On November 27, a coalition of armed opposition groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched an offensive against government-held positions in Aleppo and Idlib provinces in northwestern Syria. Less than two weeks later, they rolled into Damascus as President Bashar al-Assad and his family flew away in an unknown direction.

The disintegration of the Syrian regime’s army occurred spectacularly quickly. It is reminiscent of similar collapses in Afghanistan – when the Taliban captured Kabul from the Afghan government after the withdrawal of US forces – and in Iraq, when ISIL (ISIS) invaded in 2014 and took Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in days.

The successes of HTS, the Taliban and ISIL (ISIS) were due both to their mobilization and internal cohesion – or “asabiyya,” as the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun would call it – and to the failures of their opponents. The Syrian army, like the Iraqi and Afghan armies, was dominated by networks of patronage and corruption that left them unstable and ineffective without the support of foreign forces.

That, in addition to al-Assad’s shaky governance, the regime’s lack of legitimacy and unpopularity meant that the Syrian military could not withstand the advance of well-organized armed groups.

Patronage and low morals

The Syrian opposition suffered for years from fragmentation and internal power struggles and lost ground to the Syrian regime. After 2020, the conflict was largely considered “frozen,” allowing the opposition, particularly HTS, to consolidate and regroup. Despite years of setbacks, she did not lose hope and the will to fight the Syrian regime.

This provided a sense of internal solidarity that Ibn Khaldun identified as early as the 14th century as the key element that made a tribal power strong enough to take on entire kingdoms. He came to this conclusion as he watched the advance of the Mongol leader Timur, who conquered not only vast swaths of land in Central Asia, but also parts of India, Persia, Iraq and Anatolia.

In 1400, his troops sacked Aleppo and then launched a lightning offensive, taking Hama and Homs. Finally, in December 1400, Damascus surrendered to Timur without a fight, and the unpopular Mamluk sultan fled the city in shock.

In the case of the Syrian opposition, their morale has been boosted not only by internal solidarity, but also by the idea that they are fighting for national liberation.

In contrast, the Syrian military suffered from poor morale. Their ranks consisted largely of conscripts, some of whom were forced into service after arrest and torture.

The 130,000-strong Syrian troops therefore had little chance against the 30,000 advancing rebel fighters. The army disintegrated just as the 300,000-strong Afghan army did when it faced a Taliban force of 60,000 fighters, and just as the 30,000-strong Iraqi force did when 1,500 IS fighters attacked Mosul.

In reality, the large number hides structural defects. The Syrian army, like the Iraqi and Afghan army, was mired in corruption and had a significant problem with “ghost soldiers”. This phenomenon involves rosters being inflated with fictitious names so that officers can collect extra paychecks.

This practice arose because the military functioned as a patronage network in which officer positions were awarded based on loyalty rather than military acumen. These officers would then use their positions to create wealth for themselves, either through these bloated rosters or by extorting civilians.

The fall of a corrupt dynasty

When Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad – Bashar’s father – abandoned Arab military alliances and unilaterally built up a huge military power.

The Soviet Union provided it with a fleet of tanks, artillery and aircraft, as well as Scud ballistic missiles, to deter what it saw as its main enemy in the region – Israel. Syria has also developed a chemical weapons program equivalent to Israel’s nuclear program.

However, these weapons have never been used in a conventional war against the Israeli military. Instead, this enormous military force was used against the Syrian people – first under Hafez’s rule during the Hama uprising and then under Bashar’s rule during the Syrian revolution in 2011.

Weapons intended to cause serious harm to the Israeli military were used against Syrian civilians. Al-Assad even fired his long-range Scud ballistic missiles at Syrian cities.

When the military’s massacre of the Syrian population sparked a massive desertion offensive that cost the Assad regime half of its officers and soldiers, it sought to import foreign forces to fight on its behalf.

Lebanese fighters from Hezbollah and Russian fighters from the Wagner mercenary group were joined by various pro-Iranian armed groups and finally some regular Russian forces.

While these foreign forces managed to push back the rebels and secure the Assad regime, it made the fatal mistake of believing that it could rule forever through brute force. It has done almost nothing to restore legitimacy by offering good governance to its people. It offered few services and almost no security as the Syrian economy remained in free fall and living standards declined.

This negligence was also reflected in how the regime treated the army ranks. Starting in 2023, soldiers received bonuses of 10,000 Syrian lira or $0.75. Three days before his fall, al-Assad made a final attempt to boost morale by increasing military salaries by 50 percent. However, it turned out that this had no effect whatsoever.

What was left of the Syrian military after fighting a decades-long war against its own people appeared no longer prepared to fight another decades-long war in 2024. With no foreign forces left to fight for al-Assad, Syrian troops withdrew from the country, city by city, until rebels captured Damascus. The army vanished into thin air as its soldiers threw their military uniforms into trash cans and changed into civilian clothes.

As Ibn Khaldun noted some 700 years ago, corruption can kill Asabiyya and bring about the precipitate downfall of entire dynasties. Clearly the al-Assads had not learned much from their own country’s history.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.