Why Did Syria Really Fall To HTS?

Written by Robert Inlakesh

As the dust now settles, following the fall of the Syrian government that was led by former President Bashar al-Assad, analysts are seeking to pick up the pieces and explain how a 13-year-long regime change war finally succeeded at fulfilling its primary objective. The truth is upsetting to most and the direction Syria is headed remains uncertain, yet there are still routes forward that may prove promising in the future.

How The Regime Change Occurred

On November 27, 2024, a collection of armed groups, that were led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, launched an offensive from the Idlib Province against the Syrian government-held territory of Aleppo. The timing of the attack coincided with the exact day that the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire had gone into effect. While announcing that ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asserted that then Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was "playing with fire".

An informed source, close to the former Syrian government, had at the time informed TLAV that the US had attempted to make Damascus party to the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire agreement. The proposal, that was apparently rejected by Bashar al-Assad, was to have Syria cut its weapons supply line with Hezbollah in return for easing sanctions.

However, in the background, the armed groups that operated under the Idlib province's "Salvation Government", were reportedly preparing for some kind of offensive and were amassing forces -- this took place over a month prior to actually launching their assault. Iranian aligned militia forces, such as the Zainabiyoun and Fatimayoun, who had previously been placed in defensive positions, were also relocated to the city of Palmyra, located in the center of the country and away from potential combat zones.

The question of how the publicly exposed preparations for an Idlib-based offensive was not met with serious preparations from the Syrian Arab Army and its allies, still remains unanswered. As do the strange occurrences when it came to repositioning militia forces who could have been used to repel such an attack.

When the offensive began, there was some fighting that occurred in the country side of Aleppo, however, many of the troops were ordered to pullback to defensive positions. This was not so unusual during the course of the Syrian war, as strategic withdrawal was routine. Yet the withdrawal orders never actually ended and there were no real defensive lines set up. Suddenly, within days, the Syrian Arab Army appeared to have evaporated as Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and others moved forward to capture new positions with ease, forcing the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) -- who are based in the North East of Syria -- to intervene in a bid to protect Kurdish neighborhoods.

By December 2, Aleppo had been all but completely taken over by the Syrian opposition factions; it only took them three days. After speaking to three separate Syrian sources on this matter, all informed TLAV of "high level" treason, as they put it. Additionally, another contact who had spoken to the Mayor of Aleppo said this was also his understanding of events. A former Syrian Arab Army source stated:

"The Generals were paid off and betrayed their leadership."

One informed source, who was close with the Syrian leadership and later fled the country, had told TLAV that "Damascus will fall within a week" and that the former Syrian Defense Minister had been arrested. Although I personally approached this information with caution and avoided jumping to conclusions, he was almost bang on with his prediction, as it only took about eight more days for the Syrian government to completely collapse.

While all the details are still murky and it is not clear who struck deals with whom, the overarching theme I was hearing behind the scenes was that there was a kind of coup that had taken place within Syria. This explanation works to unpack why there was no fighting inside the major cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus, before they were taken over by a myriad of western-backed extremists. While there was certainly fighting by elements of the Syrian Arab Army in the countrysides surrounding these cities, backed up by both Russian and Syrian air strikes, the cities all fell without any fighting, they were handed over. Although there were small battles and the Russian military claimed that over 1,000 Syrian opposition militants were killed, there was no real war that occurred.

The orders given by Generals could explain why many areas suddenly fell and Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops withdrew, yet it is not the only reason to factor in to the toppling of Bashar al-Assad's government. During the height of the war in Syria, some Syrian military units had successfully fought off the opposition for months, surrounded in small enclaves and without any access to supply lines. This was demonstrably not the case this time around.

