Assad Gone at Last
Looters in the palace: Rebels toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime over the weekend. The former dictator has received asylum in Moscow.
In the past, Russia “had intervened in Syria’s 13-year civil war in an effort to keep [Assad] in power,” per the BBC. This time, neither Russia nor Iran really came to Assad’s aid, aside from that offer of refuge. Another Assad ally, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, was also distracted by its own recent conflicts.
The Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and a few other rebel factions are responsible for the Assad ouster. Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, also known as Ahmed al-Sharaa, is widely seen as the leader of the main rebel group, HTS, which has gone through several rebrands after being affiliated with Al Qaeda.
The fall of Assad happened over the course of the last few weeks.
“An armed rebel alliance charged across Syria over 11 days,” reports CNN, “sweeping through major cities and reigniting a conflict that had been largely static since a 2020 ceasefire agreement….Syrian and Russian jets had targeted rebels in Aleppo and Idlib but opposition forces seized a second major city of Hama and quickly advanced on Homs—the gateway to the capital Damascus.” After Homs fell, the rebels came into Damascus and declared Assad desposed. Prisoners were freed across the country, and the presidential palace was ransacked. Border checkpoints were emptied of guards.
Assad was a brutal tyrant, but it is not clear that HTS, and the factions they’re uniting, will be an improvement. The country has been plunged into greater chaos, and antagonists in the region are behaving opportunistically, as one might expect.
“Israeli ground forces advanced beyond the demilitarized zone on the Israel-Syria border over the weekend, marking Israel’s first overt entry into Syrian territory since the early 1970s, officials said,” reports The New York Times. Israeli authorities claim the incursion is temporary, “hoping to head off any threat that could emerge in the fallout of president Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow,” per Reuters, and that airstrikes in the area are aimed at stamping out remaining stores of weapons.
The Turkish military “fired on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria over the weekend,” reports The New York Times. It adds that this “illustrates how the interests of Turkey and the United States diverge over support for the Kurds, who have been instrumental partners for the U.S. in fighting Islamic State.”
Meanwhile in domestic politics: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) announced Friday that wants to be the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, a vacant position that would customarily be filled by someone more senior—in this case, 74-year-old Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, an eight-term incumbent from Virginia. If she gets the job, Ocasio-Cortez would become the youngest Democrat to lead a House committee; the mere act of seeking the job signals that she’s serious about rising, both within the House of Representatives and within her own party.
A third Democrat—California’s Ro Khann
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