View from Delhi: Liberating Levant – the Syrian saga is yet to unfold

Some wars end, many do not, but, like passenger trains, they linger in the siding, lost in thought, waiting for the superfast express to pass. From such a perspective, the Syrian crisis can be traced to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France through World War I by a secret pact known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) defining their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of that empire that lasted almost 600 years, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Ambassador and prominent international observer.

The force that spearheaded the operation this month to seize Damascus, with Türkiye’s support, is called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) (banned in Russia), which means the “Mission to Liberate the Levant”. This must be properly understood while probing Türkiye’s motivations in launching such a “jihadi” operation to shake up the modern Syrian state that was founded in 1946 at the end of the French mandate.

The use of the medieval term “Levant” is a repudiation of the word Syria, which was a coinage under the French mandate. That is to say, HTS implicitly denies the existence of a Syrian nation state. The landmass called Syria is, in the HTS’ conception, a vast ungoverned land, a part of the Caliphate, which is open to reshaping to reflect the current realities on the ground.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan openly alluded to this while addressing a meeting of the ruling AKP party on December 13 when he said: “The cities that we call Aleppo, Idlib, Damascus and Raqqa will become our provinces, like Antep, Hatay and Urfa!” Erdogan believes he’s on the right side of history.

The Treaty of Sèvres (1920) whereby the victorious Allied powers in World War I abolished the Ottoman Empire, punitively obliged the successor state of Türkiye to renounce all rights over Arab Asia and North Africa. And by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) that followed from it, amongst other things, Eastern Anatolia became part of Türkiye, in exchange for its relinquishment of Ottoman-era claims to the oil-rich Arab lands. This is a slice of the Turkish people’s glorious history which the world may have forgotten but not the Turkish people. On every street and bylane of ancient Istanbul, the memory lingers.

The year 2025 marks the centenary of the Treaty of Lausanne and its legal expiration, which Erdogan has often cited in his nationalistic rhetoric as an opportunity “to correct injustices done to Türkiye.” In this revisionist history, the expiry of the Treaty of Lausanne could reopen the Turkish claims of having “special rights” to parts of Iraq and Syria — if not claims of outright sovereignty. Turkish officials have been coy about voicing these claims.

The “jihadist” operation to force regime change in Damascus has shattered the illusion of stabilising Syria under Assad’s leadership. The collapse of the Assad government’s army has left three major groups vying for control of Syria — HTS, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, the ethnic Kurdish groups) and Turkish and Turkish-aligned Syrian rebel forces. While most Syrians are calling for unity, bringing together these groups and their interests will be a key challenge. More and more factors point to the gradual formation of an “all-against-all” conflict, going forward.

The HTS which was considered a Turkish proxy during the period of its stay in Idlib province, is coming on its own and its autonomy from Ankara will only grow — and, along with that, its authority will increase in the eyes of the Syrian people. It now has operational space and there is no need to hide its beliefs.

What happened in Syria is not a revolution that might have legitimised the regime change but an implosion that was least expected. A limited HTS operation last month in the western province of Idlib to wrest control of the strategic town of Saraqib from the regime forces broke through the defence lines in the Hamdaniyya, New Aleppo, and Zahra axes in Aleppo’s western countryside and entered the city centre of Aleppo.

Saraqib is located strategically at the intersection of the M4 highway, which connects the capital Damascus to Aleppo, and the M5 highway, which links Latakia (Mediterranean coast where the Russian bases are located) to Aleppo. As the regime forces suffered heavy losses and withdrew from Saraqib, the defeat turned into a rout, prompting numerous regime loyalists to flee from Aleppo to Damascus. Once Aleppo fell, a domino effect began, as the regime forces collapsed in disarray and the gates of Damascus opened. Succinctly put, the HTS unexpectedly cut through the soft butter with a hot knife. The rest is history…

Ankara and the three main Syrian groups in play are claiming that they prefer the pathway of dialogue and reconciliation, contrary to the apocalyptic prognosis that Syria’s existence as a sovereign state is in danger. They claim that the creation of a new interim government in Damascus will lead to the formation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution that will be submitted to a national referendum determining the future path of political transformations in the direction of representational rule.

The veracity of these claims remains untested. By March, the transitional government’s term ends.

Meanwhile, Türkiye’s priority in the near term lies in the security sphere. With the collapse of the Syrian authority, Ankara now gets a free run to smash the Syrian Kurdish groups aligned to the PKK separatists inside Türkiye.

Türkiye is sure to exploit the window of opportunity here. Heavy fighting has been reported in the Kurdish areas in northern Syria along the Turkish border.

While the Arab states are traumatised and are taking time to get their act together, the US exploits their sense of insecurity to coax them to reinstate Washington’s leadership role in mediating with the groups in Damascus. The US aims to roll back the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, isolate Tehran and create “strategic depth” for Israel in the region. But the indications are that the Arab states will not put their eggs in the American basket.

The Biden Administration has embarked on a cunning geopolitical ploy, albeit a lame duck itself, creating traps for the incoming Trump administration on the one hand and on the other hand, hampering the Kremlin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov merely says that Russia maintains “contact with the representatives of the forces in charge of the situation in the country, and everything will be decided through dialogue.” Peskov adds meaningfully, “There are no definitive decisions at the moment” as regards the future of the Russian military bases in Syria.

For Donald Trump, who promised to end the US’ ‘forever wars’, Syria amounts to a minefield. Trump faces two unwelcome political choices: either re-engage in West Asia, from where he had pledged to exit, or allow for chaos after having long claimed that the world would be safer with him. There is a third way, theoretically, but it seems difficult to achieve — namely, navigating the complexities of the aggravating crisis without US military involvement.

Israel has jumped into the fray with alacrity with an agenda of expansionism and cannibalisation of Syrian territory, which destroys Syria’s security infrastructure, ruptures Iran’s land route to Lebanon (read Hezbollah) and, most important, potentially creates the space to transfer/relocate the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank — in sum, advance the Greater Israel project.

In the final analysis, therefore, time only can tell whether Israel’s triumphalism over its land grab in Syria is realistic. The hard reality is that Israel now has the “jihadists” as a next-door neighbour. And a little-known fact is that HTS leader Jolani himself is a native of the Golan Heights…

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