What has to be factored into the collapse of the Syrian Arab Army is the low morale facing the conscript force. On the ideological level, those who fought and sacrificed their lives between 2011 and 2018 in the fight to defeat the Syrian opposition, had done so not for the sake of Bashar al-Assad as many analysts have tried to argue. They fought for the vision of returning Syria to its pre-war state and purging the sectarian al-Qaeda linked organizations that had become the most powerful groups to take over the opposition block.

For years, groups like al-Nusra (now Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham), Jaysh al-Islam, Nour ad-Deen al-Zinky, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Ahrar al-Sham, Daesh, and a myriad of others, had terrorized Syrian communities through their sectarian bloodshed. Although each was slightly different and some were less oppressive than others, these groups were well documented as having used child soldiers, employing suicide bombers, committed beheadings, burnt and skinned people alive, even eating the organs of SAA soldiers and foreign fighters they had killed. There were also countless documented cases of torture and field executions -- much of this sectarian violence being driven by extremist ideologies that were intolerant of difference.

Many Syrians, especially minority groups like the Christian denominations, Druze, Kurds, Shia and Alawites, were genuinely petrified of these sectarian groups, all of whom received foreign backing, arming, and funding. There was also an understanding from amongst a large portion of Syrians that the United States, along with the Arab Gulf countries and Turkey, were all conspiring to overthrow their government. Similar regime change operations had resulted in complete disaster -- even when "successful", such as in Libya and neighboring Iraq -- inspiring further fear of what a collapse of Bashar al-Assad's government could look like.

The Israelis were also backing at least a dozen Syrian opposition groups, including al-Nusra (now Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham), with the clear goal of working with them to topple Bashar al-Assad, so that they could create a 10 mile deep buffer zone inside of Syria's south and stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

However, the fighting all but ended in 2018. This occurred as a result of the Astana agreements -- struck between Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the Syrian government -- with the establishment of a buffer zone surrounding the Idlib province, that was the sole remaining territory in the hands of the Syrian opposition. This was also the same year that the Syrian government decided to stop responding to Israeli airstrikes against its territory, while also allowing for American mercenary groups to maintain their occupation of al-Tanf along the Jordanian border. In addition to this, the US-backed SDF held onto North East Syria, depriving the people of Syria of the nation's most fertile agricultural lands, as American personnel were deployed to secure to al-Omar oil fields.

In 2019, US President Donald Trump introduced the Caesar Act sanctions against the Syrian government, which isolated it even further and led to a drastic decline in living standards for average Syrian people. During this period, some 90% of Syrians living in government areas were plunged below the poverty line. Many Syrians couldn't afford basic goods or to fill up their vehicles with gas; even eating meat had become a luxury. Subsidies were also withdrawn from various areas in the country, including to the predominantly Druze populated communities of the south that had been loyal to the government throughout the war.

In such an environment, the nation became more susceptible to infiltration and the people more open to taking bribes. In addition to this, there was also the emergence of criminal gangs who engaged in the trade of Captagon and other illicit drugs. At a time when even the smallest amount of corruption was more visible than ever, it was clear amongst all Syrians that it was rampant.

What is very important to understand, is that for anyone who fights for a cause, like was the case inside Syria, they are often capable of sidelining major issues in pursuit of that cause -- often issues that their own leadership share or even crimes they have committed. This goes for both sides in this conflict, which explains why so many secular leaning Syrians could support an opposition that is led by hardline religious extremists, along with foreign mercenaries and corrupted officials who receive orders from a myriad of intelligence agencies. There is an emotional investment in their vision of the future, which is often rather imaginative, blinding people to what they see as underlying and background issues.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed fighting for their own visions of Syria, or in other cases their own personal interests, which meant that the fallout from all that death and destruction was always going to leave people isolated. While geopolitics and an understanding of western Imperialism may factor into your ideology, if you are displaced, lost family members to the conflict, and/or cannot afford to buy food, all of that goes out the window.

