Middle East Politics

[Mavs]

Sanctions remain until al-Sharaa shakes a womans hand.

 

[Raoul]

"Please stop being so Islamic and we will lift sanctions".



These people are a joke. It will only push Syria closer to Turkey and the Gulf states, and potentially reinvigorate relations with Putin's Russia.

 

[Mavs]

"Please stop being so Islamic and we will lift sanctions".



These people are a joke. It will only push Syria closer to Turkey and the Gulf states, and potentially reinvigorate relations with Putin's Russia.

It is quite short sighted isn't it. Keeping the sanctions will only increase the chance of reverting to the same situation as they were in. And at the same time Germany and other EU countries want refugees return to Syria. This isn't really the way to encourage that. This does feel like a message to a domestic audience that they are taking Islamic terror threats seriously, so I think the resistance to lift sanctions isn't going to last long, its just a bit of posturing. Al-Sharaa/Jolani also seems to understand that his former ties to al-Qaeda are a reason to give people caution, so he will be patient here I think.

And although they have mostly been reasonable in their statements, it is true that there are signs that the interim government wants to enact a more fundamental Islamic approach to governance, like this for example:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/02/...syrias-school-curriculum-spark-online-outrage

Where they wanted to remove teachings of evolution, big bang theory, removal of references to historical events, etc And involve a more Islamic view on certain things. They backed out of it after backlash from the public but could be a sign of things to come once they've achieved international normalization.

 

[Raoul]

It is quite short sighted isn't it. Keeping the sanctions will only increase the chance of reverting to the same situation as they were in. And at the same time Germany and other EU countries want refugees return to Syria. This isn't really the way to encourage that. This does feel like a message to a domestic audience that they are taking Islamic terror threats seriously, so I think the resistance to lift sanctions isn't going to last long, its just a bit of posturing. Al-Sharaa/Jolani also seems to understand that his former ties to al-Qaeda are a reason to give people caution, so he will be patient here I think.

And although they have mostly been reasonable in their statements, it is true that there are signs that the interim government wants to enact a more fundamental Islamic approach to governance, like this for example:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/02/...syrias-school-curriculum-spark-online-outrage

Where they wanted to remove teachings of evolution, big bang theory, removal of references to historical events, etc And involve a more Islamic view on certain things. They backed out of it after backlash from the public but could be a sign of things to come once they've achieved international normalization.

Indeed. At best, I see this as European leaders not wanting to look like naive politicians, who if things happen to go wrong, look like they gullibly capitulated to Sharaa's transition from militant to statesman. Suspect they will change their minds once they receive sufficient pushback in the media.

 

[Raoul]

 

[africanspur]

This seems quite prematurely self congratulatory.

I’m as happy as any non Syrian that Assad is gone but there are so many unknowns still. We don’t know if what will come will be better. We don’t know if the country is going to slip into civil war again.

More importantly, Assad’s forces were clearly unable/ unwilling to fight back in the same way as they did before, without the support of its allies who previously saved them, who are currently preoccupied with a brutal war on their doorstep, likely preparing for Israeli/ American strikes or had their entire leadership decapitated very recently.

Without the Ukraine war/ October 7th, those same groups likely come back in and prop Assad up as they did before.

 

[2cents]

There’s videos going around allegedly of new Minister for Justice Shadi al-Waisi overseeing public executions of women accused of adultery in Idlib during the Jabhat al-Nusra days back in 2015 (e.g. see here, warning - it shows a woman being shot).

 

[Raoul]

This seems quite prematurely self congratulatory.

I’m as happy as any non Syrian that Assad is gone but there are so many unknowns still. We don’t know if what will come will be better. We don’t know if the country is going to slip into civil war again.

More importantly, Assad’s forces were clearly unable/ unwilling to fight back in the same way as they did before, without the support of its allies who previously saved them, who are currently preoccupied with a brutal war on their doorstep, likely preparing for Israeli/ American strikes or had their entire leadership decapitated very recently.

Without the Ukraine war/ October 7th, those same groups likely come back in and prop Assad up as they did before.

It is still early days in Syria, but the point he’s making is that some of these conflicts don’t end in negotiated settlement; rather they end in one side defeating the other in battle, which is why the likes of Ukraine v Russia is likely to grind on until someone wins militarily. I believe this journo is a correspondent for Ukraine, which is why he’s making this point.

 

[neverdie]

There’s videos going around allegedly of new Minister for Justice Shadi al-Waisi overseeing public executions of women accused of adultery in Idlib during the Jabhat al-Nusra days back in 2015 (e.g. see here, warning - it shows a woman being shot).

Exactly the sort of thing I was worried about when this new madness took over. The old madness was madness and brutal, but what is it being exchanged for?

 

[africanspur]

It is still early days in Syria, but the point he’s making is that some of these conflicts don’t end in negotiated settlement; rather they end in one side defeating the other in battle, which is why the likes of Ukraine v Russia is likely to grind on until someone wins militarily. I believe this journo is a correspondent for Ukraine, which is why he’s making this point.

I appreciate his point. My point is that what allowed the military victory owed as much, if not more, to external factors , than it did internal.

I’m not sure this was a smart move to hold out for geopolitical events by the Syrian rebels and more taking advantage of a situation very few saw coming.

 

[Raoul]

I appreciate his point. My point is that what allowed the military victory owed as much, if not more, to external factors , than it did internal.

I’m not sure this was a smart move to hold out for geopolitical events by the Syrian rebels and more taking advantage of a situation very few saw coming.

I believe the Russians continued fighting the rebels on Assad's behalf throughout the Russia/Ukraine war, and in fact also continued bombing HTS positions after they launched their latest offensives in Aleppo and beyond. What the events of the past 6 weeks show is that Putin has been propping up Assad since October of 2015, and if not for Russian troops intervening, Assad would've likely been gone a decade ago. But even with continued Russian support, Assad was always going to fall because he lacked sufficient domestic support to repel the rebels once Russian support thinned.

 

[Raoul]

tl;dr : A perfect storm of converging events led to Assad’s fall.

- Assad’s own petulance of not wanting negotiate with Erdogan because he didn’t believe he needed to make concessions.

- The Israeli campaign in Lebanon weakened Hezbollah’s ability to support Assad.

- The Iranian air bridge across Iraq to provide logistical and military support to Assad was unstable.

- Putin was distracted in Ukraine and was making himself less available to Assad.

 

[milemuncher777]