After more than 13 years of civil war, the conflict in Syria entered a new phase earlier this month when the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) scored a series of battlefield successes that soon resulted in the collapse of the Syrian state. Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator since 2000, fled to Moscow on Dec. 8, 2024.
To understand what just happened and what might come next, Good Authority editor Christopher Clary checked in with Dipali Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; and Kimberly Howe, a research assistant professor at Tufts University. They are the co-authors of Good Rebel Governance: Revolutionary Politics and Western Intervention in Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Their insights, lightly edited for clarity and length, are below.
Christopher Clary: Why do you think a group like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was able to break the ugly stalemate of the Syrian civil war? Other groups, like the Syrian Defense Forces, arguably received more resources over the years.
Mukhopadhyay and Howe: On the one hand, it is less that HTS was able to break the stalemate on its own terms so much as the group made its move at a moment when the surrounding context – namely the Russian and Iranian commitments to the Assad regime – changed. On the other hand, as a fighting force, HTS has consistently aimed its fight at the removal of Assad. It has not taken its eye off the ball and, in the meantime, this group has been governing effectively (including the collection of taxes and the provision of public goods and services). That governance, in Idlib province, has not been democratic but, rather, a kind of authoritarian Islamist rule.
More generally, our own research and the work of others on HTS (previously Jabhat al-Nusra) reveals an organization that began as an Al Qaeda affiliate, parted ways with the Islamic State and, over time, situated itself squarely within the larger Syrian opposition. HTS relinquished the global jihadist agenda many years ago and did the work of fighting and governing as a key member of the insurgency. And it held that ground long after many thought Syria’s revolution was over. In that sense, it’s not surprising to see HTS emerge as the group that brought about the collapse of Assad’s forces.
The Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) have not been associated with a comparable ambition to govern all of Syria. Instead, this Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed group has sought to maintain authority in the territory they hold in Syria’s northeast. That area has become a Kurdish rebel enclave. The SDF has faced relentless Turkish pressure while maintaining a truce of sorts with the Assad regime. The support the SDF has received from the U.S. government is uniquely in the service of its efforts to prevent the return of ISIS, not to advance its fight beyond northeast Syria. As for the Syrian National Army (a mixture of militias previously affiliated with the Free Syrian Army), this was not a coherent force with central command and control but rather an amalgam of forces under Turkish patronage.
What seemed most notable to you over these momentous last few days and weeks? What surprised you?
There were signs that HTS and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army forces were planning an operation; our interlocutors in northwest Syria were aware of these plans in October, if not earlier. As the Russians caught wind, they ramped up bombing in Idlib, a province in northwest Syria where HTS has long been dominant.
Close observers of HTS, like Jerome Drevon, have pointed to a sustained effort on the group’s part over the last many years to improve itself as a fighting force in anticipation of an opportune moment. So, the push was not entirely a surprise, but the momentum and speed with which it swept the country were shocking.
Those of us that witnessed closely the events in Afghanistan in August 2021 watched as Afghan state forces just melted away, enabling the Taliban to take city after city, district after district, barely firing a shot. The last few weeks in Syria were eerily familiar. The day that Aleppo fell, some Syrian colleagues spoke with us about the departure of Iranian-backed troops (i.e., Hezbollah fighters) from Syria. Unless those forces returned, they suggested, Iran was not serious and had abandoned Assad.
Their view was that HTS’s progress was less about its military superiority and more about the fact that Assad’s allies had abandoned him.
Those who follow events in Russia and Iran closely have begun to explain the reasons why both countries appeared to abandon their support for Assad. Those explanations seem to be about their respective capacities being stretched by more pressing confrontations (with Ukraine and Israel, respectively) but also about a loss of confidence in the Syrian regime. The Assad regime’s collapse – like a house of cards – is resonant, again, with the precipitous failure of the Afghan republic in 2021. Both cases suggest that the dividends of foreign support to besieged regimes do not include lasting strength, let alone legitimacy, in the face of a stubborn insurgency.
In a larger sense, however, it is important to understand that the overthrow of Assad is the product of enormous struggle and sacrifice, not just by armed groups, but by the Syrian people as a society over many years – and, for some, many decades. As journalists and scholars like Rania Abouzeid, Kim Ghattas, and Wendy Pearlman have remarked in recent days – and as we’ve seen through our own research starting in 2013 – communities rose up and risked everything in the service of their revolutionary dreams. Those networks, institutions, ideas, and processes were hard won and, ultimately, served as the basis for this extraordinary moment.
What are you watching out for in the coming months? In particular, I’m curious how you think HTS will transition from a rebel group to a potential governing force for a much wider area, potentially the entirety of the old Syrian Arab Republic.
Having studied a number of transitions from war to so-called post-conflict, we are curious (and concerned) about so much. Many have been comparing HTS to the Taliban. There are important similarities – but the complex coalitional dynamics HTS has had to manage for a decade weren’t something that constrained the Taliban. A number of very different conditions – and, therefore, the groups’ different inclinations – are worth emphasizing.
HTS did not rule democratically in Idlib, so it is hard to imagine that its political stripes will change overnight. Will it maintain a focus on governance in the form of service provision and the enforcement of sharia law? Or will HTS feel compelled to relax its ideological orientation in the less conservative and more diverse communities beyond Idlib for which it is now responsible? How inclined will HTS be to curry favor with the West in order to secure diplomatic recognition and aid?
A senior counterterrorism official at the State Department recently spoke of the Biden administration’s growing comfort with operating in “the gray.” We could imagine the new Trump administration operating with a kind of transactional pragmatism as well. President Trump did forge the deal with the Taliban that brought America’s longest war to an end, after all.
Having studied the U.S. government’s inclination to find and cultivate “good rebel governance” in Syria, we are also curious to what degree democracy promotion will even be part of the discourse, let alone programming, in a post-Assad Syria. Is cooperation between Western governments and “extremist” but now-palatable regimes like the Taliban and HTS going to be the new modus operandi for the war on terror?
The other very interesting dynamic to watch is the evolving situation of the Kurds in Syria. Since the 2023 earthquake, if not earlier, HTS has been trying to win hearts and minds in Afrin, a Kurdish-majority district in Syria’s north. There are reports of ongoing dialogue between the SDF and HTS. Of course, this will make the Turkish government nervous, given its intense concerns about Kurdish separatism within Turkey. Will Ankara be prepared to take on the SDF and the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria head on, given the U.S. military presence in the Syrian Kurdish enclave? And what role will the Syrian militias under Turkish influence play?
Ultimately, the unwieldy coalition of opposition groups in Syria achieved the unimaginable, and brought down one of the most vicious, brutal regimes in modern history, when the world least expected it. These groups now face the challenge of cohering as a new government and asserting some semblance of sovereign control. They will attempt to do so in a region where the neighbors – from Turkey and Israel to Iran and the Gulf states – will no doubt continue to intervene.
The challenge for HTS, Syria, and the international community is enormous, but the Syrian people have proved tenacious beyond all expectations. We are excited to see how their next political chapter unfolds.