In the end, for the Assad government side, what vision was the conscript army fighting for and what roadmap for the future had been presented to them? Would fighting another war bring a new economic reality, would it force through fundamental reforms and restore Syria to the stable nation it was prior to 2011? Without any clear answers or sense of morale following the fall of Aleppo, there was never much hope in the Syrian Arab Army overcoming a situation in which elements of its leadership had decided to turn against the government it had once served. Therefore there was little hope that the willpower on the level of the individual was going to hold out for long, despite the immense fear of what was to come at the hands of the many "opposition groups".

Although the bleak picture painted above is not entirely complete and misses some key elements that the future may yet reveal, it does somewhat work explain why the Syrian government collapsed so rapidly and without much fighting at all. What it also demonstrates is that the US/EU-imposed sanctions ended up working just as designed, and through the long-term strife and demoralization of the Syrian people (revealingly the very group the West claims to fight for) regime change was achieved.

What Is Next?

Answering the question of what will occur in the future is an impossible task at this stage, but there are a myriad of factors at play which could indicate the direction Syria is now headed.

To begin with, there is now a new Syrian transitional government, led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), at the helm of which is Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. The overwhelming corporate media impression of the new regime in Damascus is that it has liberated the nation from the tyranny of dictatorship, and that despite HTS's extremist past, they are headed towards moderation. On the other hand, skeptics and regime change opponents have argued that this is an Al-Qaeda led government that cannot be trusted.

HTS is simply a rebrand of Jabhat al-Nusra, which was created as Al-Qaeda's Syria branch. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani on the other hand was a former Daesh commander, who, like other extremists who formed Daesh, had been held in Camp Buka by the US occupation forces in Iraq. He later splintered off from Daesh to head the Syria wing of Al-Qaeda, yet, following the rebrand of his organization to HTS, he publicly severed ties to Al-Qaeda. Despite HTS fighting alongside Daesh at different junctures of the Syrian war (while it was referred to as al-Nusra) it is still being dealt with today as a rational actor.

While the history of HTS is important to understanding the group, a look at the group and how it operated inside the territory of Idlib gives a greater indication of what may be to come. In November of 2017, HTS and a collection of other armed groups agreed upon the formation of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), which was supposed to rule over Idlib. The SSG ended up turning into little more than a symbolic organization that was headed by a collection of different characters, many of whom were openly pro-US and even pro-Israeli.

The SSG was supposed to be the only entity that had its own prisoners in Idlib, for instance, yet HTS violated this understanding and secretly ran its own jailing facilities. Even pro-opposition activists like Bilal Abdul Kareem were arbitrarily detained by HTS in Idlib, who testified to being incarcerated by HTS militants and hearing the screams of people being tortured during his imprisonment. HTS was also accused of hiring child soldiers and carrying out countless human rights abuses -- including field executions -- while operating as the most powerful faction inside Idlib. This even triggered frequent protests against Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and HTS from some residents in the territory.

Will this be the case now that Abu Mohammed al-Jolani controls Damascus? In short, HTS and Abu Mohammed al-Jolani don't actually have much power at the current moment. In 2021, Jolani's image rebrand was initiated, he appeared on an interview with PBS in a suit and had trimmed his beard, parting ways from his former persona as a bushy bearded leader sporting military fatigues. Upon the fall of Aleppo to HTS forces, Jolani then began to resemble Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Why would I claim that HTS doesn't really hold the keys to Damascus? It is simple. Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham is made up of paid mercenary type militants, leaders who work with foreign intelligence agencies, but then much of its rank-and-file are hardened militants who truly adhere to its al-Qaeda-style ideology. So, inside this group, you have those in its leadership structure who are paid to perform their duties and men like Jolani. Divisions between the base of the group and its leadership already appear to be rearing their heads.

