No one expected the swift rebel takeover of Aleppo when I was visiting Damascus last month, though almost everyone I met there seemed to think that “something was cooking.” And during my short sojourn, I felt that, too.
For starters, nothing about life in Damascus has felt coherent or sustainable since relative quiet befell the country in 2020. Inflation is so high that I found myself having to help relatives not so much carry groceries from the store, but carry the heavy bags of cash required for them to run their daily lives. The Syrian lira trades at about 1.5 million for every 100 U.S. dollars, and a trip to the food market can cost almost as much as a trip to the supermarket in the U.S. — except in Syria the average salary of a government employee, say a judge, is barely $40 per month. The wealth disparity has been sending grandmothers and children dumpster diving, while a restaurant that serves sushi can be packed with patrons ordering more food than they can eat.
But the economy collapsed years ago, shortly after the onset of the uprising-turned-war in 2011. What startled me this time was the relaxed posture of the state security forces, which I had not seen before, not even during the country’s “best years” leading up to the uprising. It made little sense that while Israel was striking specific Iranian targets in the Syrian capital almost on a daily basis, Assad’s security apparatus was nowhere to be seen.
Of course, Assad’s loyalists — however few of them might remain — have not been immune from the collapsed economy, the desire to emigrate if they get the chance or the daily hustle to make ends meet. After years of attrition from the war followed by a near-total reliance on Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, there is hardly a security apparatus to reckon with.
That said, the lack of a state of emergency or anything of the sort from the Assad regime did make me wonder whether, at the very least, Assad had grown indifferent to the targeting of his Iranian protectors or perhaps even grateful to be rid of them.
Indeed, at least until last week, there seemed to be some signs that the Syrian authorities were making Damascus just a little less hospitable for the Islamic Republic officials who have been calling the Syrian capital home. For example, the Syrian security forces rolled back approvals for residential tenancies of Iranian renters. (Since the Syrian war, regime security forces in Damascus have instigated a “security vetting process” for anyone trying to rent a residence in the city, and now it seems that Iranian nationals will find it much more difficult, if not impossible, to get approval to have their name on a rental lease.) While I was there I even learned about an Iranian school that was shut down and security forces going door to door in some Damascus neighborhoods asking homeowners if they were renting to Iranian nationals. And of course, it goes without saying that Syrian residents who live in the neighborhoods most targeted by Israeli airstrikes are unhappy about any Iranian presence in their midst, which makes them feel as if they, too, have a target on their back. (Although the Israeli airstrikes in Damascus are relatively precise in hitting their targets, they still result in the loss of innocent civilian lives and damage to property.)
In the days before the fall of Aleppo, there were many indications that Assad was trying to shirk his Faustian deal with Tehran, to whom he owes his political survival and several billion dollars in financial assistance. Earlier this year, after several high-ranking Iranian officials were killed in high-precision Israeli airstrikes during their visits to Damascus, Tehran sent its own investigators to find the security breach. According to analysts who follow the Islamic Republic closely, it is not lost on Tehran that the security breach had to have come from the Syrians, even if it may not be 100% clear whether responsibility lies with the upper echelons of Assad’s security forces or with Assad himself.
At any rate, up until just last week, Assad’s apparent disentanglement from his Iranian connection came in combination with moves that hinted at his rehabilitation in the region and, as I’m sure he hoped, internationally. For starters, the UAE Embassy had reopened in Damascus for the first time since it shut down in the early years of Syria’s war in protest over Assad’s brutal suppression of peaceful protests. And there was an expectation that the Saudi Embassy, too, would reopen soon. Assad was even invited to attend the Extraordinary Arab and Islamic Summit in Riyadh, where once he was considered persona non grata but earlier this month was given a platform to deliver a speech about the genocide in Gaza. (That no one pointed out the irony of one mass murderer shaming another is beside the point.) There were also steps taken toward reconciling with Jordan, even though Assad has turned the kingdom bordering Syria into something of a modern-day caravansary for the illicit trade of Captagon, the cheap amphetamine pressed into tablets that has been flooding the region. During my time in Damascus, in a gesture of goodwill, the Syrians released and returned “with a full pardon” a Jordanian journalist who had been wrongfully imprisoned for seven years.
Among the Damascenes I encountered, who as always are avid consumers of the news and ever so attuned to the geopolitics of the region and the mood within the regime, the writing on the wall was clear. Assad appeared to be asleep at the wheel while Israel continued picking off Iranian targets — his supposed allies — sometimes striking mere blocks from his residence without any kind of reaction.
Though life in Damascus has continued uninterrupted, the mood in the country’s capital has changed overnight following the takeover of Aleppo. The road from Damascus to Aleppo has shut down. After hearing the news, some merchants in Damascus did not open their shops, and many college students did not attend class, especially at the campuses located on the outskirts of the city. Rumors of an impending coup began to circulate. People panicked and flooded the supermarkets, loading up on provisions and, I’m told, toilet paper. Some Damascenes with means and foreign passports are already packing up to leave, unsure what the coming days and weeks might bring to their city.
Though the fear felt by an already tired and traumatized people is palpable, it is perhaps overstated — at least for now. There were no coup attempts, and Damascus is well fortified and buffered from Aleppo by the governorates of Homs and Hama, even though the rebels have made some incursions into the latter, and could conceivably breach the capital from Suwayda in the south, though this remains unlikely.
But elsewhere in Syria, a reemergence of the brutal targeting of civilians by Assad’s and Putin’s forces might have already begun, with airstrikes ongoing in Idlib and Aleppo. For his part, Assad has already launched a flurry of diplomacy, reaching out to the countries with which he has ties, including the UAE, Iraq and Jordan, and repeating his usual language about “fighting terrorists” — his go-to term to describe everyone from the unarmed protesters who took to the streets in the early days of the uprising to the fighters he later released from his own prisons to bolster the ranks of the Islamic State group. On Sunday, state television showed him with his usual smiles while meeting an Iranian entourage.
For now, with the region ablaze amid Israel’s war on Gaza, its tenuous cease-fire with Lebanon and a Turkish bid to create facts on the ground before Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump moves into the White House, Assad is likely to muster enough help from a slew of reluctant allies who would rather keep the devil they know. Then again, just like the surprise at Aleppo on Friday, anything could happen.
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