Syria and the rest

I most recently used the below map on October 2.   My next planned post will be December 12.  Also, note comments and addition to the post on the film Separated Nov 7.

I am purposely making no comments on the Syria news present and past.  I am not an informed voice on the issues short or long term.  This is for certain another crucial tipping point in regional and world affairs.  Learn.  Signed personal comments are welcome.

Syria from the CIA Factbook as of 25 November 2024.  The Factbook says Syria is about the same size as Pennsylvania.  Another source says Minnesota and Syria are about the same size.  Relative populations as of 2023: Mn <6 million; Pa 13 million; Syria ca 23 million (great variation in estimates of actual current population).

PDF of below map

from Map 96 National Geographic Atlas of the World Seventh Edition. See also pdf of same area.

Syria Natl Geog

Heather Cox Richardson on the situation, Dec.8.

COMMENTS: (more at end of post):

from Emmett, whose ancestry is from Syria-Lebanon:  Assad has had to deal with a real mess for the last dozen or so years that he inherited when his Dad passed away, largely because of all the foreign governments and domestic tribal groups that have occupied Syria.  The guy that led the group that took over Damascus was on the news the other day stating that he had met with Assad and Assad agreed to a peaceful transfer of power, and in return they agreed to assist him and his family to travel to Moscow where they will all be safe for the time being.
My biggest concern lately has been about our close allies, the Israelis, and their attempts to kill my relatives in Southern Lebanon.  Most of my relatives have left the towns that my family came from and have fled to the East where they could shelter in safer places, and thankfully the Israelis have now focused on the Beirut area where it is primarily Christians that they are slaughtering.  The British Belfour Project lunched in 1917 followed by the 1920 British Mandate has certainly created their intended mess in the Middle East.  Sure wish that our national leaders would develop a sense of morality and focus on working towards a better and safer world.  Not much more that I can offer you at this time.

from SAK, Syrian, who left the country when he was a small child:

Thanks Mr Bernard!

The whole Middle East is a patchwork of ethnicities & sects. A small country like Lebanon even when the population was a mere 3 million, in the 1970s say, had 18 sects – aside from a few Mormons, Hindus, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc…

Every country has a majority sect & that might change over time due to emigration, different birthrates, refugees etc. So you can imagine how difficult it is to govern such places. Moreover,  the colonial powers Britain & France cut up the region into states initially to be divided among them – the (in)famous Sykes-Picot agreement. That is why the Kurds for example are divided among at least 4 states & the borders between states are often straight lines in the sand (here).

As Thucydides wrote in his history of the Peloponnesian war: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” And suffer they have for more than a hundred years . . . Of course it is partly the inhabitants’ fault, they could have, once independence was achieved, organised themselves into exemplary secular democracies but given the chaos, the diversity, the history & the lack of preparation such an outcome  would have been nothing short of miraculous. No matter they are where they are – partly because they were where they were. In fact the US artist Dawoud Bey says something similar to explain the “trauma of the African-American presence that sits just beneath the surface” & links it to slavery, he says: “we got here, from there”. Faulkner also captures the same idea: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Why can’t everybody just calm down, sit around the same large table & plan a peaceful equitable future!? Well if the developed world can’t quite manage it one can only imagine how difficult it would be for the rest. The new leader of Syria, al-Jolani, was an extremist & now speaks more moderately but what guarantees that he won’t turn extremist again, that a more extreme faction will dispute power, or that someone would assassinate him!? Exhibits A, B, C &D: Gaza, Libya, Yemen & Sudan to name just the currently ongoing violent conflicts & disaster areas in that neighbourhood . . . Al-Jolani by the way spent time in a US jail in Iraq where he was radicalised it is said – only connect!

An article from the Financial Times about al-Jolani:

Raya Jalabi, 7 Dec 2024

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the Syrian rebel leader who overthrew the Assad regime

The offensive by his Islamist group has marked a turning point in the country’s bloody 13-year civil war

Days before his forces toppled Syria’s Assad regime, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani triumphantly walked up the steps of Aleppo’s medieval citadel, dressed head to toe in khaki and flanked by unarmed guards.

