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The Islamist rebels whose swift seizure of Syria over the weekend toppled long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad haven’t solely ushered in an unsettled new period for the troubled nation, however they promise to reshuffle the area’s fraught geopolitics.

The ousting of Assad, who dominated Syria for 1 / 4 century after assuming energy from his father, leaves a harmful political vacuum. Ahmed al-Shara – previously identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohmmad al-Jolani – on the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is at the least nominally in cost. He and his group are on the helm of a fractious insurgent alliance that fought Assad over greater than 13 years of civil warfare. Previously often known as the al-Nusra Entrance, HTS was as soon as affiliated with al-Qaida. Though Shara claims to have damaged ties with al-Qaida, HTS stays on a U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations.

A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with its body damaged, within the Political Safety Department facility on the outskirts of the central metropolis of Hama, following the seize of the realm by anti-government forces this previous weekend.

Omar Haj Kadour/Getty Photographs/AFP

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Omar Haj Kadour/Getty Photographs/AFP

It is a complicated and fluid state of affairs on the bottom, and most observers agree it is all however inconceivable to foretell how issues will play out within the coming days, weeks and months. However as Syria marks the beginning of a brand new chapter, listed here are 5 dynamics that specialists say will likely be necessary to concentrate to.

How clean will the political transition be?

Whereas Assad and different regime figures fled Syria within the hours earlier than the rebels seized energy in Damascus, Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi Jalali stood his submit. “We’re working in order that the transitional interval is fast and clean,” Jalali instructed Sky Information Arabia TV on Monday, in keeping with The Associated Press.

Having Assad’s prime minister keep on was “clearly an association” with the rebels, says Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist on the College of Oklahoma. “They’ve labored it out, what appears to be a brief, peaceable handover of energy.”

In a meeting on Monday with Jalali, the HTS chief acknowledged that regardless of the insurgent victory, “we won’t dispense with the earlier state.”

The chief of Syria’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, Ahmed al-Shara, addresses a crowd on the capital’s landmark Umayyad Mosque on Sunday.

Aref Tammawi/Getty Photographs/AFP

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Aref Tammawi/Getty Photographs/AFP

Sanam Vakil, director of the Center East and North Africa Programme on the London-based assume tank Chatham Home, says it’s too early to sign any final result. “I feel we now have to provide everyone a little bit of time to determine it out,” she says.

Vakil says Syria might study a lesson from the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Sadaam Hussein in 2003. Within the wake of Hussein’s fall, the U.S. dissolved the ruling Baath Get together, resulting in a breakdown in fundamental providers that helped set the stage for the mass chaos that in the end swept the nation. Vakil says that “together with technocrats and maybe holdovers from the Assad authorities is a means of constructing consensus and broader assist.”

Years of dangerous blood and fears of an Islamist regime will make reconciliation a problem

The variety of ethnic and spiritual stakeholders in Syria paints a sophisticated image: Assad’s powerbase was drawn from Shia Muslims, and the small however influential Alawite non secular minority that he belongs to, mixed with different teams make up about 13% of the inhabitants. Sunni Muslims, in contrast, account for roughly three-quarters of Syria.

The Alawite minority, concentrated primarily on the Mediterranean coast, has now all of a sudden discovered itself out of energy and doubtlessly extra susceptible. Landis says there’s “appreciable stress” between the 2 principal Muslim teams in Syria. However to this point, there are not any indicators of reprisals by the brand new leaders, he says. Everyone seems to be attempting to determine “whether or not there’s going to be revenge killings or actual disturbances within the Alawite territories,” Landis says.

Nonetheless, there are indicators of some fraying. Within the northeast of the nation, Kurdish forces have been pushed out of Manbij by Arab-led opposition forces.

Vakil says there’s concern that Syria might descend right into a strict fundamentalist Islamic state much like Taliban-led Afghanistan, though the nation’s new leaders have made pronouncements that search to dispel that concern.

Syrian insurgent fighters parade detained members of the Syrian authorities’s forces in civilian clothes in Homs on Sunday, after insurgent forces entered Syria’s third metropolis.

Aaref Watad/Getty Photographs/AFP

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Aaref Watad/Getty Photographs/AFP

The rebels, as an illustration, issued a statement on social media Monday instructing their fighters that it’s “strictly forbidden to intrude with girls’s costume or impose any request associated to their clothes or look, together with requests for modesty.”

However U.N. Particular Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, talking in Qatar, on Sunday, sounded a phrase of warning, saying he was listening to “contradictory messages” coming from the brand new management. “That is now my key message to all – keep away from bloodshed, be sure that it’s inclusive, that every one communities in Syria are included, and that the nervousness that some are dealing with, are fearing, that we will deal with this, and transfer ahead to peace and stability,” he stated.

There are thousands and thousands of Syrian refugees ready to return residence

Refugees who fled in the course of the civil warfare are already attempting to return. Many have been lining up at border crossings in Turkey on Monday, according to the AP.

Syrian residents in Turkey wave Syrian opposition flags as they have fun the President Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria after insurgent fighters took management of Damascus in a single day, on the Fatih Mosque, in Istanbul, on Sunday.

