00:00 - 00:02
What we’re witnessing unfold right now is truly historic.
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A political regime has literally taken a week to collapse.
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By the looks of it, the root cause of that dramatic tumble
wasn’t the military superiority of its opponents.
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The biggest thing is that nobody has stepped forward
to fight for it. That’s the way dictatorships tend to fall.
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Today, we have a pretty accurate idea
of a typical battlefield dynamic.
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If anything, we do know for a fact that even a shred
of resistance is capable of slowing down the enemy offensive.
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The regime fall and the capture of a country’s
capital city happening in a matter of days
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only means that no one has stood up for it.
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Both the armed forces and the government
have come down crashing.
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Later on, we’ll delve
into the Syria-specific context.
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But even without getting into the details, such a meteoric
collapse is indicative of the regime’s real backbone.
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This meteoric collapse shows us that the regime was predicated
on violence and violence only, propped up by foreign troops.
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As soon as Russian and Iran ran out of spare troops
and proxy forces and their support crumbled,
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the regime was toppled in a heartbeat.
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Over the past two-plus years, we’ve witnessed
the way actual governments resist the invading troops.
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The Ukrainian army fights to protect its home country,
and the locals have been joining the resistance.
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These people know full well
their country’s existence is at stake.
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But now, let’s get back to Syria.
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In all likelihood, most Syrians’ reaction to what has just happened
falls somewhere in between indifference and elation.
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That’s the way the ball bounces for regimes
like this whose legitimacy is rooted in fear.
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Disloyalty leads to repression.
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Once the regime can no longer club its citizens into compliance,
fire at them, and torture them in prisons, it’s toast.
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However logical, this swift and inglorious fall
of a dictatorship still strikes one as remarkable.
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There’s no political crisis unraveling.
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There’s no heated controversy. No one
predicts the regime’s imminent decline.
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It just collapses in a day.
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But it happens because a dictatorial rule
has no feedback loop with the public.
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Far from it, the regime goes to great lengths
to make sure the public doesn’t stand in the way.
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The public is being repeatedly told
they are unable to make a difference.
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Instead, they are supposed to follow the government
rulebook they have no say in drawing up.
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At a critical juncture, whether it’s an ex-con leading
the battle tank convoy or an Islamic insurgent force,
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the public keeps following the rulebook
the government has forced them to abide by.
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As long as the government has an unlimited grip
on power and we don’t have a say, we won’t intervene.
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When they start lynching you on lamp posts,
it’ll be every man for himself.
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Each time a collapse as massive
as this one occurs,
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the observers find it hard to come
to grips with the fact it’s over with.
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Yesterday, the regime looked all mighty, dominant,
and impregnably, but today, bam, it’s no longer.
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No international allies that have been pouring so many political,
financial, and human resources into the regime’s survival,
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not even Vladimir Putin who’s gone the extra mile
to support it, will stand a chance to prevent its undoing.
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For us, that’s perhaps
the most interesting aspect of it.
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Assad wasn’t just your garden-variety
terrorist-leaning tyrant from the Middle East.
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In reality, he was largely a puppet ruler
only backed by Iran and Russia.
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Saving Assad was Putin’s largest
project of the mid-to-late 2010s.
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That project helped the tiny Wagner squad
grow into a proper PMC.
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The project involved the waste of enormous
amounts of money and manpower.
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It took years to reinforce the Assad regime.
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That rescue effort was viewed
as a major geopolitical success.
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The propaganda was trying to spin it
as Putin’s triumphant international crusade
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trumping the Americans, the Turks,
and the rest of the lot.
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The gargantuan amounts of Russian
taxpayer money, the lives of Russian soldiers,
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and the diplomatic efforts to legitimize
Assad’s rule have been squandered for nothing.
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The years-long operation propelled by countless
billions of dollars has become immaterial overnight.
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Apart from the dictatorship's fall dynamic, it’s a story pointing
to the idiocy of the junk rationale behind the so-called geopolitics.
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The mammoth efforts and resources expended
to prop up the geopolitical genius
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at the top of the mountain for several
years have been razed in a flash.
