However the regime change may be portrayed in the Western media, the outlook for the Syrian people is bleak and the prospects for peace in the region severely weakened, due to the US insistence on imposing its hegemony on the region, writes Steve Bishop
The warm words of US President Donald Trump for current Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, describing him as “a young attractive guy…he’s got a real shot at pulling it together”, reflect the extent to which the United States has succeeded in manipulating regime change in Syria. Trump’s assessment came during his tour of the Middle East in mid May, a trip which resulted in a staggering $142 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
As part of the trip the US and the United Arab Emirates agreed that Abu Dhabi should be the site of the largest artificial intelligence (AI) campus outside the US. The deal reportedly allows the UAE to import half a million Nvidia semiconductor chips, considered the most advanced in the world for the creation of artificial intelligence products. Saudi Arabia struck a similar deal for semiconductors, obtaining the promise of the sale of hundreds of thousands of Nvidia Blackwell chips to Humain, an AI startup owned by its sovereign wealth fund.
These deals, which will see a further concentration of power and influence in the hands of a few super rich companies, were with already established US allies. The Trump tour was essentially an exercise in keeping the oil rich gulf states tied in more closely to reliance on US AI and weapons technology.
In many respects Syria was a far greater prize, given the efforts that the US has put in over many years to gain control of this most significant Arab state. The first CIA backed coup in 1949 ended in failure and subsequent efforts to prise Syria away from a path of independent development have not been successful, until now.
The coup which brought Hafez al-Assad to power in 1970 may have left little breathing space for internal opposition but it did establish Syria as a secular Arab state, tolerant of the diverse range of ethnic and religious minorities which co-existed within its borders. In the wider politics of the Middle East Syria was supportive of the Palestinian cause, being home to training camps and resistance group headquarters.
Succeeded by his son, Bashar al-Assad, in 2000 the regime inevitably took on a dynastic aspect which did not appease the internal opposition. Reforms to introduce a more liberal atmosphere were introduced in 2010 but that did not prevent an outbreak of protests in the city of Dera’a in March 2011.
While the Syrian government response to these protests may have been heavy handed they were not in themselves insurrectionary. However, the pouring in of weapons from the Gulf states and the Western powers quickly turned what started as demands for greater liberalisation into a major war of intervention, characterised by the Western media as a civil war, in Syria.
As well as Syria’s support for the Palestinian cause the regime supported Hezbollah, from its foundation in Lebanon in 1982, and was a key conduit for weapons from the Iranian dictatorship to reach the so called Axis of Resistance of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen. For the hardline religious fundamentalists in Israel this was viewed as an existential threat, while the West regarded any threat to Israel as potentially undermining its own ‘interests’ in the Middle East.
For the US this justified intervention, covert or otherwise, and regime change was clearly the agenda. Using Jordan as a base the CIA trained Syrian opposition, including those affiliated to Al-Qaeda, in a $1 billion programme, Operation Timber Sycamore. Britain’s MI6 played its part , using its base in Cyprus to pass intelligence to CIA backed rebels. By 2012 the so called Free Syrian Army had seized a number of Syrian towns and parts of the country’s main cities.
In spite of the massive external intervention on the part of the so called rebels the Syrian government, with assistance invited from Russia, not only withstood the bombardment but was beginning to bring about some stability to large parts of the country by 2018.
While the prospect of a united and peaceful Syria had certainly suffered massively following the wars of intervention waged since 2011, there was scope for a turning point in 2018. During the war the United Nations had delivered a programme of wartime humanitarian aid, to a country which had seen 600,000 dead and over half of its 23 million strong population displaced. When Syria asked the UN to switch its programme of wartime humanitarian aid to one of development in 2018, this request was blocked by the United States.
This brake on rebuilding was only one element of the ongoing regime change strategy of the West for Syria, following the failure to remove Assad militarily. The Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sharaa (HTS), an Al-Qaeda offshoot publicly branded terrorist by the West but in reality part of the covert funding of opposition to Assad, had been largely driven to the province of Idlib, bordering Turkey.
While containing the jihadi elements to one area of the country solved an immediate problem, allowing the Syrian government to give what little energy it had left to reconstruction, it simply stored up another. Idlib became a recruiting ground for jihadi fighters from across the globe, under Turkish protection, and the regrouping of these forces was a key factor in the final push towards Damascus in December 2024.
Any energy the Syrian government had for reconstruction following the wars of intervention was sapped by the US block on UN development aid, Western sanctions and the regular bombing of civilian and military targets by Israel. It is little wonder that discontent simmered and laid the groundwork for the HTS takeover in 2024, an outcome the West may yet come to regret
In reality any energy the Syrian government had for reconstruction was sapped by the US block on UN development aid, ongoing Western sanctions to undermine the regime and the regular bombing of civilian and military targets by Israel. It is little wonder that discontent simmered and laid the groundwork for the HTS takeover in 2024, an outcome the West may yet come to regret.
For the moment, Donald Trump is prepared to bask in the success of the long running regime change operation in Syria, in spite of the HTS being potentially unstable allies. The persecution of minorities in Syria, previously unheard of, is underway, the segregation of women in public places is being enforced and Palestinian organisations in Syria have been forced to shut down. It is without any hint of irony that Donald Trump, in spite of these characteristics of the HTS regime, states that “we will be dropping all of the sanctions on Syria…to give them a chance at a fresh start.”
In reality HTS is itself made up of diverse factions and is unlikely to be capable of overseeing national cohesion, being reliant on its backers in the US, Turkey and Israel. Syria becoming another fragmented country in the Middle East, like Libya and Iraq, is a distinct possibility, directly as a result of US and Western foreign policy.
However the regime change may be portrayed in the Western media, the outlook for the Syrian people is bleak and the prospects for peace in the region severely weakened, due to the US insistence on imposing its hegemony on the region.
Steve Bishop is a Liberation member and senior executive member of Liberation affiliate. CODIR. Read his review of a new book on Syria by former ABC News Chief Middle East Correspondent, Charles Glass, on our website.
This article first appeared in Liberation journal.
Photos: Creative Commons/Public Domain
The views expressed in the articles published on this website do not necessarily represent those of Liberation.
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