The Collapse of Syria Has Begun

Violence is accelerating under Syria’s new Islamist government, as is the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities. This tragedy was entirely predictable. As far back as Barack Obama’s first term, critics warned that Washington’s flirtation with and assistance to Sunni Arab radicals would turn out badly. Nevertheless, Joe Biden’s administration persisted in that approach in an effort to overthrow the secular government of Bashar al-Assad. From the standpoint of US policymakers, Assad had committed two unpardonable sins. He transformed his country into Iran’s closest regional ally, and he forged closer ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Indeed, Russian air power played an important role in 2016 in enabling Syrian government forces to rout the predominantly Sunni insurgency and regain control of key portions of Syria.

Propping Up and Ousting a Regime

The ability of Tehran and Moscow to prop up Assad’s government gradually faded as the years passed, however.

Moscow’s assistance, especially, became less reliable as the Kremlin changed its principal strategic focus to the conflict in Ukraine. During the final year of Biden’s administration, a de facto alliance consisting of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey redoubled its efforts to bring Syria’s insurgents to power.

That move finally succeeded. In December 2024, a Sunni Islamist coalition led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) movement—once an affiliate of Al Qaeda—successfully ousted the Assad government. Washington and its allies had worked diligently for that goal since 2011, even though the effort triggered a civil war that had produced more than 600,000 fatalities and over 13 million people displaced.

Biden administration officials, as well as the always reliable pro-imperial mouthpieces in the establishment news media, predictably portrayed the rebel victory as the “liberation” of the oppressed Syrian people. The lead segment on the December 15, 2024, edition of the CBS program “60 Minutes” was typical. Such propaganda continued a long, dishonorable tradition of portraying even Washington’s most corrupt and vicious authoritarian clients as proponents of freedom and democracy.

The Enemy of an Enemy

Until the HTS military triumph, the US government listed the movement as a terrorist organization. US leaders applied a generous coat of whitewash, however, and the new regime is now feted in Western circles as though that unpleasant record never existed.

Such policy blindness by US leaders concerning Syria has been long-standing and shameful. Earlier in the Syrian civil war, some US policymakers and opinion leaders, especially during Obama’s administration, openly advocated cooperation with Al Qaeda and its allies. Former CIA director David Petraeus, for example, insisted that some of the organization’s “more moderate” elements could be useful allies for the United States, and therefore should be courted. Jake Sullivan, who would later become President Biden’s national security advisor, embraced similar reasoning.

An Ethnoreligious Country

It has been a naïve and destructive strategy.

Syria was and is a fragile ethnoreligious tapestry. The predominant Arab ethnic population is subdivided among Sunnis (about 60 percent of the Arab population), Christians (10-12 percent), Alawites, a Shiite offshoot (also 10-12 percent), and Druze, a sect combining elements of Shia Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (about 5 percent). The remainder of the population consists of various (predominantly Sunni) ethnic minorities, primarily Kurds (about 10 percent of the total Syrian population).

For more than four decades, the Assad family remained in power because of the intense loyalty of its Alawite base and that faction’s alliance with Christians, Druze, and other smaller ethnic and religious groups. No rational person would dispute that the Assad family, which had ruled Syria with an iron fist for decades, was a nasty governing elite. However, the abusive nature of the entrenched regime did not automatically mean that its opponents were better.

Ruling Party

That unpleasant reality is now becoming all too apparent.

The credibility of pro-HTS propaganda is eroding at an unprecedented rate. The new regime, led by Interim President Ahmed al Sharaa, (a former member of Al Qaeda), already has reportedly executed numerous political opponents with minimal or nonexistent due process. He has also launched murderous military offensives, claiming thousands of (mostly civilian) lives.

The first significant phase began in early March 2025, when government forces launched attacks on the main Alawite homeland near the Mediterranean coast. That offensive claimed more than 1,500 victims, almost all of whom were Alawites. A second assault by government troops in April focused on Christians and Druze. That episode resulted in hundreds of additional casualties. Islamic extremist fellow travelers also have conducted terrorist bombings and other assaults on both Christian and Druze civilian targets, including churches.

The Islamist government waged a new offensive in early summer that appeared to be coordinated with Sunni allies in a Bedouin militia. That fighting resulted in more than 1,000 (mostly Druze) fatalities. Israel then intervened, conducting air strikes against Syrian government targets—ostensibly to protect the beleaguered Druze.

Now that the Assad regime is no longer a target for Tel Aviv’s wrath, Israeli leaders who had previously worked with Assad’s Sunni rivals had little incentive to cooperate with the new Islamist rulers in Damascus.

Syria Carved Up? 

In addition to the odious domestic consequences that are already emerging in Syria, it appears that at least two of the country’s regional rivals, Turkey and Israel, are engaged in land grabs at the expense of their wounded neighbor.

The deployment of Israeli ground troops in the largely Druze Suwayda province in southern Syria—adjacent to the Syrian Golan Heights that Israel annexed years ago—suggested that Tel Aviv has its sights on securing de facto control over a broad swath of southern Syria.

Turkey has been at least as brazen. The Turkish government (with Washington’s backing) has successfully pressured the Kurds to relinquish their self-governing ambitions that they had been able to implement because of the Assad government’s weakness. Istanbul now effectively controls a wide buffer zone of Syrian territory along Turkey’s border with that country.

What Happens Next? 

The policy that the United States and key Middle East allies have pursued with respect to Syria could prove to be a horrid failure in both humanitarian and geopolitical terms. Assad’s ouster may have opened the door to an even worse tyranny, characterized by the new Sunni-dominated regime’s persecution of religious and ethnic minorities. Assad’s ouster also may unleash dangerous, competing expansionist ambitions on the part of Turkey and Israel. Washington’s Syria policy has brought ruin to yet another small country and created conditions for even more human tragedy in a volatile region.

President Trump should have the United States disengage from Syria. More trouble appears to be coming to that country, and Washington should at least avoid making matters even worse.

About the Author: Ted Galen Carpenter 

Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a contributing editor at National Security Journal.  He is the author of 13 books and more than 1,300 articles on national security, international affairs, and civil liberties.  His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and US Foreign Policy (2022).

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