the West.

Its Fath al-Mubeen military alliance also incorporates lots of members of other less authoritarian groups that were displaced to Idlib and then gobbled up by HTS. HTS has not been popular among people in Idlib—they’ve been demonstrating against it for months—but its offensive is wildly popular because the people want to be rid of Assad and his foreign backers and to return to their homes.

I didn’t expect the offensive, at least not on this scale. Nobody did. At first, it looked to me like a controlled operation to restore the agreed Astana lines—that is, the division of north-west Syria agreed upon at Astana by Russia, Iran and Turkey. Russia had pushed Turkey to normalise and negotiate with Assad, and Turkey had tried hard to do so. Assad had refused to budge from his maximalist positions, the Russians don’t want to alienate Turkey (given their difficult position attacking Ukraine), and Turkey needs more Syrian territory to which to send Syrian refugees. So perhaps the Turks and Russians were scaring Assad into negotiating by taking a few towns in the Aleppo countryside.

But the offensive went much further than that, far beyond the Astana lines. News came, meanwhile, that the Turks had prevented the Syrian National Army—comprised of former Free Army militias now under Turkish control—from moving towards eastern Aleppo. This allowed the PKK-dominated SDF to take areas in Aleppo abandoned by collapsing Assad forces—surely the opposite of what Turkey wanted. Turkey was not, therefore, in control of events. Turkey clearly didn’t know what was going on.

What this offensive shows, therefore, is Syrians organising themselves, and Assad’s gangster regime crumbling as soon as Russian and Iranian imperialists are unable to protect it. When Assad subjugated free Aleppo in 2016, 80 percent of his ground troops were Iranian-organised transnational Shia militia and the air force was Russian. Now, the Iranian militia system is weak as a result of its targeting by Israel. In particular, Hizbullah was decapitated. (After 2011, Hizbullah turned itself from a resistance organisation into a counter-revolutionary tool, and was infiltrated and now destroyed by Israel as a result – but that’s another story.) The Russians are preoccupied with their invasion of Ukraine.

In these circumstances, the unsustainable nature of regime rule comes inevitably to the fore. Anybody who knew Syria knew that the regime was widely hated, that it had utterly destroyed the Syrian economy, and that it was held in place only by foreign powers. But nobody expected such a dramatic and sudden turnaround.

The rebels swept into Aleppo city. The regime and the Iranian militias, which had previously spent years battling for the city, fled without resistance. Military analysts say the rebels appear better organised and more disciplined than ever before. Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the HTS leader, issued directives to his men to respect the civilians of the city, including the large population of Christians and other minorities.

So far, I have heard one unconfirmed report of a woman being ordered by a rebel fighter to cover her hair, but nothing worse. Apparently, people in the city are nervous of how the rebels may behave, and of course of punitive Russian and Assadist bombing, which has already begun. (It is important to hold the rebel fighters to account, and to high standards. In the past, they have helped the revolution’s enemies with their violations of Syrian people’s rights.)

Key towns in Idlib province were quickly liberated—places that were once full of creative revolutionary activity, like Saraqeb, Khan Sheikhoun, Ma’aret al-Nowman, and Kafranbel. Next, the offensive moved into the Hama countryside, taking towns like Morek. Years’ worth of progress is happening in mere hours. As I write [1 December—ed.], the rebels are at the gates of Hama city.

This is by far the best news in many years. Assad, Iran and Russia are being smashed. Prisoners are being released (moving footage can be seen of prisoners, including many women, rushing out of the dungeons in Aleppo in which they were tortured and starved). Hundreds of thousands of people are returning to their homes.

Apparently, Rastan and Talbiseh, towns in Homs province, have been liberated by armed residents. In Deraa in the south, several towns have risen against Assad. (Next door, the Druze-dominated Sweida province is already largely autonomous, having roundly rejected Assad well over a year ago.) The Turkish-backed National Army, meanwhile, is this morning moving into territory held jointly by the PKK/SDF and the Assad regime in the Tel Rifaat area.

The fact that other parts of Syria are rising, and under different commands, is important because it means HTS influence will be diluted. If several parts of the country are liberated, HTS will have to build a united front with people with other perspectives and political backgrounds.

This doesn’t mean that the democratic revolution is about to seize power, or that Syria is about to enter paradise. The civil revolution that began in 2011 was largely crushed, its experiments in democracy eliminated, its most grassroots military forces co-opted or gobbled up by more powerful and authoritarian actors. There are no longer hundreds of independent, quasi-democratic local councils to organise civil life. The country is divided, traumatised, cursed by warlords and foreign occupiers.

But suddenly, it looks as if it may be possible not only to challenge but to end the rule of the monster, which means it may become possible for millions to go home, and therefore for civil society to begin to reconstitute itself. The future can’t start until Assad is gone.

Today, the most important events may occur around the city of Hama, where the regime may be able to mobilise fighters based in loyal communities to stage a fightback. If the dominoes continue to fall, I’d expect very fierce fighting in Homs and Damascus, where militarised Alawi communities have been planted in strategic locations precisely for this eventuality.

I also expect all fascist forces regionally and globally to do what they can to stop Syrian self-determination, including the genocidal Zionist state, which Assad father and son have served so well. Israel certainly wishes to crush Hizbullah and the Iranian militia system, but it doesn’t want to unseat the dictatorship which handed over the Golan and which imprisons teenage girls (like Tal al-Mallouhi) if they write poems about Palestine.

Already, there are Zionists making noises about the “danger of chemical weapons falling into the hands of jihadists”—people who didn’t worry about chemical weapons in the hands of Assad, who slaughtered thousands of innocents with them, or in the hands of the Iranian militias that are supposedly such a threat to them.

People who still choose to believe that the fascist Assad regime—which murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians, and recently withdrew further from its side of the Golan so that Israel could advance—is “anti-Zionist”, well, I really can’t help them. Freedom for the Syrians from fascism and foreign occupation is a noble aim in itself. So is freedom for the Arabs in general from the dictatorships which abuse them. This is actually a precondition for Palestinian liberation.

But today, it doesn’t matter so much what outsiders think. History is being made on the ground.

First published at Qunfuz.com. Robin Yassin-Kassab is the author of The Road From Damascus, and co-author, with Leila al-Shami, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War.