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After 50 years of dictatorship, is there hope for democracy in Syria?

After 50 years of dictatorship, is there hope for democracy in Syria?

It’s been an extraordinary week in the news—a dramatic shift in global alliances and a stunning movement of tectonic plates in Middle East geopolitics that has caused the sudden cratering of a despotic regime in Syria after half a century of brutality and cruelty to its people.

Russia and Iran, which both supported Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s regime as a client state, are structurally weakened after Assad was toppled and the streets of Damascus erupted in flashes of joy and sparks of hope amid the smoke of a country in ruins. in disarray. The United States, along with Syria’s neighbors Turkey and Israel, were generally considered to be more closely tied together by all that is unfolding at a fast and chaotic pace. It is truly history in the making and I want to delve into what it could mean for the region and the world.

We are in many ways on a hinge of history that in too many places is heading in the direction of autocracy fueled by misinformation and misinformation, and in some places, like Syria, may also be heading sharply in the other direction, toward freedom from tyranny and oppression.

Bashar, who last weekend fled to Russia, and before him, his father Hafez al Assad, ruled over half a century of brutality, fear and corruption. Russia had been propping up the Assad dynasty for decades while Bashar was bombing and gassing his own people and locking up anyone who dared to express dissent in a maze of dark prisons. All of this was in exchange for Russia exercising regional power and securing crucial maritime access to the Mediterranean.

Syrian fighters and civilians chant slogans as they gather before Friday prayers at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (Photo by Leo Correa/Associated Press)

Iran, also a supporter of Assad, has been hit by the stunning developments in the region as its Shiite power through proxies such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government and Yemen’s Houthis has been on the wane. Iran’s long-standing support for Hamas in Gaza is expected to wane, as the pipeline of military and economic support would now become more difficult without the reliable base of neighboring Syria.

The United States and Israel, along with the Sunni-majority countries of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, will likely see their geopolitical power strengthened by these developments. President Joe Biden says the US government believes missing American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared 12 years ago near the Syrian capital, is alive and Washington is committed to bringing him home.

The news that Tice may be alive is an extraordinary twist in a long and tragic story of how the Syrian regime and Islamist opposition have taken hostage, tortured and killed journalists, including James Foley, who was killed by ISIS in 2014. Tice was believed. to be held by the Syrian regime, and the opposition has offered to help locate him amid the chaos of prisons that are emptying amid the collapse of the government.

Seeing Tice freed after all these years would be a hopeful and emotional moment, but it would come amid the chaos of a fractured and unpredictable opposition that includes disparate elements led by a fundamentalist Sunni Islamic movement led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). This opposition coalition includes army defectors as well as Druze, Kurdish and Christian fighters, as well as disgruntled Alawites. backgrounds. There are elements that are religious and others that are secular. They are all bound together in an anti-regime coalition that could easily break and then collapse into chaos and plunge back into civil war.

But these strands of opposition can also be tied together in a hope for democracy. And, at least for this brief moment in time, it is notable that history has swung in the right direction—away from the tyranny of a dictatorship and toward a new future, perhaps democratic or self-determination for the Syrian people. . Now, Syria and the world must ensure that the door does not swing back again to slam us in the back on the way out.

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