Suddenly the unsustainability of the régime comes to the fore

 

 Robin Yassin-Kassab:


 'It remains to be seen, but this moment is immensely important. We don’t quite know where it’s going, and it’s come kind of out of the blue. Everything was frozen for years, and suddenly, years-worth of events have happened in a few days. So it’s immensely important.

 HTS is still an authoritarian Islamist organisation, but it’s greatly moderated. It split definitively, first from ISIS, then from al-Qaeda. It fought ISIS. It split from al-Qaeda. It purged the al-Qaeda people and the extremists in its ranks, and it’s tried to really moderate and become a Syrian organisation rather than a transnational jihadi organisation. It doesn’t threaten the West.

 It doesn’t have a religious police like ISIS had. It doesn’t go out arresting people for infringements of its behavioural code. It’s built good relationships, or much better relationships than in the past with Christians and other minority groups, and to an extent it tolerates opposition. I mean, in comparison with the Assad régime, it tolerates opposition; and you know there have been demonstrations against HTS in Idlib for months on end. Because they arrest people for political reasons, and sometimes torture them. If that was in Assad territory, the protesters would all be shot dead, or arrested and tortured. But in HTS territory, it’s quite a bit more tolerant.

 And then, it’s great to see, it’s really quite surprising to see, that in Aleppo today, now that they’ve arrived in Aleppo, they seem really very disciplined. Much more disciplined than I would expect. They’ve clearly learned a lot of lessons. There have been no verified attacks on minorities. Women are walking around freely without hijabs. The electricity is on, and they’re presenting themselves as a national group here to get rid of the dictatorship, and then allow the people to decide what comes next.

 I don’t know if the conditions are there at the moment. It really depends on what’s happening in the next hours. But they could be. Because, remember, when the Assad régime took Aleppo back from the Revolution, from the people of Aleppo, at least Eastern Aleppo, back in 2016, it didn’t do it with the Syrian army. 80% of the ground forces fighting for Assad were Iranian-organised Shia militias from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan; and the airforce was Russian, it was Russian bombers.

 The Assad régime is hated by at least four-fifths of the population. It has expelled thirteen million people from their homes. It’s killed hundreds of thousands, and it’s cratered the economy and civilian infrastructure. So, people don’t like it, and it’s been kept in power, frozen, by foreign powers, mainly Russia and Iran, but also others too. Russia, of course, is preoccupied in Ukraine at the moment. And Iran’s militia system in the area, in the region, has just been hammered as a result of the Israel War. So, now that the backers of the régime are much weaker, then suddenly the unsustainability of the régime comes to the fore, and I think that’s what’s happened.'