Yasin Akgul/Getty Photographs/AFP

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Yasin Akgul/Getty Photographs/AFP

“Syria is at a crossroads – between peace and warfare, stability and lawlessness, reconstruction or additional destroy,” the UN Excessive Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi stated in a press release on Monday The company stated that “latest developments carry hope that the struggling of the Syrian individuals might lastly finish, and that the world’s largest compelled displacement disaster can transfer in direction of simply options.”

However in the end, specialists say, the tempo or returns will likely be formed by how a lot political stability Syria’s subsequent leaders can ship.

“Lots of them are going to wish to go residence,” says Landis, including that he thinks that given the historical past of their predicament, he thinks that “most will take a wait and see” place.

Daniel Mouton, a Center East knowledgeable on the Atlantic Council, writes that “Tens of millions of Syrian refugees will wish to return residence and are extra possible to take action in an surroundings of excellent governance and lively reconstruction.”

The dangers of an influence vacuum are very actual

Governments throughout the area are all too aware of the risks that may come after an autocrat’s fall. Civil warfare dominated Libya for years after the dying of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, simply because it did in Iraq after Hussein was toppled. Immediately, they’re watching occasions in Syria with a cautious eye.

On the floor, the ouster of Assad would possibly appear like a web optimistic for Israel. Each Iran and Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed militia that Israel has sought to destroy in neighboring Lebanon, have been among the many former Syrian dictator’s key backers.

Hours after rebels took the Syrian capital, nevertheless, Israel moved right into a demilitarized buffer zone with Syria that had been maintained with out violation for the reason that 1973 Yom Kippur Warfare. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights — an space seized from Syria in the course of the 1967 Six-Day Warfare and later annexed by Israel — proclaiming that the transfer into the buffer zone was a “momentary defensive place.”

Israel has additionally launched hundreds of airstrikes in opposition to Syria in latest days, saying it has taken out 70% of the Syrian military’s capabilities — a transfer criticized Tuesday by Pedersen, the U.N. particular envoy. “We’re persevering with to see Israeli actions and bombardments into Syrian territory. This must cease,” he stated.

Vakil says the collapse of the Assad regime locations Israel in a tough place. “As a democracy, I feel it’s obliged to attempt to assist [the transition] course of [in Syria] and attempt to truly keep out of this course of,” she says.

For Jordan, Vakil says, Assad’s ouster may very well be a optimistic, “if there’s finally parliamentary democracy and extra inclusive parliamentary democracy” in Syria. “And if, then again, you do see a kind of Taliban-like situation emerge, that is not going to be notably optimistic for a rustic like Jordan that has its personal Muslim Brotherhood.”

The U.S., Russia and Iran even have pursuits in Syria

Because the begin of anti-Assad uprisings in 2011, the U.S. authorities has imposed a series of sanctions geared toward stopping violence in opposition to civilians.

Even so, President Biden, in a televised address on Sunday, expressed concern in regards to the post-Assad authorities in Syria: “Make no mistake, a number of the insurgent teams who took down Assad have their very own grim document of terrorism and human rights abuses,” Biden stated. “We have taken observe of the statements by the leaders of those insurgent teams in latest days they usually’re saying the best issues now. However as they tackle extra accountability, we are going to assess not simply their phrases, however their actions.”

Vakil says the administration needs “to curb the potential comeback of ISIS and different terrorist teams.”

U.S. warplanes struck “dozens” of “ISIS leaders, operatives and camps” on Sunday, in keeping with U.S. Central Command. On Monday, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said: “Centcom, along with allies and companions within the area, will proceed to hold out operations to degrade ISIS capabilities, even throughout this dynamic interval in Syria.”

It is unclear, nevertheless, how lengthy these efforts will final. President-elect Donald Trump as lately as this previous weekend said the U.S. ought to keep out of the preventing in Syria, and through his first time period flirted with eradicating all U.S. forces from the nation.

About 900 U.S. troops are stationed in Syria, largely in oil-rich areas managed by Kurdish militia forces. Syria’s financial system is very depending on oil revenues and the presence of U.S. troops has denied the Assad regime entry to these fields.

“Over the subsequent six months, the US goes to be in re-evaluation mode,” Landis says. “If it needs good relations with this new state, it might’t punish it eternally by withholding the oil.”

Russia — a staunch ally of Assad and the vacation spot for his instant exile after fleeing Syria over the weekend — seems to have little recourse however to just accept the brand new actuality within the nation.

Moscow, specifically, is anxious about dropping key navy installations that its sees as a counterweight to NATO within the area — a naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast and the Hmeimim air base in Syria’s Latakia province. Reuters experiences that Syria’s new leaders have agreed to ensure the protection of Russian navy bases.

For Iran, dropping Assad as an ally has additional eroded its affect — particularly after Israel’s warfare in opposition to its regional proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. Hezbollah helped maintain Assad in energy, and the militant group has for years used Syria as a conduit to switch weapons into Lebanon.

Talking in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday, as Syrian rebels have been closing in on Damascus, U.S. Envoy Amos Hochstein said Iran’s withdrawal from Syria would “make it very tough … to switch weapons in.”

“I positively would not write Russia out. And I can even say the identical factor about Iran,” Vakil says. “I feel each international locations will likely be trying to perhaps not instantly, however over time and rekindle no matter ties they’ve for various functions.”