FOr once: The use of the word “historic” is justified to describe the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad after more than 50 years of brutal dictatorship, 13 years of civil war and a world of suffering. The people of Syria, or at least most of them, are cheering. You should enjoy the moment. You deserve it. It commemorates the celebrations that accompanied the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. But such memories carry a warning and a threat.

The warning is that joy can quickly turn to tears and liberation to renewed oppression when the sudden collapse of hated but relatively stable authoritarian structures triggers an inexorable descent into chaos. The danger is that the resulting political and military vacuum will be contested by self-interested actors interested not in justice and reconciliation but in power and retribution. In Syria, revenge is served hot – and it’s back on the menu.

The beginning of the campaign to overthrow Assad can be traced back to Daraa in southwest Syria, the scene of a popular revolt in 2011. The successful advance of the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is also related to this. from Idlib in northwest Syria to the capital Damascus is a fitting conclusion: a people’s revolution by the people for the people. Still, no one can yet say what kind of Syrian future is envisioned by HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, a former al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist and wanted terrorist who has renamed himself “National Liberator.” HTS has a list of human rights violations and authoritarian rule in Idlib.

Many Syrians reportedly flocked to the HTS banner as Jolani’s forces advanced south. But other groups with different goals and interests are quick to take advantage of the crisis. These include a coalition of Kurdish-led nationalist militias in the northeast – the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces; Turkish-backed rebel groups known collectively as the Syrian National Army; and opposition groups in the south, united in hatred of Assad but perhaps not much else.

Can the pre-war Syrian mosaic – multi-ethnic, multi-religious, unusually tolerant and secular – be put back together? Is Jolani a man fit to lead a nation? Who else could prevent an anarchic territorial and political break? Nobody has answers to these questions yet. The regime’s prime minister, Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, announced that, unlike the miserable Assad, he is staying put and is ready to cooperate with the insurgents. Brave words and hopefully not his last.

The challenges that lie ahead of us are truly enormous. More than 300,000 people died in the civil war, although some estimates put the number at twice that number. Since 2011, around 100,000 people have been missing or have been forcibly disappeared. Where are they? Now a terrible reckoning begins. Half of the population – around 12 million people – are displaced. Tens of thousands were detained without trial, tortured and ill-treated. Their prisons are now emptying, sending a flood of angry, bitter, physically and psychologically scarred and vengeful people back into a broken, already dysfunctional society. Millions of refugees in Turkey and Jordan could return home en masse. There is a risk of humanitarian and security disasters.

Destructive foreign interference – central to Syria’s history since the start of the war – is another very real threat if things fail. The fall of Assad represents a major defeat for his main sponsors, Russia and Iran. Vladimir Putin moved to Syria in 2015 after then-US President Barack Obama backed down and prioritized counterterrorism over supporting pro-democracy forces. Russian Air Force bombers, along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, kept Assad in power. Putin’s reward was military bases and greater influence. All of that is now at risk.

For Iran, Syria’s collapse is just the latest in a series of setbacks related to Israel’s response to the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023. Israel’s denigration of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran’s main ally in the so-called regional “Axis of Resistance” , deprived Assad of another important support and made Iran’s position more vulnerable. His embassy in Damascus is reportedly under attack. His diplomats fled. But neither Russia nor Iran will give up. They will try to shape the new order to their advantage, regardless of what is best for the Syrian people.

The same applies to Israel, which has repeatedly bombed alleged Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Damascus and elsewhere in Syria in its campaign against Hamas and other Iranian supporters. Tehran sees Israel’s hand in overthrowing Assad. Although perhaps not intentionally, Israel – by abiding by the law of unintended consequences – certainly helped to undermine him. Now it worries about a failed state on its border that has control of Assad’s chemical weapons and a possible renewed Islamist-jihadist threat.

Speaking of own goals: Former soccer player Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Türkiye, is clearly in the lead. He is believed to have given HTS the green light to launch its offensive after Assad rejected his attempts to create a border buffer zone inside Syria. Erdoğan is obsessed with the Kurdish “threat” from northern Syria and Iraq. He may now send more troops across the border. But did he really intend to destroy the regime and unleash chaos across Syria? Perhaps Erdoğan could explain how this serves Türkiye’s interests.

Unless one believes the darker conspiracy theories, the US, UK and Europe were just as surprised by the events as Assad. That in itself is an alarming intelligence failure – but then again, the West’s record throughout the Syrian war has been one long, miserable failure. People largely watched as terrible suffering, mass displacement, war crimes, the illegal use of chemical weapons and other horrors took place. His occasional interventions – such as Donald Trump’s one-off bombing of regime military facilities in 2017 after a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhun in Idlib – served more to assuage the collective conscience than to bring about real change. Now the West is playing spectators again – even though the threat of state failure is urgent. “It’s not our fight,” Trump says smugly.

There is also no point in asking our Arab neighbors in the Gulf for help at this critical moment. Just over a year ago, Assad managed to shatter his well-deserved international pariah status at an Arab League summit in Riyadh. He was celebrated by, among others, Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman. The not-so-diplomatic message was that Assad was back. Rehabilitated. The world could do business with him again.

Incorrect. Assad was a monster and still is. Wherever he goes, he should not sleep peacefully. In the meantime, it is up to the Syrian people to save Syria. Nobody else will do it.

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