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Bashar al-Assad didn’t lose power in a dramatic instant. No single battle tipped the scales. No shocking betrayal sealed his fate.
BYDR.ABDULLAH YUSUF
BYDR.ABDULLAH YUSUF
FEBRUARY 21, 2025
Bashar al-Assad didn’t lose power in a dramatic instant. No single battle tipped the scales. No shocking betrayal sealed his fate. No decisive political blunder sent his regime tumbling. His downfall played out in slow motion—a prolonged erosion of authority, the steady unravelling of a system that had been rotting from within for years. Some analyses fixate on the final moments: the territorial losses, the defections, the sudden military collapse. But those were only the symptoms. The real cause ran deeper. His fall wasn’t about one fatal miscalculation.
It was the accumulation of economic decay, shifting regional dynamics, and his own failure to recognise the limits of his power. He dismissed the cracks in his regime, and convinced himself that brute force could hold everything together. In the end, it couldn’t. Syria’s future now depends on understanding exactly why Bashar’s grip slipped. There’s no easy answer, no clear-cut story of hero and villain. Just a leader who overestimated his own strength, a country left in ruins, and a world trying to figure out what comes next.
House of Assad
When Bashar al-Assad assumed power in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, he inherited a position that had been carefully shaped by Hafez during his decades-long rule. Hafez didn’t merely govern Syria; he dominated it. His power came from a carefully balanced coalition: undercover agents, military elites, and sectarian minorities who saw their fate tied to his rule. He played them against each other, keeping them close but never too strong. His son, Bashar, was not that man. He inherited the system but never commanded it the way his father had.
His early attempts at modernising the economy did more damage than good. When state-run industries were privatised, it wasn’t the people who benefited—it was the regime’s inner circle, who looted what they could. Ordinary Syrians saw prices rise, wages stagnate, and opportunities vanish. The state grew weaker, but repression grew stronger. The secret police expanded their reach and fear became the government’s primary currency. It worked—until it didn’t. The Arab Spring in 2011 shattered the illusion that Bashar’s rule was permanent.
The protests that erupted weren’t just about democracy. They were about dignity, economic desperation, and a system that had long since stopped serving its people. His response—violence on a scale Syria had never seen—set the country on the path to destruction.
An Economy in Freefall
By the time Bashar fell, Syria had already collapsed in every way that mattered. The government still existed on paper, but the country had become ungovernable. Soldiers were earning wages that barely bought a meal. Officers, unable to feed their families, let their troops abandon their posts. In the most literal sense, the Syrian army stopped functioning—not because it lost battles, but because it was starving from the inside. The economy, once fragile but functional, had turned into a wasteland. Syria’s oil industry had once sustained the state, bringing in enough revenue to at least keep the system afloat. That was gone. Oil production, which was 406,000 barrels per day in 2008, had dropped to 24,000 by 2018 – a staggering decline of over 90%.
But the real blow wasn’t just the loss of production—it was the loss of control. The remaining oil no longer flowed to Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The wells, pipelines, and last remnants of Syria’s once-thriving energy sector had slipped from his grasp, claimed by the USA-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who controlled the northeast—and with it, the country’s last significant source of government revenue. Entire cities went dark. In winter, people froze in their homes. Schools, hospitals, water treatment plants—everything that made life liveable—collapsed.
The War Bashar Couldn’t Win
For years, Bashar al-Assad’s survival had depended on two things: Iran’s ground forces and Russia’s air power. Without them, he would have been forced to negotiate years ago. But by the time of his fall, both allies had retreated. In 2024, Israel’s relentless airstrikes on Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Syria significantly weakened Iran’s ability to support Bashar. Russia, distracted by its war in Ukraine, had deprioritised Syria. Its air force, once decisive in turning battles, was no longer available to prop up Bashar’s forces.
This left him exposed. Rebel groups, long battered and fragmented, saw an opportunity. Without Russian airstrikes holding them back, they advanced swiftly, reclaiming territory with little resistance. On December 8, 2024, rebel forces captured Damascus, ending Bashar’s rule and Syria’s brutal civil war, which claimed between 470,000 and 600,000 people.
