Following the fall of Assad’s regime, one will be hard pressed to find many public fans and defenders of the former Syrian president’s legacy. For the most part, the criticisms of Assad and his record are entirely justified. Some criticism, however, reflects opportunism on the part of some Western fans of the ‘resistance axis’, whose effective position prior to the regime’s fall was that whatever reservations one might have had about the dictatorship, police state and human rights’ abuses, one needed to stand by the regime as a pillar for the ‘resistance’ in the face of the greater evil of ‘imperialism’ and the ‘dirty war’ being waged on Syria by the United States (‘US empire’) and its allies. I am aware of course that they will now deny that this was their position, but I cannot see how any one who listened to or read their output would not have drawn the conclusion I have just outlined. At best, the problems of Assad’s regime as a dictatorship and other shortcomings would only be mentioned in a cursory way, all very much secondary to the greater evil of the United States and the ‘sectarian jihadists’ of al-Qa‘ida and Islamic State it was supposedly backing.
Following Assad’s fall, these same ‘resistance’ fans are effectively jumping on the bandwagon and complaining that among his other flaws, Assad was just not committed enough to the axis and war with Israel! In particular, they are holding it against Assad that he apparently rejected requests to open a war front on the Golan against Israel.
It is notable that this same sort of criticism has its parallel in their criticisms of the new government in Syria: namely, they lambast it for refusing to engage in an armed confrontation with Israel over its incursions beyond the Golan Heights, mostly into parts of al-Qunaytra and Deraa governorates. Ultimately, this line of thinking is very much the mirror image of stereotypical ‘neocons’ and ‘hawks’ who reflexively insist on military action and armed confrontation for generalized reasons such as demonstrating strength, not appearing ‘weak’ and avoiding ‘appeasement,’ without giving considered thought to the particular circumstances, specific aims and strategy. And so, far from being ‘anti-war’, some Western ‘resistance’ fans are in fact war-mongers, insisting on armed confrontation with Israel, seemingly for the mere sake of notions of ‘resistance’ and ‘steadfastness’, without properly considering circumstances, aims and strategy. Criticism of Assad for not opening up a Golan front against Israel is one aspect of this warmongering. More troubling still is that some of these ‘resistance’ fans have promoted or bought into the concept of an eventual ‘great war’ that supposedly leads to the destruction of Israel.
Following the fall of Assad’s regime, one will be hard pressed to find many public fans and defenders of the former Syrian president’s legacy. For the most part, the criticisms of Assad and his record are entirely justified.
That Assad did not want to open a Golan front and engage in a military confrontation with Israel is not somehow reflective of a secret alliance between him and Israel (a conspiracy theory that was notable among some opposition supporters) or a cynical attempt by him to betray or undermine the ‘axis of resistance’. Rather, a stance of non-confrontation was simply a matter of rational thinking on his part. He knew that his own forces, weakened and preoccupied with internal fronts, could not take on Israel’s military capabilities. With hindsight of course, we can now say that his forces were suffering a far greater internal rot than most observers (myself included) had supposed, and there is little doubt that opening a Golan front would have resulted in Israel marching into Damascus, likely in a matter of days.
Beyond Assad’s own general approach of non-confrontation with Israel, however, the criticism of some Western ‘resistance’ fans now directed at him raises the following question. Was Assad somehow being pressured by his two main allies in the ‘axis of resistance’- namely, Iran and Hezbollah- to open a front while he stubbornly refused their requests? I found such claims implausible when they were being made during the course of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and I still find them implausible now. Indeed, a recent article by Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the pro-‘resistance’ Lebanese outlet al-Akhbar (H/T: Sam Heller), further casts doubt on this picture of Assad pushing back against supposed Iranian and Hezbollah pressure to open a Golan front. In fact, al-Amin says that following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, it was the decision of both Iran and Hezbollah (the former acting on the advice of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah) that Syria should not be turned into an additional ‘support’ front against Israel:
If Nasrallah did indeed fear that Israel could quickly dismantle the military capabilities of Assad’s forces, we now know with hindsight that it was a very justified fear, given how quickly and easily Israel has managed to destroy much of what was left of the military assets abandoned by Assad’s forces as they melted away. In any event, the assessment fits with a point I have made previously that Iran and Hezbollah were not necessarily intervening in Syria as part of a plan or expectation that Syria should be turned into an additional war front against Israel. Rather, their primary interest was in maintaining Syria as a reliable conduit and supplier of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah.