On the question of Palestine for instance, there are countless videos of HTS fighters raising their guns and pledging to liberate al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, but then when it comes to the HTS leadership, they fear the prospect of even criticizing Israel's ongoing invasion of Syria. When Syria's new transitional Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir -- who like Jolani also underwent a provided makeover to have him appear more presentable to the West -- gave his first address in front of the new Syrian Flag and an Islamic Flag, it triggered an immediate backlash. Many Syrians who supported the regime change that was achieved by HTS, were enraged to see a flag bearing the Shahada (Muslim profession of faith) behind their new PM, as they hope to see the pluralistic Syria that Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has been promising.

In the very next address given by al-Bashir, the Islamic flag was then removed, which then triggered a smaller backlash from those who fought to create an Islamic State. This is a major issue for HTS, because they built themselves up as an internationalist Islamic group that sought to build a Caliphate, but have more recently had to refashion themselves as a Syria-centric national liberation movement. Although the transition has not yet sparked major infighting, such a transition is no simple task.

Now that Bashar al-Assad is out of the picture, the Syrians who despised him will now undergo a period in which their jubilance will begin to expire and they will wake up to the situation in front of them. This may take some time, but eventually the Syrian people are slowly going to start wanting to have an influence on how their new State is shaping up and the kinds of policy positions that are being adopted. So too are the many western-backed armed groups that continue to operate inside Syria.

The US government still currently holds all the cards when it comes to the success or downfall of the HTS government. Washington is currently leveraging its sanctions, terrorist designations, foreign aid, control of Syria's resources, and the potential it has to activate armed groups throughout the country. Also in this mix are British, Israeli, Qatari, Turkish, Saudi, German, French, and a collection of other intelligence agencies that all have their own cards to play inside of Syria.

Meanwhile, Israel is carrying out frequent airstrikes across Syrian territory, eliminating most of Syria's military capabilities, and while it continues to seize even more territory, its occupation forces move into Quneitra, conquer the entire Golan Heights region, and even advance into Dara'a. This is significant because the Israelis entering Dara'a specifically is indicative of the Syrian opposition's failure to actually capture the country, as this is where their revolution began. For people who believe that the Syrian revolution just declared victory, the very place that it began is now falling under foreign control.

Meanwhile, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and his new Syrian transitional government are only interested in condemning Iran and Hezbollah, both of which are no longer present in Syria. When it comes to Israel, they dare not even issue a statement condemning the ongoing invasion, let alone attempt to repel the Israeli military. Even if Jolani wanted to fight against Israel, he knows that the second he makes such a decision there will be an airstrike ordered on his position. In other words, the HTS leadership are in a state of full submission to the US government and other foreign actors.

At some point, this situation will have to change out of necessity. With the converging interests of foreign powers inside of Syria, particularly when it comes to Turkey's role that may present issues for the US, there will be infighting, protests, and the configuration of power will shift. This is likely why the Israelis instantly decided to eliminate Syria's military capabilities. It will eventually prove impossible to keep elements of the Palestinian resistance out of Syria altogether, while on the other hand there are countless groups and political movements inside of the country that could end up forming alliances to either pressure or fight the new Syrian government.

There are also many elements of the former Syrian army that could end up factoring into future equations. There is even the chance for a Syrian resistance front to eventually open up against the Israeli occupation of their territory.

In the case of Sudan, after the overthrow of its former leader Omar al-Bashir, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and military formed a transitional government. This government was pressured by the US to normalize ties with Israel and adopt neoliberal economic policies, as Washington used terrorist designations, foreign aid, sanctions, and debt elimination as tools to pressure it. However, in this case the nation still could not come to an agreement that would allow for a civilian government to take power and has descended into catastrophic civil war. Syria is more complex and has many more converging interests at play.

This isn't to say that further violence and civil war is certain, but the likelihood of at least some level of armed conflict is extremely high. In the end, it will come down to the will of the people to fight for a new Syria and what will emerge as a result of that determination to forge a future. There is a lot of pain that has to be overcome and alliances will have to be struck between groups that analysts never believed to be possible. Overall, this is not the end for Syria, nor is it a liberation, it is only the beginning.