A Shaky Truce and What Comes Next
By the time Bashar was gone, Syria was already a divided country – with a three separate zones of control, each backed by a different foreign power: As previously mentioned, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the USA, controlled north-eastern Syria and much of the country’s oil resources. The Syrian National Army (SNA), sponsored by Turkey, held the northwest. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate, reports surfaced of external backing, including Ukrainian operatives, though the scale and effect of this involvement remain uncertain. Regardless, the group’s actions in those final weeks forced a shift, dismantling the last barriers to Bashar al-Assad’s rule. In the aftermath, its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani moved from battlefield commander to a central figure in the unfolding transition.
Syria’s future now depends on whether its three rival factions—and their external backers—can reach a lasting agreement. Without one, both the country and its transitional government will remain unstable. Power will shift, not through negotiation but through violence. Territory will change hands. More lives will be lost. Foreign actors will not withdraw. Their influence runs deep, and their involvement will only grow, steering the conflict beyond Syrian control. This is not about optimism. It is about consequence. If these factions refuse to resolve their differences, nothing will change. Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was not a conclusion. It was a warning. Those who fail to break the cycle will remain trapped in it.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/02/...-examining-the-reasons-and-what-happens-next/
The toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria shattered the illusion that stability in the Middle East can be sustained through brute force. The Syrian regime was one of the most brutal in the world. Its atrocities, long known or suspected but hidden from view, have been laid bare: the prisoners routinely tortured and killed, the detainees exposed to sunlight for just ten minutes each year, the children born in jail cells who have never seen a bird or a tree. Yet its terrible repression could not guarantee the regime indefinite control. Iran and Russia, its biggest supporters, could not save it. Most important, the Syrian army, poorly fed and paid, did not have the will to defend it. When militants led by the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham reached Damascus last December, the capital fell without a fight.
The regime’s collapse should also dispel at last the persistent myth that the Arab Spring was a mirage. The first wave of uprisings, which lasted from 2010 to 2012 and saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest autocratic governance across the Arab world, ended, in most cases, with governments tightening their authority. Yet as I argued in 2018 in Foreign Affairs, as long as Arab governments do not properly address the challenges facing the region, popular resistance to their rule will not end. Protest and rebellion will continue.
Unless they embrace genuine reform, the region’s leaders will learn the hard way, as Assad did, that no measure of repression can secure their rule over increasingly dissatisfied publics.
But Syria’s new leaders must heed this lesson, too. If they replace Assad’s autocratic regime with one that is also exclusionary and repressive, they will be just as vulnerable to overthrow as he was. But if they are wise enough to pursue a more democratic course, Syria’s political transition could become a turning point for a region where popular demands for responsive governance have been ignored for far too long.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is hoping that, by introducing serious social and economic reforms, Saudi Arabia can resist pressure to reform its politics. So far, his gambit appears to be working; a young generation of Saudis, fed up with the country’s outdated social restrictions, appreciate new measures to lift the ban on women driving, curb the power of the religious police, and allow men and women to mix in public.
But tackling the country’s economic problems, such as a youth unemployment rate above 16 percent, will not be so easy.
The challenges faced by the Gulf countries pale in comparison to those confronting the rest of the region.
Countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia remain unable to reduce their overdependence on foreign aid and remittances, which suppresses productive activity. Others, including Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen, have become failed states. Now that Hezbollah is weakened and the influence of its patron, Iran, has waned, Lebanon may be able to break its political impasse, but only if it can loosen the kleptocratic hold of members of the elite. The rest are stuck in seemingly inescapable cycles of dysfunction, corruption, civil strife, and economic decline.
To be continued
BYDR.ABDULLAH YUSUF
BYDR.ABDULLAH YUSUF
FEBRUARY 21, 2025
Bashar al-Assad didn’t lose power in a dramatic instant. No single battle tipped the scales. No shocking betrayal sealed his fate. No decisive political blunder sent his regime tumbling. His downfall played out in slow motion—a prolonged erosion of authority, the steady unravelling of a system that had been rotting from within for years. Some analyses fixate on the final moments: the territorial losses, the defections, the sudden military collapse. But those were only the symptoms. The real cause ran deeper. His fall wasn’t about one fatal miscalculation.
