Syria is not dead, it is occupied. The two biggest NATO militaries, the Israelis and their Al-Qaeda styled terrorist proxies occupied one third of the country before 8 December 2024, now they occupy 100%. The “transitional” government led by UNSC listed terrorists, has a way to go before it receives either local or international approval; and armed and civil resistance have already emerged.

The HTS (Jabhat al Nusra, Al-Qaeda) regime has no revolutionary or democratic mandate and its sponsors are scrambling to rebrand it (HTS is still listed by the UNSC as a banned terrorist organisation) as democratic and inclusive. No doubt they will find some token collaborators. Many Syrians are reinventing themselves to survive and, in some cases, find a role in the new regime. Yet according to the UNHCR, after the HTS offensive, another million people have been “newly displaced” while few of those who fled the dirty war are returning.  

Yet in face of the tragedy of the Al-Qaeda takeover, there is a revival of Syrian values, a phenomenon neither reported by the Anglo-American media nor its media allies in Turkiye and Qatar. As with the Israeli crimes in Gaza, we have to turn to social media to find detail of (1) the crimes of the al-Qaeda regime (2) more fake and exaggerated propaganda against the fallen Assad regime, used to justify the foreign occupation, and (3) the emerging civil and military resistance to the occupation. It is precisely this resistance which tells us that the Syrian nation is still alive.

Assad is gone and it is inconceivable that he will return. Many who were close to him remain bitter about the manner of his rapid exit. He surrendered - under what circumstances we still do not know - leaving a vacuum into which the foreign occupation moved rapidly.

It is clear that there was a failure in the Syrian Army command, including its commander in chief, though not necessarily in the will of Syrian Army soldiers. Some groups of Syrian soldiers have already resorted to guerilla style attacks on the sectarian terrorists. It is sheer ignorance to label these brave soldiers simply regime or Assad “loyalists”. They are defending an independent and inclusive Syria and its constitution, which is now under serious threat.

There has been much speculation about the role of Russia and Iran in the collapse of the Assad government. Some otherwise quite sober analysts refer to Putin “backstabbing” Assad. I cannot see evidence of any such betrayal, except to the extent that Russia’s support for the Syrian Army’s fight against proxy armies always had the limits of not directly confronting "Israel" or Turkiye. Iranian explanations for the collapse of the Assad government run along these lines: Iran warned Damascus about the threat since September and offered direct help, but Assad declined such help, wanting to distance himself from Iran and gain some sort of economic breakthrough with the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

He may have been misled by false promises but, in any case, he did not call for Iranian help. In those circumstances, uninvited, Iran could not fight in place of the Syrian Army. Sources close to the Syrian Army told me that Assad made some inexplicable changes in senior commanders, sidelining some of the more capable generals. Certainly, Syria had been under tremendous economic pressure, and that must have weakened its capacity to resist. Yet in the end, there was a failure of the Syrian command leading to Assad’s surrender. By the same reasoning, as regards Russia, I tend to agree with Helena Cobban’s first proposed explanation: that “Putin decided he could not save the Assad government if it could not save itself.”

While Syrians now adapt to survive under HTS rule, many hoping that their lives will be “free” or go on as normal, there can be no doubt that a great tragedy has fallen on them. Never mind the sustained propaganda war against Assad, an al-Qaeda led regime propped up by predatory foreign powers is the worst of all outcomes for the Syrian people. The Israelis, battered in Gaza and Lebanon, have had a “free kick” in Syria, racing in to occupy large parts of the south and bombing all the major defence infrastructure of the country. The fall of the Assad government was thus also a major setback for the Axis of Resistance, the only real ally of the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance.

In the first few days, while the Western media reported that sectarian violence was “less intense than feared”, there were dozens of sectarian murders across Syria. The crimes of the HTS regime began in a sporadic rather than a systematic way, as Jolani and his henchmen tried to brush up their image, for their sponsors. But the sectarian character of HTS had not changed. While in early 2011 sectarian terrorists chanted “Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave”, in December 2024 the pro-Jolani crowd chanted, “Homs is for Sunnis, Alawites must get out”

Western think tanks like the Washington based CSIS prepared the ground for the rebranding back in 2023, saying that “HTS’s status as a terrorist group … grows increasingly complex”. After the fall of Damascus, France 24 observed that the “West” was looking at “normalisation” with the UNSC listed terrorist group, as it was regarded as having become more “moderate”. Certainly, in helping topple the independent Assad regime, the group was serving the interests of the US, Turkiye and the Israelis.

Syrians looked for some hope in the new rhetoric which claimed that, despite its bloody history, the HTS regime pledged “tolerance” for minorities and women. Many Syrians waved the new flag, as a form of protection, while former Syrian soldiers rushed to seek an amnesty from the new regime, fearing reprisals. Many were arrested and jailed.

Yet HTS crimes were filmed and published, like the sectarian murder of two soldiers who were called “Nusayri [Alawi] pigs”. There are now social media accounts documenting the crimes of the HTS regime and others documenting acts of resistance.

Related News

The fall of Syria: A NATO, Zionist and Gulf state operation

Palestine, Syria, and the sickness called defeatism

Nevertheless, the Syrian nation remains because there is resistance, civil and armed. Armed guerilla style attacks on the HTS forces took place on the coast between Jableh and Latakia (14 December), at Talfita in rural Damascus (20 December), and through another ambush by former soldiers in Tartus (25 December) which killed 14 and injured 10 HTS fighters, as people in Daraa stoned the invading Israelis and brave crowds mounted demonstrations in Ummayad Square, Damascus, demanding elections, women’s rights and an end to sectarian attacks. In an attempt to normalise this violence Reuters reported that Syrian “police” had imposed a curfew “after unrest”.

