The ex-dictator of Syria, Bashar Assad, is lucky that, unlike fellow deposed tyrants, he didn’t end up dead at the end of a rope like Saddam Hussein of Iraq or dead at the end of a sewer pipe like Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Instead, Assad has been granted asylum far from the Mediterranean in balmy Moscow on “humanitarian grounds,” which has to be the only time the word “humanitarian” can be associated with this butcher, who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Syrians, including deploying chemical weapons against civilians.
While freedom reigns (at least temporarily) in Damascus, which is a drastic change from the recent history of that ancient city, what is unchanged since Assad’s rapid fall is the Pentagon running a bombing campaign against ISIS targets in the country. More than 75 ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria were blasted yesterday by airstrikes from Air Force B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s, in support of the 900 U.S. troops in the country to combat ISIS. That American mission, to prevent the return of bloodthirsty ISIS, must continue.
Assad and his horrible regime are gone, “a fundamental act of justice” as President Biden put it yesterday. We still don’t know who will be replacing him, but the leader of one of the larger rebel groups, Abu Mohammed al-Golani (whose real name is Ahmad al-Sharaa) still has a $10 million price on his head from the U.S. government for his days as an Al Qaeda loyalist.
While he’s broken with Al Qaeda and fought them in recent years, the imposition of strict Islamic rule is not what splintered Syria — with many minorities and sects, like Kurds, Alawites, Shiites, Druze and Christians — needs.
Syria has been shattered. Since the civil war broke out in 2011, half the population of 24 million has been displaced, about six million internally and six million made refugees in other countries, notably in neighboring Turkey and in Europe. Maybe, hopefully, people can return to their homes, if they still exist.
Turkey sponsored the rebels led by al-Golani/al-Sharaa, but what really added to the push were the defeats of Assad’s backers of Russia, Hezbollah and Iran.
As Donald Trump correctly points out, Russia has been bled dry with its invasion of Ukraine. Hezbollah was destroyed by Israel after the Lebanese terrorists joined Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks. Iran was militarily embarrassed and humbled by Israel in not defending its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah and in two failed Iranian attacks on Israel which resulted in Israel eliminating Iran’s air defense network.
Left naked without his three allies, Assad’s forces crumpled when pressed.
The one area where Assad and his dictator father before him, Hafez Assad, maintained peace and security and scrupulously kept international order was along the ceasefire line with Israel following the Yom Kippur War. For 50 years, since the 1974 truce, the buffer zone has been quiet. When the regime collapsed yesterday, the Syrian Army melted away and Israel took over their positions to prevent ISIS or others from filling the vacuum.
As for Assad, he won’t face the mob or a tribunal and while in Moscow he can resume his ophthalmology practice that he had in London before he had to return to Damascus when his older brother and planned future dictator died in a car crash 30 years ago.
