How the World Got Syria Wrong

On Dec. 8, President Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, bringing an end to nearly 54 years of his family’s rule and sending millions of Syrians at home and abroad into a state of euphoria and relief. Over a dramatic 12 days, an armed opposition offensive that had begun west of Aleppo on Nov. 27 triggered the precipitous crumbling of regime front lines, one after the other. As rebels began to advance south, Syrians across the country began to rise up. By the night of Dec. 7, Assad’s defeat had been sealed.

The rapid disintegration of Assad’s regime came as a surprise to everyone. For years, the international community had written off any chance that Syrians’ demand for change would ever be realized, embracing instead the concept of a “frozen conflict” and gradually withdrawing attention and resources away from Syria policy. In 2023, most of the Arab world reembraced Assad, rewarding him with his seat back in the Arab League and granting him and his regime with high-profile public visits across the region.

In truth, the international community has misjudged the situation in Syria in recent years. While lines drawn on maps and the stagnation of diplomacy led to assumptions that Assad was here to stay and was consolidating his rule, the regime had, in fact, been decaying and fragmenting from within. In many ways, the fact that Assad’s regime had not faced a serious military challenge since early 2020 was what created the conditions that allowed the decay to take root.

Events over the past two weeks have turned the entire international approach to Syria on its head. A rapid process of adaptation and reassessment is now underway. In a series of hurriedly organized high-level meetings in Doha, Qatar, this weekend, Arab governments have struggled to adjust to the new reality.

As Syrians were seizing control of Damascus suburbs late on Dec. 7 and Assad was preparing to flee, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Qatar called for a cease-fire and political negotiations—a statement that might have made sense a week earlier but seemed irrelevant within hours. In subsequent side meetings, it was clear that regional states were simply perplexed and outpaced by events on the ground.

Meanwhile, the United Nations and its special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, have surged into action, engaging intensively with the so-called Astana group (Russia, Iran, and Turkey), the Arab states, the United States, and Europe to chart a path forward oriented around U.N. Security Council Resolution 2254.

That mandate, set forth in December 2015, calls for a transitional period, leading eventually to free and fair elections. Plans are already afoot for a return of Syria peace talks in Geneva—but without the Assad regime’s representatives, who had attended only to block any meaningful progress. Nevertheless, despite the rapid call to action, it remains unclear exactly what format the U.N. intends to bring to Geneva, nor who or how many Syrians would be involved.

While deliberations around a political process continue, events are developing fast on the ground. Early on Dec. 8, armed fighters from southern Syria escorted the country’s Prime Minister, Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali, to the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus amid a purported plan to conduct a swift but nonviolent transition.

Later that day, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—the most powerful armed group that launched the initial offensive—arrived in Damascus and went to Syria’s famed Umayyad Mosque to proclaim victory. In the Assad regime’s coastal heartlands of Tartus and Latakia, locals took to the streets to topple Assad family statues and opposition fighters took over military bases.

According to four sources associated with HTS and its broader military operations coalition, Syria’s political transition is already underway and is being managed internally. Their view is that a U.N.-led process designed and determined abroad is unnecessary, and they reject it. “We welcome the international community’s support, but we do not need them to manufacture a process that we are already implementing,” one of them told me as they arrived in Damascus. “We refuse to step into the traps of the past,” said another.

The divergent visions of internal and external actors represent a significant problem but also a simple reflection of how astonishingly fast developments have occurred.

For now, the priority for the international community needs to be on communication—with as many of the actors on the ground as possible, armed and civilian alike. Many towns and cities across Syria are now being run by long-standing local councils, religious bodies, and state institutions.

How they fit within the transition that is seemingly underway in Damascus or in the U.N.’s plans for talks in Geneva is anyone’s guess. Before devising another internationally-led process to determine Syria’s future, regional and U.N. officials would be wise to listen to and communicate with the forces on the ground that are already shaping it.