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Those who could now be having a career doing something
of value have been squandered and buried in a faraway desert.
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The money that could’ve been spent domestically
or invested in foreign assets has been blown away.
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All those moronic pseudoachievements intended
for the telly and cello concerts amid the rubble,
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featuring Sergei Roldugin, Putin’s backend
fortune-holder, have turned into waste.
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And they seemed to have come to grips
with it and switched to the Pokrovsk offensive.
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What do you mean Aleppo?
What about it?
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The previous efforts and campaigns matter no more.
05:06 - 05:12
The costliest drive to put the puppet regime
on life support has now laid an egg.
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Who cares if it would’ve collapsed nine years ago.
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It doesn’t make much of a difference.
It’s a clunker of a show.
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It would’ve been funny, had it not involved multiple Russian
deaths and the obscene amounts of money squandered.
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The dictatorial regimes collapse in a heartbeat and fade into
total oblivion along with their erstwhile foreign policy shenanigans.
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We’ll now proceed to give you more context and specificity,
but given the rarity of the occurrence, let’s recap it
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The violent regime that three weeks ago
looked solid and impregnable
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has apparently been redacted to the former
dictator’s attempt to flee the country.
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And it’s yet another project attempted by Vladimir Putin
that’s been consigned to the boneyard of history.
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And he himself has given up on it,
as befits the nature of the project.
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However seemingly successfully,
they are rendered nonexistent in the blink of an eye.
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WHAT HAPPENED?
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Let’s put together a timeline, though.
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The Islamist militants sprang out
of their Idlib strongpoint.
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They went on to capture the country’s
major cities of Aleppo, Hama, and Homs.
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The latter is a major logistics hub that,
until yesterday, was the loyalists’ last-ditch hope.
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But as it fell, the insurgents continued their Damascus-bound
roll while cutting off Lattakia and Tartus governorates,
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the ones that house a Russian
air base and naval facility.
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Tahrir al-Sham’s blitz jolted everybody else
into action as well. Southern Syria saw a revolt
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if the regime opponents in Daraa Governorate.
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They quickly seized control of the predominantly
Druze-populated Suwayda and Jaramana,
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the latter sitting three kilometers
away from Damascus.
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The Jaramana Druze residents that used to be
violently oppressed by the Islamists and known
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as the brave pro-government warriors unexpectedly
opposed he regime and toppled a Hafez al-Assad statue.
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It runs contrary to the Druze tradition of being extremely
loyal to the incumbent government of a country they live in.
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Their insurgency may benefit Israel as the Druze can
set up a buffer area between Israel and the Islamic forces.
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Some reports claim that the IDF has crossed the border
and spread throughout the border governorate.
07:40 - 07:47
According to other reports, Israel has bombed the Damascus
ammo dumps to prevent the insurgents from getting hold of those.
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Southeastern Syria is home to a U.S. military
base controlled by the U.S.-backed forces.
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Their drive helped them swiftly capture Palmyra
and roll toward Damascus from the north-west.
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The claim about them being moderates, however,
isn’t something we’d necessarily take to the bank.
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The otherwise neutral Kurds, too, decided
to expand the area under their control this time.
08:14 - 08:18
Their offensive kicked off in their
self-proclaimed autonomous administration area.
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They took the city of Deir ez-Zur.
08:21 - 08:27
To be fair, the Kurds are being assisted by
the Assyrians, Christian Arabs, and other minorities,
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collectively known
as the “Syrian Democratic Forces.”
08:31 - 08:39
If President Erdogan has been planning on
crushing the Kurds, he may have misjudged it.
08:39 - 08:46
Amid the teardown of the Syrian statehood, if they are lucky,
the Kurds may even improve their hand like never before.
08:46 - 08:53
The government troops have fled the scene,
letting the enemy scoop up 1,000s of pieces of military hardware.
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Those include battle tanks, IFVs, artillery pieces,
missiles defense systems, fighter jets, and helicopters.
08:58 - 09:05
There’s video footage of the militants figuring out how to pilot
a Mil Mi-8 helicopter by watching the how-to videos on YouTube.
