Brian M Downing
When the Arab Spring came to Syria in 2011, popular protest was put down by government violence and terror. Civil war erupted. Sunni powers stepped in and armed rebel groups – lots of them. Government forces abandoned key border crossings and fell back into a redoubt in the west. Rebel groups controlled parts of Damascus and mortar rounds fell on government buildings. The Assad government was doomed.
Or so it seemed, even here at Downing Reports it must be noted. But 2 years into the conflict, the fighting fell into stalemate. This was before Russian airpower was brought to bear in 2015 and before chemical weapons were systematically used.
Why didn’t rebel forces take Damascus and end the war prior to the Russian intervention, as seemed not only likely but inevitable? Why did we get Syria so wrong?
The tide of democracy
By the time the civil war broke out, authoritarian rulers had been swept aside in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya had fallen. Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Mubarak was under arrest, and Qaddafi was shot dead in a gully by a civilian-cum-soldier. A new day was dawning and we greeted it with uplifting prose.
Western observers were influenced by their political cultures which saw democracy as both beneficial and inevitable. Democracy was prospering in Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics. The Middle East was catching up.
A tide there was, but it was not irresistible. Armies and foreign governments played oppositional roles where they could. Qaddafi, having no sizable army to keep him in power, quickly fell. Mubarak’s army was pleased to see him go, then bided its time before seizing power for itself. And Saudi Arabia strove to prevent democracy from taking hold in the region.
Democratic hues imputed on the opposition led to exaggeration of its progressiveness. It also blinded us, at least for a while, to the radical Islamism, murderous millenarianism, and increasing ruthlessness of many if not most rebel bands.
Disunity on the rebel side
Early in the conflict a group of Syrian ex-pats formed a council that supplied news from inside the country and offered the prospect of a provisional government that would soon take its place in Damascus. The council presented an appealing image of a united people determined to depose Assad.
However, the council was never able to speak for the growing number of rebel militias, let alone command them. In time, council members bickered among themselves and receded into irrelevance.
Rebel bands were no less united. They refused to form a unified command and at times fought each other more than they did Assad’s troops. Even among Islamist forces, of which there were many, unity of command and goals was elusive. It was commander versus commander, militia versus militia. Hobbes had come to the Levant.
Foreign powers agreed on ousting Assad but little else. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, and the US backed differing Sunni forces and contributed mightily to disunity.
Unity on the government side
Syrian forces had far more unity. They were Shia and Alawi who had a long history of facing Sunni oppression. Indeed, that outlook constitutes a basis of the Shia faith. As Sunni rebels increased in numbers and ruthlessness, Shia forces in the western redoubt dug in.
Iran sent in IRGC troops and patched together militias it recruited from across the region. Hisbollah, another Iranian-trained force, entered the war on the side of Damascus and took very high casualties. Despite coming from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan, Shia troops were able to operate in a far more unified manner than the Sunni rebels, probably due to Russian and IRGC advisors.
The black box of government forces
Western advisers, journalists, and aid workers traveled into Syria and provided valuable insights regarding rebel forces. ISIL and al Nusrah troops showed remarkable cohesion and tenacity. Many other forces were ill-disciplined and reluctant to face enemy fire.
We had no such insight on Syrian forces. Most footage showed clean faces in tidy uniforms posing for the camera – propaganda for public consumption. Iranian and Russian advisors certainly gained insights but they were hardly disposed to share them outside their own military and intelligence services.
An inference came: Syrian troops were outnumbered and beleaguered, probably on the brink of disintegration. The occasional deserter seemed to be a harbinger of large-scale defections, perhaps of entire battalions. It never happened.
We got it wrong and Assad remains in power.
© 2019 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.