WHEN members of the Muslim Brotherhood rose up against the Syrian government in 1982, killing hundreds of soldiers in the city of Hama, the regime’s response was swift and brutal. Under orders from President Hafez al-Assad, government warplanes and artillery pounded the city for weeks. By the time the army’s bulldozers had finished flattening entire districts, the regime had killed as many as 25,000 people.
In 2011, almost 30 years after the Hama massacre, Hafez’s son, Bashar, faced his own revolt when peaceful protests against his rule erupted across Syria. Some believed that the soft-spoken ophthalmologist would show more restraint than his blood-drenched father. But after more than five years of war no one thinks that any more. Mr Assad junior has systematically starved, bombed and shot his own people, laying siege to civilians in rebel-held areas while bombing their hospitals, markets and schools. His scorched-earth tactics have killed the vast majority of the war’s 400,000-plus dead and driven millions of Syrians abroad as refugees. The massacre his father oversaw in Hama seems small and local in comparison.
These tactics, along with Russian air power and Iranian military expertise, now appear to have propelled Mr Assad to his greatest victory so far. Pro-regime forces, spearheaded by Iranian-backed Shia militias from Iraq and Lebanon, have cornered rebel forces in a tiny sliver of territory in the east of Aleppo, the country’s largest city before the war.
On December 13th, as part of a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey, the rebels agreed to surrender. A ceasefire followed as buses prepared to evacuate rebel fighters and civilians to opposition-controlled territory west of the city. Residents gathered in the bitter cold and driving rain as they prepared to leave. Some burned possessions they could not carry, rather than see them fall into the regime’s hands.
But the evacuation, which was scheduled to begin at 5am on December 14th, failed to happen. By midday, warplanes were back in the skies above Aleppo, bombarding neighbourhoods in the tiny rebel pocket as tanks and artillery guns shelled the area once again. Russia announced that the regime had captured yet another district. Terrified residents desperately sought shelter. Some described seeing bodies lying in the streets as they ran. Others said the bombardment was too intense to rescue the wounded. In one field clinic bodies lay in rows on the floor where they had been left for days, their relatives too scared to collect the corpses.
The deal broke down mainly because Iran, which supports a number of Shia militias fighting alongside Mr Assad’s troops, imposed new conditions, including an evacuation of Shias from two rebel-besieged villages. As The Economist went to press on December 15th, there was renewed hope that the evacuation might soon begin; but local disagreements could all too easily delay or scupper it.
The failure of the world to act means that what happens next to the remaining population of east Aleppo, numbering anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people, could be atrocious. In recently captured neighbourhoods, pro-regime troops have begun to slaughter civilians inside their homes, according to reports received by the UN and sources inside the city.
In what it described as a “complete meltdown of humanity” inside Aleppo, the UN said reports suggested that at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, have been murdered in recent days. Government forces have also detained hundreds of men, the UN said; others have been conscripted into the Syrian army.
The remaining trapped civilians are petrified. “Some are hiding, waiting to know their fate. Others are fleeing to the regime’s part of the city. Imagine a family fleeing to its killers. That’s the only option now: to flee to their killers,” said Ammar al-Selmo, the head of the city’s White Helmets, a volunteer rescue service. Evacuation, if it happens, will take many days.
After the fall
Terrible though the situation in Aleppo now is, the city’s fall will not end the war. Mr Assad has repeatedly vowed to reclaim the entire country. Though the capture of Aleppo will leave the government in control of all Syria’s main population centres, including its four largest cities, large swathes of territory remain beyond the regime’s authority.
Islamic State (IS), which retook the ancient city of Palmyra on December 11th, still rules wide tracts of (sparsely populated) land in the east. Rebel forces control the province of Idlib, parts of Deraa in the south, a large chunk of the border with Jordan and a few pockets of territory around the capital, Damascus. Turkish and Kurdish rebels have also carved out enclaves in the north of the country.
Once Aleppo is secured, Mr Assad will probably turn his attention to those pockets of rebellion that remain around the capital, while securing the main highway that leads from Homs to Aleppo. He will then want to go after rebel forces in Idlib, where he has corralled much of Syria’s insurgency. The province is dominated by a hardline Islamist group, Ahrar al-Sham, as well as militants from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, a jihadist group with ties to al-Qaeda. The regime is calculating that their presence will dampen any Western support for the rebels holding out in Idlib, allowing it a free hand.
It is difficult to see how the opposition can bounce back. America’s president-elect, Donald Trump, has threatened to withdraw already limited support for Syria’s moderate opposition and concentrate instead on defeating IS. This would suit both Mr Assad and his Russian backers, swinging the course of the war even further in the dictator’s favour.
“The crushing of Aleppo, the immeasurably terrifying toll on its people, the bloodshed, the wanton slaughter of men, women and children, the destruction—and we are nowhere near the end of this cruel conflict,” the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said on December 13th. “What is happening with Aleppo could repeat itself in Douma, in Raqqa, in Idlib. We cannot let this continue.” For now, though, there seems little to prevent further tragedies unfolding.
Yet Mr Assad’s ambition to reassert his control over the entire country is unrealistic. The recapture of Palmyra by IS is an indication of the difficulties Mr Assad still faces. His priority over the next few months is therefore likely to be to consolidate his recent gains in what he calls “essential Syria”, the urbanised spine of the country between Aleppo and Damascus.
He should also not assume that the Trump administration will be unalloyed good news for him. Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reckons that “big changes are coming.” What most distinguishes Trump appointments, such as retired Marine General Jim Mattis as defence secretary and retired General Mike Flynn as national security adviser, is their conviction that Iranian influence in the region must be confronted and rolled back. Handing victory to Mr Assad also means handing victory to the mullahs in Iran, something they will be loth to do. The one country that has real influence over Iran, especially in Syria, is Russia.
The overarching question about Syria’s future could therefore hinge on America’s relations with Russia, which Mr Trump has said he wants to put on a more co-operative footing. It also depends on the extent to which Russia’s and Iran’s goals in Syria may differ. Russia says it is committed to UN Security Council resolution 2254, which is designed to reunify the country following an 18-month transition period after which democratic elections would be held under a new constitution. Iran, by contrast, wants above all to preserve the Assad regime. Its aim is a rump Syria as a client state, and an arc of Shia dominance running through it from Iraq to Lebanon.
Given Mr Trump’s transactional approach to international relations, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, will want to know what kind of deal the new administration will offer him to part company with his Iranian ally. After the fall of Aleppo, he will surely demand a high price.
