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The last few days in Syria have shocked the world.
Basha Alsade has fled to Moscow after rebels advanced on Damascus. But it's truly unbelievable scenes.
Most people alive today do not know a Middle East so that did not.
Have the Atad regime at the helm of Syria. After ten days of rebel advances across the country and a lightning offensive into Syria's capital over the weekend, the Shah Al Asad fled Damascus for Russia, ending his family's fifty year grip on power over Syria and his own brutal twenty four year reign. His toppling creates a power vacuum in a country that's been ravaged by thirteen years of
a deadly civil war. Syrian rebels on Monday were in the process of appointing an interim government to replace Assad, but as global leaders react to the rapid shifts on the ground, the country and the region face an uncertain future.
It's certainly momentous for the Middle East. It's hugely symbolic.
That's Bloomberg's Paul Wallace, who's been covering the fallout from Dubai. He joined me to break down the developments.
And talking to Syrians, whether they're in the country or whether they're in the diasper somewhere. There's almost a universal sense of jubilation that finally the country is rid of the Asad regime, but that's mixed with a lot of nervousness and wariness about what comes next.
Today on the show, what the swift and unexpected toppling of Bashar al Assad's regime means for Syria, the Middle East, and the world. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. Paul. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. I'd love to catch up everyone on what's been a landmark few days in Syria. Can you walk us through what happened this past weekend.
Everything happened extremely quickly and in a way that took I think everyone off guard, not just Syrians, but world powers too that have vested interests in the country. Two weeks ago, Syria was in some of what that started back in two thousand and eleven, but the situation was pretty stable and the government of President Bashah al Asad seemingly had little to worry about. It didn't control all
of the country. The country has kind of been a hatchwork of areas controlled by different groups for a long time, groups ranging from Islamic state to the government itself, to Kurdish groups and lots of other types of organizations in between. But suddenly, in late November, a rebel group advanced out of a northwestern province that it controls called Idlib and
took Aleppo. That was a major shock, but even then people thought, wow, okay, they may try and advance on Damascus, the capital, but that would surely take a long time. And we went into the weekend with the rebels having advanced a little.
Bit from Aleppo.
But what happened was that the Syrian military just collapsed at astonishingly quick rate. It gave up cities like Hamma and then Homes, which was the last one before Damascus, and then Damascus was taken extremely quickly, essentially apart from Aleppo, those areas in those cities were given up by the Syrian military without a fight, And that just showed how hollered out it had become, how hollered out serious institutions had become. After thirteen years of civil war and almost a quarter of.
A century rule and Theerbasha ala San tell us a little more about the main rebel coalition that ultimately forced Asad from Syria. Who are they, what are their motivations, and who's eating that coalition?
So Hayataria al Sham is a Sunni is An organization.
It's the one that led the rebel advance.
Hs As it's called broke away from al Qaeda in twenty sixteen. It claims to have moderated significantly since then, but it is still designated a terrorist organization by the US, the UK, and many other countries. It's led by someone who goes by two names. His real name, if you like, is Ahmed al Shara. He's also got a non de guere or a war name, and that's Abu Muhammed al Jolani.
He is in his early forties and spent time in Iraq fighting with militias there, but he was instrumental in setting up a civilian quasi government, if you like, in the rebel held territory of Idland, where this latest uprising began.
He has a pretty good reputation among Syrians that have either lived under Hshes's rule or that have read and heard about too, but there's still a lot of wareness among Syrians and governments around the world that HHS has actually shed all of its most extreme parts of its ideology, and certainly the still elements within the group that would be classified as extremists by most standards in the West.
Well, it's back up a bit more and give some more historical context. You mention this conflict dating back to twenty eleven. What are some of the key events in the past decade or so that really led us to this moment.
Syria was one of the countries that was hardest hit by the Arab Spring that started in late twenty ten and really kicked off in twenty eleven and saw Arab leaders and places like Yema in Egypt and Libya toppled. The Arab Spring Is said he kicked off the civil war in Syria, and for the first probably five or so years, that was when the fighting was most intense.
Early on, in about twenty twelve, Hesbela, based in Lebanon, the Iranian proxy militia came to Basha Alassan's aid, and they said troops there around that time, aside didn't really look all that vulnerable until about twenty fifteen, and at that stage he probably was going to fall, and that's when Russia and Iran stepped in, Iran doing so directly,
not just through helping Hesbela with arms and funding. And if it wasn't for Vladimir Putin and the Iranian government deciding to do that, he probably would have been ousted back in twenty fifteen.
But they saved him for Russia.
This was a real power play, was one of the well, in fact, the only time really that Russia has engaged so decisively outside its own direct sphere of influence in say Central Asia or Eastern Europe. And Putin used his ability to enable Assad to survive not only to showcase his clout globally, but to use it to try and drive a wedge between the various Western powers and also between other Arab states and Western powers.