There were similar demonstrations in Homs, in Aleppo, by Christians in Christian areas of Damascus and in Tartus, against sectarian policy and practice. In Tartus, the old slogan which pledged loyalty to Assad ("with our souls with our blood") became a pledge of loyalty to Syria from people of all religious sects.

After the Christmas attacks in Tartus, huge HTS reinforcements were seen moving to the coastal cities, amid reports of Sunnis joining Shia, Alawite, and Christian protesters in demanding that foreign fighters be expelled from the country. Jolani has suggested that these foreign fighters might be given Syrian citizenship. Yet there are thousands of foreign extremists in Syria (Chechens, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Afghans, Albanians, Europeans) in the ranks of the NATO-backed HTS coalition.

In efforts to cover the history and crimes of the HTS gangs - and to divert from the Israeli crimes against Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria - Western media went into overdrive to rehash the supposed crimes of the Assad regime. I addressed many of these claims in my 2016 book The Dirty War on Syria.

In brief, ‘false flag’ massacres were used to impose an economic blockade on Syria in 2012; the various chemical weapons claims (2013-2018) were also all false flags: attacks carried out by US backed armed groups, then falsely blamed on the Syrian Arab Army. Most of the accusations of abuse had to do with captured or wounded terrorist fighters, which the Western media called “political opposition”. In the case of “mass graves”, unlike those created for the civilians and doctors killed by the Israelis in Gaza, in Syria the mass graves were for terrorists killed in large scale operations.

The notorious case of “Caesar”, a worker from the Damascus morgue who defected to Qatar in 2014 with photos of dead bodies, involved a claim that all dead bodies in this wartime morgue were “opposition” prisoners who had been tortured to death. Yet even the US-based Human Rights Watch, which ran constant false propaganda against Syria during the dirty war, was forced to admit that more than half of the photos were those of “government soldiers, other armed fighters, or civilians killed in attacks, explosions, or assassination attempts”.

In short, exaggerated claims against the Syrian army were run to cover the far worse and better documented sectarian atrocities of the ISIS and HTS gangs, crimes which led to Jabhat al Nusra, HTS and ISIS being listed as terrorist groups by the United Nations Security Council. What this means for recognition of an HTS led Syria is interesting. Of course, Washington wants to legitimise its triumphant proxy in Syria but to do so would undermine its already fragile claim to be “fighting terrorism” in multiple countries; so it may prefer the creation of a weak coalition of HTS and HTS collaborators, individuals chosen from minorities and the former government. At the UNSC level, a unanimous decision of the council is needed to lift the ban on HTS, otherwise an asset freeze, travel bans, and an arms embargo is expected of every country.

Overall, what Washington wants in Syria is mainly the destruction of the independent will which allowed it to ally with Iran and support the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance. That mission has been achieved, for now. What comes next is less important for the US and its forward base "Israel", but could mean (a) long term sectarian fighting as in Libya, after Gaddafi was deposed, or (b) an Iraqi style dismantling of the state into a weak, sectarian federal system. In each case, the aim is to prevent the restoration of a state with independent political will.

There were earlier plans for the partition of Syria, both from the French colonial regime and various options floated in relation to the US ‘New Middle East’ project. These plans typically involved an Alawi statelet on the coast, some sort of Druze protectorate in the south, perhaps a Kurdish region in the north east and a “Sunni” heartland ruled by Salafist extremists. However any such partition is now subject to several constraints: first is the extent to which a post-Assad unified Syrian resistance is able to undermine rule by the fractious coalition of HTS and foreign extremists; second is the claims by Erdoğan over parts of the north and his demand to eliminate Kurdish separatists who would use any Kurdish enclave in Syria as a springboard for separatists within Türkiye; third is the extent to which the Israelis will try to annex parts of the south and the mountains between Syria and Lebanon. There is no indication that the HTS regime would oppose the ambitions of the Israelis or of Erdogan’s forces, all of whom provided substantial support to Nusra/ISIS/HTS.

A fourth constraint is the UNSC resolution 2254 of 2015, which Washington and its minions used against Assad but may now become an obstacle for the HTS regime: the resolution demands maintenance of the territorial integrity of Syria, “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance”, a new constitution followed by “free and fair elections”. Regional Arab countries are more or less on board with UNSC 2254, as are Russia and China. While UN officials are notoriously compliant to the demands of the big powers, calling the HTS regime a “flame of hope”, UNSC resolutions will certainly influence international legitimacy.

For now, the HTS regime has neither revolutionary nor democratic mandate, so it is liable to overthrow by the same methods which brought it to power, until there is a real democratic mandate. That places a heavy burden on the Syrian Nation: can it resist by civil and guerilla warfare methods a sectarian occupation regime supported by NATO’s two largest armies plus the Israelis, who have already wiped out most of the country’s defence infrastructure? Nevertheless, as we have seen in many other countries, and even against great odds, while there is resistance the nation survives.

Iran believes the Axis of Resistance, the key support for Palestine and Lebanon, will maintain its strategic and moral high ground against the Israelis and will adapt to the challenges of the fall of Damascus. Former Iranian IRGC chief commander Major General Mohsen Rezaei adds that, in his view, the Syrian resistance will rise rapidly. “In less than a year, Syrians will revive the resistance in their country in a different way and neutralize the evil and deceitful plan of the US, the Zionist regime” and their collaborators.

While we can understand that many Syrians will test all possible options to survive under the current regime, those outsiders who celebrated the fall of Assad and naively shared the slogans of a “Free Syria” should appreciate that they are applauding a great victory for the Israelis and for the US strategy of smashing the main supply line to the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance. Iran will ensure that that supply line will be rebuilt. Just as the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance are battered but resilient, the occupied Syrian Nation is down but not out.