It was the accumulation of economic decay, shifting regional dynamics, and his own failure to recognise the limits of his power. He dismissed the cracks in his regime, and convinced himself that brute force could hold everything together. In the end, it couldn’t. Syria’s future now depends on understanding exactly why Bashar’s grip slipped. There’s no easy answer, no clear-cut story of hero and villain. Just a leader who overestimated his own strength, a country left in ruins, and a world trying to figure out what comes next.
House of Assad
When Bashar al-Assad assumed power in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, he inherited a position that had been carefully shaped by Hafez during his decades-long rule. Hafez didn’t merely govern Syria; he dominated it. His power came from a carefully balanced coalition: undercover agents, military elites, and sectarian minorities who saw their fate tied to his rule. He played them against each other, keeping them close but never too strong. His son, Bashar, was not that man. He inherited the system but never commanded it the way his father had.
His early attempts at modernising the economy did more damage than good. When state-run industries were privatised, it wasn’t the people who benefited—it was the regime’s inner circle, who looted what they could. Ordinary Syrians saw prices rise, wages stagnate, and opportunities vanish. The state grew weaker, but repression grew stronger. The secret police expanded their reach and fear became the government’s primary currency. It worked—until it didn’t. The Arab Spring in 2011 shattered the illusion that Bashar’s rule was permanent.
The protests that erupted weren’t just about democracy. They were about dignity, economic desperation, and a system that had long since stopped serving its people. His response—violence on a scale Syria had never seen—set the country on the path to destruction.
An Economy in Freefall
By the time Bashar fell, Syria had already collapsed in every way that mattered. The government still existed on paper, but the country had become ungovernable. Soldiers were earning wages that barely bought a meal. Officers, unable to feed their families, let their troops abandon their posts. In the most literal sense, the Syrian army stopped functioning—not because it lost battles, but because it was starving from the inside. The economy, once fragile but functional, had turned into a wasteland. Syria’s oil industry had once sustained the state, bringing in enough revenue to at least keep the system afloat. That was gone. Oil production, which was 406,000 barrels per day in 2008, had dropped to 24,000 by 2018 – a staggering decline of over 90%.
But the real blow wasn’t just the loss of production—it was the loss of control. The remaining oil no longer flowed to Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The wells, pipelines, and last remnants of Syria’s once-thriving energy sector had slipped from his grasp, claimed by the USA-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who controlled the northeast—and with it, the country’s last significant source of government revenue. Entire cities went dark. In winter, people froze in their homes. Schools, hospitals, water treatment plants—everything that made life liveable—collapsed.
The War Bashar Couldn’t Win
For years, Bashar al-Assad’s survival had depended on two things: Iran’s ground forces and Russia’s air power. Without them, he would have been forced to negotiate years ago. But by the time of his fall, both allies had retreated. In 2024, Israel’s relentless airstrikes on Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Syria significantly weakened Iran’s ability to support Bashar. Russia, distracted by its war in Ukraine, had deprioritised Syria. Its air force, once decisive in turning battles, was no longer available to prop up Bashar’s forces.
This left him exposed. Rebel groups, long battered and fragmented, saw an opportunity. Without Russian airstrikes holding them back, they advanced swiftly, reclaiming territory with little resistance. On December 8, 2024, rebel forces captured Damascus, ending Bashar’s rule and Syria’s brutal civil war, which claimed between 470,000 and 600,000 people.
A Shaky Truce and What Comes Next
By the time Bashar was gone, Syria was already a divided country – with a three separate zones of control, each backed by a different foreign power: As previously mentioned, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the USA, controlled north-eastern Syria and much of the country’s oil resources. The Syrian National Army (SNA), sponsored by Turkey, held the northwest. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate, reports surfaced of external backing, including Ukrainian operatives, though the scale and effect of this involvement remain uncertain. Regardless, the group’s actions in those final weeks forced a shift, dismantling the last barriers to Bashar al-Assad’s rule. In the aftermath, its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani moved from battlefield commander to a central figure in the unfolding transition.
