Assad government falls in Syria after rebels take over Homs and Damascus, says TV

(Bloomberg) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government has apparently fallen after a stunning territorial advance by opposition groups in recent days.

On Sunday morning (8), state television announced the “triumph of the great Syrian revolution and the fall of Assad’s criminal regime.”

The overthrow of the longtime ruler is sending shockwaves across the Middle East and will be a major blow to Russia and Iran, his main foreign backers.

The Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group, which led the movement to oust Assad and his government, entered Damascus on Saturday night (7) and captured the key city of Homs — about 160 kilometers north of the capital — at approximately the same time. time. Other areas of the country, including the north, near the border with Turkey, and the south, were captured by different groups.

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There were reports of Syrians in Damascus celebrating the fall of the widely despised regime.

HTS leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa called on all Syrian government forces in the capital to surrender. Al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, said Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali will remain in his post until there is an official handover.

Al-Jalali, speaking to Al Arabiya television, said that I didn’t know where Assad was. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said it took a flight from Damascus and left the country.

Assad, 59, who took power from his father Hafez in 2000, has made a desperate attempt to remain in office, including indirect diplomatic approaches to the US and the , the report said. Bloomberg on Saturday. In a sign of how weak his military position was, he ordered his army to retreat to Damascus, essentially ceding much of the country, including Homs, to the insurgents.

Trump: “This is not our fight”

Trump used social media to say that the US should have “nothing to do” with events in Syria. “This is not our fight,” he said. “Let it happen. Don’t get involved!” In a later post, he stated that Assad had left the country and that Russia was “no longer interested in protecting him.”

President Joe Biden’s administration, which will be in power until next month, has shown little willingness to intervene and has stated that the US had nothing to do with the HTS rebellion.

The US and Israel, which borders Syria, are watching cautiously. Assad was not their ally, and Washington imposed severe sanctions on the Syrian government. At the same time, HTS is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and other Western countries.

On Sunday morning, Israel said it had sent forces to a buffer zone near Syria to protect communities in the Golan Heights. The Israeli army added that it is not involved in what is happening in Syria.

“It must be remembered that these rebels are not lovers of Zion,” Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told Israel’s Channel 14. “It is true that everyone today is welcoming the weakening of Iran — something that is certainly very significant from a regional perspective. But there is also concern that parties aligned with terrorist organizations will use Assad’s weapons against Israel.

An “unstable and fragmented” Syria

HTS, a Sunni group, split from al-Qaeda in 2016 and has since tried to portray itself as more moderate. Al-Sharaa, in an interview with CNN on December 5, said that non-Muslims and other minorities would be safe in areas of Syria overseen by HTS.

The leader, in his 40s, attributed the success of the opposition forces to greater discipline and unity. “The revolution has moved from chaos and randomness to a state of order,” he said.

Syria’s political situation is likely to remain fluid as various groups try to strengthen their positions, according to risk consultancy RANE.

“The collapse will likely trigger a contested political process between competing rebel factions to create an interim government,” said Freddy Khoueiry, global security analyst at RANE.

“This process is likely to be slow and prone to violence as foreign actors attempt to shape the post-war balance of power, making an unstable and fragmented Syria the most likely outcome in the near term.”

Allies were taken by surprise

Assad lost large swaths of the country’s northwest in late November when opposition fighters made a sudden advance from Idlib province.

The rapid collapse of the Syrian government caught Russia, Iran and the US by surprise. In 2015, Russia and Iran came to Assad’s aid and helped turn the tide in the Syrian war — which began four years earlier — in their favor.

This time, both Tehran and Moscow, which has a naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus, have been overwhelmed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. Iran has tried to drum up support for Assad among Arab states. He also said he would send Iranian troops to Syria if requested, but ended up being unwilling or unable to do so.

Furthermore, Tehran’s most powerful paramilitary group, Lebanon-based Hezbollah, has been massively degraded since September due to the war with Israel. Its fighters have been crucial in helping Assad stay in power since the start of the civil war.

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