What does the fall of Assad’s bloody regime mean? Interview with Syrian socialist

Syria’s bloody dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the capital Damascus on Sunday (Picture: Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

After decades of bloody and repressive dictatorship in Syria, the Assad regime has fallen. Bashar al-Assad, who ran the country since the death of his father in 2000, fled the capital Damascus on Sunday morning. 

Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), an armed Islamist group, launched a lightning offensive against the Assad regime ten days ago. After storming the northern city of Aleppo, HTS made progress south towards Damascus.

It reignited the long-running civil war, which saw Assad drown in blood a popular revolution in 2011 and rival imperial powers intervene in the country.

Syrian socialist Ghayath Naisse told Socialist Worker that Assad’s downfall “is a great moment in the history of Syria”. “There are many opportunities and many dangers,” he explained. “It has been a great joy to see this event after all this time and all this struggle. 

“There’s joy because no more do we have this Assad regime—that authoritarian, bloody, dictatorship. But, alongside this joy, we have some fears because the agent of change it not the one we want it to be. There is so much fear because of HTS and what it is.”

The “agent of change”—the HTS group led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani—overthrew Assad with Turkish backing. He did not fall through mass, popular mobilisations. 

Recep Erdogan’s Turkish regime backed HTS’ offensive to weaken the Assad regime and gain more regional influence. This was both for economic interests, but also so Erdogan could further attack Kurdish people in Syria and Turkey who demand their rights. 

But HTS was able to overthrow the Assad regime with shocking force, exposing the hollowness of Assad’s rule. Ghayath said it’s essential to understand the context—and why the Assad regime fell so quickly. 

He said, “Firstly, everyone in Syria is very tired, including the regime, after years of civil war. The situation is very degraded—the economy is worse every year and the regime cannot offer the minimum of needs to the people. So Assad had no real social base in Syria.” 

“Second, the main powers backing Assad—Russia and Iran—are weakened.” He explained that “because Russia is occupied in Ukraine, it cannot help Assad as it did” in 2015 when it intervened to rescue the regime. 

“Iran is also not doing so good,” he added. “The war in Gaza and Lebanon has hugely weakened the Iranian influence in the region. So today we see regional powers letting the Assad regime fall because they cannot help.”

The civil war saw rival imperialist and regional powers intervene in Syria, including the United States, Russia, Iran and Turkey.  

Ghayath, who previously described Syria as a melting pot of imperialist rivalry, argued tensions between different powers would increase. “The fall of the regime has lots of consequences on the geopolitical level,” he explained. 

“For Israel, Turkey, the United States and Russia, they will want a transitional programme that includes them. 

“This is not what the people of Syria need, and many will oppose what HTS will do and the agreements it will make.”

Some argue that HTS is continuing the legacy of the Syrian Revolution of 2011. Anger at years of poverty and dictatorship boiled over into mass protests, and by March 2011 huge forces battled against state repression. 

But, in response, Assad launched a brutal, sectarian civil war in a bid to drown the revolution in blood. His war was designed to make mass struggle impossible. Rival imperial powers used it as a pretext to intervene. 

Ghayath said that HTS is not continuing the people’s revolution. “HTS does not have a social base in Syria,” he explained. “It recruits from the most desperate people, but it is not a popular organisation.”

But Ghayath argued that Assad’s toppling meant there was a possibility for ordinary Syrians to organise struggles from below. “We oppose HTS, but even so it opens the doors for social and political struggle—and this is the most important aspect,” he said. 

“HTS are not the only masters of the destiny of Syria today. People can mobilise in this period now.  The fall of the Assad regime has opened the horizons for Syrian people to struggle again and push back against the reproduction of another authoritarian regime.” 

It’s the possibility of such struggles from below “for democratic aims and achieving the political and social needs of the people” that offer hope in Syria.

Syria: revolution, counter-revolution and war, a Socialist Worker pamphlet by Anne Alexander and Jad Bouharoun from 2016, is available as a PDF.