09:05 - 09:10
In 2024, the shape of the government armed
forces is much worse than it was a decade ago.
09:10 - 09:15
Even at the lowest point in the civil war,
some units carried on fighting for their president.
09:15 - 09:18
Some even continued striking back
from inside the pockets for years.
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Now they are no longer fighting back.
09:21 - 09:24
As of this recording, Bashar al-Assad’s
whereabouts can’t be confirmed.
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Rumor has it that his family was jetted to Moscow.
His elder son has been studying in Moscow.
09:29 - 09:32
In November 2024, he earned a Ph.D.
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On the morning of Dec. 8,
the PM who’d stayed in Damascus
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was videotaped surrounded by a bunch
of bearded rifle-wielding rebels.
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He’s pledged to hand the power over to the militants.
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However, it’s unclear which ones.
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If the publicly available videos are anything to go by,
they started lynching people in Damascus.
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But this information can’t be confirmed.
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TOTAL EROSION
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Unimpeded, the Tahrir al-Sham militants
rushed toward Damascus.
10:04 - 10:11
Allegedly, this came as a shocker to their major backer,
Recep Erdogan, as he only staked a claim to northern Syria.
10:11 - 10:14
Tahrir al-Sham isn’t part
of Turkey’s regular troops.
10:14 - 10:16
It’s a terrorist group.
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So, Erdogan can’t just order them to stop.
10:19 - 10:25
His only option is now throwing his support behind their
Damascus drive and pretending everything goes as planned.
10:25 - 10:33
But he was rumored to be expecting the pro-Assad troops
to retreat, only to later halt the offensive at a different location.
10:33 - 10:40
But why did it only take ten days for the government
army and the government itself to collapse?
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We’ve briefly broached this subject,
but let’s get back to the events of 2016.
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Back then, the Assad regime was surrounded
by ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their satellite groups.
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However, it was the Russian army’s
involvement that helped Assad pull through.
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In 2016 and 2017, the government wrestled
back control over most of the Syrian territory.
11:00 - 11:03
It looked like the Syrian Arab Republic got a shot.
11:03 - 11:09
But 2016 saw another event, seemingly
a minor one, which proved crucial.
11:09 - 11:15
Anisa Makhlouf, Bashar’s mother,
passed away aged 85.
11:15 - 11:19
Her passing reignited the infighting among the country’s
elites as they vied for the contested assets.
11:19 - 11:24
“Since the Russians helped us out, it’s high time
we got back to our clan skirmishes,”
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the three families, including the one
of Bashar’s wife, must’ve thought.
11:31 - 11:36
Bashar al-Assad, a trained eye doctor,
ascending the throne was purely accidental.
11:36 - 11:41
Throughout much of his rule, he was often swayed
by his spouse and taken advantage of her family.
11:41 - 11:46
Roughly the same thing happened in 2000
following the death of Bashar’s dad.
11:46 - 11:52
A ruthless Hafez al-Assad could keep
his family members in check. But his son couldn’t.
11:52 - 11:57
Even back then, the elites began scrapping it all
out and embroiled the country into the civil war.
11:57 - 12:04
Following Anisa’s death, it only took
eight years for the Syrian state to collapse.
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We’ll pick it up after a brief commercial.
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Let’s keep rolling.
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Between 2017 and 2024, the Syrian elites couldn’t be bothered
by funding, equipping, and training the armed forces.
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No trenches or pillboxes were ever set up.
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Instead, they were busy
divvying up the property.
13:51 - 13:57
2020 saw the downfall of Assad’s cousin,
the country’s richest tycoon.
13:57 - 14:03
Syria’s downward spiral reached an ultimate
low point where Bashar’s younger brother
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took charge of a cartel selling Captagon,
a popular stimulant drug.
14:08 - 14:10
That story outraged the leaders
of the neighboring states.
14:10 - 14:15
Mind you, Maher al-Assad was an army general
in charge of the 4th Armored Division,
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an elite formation tasked
with protecting the country.
