Dyer: Sunni muslims take their shot in Syria

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One week in, the cease-fire in Lebanon seems to be holding, but everything is connected: only three days later, the civil war in Syria started up again after a de facto four-year truce.

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In just a few days more the Sunni Muslim fanatics of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, burst out of the north-western province of Idlib where they had been confined since 2016 and captured Aleppo, Syria’s second biggest city.

The Syrian army has withdrawn completely from Aleppo, and its spokesperson said “the multiplicity of battlefronts prompted our armed forces to carry out a redeployment operation aimed at strengthening the defence lines in order to absorb the attack, preserve the lives of civilians and soldiers, and prepare for a counterattack.”

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“Redeployment” usually means “retreat,” and at last report, HTS forces were advancing on the city of Hama, almost halfway to Damascus. This may not be a replay of the Western scramble out of Afghanistan and the Taliban victory of 2021, but the future of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is certainly at risk.

However, two things are different this time. One is Assad has the unwavering support of Russia (whose air force is already striking the rebel forces from its bases in Syria). The other is a large number of Syrians (all Christians, all Shia muslims and an indeterminate number of Sunni muslims) prefer even Assad to the rule of the HTS fanatics.

It’s no coincidence that the war in Syria restarted just as Hezbollah was defeated in Lebanon, since Lebanon and Syria were part of the same province for most of the last thousand years. The French divided them in 1920, ostensibly because there was a big Christian minority in Lebanon.

One-third of the Lebanese are still Christians, but what drives the country’s politics now is the rivalry between Shia and Sunni muslims. Each accounts for about a third of the population, but the Shias have dominated Lebanese politics in recent decades because they had their own powerful army, Hezbollah. That army has now suffered a grave defeat.

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Syria also has a Shia minority of 10 per cent and 15 per cent of the population, which dominates Syrian politics.

For Sunnis in both Lebanon and Syria, the Shias are the main enemy. Once the Israelis had decimated Hezbollah’s forces in Lebanon during the past two months, therefore, it was only natural for Sunni extremists in Syria to have another go at overthrowing their local Shia enemy, the Assad regime.

It is far from certain they will succeed, but HTS has caught the Assad regime with its pants down and is building momentum that will be hard to resist. What would happen if Assad and the Shias actually lost power in Syria?

It would be a catastrophe for the people of Syria, who would end up living under an Islamist tyranny that would be even more repressive and brutal than the current regime. On the other hand, it could be a boon for the long-suffering Lebanese, whom Hezbollah keeps dragging into wars with Israel that most Lebanese would rather avoid.

But it is too early to say whether any of the dominoes will fall, let alone all of them. It’s just as likely HTS, successor to al-Qaida and ISIS and now making such rapid progress in Syria, will over-extend itself, and the Syrian army, Russian air power and quiet support from Egypt and the Arab Gulf states will drive the jihadis back.

That would be the least bad outcome, although it is certainly not a good one. If you doubt that, look at the images of HTS fighters moving south. Half of them show men with a single finger pointing to the sky: “There is only one God, and we will impose his rule.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist based in London, England.

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