Leaders 11“A
ssad or weburn the country.” For years Bashar al-Assad’s
troops have daubed that phrase onto walls in the towns
they recapture. The insurgents pushed the dictator to the brink.
But Mr Assad shrugged off the empty threats of Western leaders,
and enlisted the help of Iran and Russia. True to his slogan, he
destroyed whole cities and gassed and starved his own people.
What rebels remain are holed up in Idlib province. It, too, will
soon fall. Against all the odds, the monster has won.
Yet it is a hollow victory. Far from bringing order to the coun-
try, as the Russians and Iranians claim, Mr Assad has displaced
half the population. Eight years of civil war have destroyed the
economy and cost 500,000 lives. Mr Assad has nothing good to
offer his people. His country will be wretched and divided. The
consequences will be felt far beyond its borders.
The precise moment of Mr Assad’s triumph will be deter-
mined in Idlib. About 3m people live there, many of whom fled
fighting elsewhere. The area is controlled by the hardest-core re-
bels, jihadists linked to al-Qaeda, who will not go quietly. That,
too, is a legacy of Mr Assad’s ruthlessness. He released hundreds
of jihadists from prison in 2011, hoping that they would taint the
once-peaceful, multi-confessional uprising. Now the regime is
bombing them, along with civilians and hospitals. The offensive
will take time—and it will be bloody (see Briefing).
When the fighting stops, the tensions that
originally threatened the regime will remain—
but they will be worse than ever. Start with reli-
gion. Mr Assad’s father, Hafez, a member of the
Alawite minority, clung to power partly by hold-
ing the line between the country’s faiths. His
son, though, painted his Sunni opponents as
fundamentalists as a way of rallying Christians,
Druze and secular-minded Syrians to his side.
Millions of Sunnis have fled the country, creating what Mr Assad
calls “a healthier and more homogeneous society”, but millions
remain. They have seen their homes looted, property confiscat-
ed and districts overrun by Assad supporters. Resentful, fearful
and oppressed, they will be a source of opposition to the regime.
Next are Syrians’ grievances. Back in 2011 corruption, poverty
and social inequality united the uprising. Things have only got
worse. Syria’s gdpis one-third of what it was before the war. The
unreckons that more than eight in ten people are poor. Much of
the country lies in ruins. But the government’s plans to rebuild
Syria risk tearing it further apart. Reconstruction will cost be-
tween $250bn and $400bn, but Mr Assad has neither the money
nor the manpower to carry it out. So he has focused resources on
areas that remained loyal. The Sunni slums that did not are being
demolished and redeveloped for his bourgeois supporters. His
cronies reap the profits, as the country’s class and religious fault
lines grow wider.
Then there is Mr Assad’s cruelty. Hafez kept Syria in check
with a brutal secret police and occasional campaigns of murder-
ous violence. His son, in danger of losing power, has tortured
and killed at least 14,000 people in the regime’s sprawling net-
work of clandestine prisons, according to the Syrian Network for
Human Rights, an ngo. Nearly 128,000 people are thought to re-main in the dungeons, though many are probably dead. Even as
the war nears its end, the pace of executions is increasing. Al-
most every Syrian has lost someone close to them in the war. Psy-
chologists speak ominously of a breakdown in society.
Last is Mr Assad’s debt to Iran and Russia. He owes his victory
to their supply of firepower, advice and money and their willing-
ness to back a pariah. They will expect to be paid, with interest.
For Syrians, therefore, Mr Assad’s victory is a catastrophe. But
his opponents are exhausted so, in spite of his weaknesses, he
could yet cling to power for years. And for as long as he is in
charge, Syria’s misery will spread across the region.
The war has already drawn in a handful of outside powers, but
the chaos could grow. Iran treats Syria as a second front against
Israel to complement Hizbullah, its proxy in Lebanon. Israel has
launched hundreds of air strikes on Iranian positions during the
war. One in August prevented Iranian and Hizbullah operatives
from attacking Israel with armed drones, the Israeli army says.
Turkey, which has troops in the north, is threatening to launch
an offensive against Kurdish forces, whom it considers terro-
rists, near its border. That could lead to a face-off with America,
which supports the Kurds and had been trying to calm the Turks.
Refugees will destabilise Syria’s neighbours, too. Those who
have fled Mr Assad do not want to go home—indeed their num-
bers will grow because of the offensive in Idlib.
The longer they stay in camps, the greater the
danger that they become a permanent, festering
diaspora. They are already unsettling host coun-
tries, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey,
where many locals accuse them of draining re-
sources and taking jobs. Turkey is sending some
back, even to places like Idlib.
And that could spill over into the wider
world. Dispossessed at home and unwanted abroad, refugees are
at risk of radicalisation. Mr Assad’s ruthless tactics have left large
parts of his population bitter and alienated. His prisons will in-
cubate extremism. What better breeding ground for al-Qaeda
and Islamic State (is), which the American government says is
already “resurging in Syria”? In May America dropped 54 bombs
and missiles on jihadists in Iraq and Syria. That number rose to
over 100 in each of June and July.
Having failed to act in the war’s early days, when they might
have pushed the dictator out, Western countries can do little
now to change Syria’s course. Some European leaders think it is
time to engage with Mr Assad, participate in reconstruction and
send the refugees home. This is misguided. The refugees will not
return willingly. Reconstruction will only benefit the regime and
the warlords and foreigners who backed it. Better to let Russia
and Iran pay.
Instead the West should try to spare Syria’s suffering by offer-
ing strictly humanitarian assistance and threatening retribution
for heinous acts, such as the use of chemical weapons. America
should stay to keep isand al-Qaeda in check. But for as long as Mr
Assad is allowed to misrule Syria, most aid money would be bet-
ter spent helping its neighbours. Syrians have suffered terribly.
With Mr Assad’s victory, their misery will go on. 7Assad’s hollow victory
The dictator is on the verge of vanquishing his enemies. But Syria will poison the region for years to comeLeaders