Syria’s future now depends on whether its three rival factions—and their external backers—can reach a lasting agreement. Without one, both the country and its transitional government will remain unstable. Power will shift, not through negotiation but through violence. Territory will change hands. More lives will be lost. Foreign actors will not withdraw. Their influence runs deep, and their involvement will only grow, steering the conflict beyond Syrian control. This is not about optimism. It is about consequence. If these factions refuse to resolve their differences, nothing will change. Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was not a conclusion. It was a warning. Those who fail to break the cycle will remain trapped in it.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/02/...-examining-the-reasons-and-what-happens-next/
In Assad’s Fall, an Echo of the Arab Spring
A Reminder—Including for Syria’s New Rulers—That Tyranny Ultimately Fails
Marwan Muasher
MARWAN MUASHER is Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was Foreign Minister of Jordan from 2002 to 2004 and Deputy Prime Minister from 2004 to 2005.The toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria shattered the illusion that stability in the Middle East can be sustained through brute force. The Syrian regime was one of the most brutal in the world. Its atrocities, long known or suspected but hidden from view, have been laid bare: the prisoners routinely tortured and killed, the detainees exposed to sunlight for just ten minutes each year, the children born in jail cells who have never seen a bird or a tree. Yet its terrible repression could not guarantee the regime indefinite control. Iran and Russia, its biggest supporters, could not save it. Most important, the Syrian army, poorly fed and paid, did not have the will to defend it. When militants led by the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham reached Damascus last December, the capital fell without a fight.
The regime’s collapse should also dispel at last the persistent myth that the Arab Spring was a mirage. The first wave of uprisings, which lasted from 2010 to 2012 and saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest autocratic governance across the Arab world, ended, in most cases, with governments tightening their authority. Yet as I argued in 2018 in Foreign Affairs, as long as Arab governments do not properly address the challenges facing the region, popular resistance to their rule will not end. Protest and rebellion will continue.
Unless they embrace genuine reform, the region’s leaders will learn the hard way, as Assad did, that no measure of repression can secure their rule over increasingly dissatisfied publics.
But Syria’s new leaders must heed this lesson, too. If they replace Assad’s autocratic regime with one that is also exclusionary and repressive, they will be just as vulnerable to overthrow as he was. But if they are wise enough to pursue a more democratic course, Syria’s political transition could become a turning point for a region where popular demands for responsive governance have been ignored for far too long.
STUCK IN DYSFUNCTION
Today, much of the Arab world is in disarray. Even countries in the Gulf, long considered a bastion of stability, are facing internal challenges. Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the United Arab Emirates for decades dished out generous aid to neighboring countries. But now, Saudi Arabia seems largely focused on shoring up its domestic economy, and its traditionally staunch support of the Palestinian cause might give way to an effort to normalize relations with Israel. Riyadh weathered the first wave of the Arab uprisings by pouring money on the problem, announcing a social welfare package of more than $130 billion that included pay raises for government employees, new jobs, and loan forgiveness initiatives.Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is hoping that, by introducing serious social and economic reforms, Saudi Arabia can resist pressure to reform its politics. So far, his gambit appears to be working; a young generation of Saudis, fed up with the country’s outdated social restrictions, appreciate new measures to lift the ban on women driving, curb the power of the religious police, and allow men and women to mix in public.
But tackling the country’s economic problems, such as a youth unemployment rate above 16 percent, will not be so easy.
The challenges faced by the Gulf countries pale in comparison to those confronting the rest of the region.
Countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia remain unable to reduce their overdependence on foreign aid and remittances, which suppresses productive activity. Others, including Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen, have become failed states. Now that Hezbollah is weakened and the influence of its patron, Iran, has waned, Lebanon may be able to break its political impasse, but only if it can loosen the kleptocratic hold of members of the elite. The rest are stuck in seemingly inescapable cycles of dysfunction, corruption, civil strife, and economic decline.
To be continued