When we come back how developments in Syria could impact the rest of the Middle East and the region's ongoing geopolitical conflicts. Syria sits at the geographic center of several powers in the Middle East. One of its neighbors, Israel, has been at war with Iran's proxies in the area Hamas and Hezbola, and over the weekend, as Asads regime fell, the Israeli military made incursions into its buffer zone with Syria and reportedly launched strikes on military targets, including on
suspected chemical weaponsites. Bloomberg's Paul Wallace told me Israel is just one of the major players trying to get a handle on what a post Assad Syria could look like. Paul, the Middle East is grappling with a web of overlapping conflicts right now. What does this development in Syria mean for the region broadly?
If you look at Syria in terms of the size of its population, or its commodity exports, or its economy in general, it's not that significant on a global scale, but it is one of the Middle East larger countries that holds a strategic position. It bought is Israel, it bought is Lebanon, it bought his Turkey, It's got part of the Mediterranean coast, and Syria has traditionally been.
Very much one of the heartlands of the Arab world.
It's important to note that while Basha Alassan has ruled since two thousand, his father Hafez ruled since the nineteen seventies, and essentially it's been family rule for a fifty five years until it had been until last weekend. They were both in the end as despotic, as autocratic, and as.
Despise as each other.
So for the Middle East, it's hugely symbolic, and talking to Syrians, whether they're in the country or whether they're in the diaspora somewhere, there's almost a universal sense of jubilation that finally the country is rid of the Asad regime. But that's mixed with a lot of nervousness and wariness about what comes next in terms of what's been going
on in the Middle East recently. Of course, I think a lot of listeners will be thinking how does this tie with Israel's conflicts with Hezbela and Lebanon and with Hanas in Gaza, And depending on how you see it, it could be seen as.
A continuation of that.
Is there any Prime Minister Benjamin Nettinyahu has said that if Israel hadn't weakened Hesbela so much in the last two or three months, things would have been very different in Syria.
I think, you know.
He's alluding to the fact that maybe Hezwela would have been able to send troops from Lebanon into neighboring Syria. If it wasn't so weakened by war with Israel. I don't think we can say it was down to Israel. It was certainly down to opposition forces and Syrians themselves, but it's not completely isolated from what's been going on in the region since October last year.
What about Russia and Iran, countries with ties to Asade, how have they been reacting?
They, I think are the two big losers from what's happened. It's hard to overstate just how crucial Aside was both to Iran's government and Russian's Vladimir Putin. He was absolutely
key to their influence in the Middle East. Russia has its only Mediterranean naval base in Syria, it has a nearby air base there, and President elect Donald Trump actually said as much, and he and many others have said that this is a sign of how distracted and we can Russia has been by its war in Ukraine, and how we can Iran has been by conflict with Israel, either directly or vir It's proxies like Hesboala over the last year.
Speaking of President elect Trump, what is the US's positioning in all of this, What do we know about how Trump might approach Syria and developments there as he enters office next month.
I think for the US it's a very tricky situation. Essentially, Joe Biden's administration and Donald Trump are taking the same view. They're essentially saying that step back, we can't do anything at the moment, just let events in Syria unfold. We shouldn't get involved. Trump said that very unambiguously. He said, it's their fight, whatever happens, the US should just stay
out of it. The White House older Biden has not been as explicit, but its actions point to it thinking in much the same way the Americans have troops in Syria or paper they're there to help find ISIS and other extremist groups. There's not a huge number of troops, but I imagine what the US is going to do for the rest of Biden's term and probably for the early part of Trump's presidency, is just to stay back and wait till the situation stabilizes.
The long term leadership of Syria is unclear right now. But what do we know so far about who is in power in Syria today and who might take over long term?
That's a good question, and that's a very big question. HGS controls Damascus, the capitol, and a Leppo, the second city in Syria, and other cities in between them. So essentially it controls areas containing the vast bulk of Syria's population. Other groups, some of which are supported by Turkey, some of which are opposed by Turkey, controlled bits of northern Syria. You've still got Islamic state in control of small parts, let's say, very largely populated parts of eastern Syria, and
groups in between. At the moment, I think it's you would say that HTS is in charge that has the capital and the second city as well, but that's far from saying that it's consolidated in its gript across the country.
And Paul, what does this all mean for the people of Syria, millions of whom have been displaced, hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed in this thirteen year long civil war. What could the immediate future look like on the ground for them?
I think the first thing is that it essentially means the war is over. As you mentioned, this war has been absolutely devastating by global standards, by historical standards. You name it un agencies estimate somewhere between three hundred thousand and a half a million people have been killed by fighting or by disease and other effects of war. Close to fifty million people have been displaced. There is still fighting in some parts of Steious, so it's not totally peaceful yet.
But broadly speaking, I think HTS's.
Toppling of sign brings the civil war to an end, and that is first and foremost the biggest source of relief for Syrians. And I think now it's a case of can the country unite? Can it build up its economy which has been absolutely devastated in the last thirty years. I think the first thing they'll be looking for is for somebody, whether it's HGS or somebody else, to actually consolidate their grip on the country and to form a proper, functioning and inclusive government.
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by Julia Press and Jessica Beck. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Greg White. It was fact checked by Adriannatapia and mixed and sound designed by Alex Subia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shadan. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso, Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster Boord. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review
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