For what it is worth, I do not think that in organizing, training and raising various units of the LDF, the Iranians and Hezbollah were trying to undermine Assad in a cynical scheme by creating a parallel ‘Syrian Hezbollah’ army that he would have no control over.
However, al-Amin also touches on another matter I think worth highlighting for historical purposes. In terms of what happened on the ground, his account concurs with some of my prior research on the Iranian and Hezbollah networks in Syria. Specifically, al-Amin says that problems began to emerge between Iran and Assad in 2021 with regards to pressure from the latter to incorporate personnel from Iranian and Hezbollah-backed formations (which operated under the ‘Local Defence Forces’- LDF) into the regular Syrian army: pressure that Iran and Hezbollah acceded to. He writes:
In the terms of the facts, the picture concurs with what I have previously written about how large numbers of LDF personnel (in particular those who were wanted for military service in the regular army) were transferred to the army. Put another way, Assad (for understandable reasons) wanted consistency in application of laws on military service, and the Iranians and Hezbollah eventually felt compelled to agree to his requests. This in fact agrees with what I recently heard from the person who led an LDF unit called the ‘313 Force’ (one of the LDF units I profiled some time ago, and which observers reading my work on these groups liked to cite). He too confirmed to me, as many others have done previously, that many LDF personnel were transferred to the regular army. He characterised the Iranians and Hezbollah as having been ‘compelled’ to agree to these transfers. I should also add that he too denied to me the notion that Iran and Hezbollah were pressuring Assad to open a Golan front against Israel.
For what it is worth, I do not think that in organizing, training and raising various units of the LDF, the Iranians and Hezbollah were trying to undermine Assad in a cynical scheme by creating a parallel ‘Syrian Hezbollah’ army that he would have no control over. Rather, they saw the decrepit state of the Syrian army, the way it was hollowed out by heavy casualties (especially among officers in the early stages of the war), corruption and harsh terms of service, and problems of combat ineffectiveness. The units they helped raise had personnel from both the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and Hezbollah taking command roles and were better financed, and proved more attractive alternatives for many who wanted to evade compulsory service. That the Iranians and Hezbollah agreed to Assad’s requests for transfer of LDF personnel to the army was also likely influenced by the fact that Syria’s conflict was effectively ‘frozen’ in the period 2020-2024, and there was likely a perception that with the war seemingly having wound down, there was less military justification for maintaining LDF units.
It is of course a cliché that history is written by the winners, but that does not mean that writers should buy into every narrative about the war that has come from the winning side, just as we would almost certainly not have allowed the Assad regime to dictate the narratives if it had won the war.
Al-Amin’s figure for transferred personnel on paper (25,000) may be an undercount if going by some recently discovered Iranian documentation on the number of LDF personnel in comparison with prior internal documents on LDF personnel. However, it is certainly the case that the transfer into the regular army meant substantially worse conditions of service, providing incentive for personnel to desert. For example, one person I know (Sunni, from al-Hasakah province in the northeast) who previously served in an LDF unit was transferred to the Syrian army. This meant a 70% reduction in salary (from $100 a month to $30 a month). He simply decided to call quits and deserted some time before the final collapse. He had been repeatedly asking me to help find him paid work!
In short, the opportunistic criticism levelled by some Western ‘resistance’ supporters against Assad for not opening a Golan front is not only indicative of a war-mongering mindset detached from military reality, it also likely gets the facts wrong: rather than Assad back-stabbing his main ‘resistance’ allies when they needed him most in the conflict with Israel, those allies likely understood (correctly) that opening a front on the Golan against Israel would have had disastrous consequences.
More broadly, now that Syria’s main conflict between the regime and insurgency has finally come to an end, future writers will now be able to look back and write complete histories of that conflict, no longer wondering writing of a stalemate and freezing of the frontlines in their own day. One side of course clearly emerged as victor (the insurgency/the opposition). It is of course a cliché that history is written by the winners, but that does not mean that writers should buy into every narrative about the war that has come from the winning side, just as we would almost certainly not have allowed the Assad regime to dictate the narratives if it had won the war. A proper examination of the case of Assad and his relations with Iran and Hezbollah over the course of the war should lead to pushback against some more simplistic notions that were popular in earlier years of the war and portrayed Assad as not being a real decision-maker in his own right, but rather a figure of authority in name only, with his foreign allies supposedly calling the shots. More detailed examination of these issues will hopefully be possible through researchers gaining access to documents and being able to conduct interviews in a freer environment in the new Syria.