14:19 - 14:24
The same went for Gen. Suhayl al-Hassan,
a flamboyant and undefeated military leader.
14:24 - 14:28
Over the past years, he, too, was involved
in the behind-the-scenes tussle.
14:28 - 14:31
Besides, he had a falling-out
with another general over politics.
14:31 - 14:37
While Suhayl advocated for Syria’s alliance with Russia,
many of his colleagues were rooting for a pro-Iranian stance.
14:37 - 14:40
By 2024, the armed forces had
ultimately lost their combat-readiness.
14:40 - 14:45
A typical Syrian trooper is a Sunni Muslim.
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Should he refuse to fight
and change to civilian clothing,
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the militants who are Sunni Muslims
themselves won’t kill him.
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Unlike female civilians, he won’t be forced to wear
a face covering or stripped of his right to study or work.
14:56 - 15:06
Unlike the Assad regime, the militants will no longer allow them
to have fun at night clubs and drink booze in a posse of cute girls.
15:06 - 15:09
But a louche lifestyle isn’t something
a Sunni soldier would die for.
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Add to it the fact that he hasn’t been properly trained,
and the corrupt authorities didn’t sit right with him, either.
15:19 - 15:24
When it comes to the Islamic militants, the first image
that springs to mind is the one of dimwitted bearded guys
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whose vocabulary is reduced to “Allahu Akbar.”
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There are indeed plenty of those among their forces.
15:30 - 15:34
However, these groups aren’t
being run by utter morons.
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For instance, ISIS mostly revolved around
the army and intelligence officers from Iraq.
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The Americans could’ve won over their allegiances
following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
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Instead, they drove them away.
15:44 - 15:53
Tahrir al-Sham is led by a seasoned commando,
Abu Mohammad al-Julani who boasts an impressive track record.
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He’s also great at spotting the new trends
both in warfare and politics.
15:58 - 16:04
He picked up on the extensive use of FPV drones in
the Russo–Ukrainian War and got his hands on some of those.
16:04 - 16:09
The Syrian army, by contrast,
had no defenses against those drones.
16:09 - 16:15
On top of that, al-Julani mounted a propaganda
campaign targeting Syria’s ethnoreligious minorities
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whereby he vowed
he wouldn’t slaughter them.
16:19 - 16:23
For example, Tahrir al-Sham has posted photos of a Christian
church service taking place in militant-occupied Aleppo.
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Like, see?
Everybody’s alive and kicking.
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Which is a good thing, but truth be told, even ISIS
stayed out of killing Christians provided the latter paid
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a denomination-based fee
and thus protected their own right to live.
16:35 - 16:36
The same is true of the Jewish worshippers.
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However, the radical Islamists have always
sought to ethnically cleanse the Yazidis
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and the Kurds as well as Muslim renegades,
that is, non-Sunni Muslims.
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Those include the Alawites Assad belongs to.
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The photos taken inside the church
prove nothing, though.
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But the propagandist effect is there.
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Al-Julani himself tweaked his public persona, too,
by ditching the traditional Muslim outfit for military fatigues.
17:04 - 17:14
He has also become a self-avowed
“diversity-friendly Jihadist.”
17:14 - 17:20
Notably, early on, following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,
the Talibs also claimed they were the progressives.
17:20 - 17:24
But shortly afterward,
they switched back to radical Sharia
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to the point where the Afghan women
were barred from talking to each other.
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They were also stripped of their right to medical care
and, sure enough, education.
17:34 - 17:38
There’s nothing radical Islamists won’t vow to do
as long as it means they’ll face no resistance.
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But once they get a grip on power, it turns out they
adhere to a far harsher worldview than initially advertised.
17:45 - 17:49
THREAT TO RUSSIA
17:49 - 17:54
Russia’s operation in Syria commenced
in September 2015 and gained the momentum.
17:54 - 17:57
Many of the Syrian cities were liberated.
17:57 - 18:01
The siege was lifted. Assad’s secular
dictatorship was eventually reinstated there.
18:01 - 18:06
Putin sought to earn the bragging rights as the protector
of the Western civilization against international terrorists.