On that appearance in Syria’s second city, captured as part of rebel groups’ lightning offensive across the country, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was swarmed by supporters.

Jolani waved at Aleppo’s stunned residents before getting into his white jeep and driving back to the frontline. He barely cracked a smile. It was a politically astute move typical of the ambitious 42-year-old Islamist who has spent the past few years in the throes of a political transformation.

“Jolani very smartly knows how to pick his moments, and capitalise on them,” says Aaron Zelin, an expert on jihadism, Jolani and HTS. “He picked a symbolic place, there were no guns around — it was designed to make him look like a serious, political leader.”

The scenes in Aleppo were a prelude to Sunday’s historic fall of Damascus, which ejected President Bashar al-Assad from power and ended half a century of his family’s rule.

Before HTS’s recent advances, the frontline in the bloody 13-year civil war had been frozen in an uneasy stalemate.

But days after seizing Aleppo, rebels captured another major city, Hama, and then took Homs to its south. Damascus — the capital that Jolani had long had in his sights — fell hours later.

The success of the offensive revealed the fragility of the hold that Assad had exercised over his shattered country. His armed forces — despite being propped up by Russia, Iran and Tehran’s network of proxies — appeared to melt away as the rebels advanced.

It was also the product of years of careful preparation by Jolani, who helped his group rebound from near-collapse five years ago. He has moderated its Islamist doctrine, built out its military capabilities and established a civilian-led government.

That transformation was on display during the offensive. Jolani capitalised on the recent outreach he’d conducted with tribes, former opponents and minority groups, brokering surrenders and ordering the protection of minorities. He even directed a statement to Russia, which has helped Assad for years, suggesting HTS and Moscow could find common ground in rebuilding Syria.

Born Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa in 1982, Jolani spent his first seven years in Saudi Arabia, where his father was working as an oil engineer. He then moved to Damascus — the city his grandfather arrived in following Israel’s occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights.

Jolani has said he was radicalised by the second intifada in 2000. “I was 17 or 18 years old at the time, and I started thinking about how I could fulfil my duties, defending a people who are oppressed by occupiers and invaders,” he told PBS Frontline in 2021, in one of his only interviews with western media to date.

Drawn to resist the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he landed in Baghdad after a long bus ride from Damascus just a few weeks before US forces did. He spent the next few years rising through the ranks of the insurgency before being captured and thrown into Camp Bucca prison, now notorious for incubating a generation of jihadi leaders.

Released just as the Syrian uprising began in 2011, Jolani crossed the border with bags full of cash and a mission to expand al-Qaeda. Many in Iraq were happy to see him go. He was at odds with al-Qaeda’s leaders there, a rivalry that continued to grow. Jolani distanced himself from their transnational jihadi ideology and grew his rebel faction under the auspices of a nationalist struggle for Syria. Eventually he broke away and openly fought against al-Qaeda and Isis.

He has also purged the more radical elements of HTS and helped to craft a technocratic administration. “Jolani’s destiny is being written right now. Just how he manages the next phase, if HTS manages to remain inclusive, that will determine what his legacy will be,” says Jerome Drevon, a jihad expert at the Crisis Group think-tank.

Jolani stands out among his peers. He is well-educated, urbane and softly-spoken. His middle-class background “helped shape his approach to Islam”, says Drevon. “He often says that the real world has to guide your Islam, that you cannot force your Islam on to the real world.”

But jihadism expert Zelin cautions that this doesn’t make Jolani a liberal democrat, describing him as “the charismatic leader of an authoritarian regime”.

This has been key to his success. So have his coterie of young advisers. “They are very well-educated people who understand the outside world. They don’t have a bunker mentality,” says Dareen Khalifa, Drevon’s colleague at Crisis Group, who has met Jolani repeatedly since 2019.

The question is how far can the transformation go? The US has designated HTS a terrorist organisation and placed a $10mn bounty on Jolani’s head — which could complicate his aspirations to build relationships with the west and lead Syria.

This week, Jolani told Khalifa that his group would consider dissolving itself, that Aleppo would be managed by a transitional body and the city’s social fabric and diversity would be respected. Now that Damascus has also fallen, whether the group can reconcile such plans with its jihadi roots remains to be seen.