Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2024. © Richard Kemp

The overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria is down to Hamas. The terrorist group’s invasion of Israel on October 7 last year triggered a chain of events that severely weakened Iran and consequently left its Syrian client exposed. Alongside Russia, Tehran had been propping up Assad since the rebellion against his rule that began in 2011. During its defensive war following the October 7 massacres, however, Israel inflicted huge damage on Iran’s two most important proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In addition Iran itself was revealed to be a paper tiger during the damaging counter-strikes that followed Tehran’s largely ineffective missile barrages against Israel.

Spotting the opportunity, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with an eye both on the destruction of Kurdish forces in northern Syria and his broader expansionary Islamist agenda, gave the green light to his terrorist proxies in Syria to move. Speaking to the media, he all but admitted that his intention was to bring down Assad. Most strikingly, in a lightning offensive Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) burst out from Idlib, leading a collection of other armed groups in seizing the major cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and now Damascus.

Given the Assad regime’s monstrosities, many in the West have been enthusiastic about its fall, with some even hailing HTS as the good guys, led on by the apparently reasonable rhetoric of their leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

Not so fast. We can see many echoes of Afghanistan in what’s been happening in Syria. A similar power vacuum emerged there after Joe Biden pulled US forces out in 2021, leading to an astonishingly rapid Taliban advance. As in Afghanistan, demoralised Syrian government forces collapsed in the face of the jihadist march, with many melting away and some switching sides. In some places political accommodation has also been achieved by local leaders who preferred not to fight.

But remember also how in 2021 the Taliban tried to convince the world that they had changed from the group that inflicted such brutality on the country before being ejected 20 years earlier. Their spokesman said they would not seek revenge on those who had collaborated with Coalition forces and the US-backed government, and would even respect women’s rights and press freedom.

We know how that worked out. Well, HTS is trying the same trick now. Jolani has even gone so far as to declare that ‘diversity is a strength’. He has suggested that the people of Syria have nothing to fear and that his intent is to decentralise governance in the country, with the various ethnic and religious groups being freed to rule their own areas.

No doubt this was an effort to diminish resistance as HTS advanced and also to gain some kind of acceptance among gullible Westerners. But we should not forget that HTS is a jihadist group with origins in Al Qaeda, including the remnants of the group led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Palestinian Jordanian known as the ‘sheikh of the slaughterers’. Wherever they have had authority, they have inflicted abuse.

So if HTS does emerge out of the fall of Assad as the country’s new rulers, we should be under no illusion that what will follow will be any more palatable. If anything the situation is likely to be even worse, and not just for human rights in Syria.

Assad is a life-long enemy of Israel, and allowed Iran to use the country both as a transit route for munitions for Hezbollah in Lebanon and to build a base of attack against the Jewish state. But direct Syrian aggression against Israel has been limited by Russian influence as well as Assad’s desire for greater acceptance across the Arab world. No such restraint is likely to apply under HTS rule.

The HTS jihadists have been seizing weapons wherever they have found them. Now there is every likelihood that vast stockpiles of munitions, including chemical weapons, armoured fighting vehicles, combat planes and missiles will fall under their control.

To mitigate that nightmare scenario, the Israeli Air Force appears to have been striking critical weapons depots. That might turn out to be not just a service to their own country but to other nations and forces in the region as well.

For the time being, HTS have their sights set on control within Syria. But it is not credible that they will not turn their attention beyond the borders in time. And that may not be limited to aggression against Israel: there is every likelihood that Syria is once again about to become a major exporter of jihadist terrorism.

Before welcoming the rise of HTS, we should bear in mind that the enemy of my enemy can still be my enemy.