18:06 - 18:15
Palmyra hosted a major classical music concert starring
Sergei Roldugin at the former ISIS execution site.
18:15 - 18:18
Western media people got access to the Russian troops.
18:18 - 18:22
The air bombs were emblazoned with
“This for Paris markings,”
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following an ISIS Paris terror attack
that claimed the lives of 130 people.
18:25 - 18:28
However, Putin was reluctant
to see the operation through.
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Or maybe he didn’t know how to do it.
18:30 - 18:36
2017 saw the launch of the Astana Platform
featuring Russia, Iran, and Turkey.
18:36 - 18:42
The parties to the negotiation agreed on the creation
of de-escalation zones, with the largest one being in Idlib.
18:42 - 18:45
Putin thereby recognized Turkey’s control over Idlib.
18:45 - 18:52
Starting in 2017, tens of 1,000s of terrorists
and their families flocked to Idlib.
18:52 - 18:59
They boarded the buses, and strings of those buses
were taking them to Idlib as Russia guaranteed their safety.
18:59 - 19:04
It was supposed to be an agreement with Erdogan whereby
he may have taken control of a large chunk of Syria.
19:04 - 19:07
But at least the militants would be contained there.
19:07 - 19:12
But when it comes to the Middle East, agreements
only work as long as you’re exerting the power.
19:12 - 19:19
But now both Iran and Russia, Syria’s two major
allies, have found themselves on the backfoot.
19:19 - 19:26
The pro-Iranian Hezbollah could’ve lent Assad a hand,
had it not been pummeled and weakened by the Israelis.
19:26 - 19:31
Iran could’ve sent its regular troops,
but it apparently opted not to.
19:31 - 19:35
Perhas they were salty over Assad
refusing to join their Israel attacks
19:35 - 19:39
and barring Hezbollah from striking
Israel from inside Syria.
19:39 - 19:43
The Iraqis were yet another no-show, even though
they set out to help the Syrian government
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and boisterously sent large
military convoys several days ago.
19:49 - 19:54
The Russian army is totally focused on Ukraine
and couldn’t help Assad, either.
19:54 - 20:02
Most likely, the Russians will make an effort
to protect their bases in Lattakia and Tartus.
20:02 - 20:08
These two governorates are home to most Alawites
to whom the radical Islamists pose an existential threat.
20:08 - 20:11
So, the locals may be motivated enough
to keep up the defensive effort.
20:11 - 20:16
However, the Assad family statues
are being crushed in those regions.
20:16 - 20:24
By the way, many Islamist militants speak Russian as they hail from
Russia’s Muslim regions and post-Soviet Central Asian countries.
20:24 - 20:31
As we speak, they’re gaining combat experience in Syria
along with military hardware, including fighters jets and SAMs.
20:31 - 20:37
Putin’s Syria debacle and this country’s ensuing descent
into a humongous militant base may backfire on Russia.
20:37 - 20:41
These radical Islamists may eventually
set their sights on Central Asia, the Caucasus,
20:41 - 20:44
and even Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
20:44 - 20:51
We’re dealing with the part of the world where we can’t say
the forces of evil have just been routed by the forces for good.
20:51 - 20:53
This is another intrinsic aspect of dictatorships.
20:53 - 20:57
Any reasonable forces or political figures
are unlikely to survive amid a dictatorial rule.
20:57 - 21:03
The ones who survive are the ones who are on the same page
with the regime and can counter gunfire with gunfire of their own.
21:03 - 21:05
Liberal democracies are opposed at the polls.
21:05 - 21:10
Meanwhile, the biggest opposition
to dictators are similarly acting thugs.
21:10 - 21:13
Nonetheless, we’re witnessing
the inevitable being toppled.
21:13 - 21:19
A dictatorship rooted in violence has been
violently and effortlessly overthrown.
21:19 - 21:21
True, for a while, you can govern
and thrive off wielding the spears,
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but it’s only true for as long as your spears
are more lethal than those of your opponents.
21:26 - 21:28
There’s nothing good about it.
21:28 - 21:29
See you tomorrow!
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