Assad Waited Too Long

In 1973 amid stalled Arab-Israeli negotiations, former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban quipped that “the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” While this was a somewhat disparaging remark, it perhaps can be applied to former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syria observer and noted British journalist Patrick Seale once assessed that when the Syrian government under the Assads negotiated a deal, even on something they really wanted, they would say “no” ninety-nine times before saying “yes” on the hundredth. This is only a slight exaggeration.

The Syrian leadership typically tried to punch above its weight class. Bashar and his inner circle always believed they had more leverage than they actually did and, importantly, that time was always on their side. Conditions, they thought, would eventually change in their favor, and they could wait out a sticky situation. It could be the change in a US administration, a change in fortunes in the region that has nothing to do with anything Damascus was strategically involved in, or simply the passage of time that allowed Syria to recede into the background.

Bashar witnessed this front and center on multiple occasions. The 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was initially blamed on Damascus[i], with subsequent ostracization, international political pressure, and isolation, leading many at the time to conclude that his days were numbered. But not only did Assad survive, he emerged in a stronger position in Damascus even though Syria’s position in Lebanon was diminished. This author saw up close and personal Bashar develop a strong sense of triumphalism in the aftermath of this, consecrated by his country being invited in late 2007 to Annapolis, Maryland, to participate in Arab-Israeli peace talks[ii] sponsored by a Bush administration that had so vigorously opposed Assad ever since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Emerging out of the cold would become a frequent thing for him.

This sense of triumphalism served Assad well in the Syrian uprising and civil war that began in 2011, thinking again that if he could just hold on to power, circumstances would change and he would get bailed out somehow. And that he did when his allies, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia came to his rescue. In early 2013, opposition forces had Damascus surrounded except for one road connecting the Syrian capital with Lebanon. But Iran and Hezbollah upped their game[iii] in order to protect their regional interests and knowing at that time they had a Syrian partner willing and able to fight to survive.

It happened again in 2015 when opposition elements formed a unified command and control structure and subsequently took Idlib province in the northwest at the same time ISIS was expanding its territory in central and eastern Syria.[iv] Again, many were saying Assad was weeks from falling from power. This time, however, the Russians intervened forcefully, essentially becoming the Syrian air force, relentlessly punishing the opposition and turning the tide of the civil war in Assad’s favor. Retaking a number of cities that had been lost to the opposition, most importantly Aleppo in 2016[v], Assad believed he had emerged triumphant once again.

This feeling was only reinforced as he came out from the cold once again, this time when he was readmitted into the Arab League in 2023[vi] amid a number of Arab countries reestablishing diplomatic relations with Damascus. European countries began to engage with Syria, hoping a level of cooperation might help relieve the politically volatile issue of Syrian refugees in Europe. Even Turkish President Erdogan, who had been the most avid supporter of the opposition during the heyday of the civil war, made public overtures to Assad for a diplomatic rapprochement between the two countries.[vii]

But Assad waited too long. Typically, he played hard to get, thinking time was on his side. After all, countries seemed to be courting Damascus, not the other way around. Over and over again he rebuffed Erdogan’s overtures. The Syrian president refused to make concessions to EU countries too. He did not follow through on promises made to Arab League countries, especially with regard to stemming Syria’s drug trade.[viii] Even in the weeks before his fall, he did not give in to backchannel US offers to break with a weakened Iran and Hezbollah in return for lifting the crippling US-led international sanctions.

In an effort in which this author was heavily involved, in March 2020 President Donald Trump sent a letter to Assad and gave a news conference asking for the Syrian president’s help in finding American journalist Austin Tice[ix], who had gone missing in Syria in 2012. It was widely believed by US intelligence that the Syrian government had been holding Tice and that there was still hope he was alive. Trump, though, was not accusing Damascus of anything, just asking for Assad’s assistance. There were a number of ways Assad could have played this in order to exact some concessions, or at least goodwill, from the United States; however, he dithered again, with the only response a couple of weeks later form the Syrian foreign ministry acknowledging receipt of Trump’s letter. By that time, the mercurial US president’s attentions have moved on elsewhere.

And when he had the clear advantage from 2017 on, Assad failed to negotiate any sort of power sharing arrangement with what seemed to be the defeated and fragmented opposition, one that would have been heavily weighted in his favor. He was obstreperous. He won. Why should he dilute his power base toward those who tried to unseat him? There was no “malice toward none, with charity for all” thoughts in his mind, and certainly no real efforts at reconciliation that might have allowed him to oversee the physical and emotional rebuilding of the country under his leadership.

Instead, he stayed with the status quo, which had long been his modus operandi. But the status quo now was a dilapidated economy that had suffered from over a decade of war, withering sanctions, government neglect, rapacious warlords, and even more corruption than that which existed prior to the civil war. The Syrian government had become a car without an engine, stuck and unable to move. It was an empty shell under which life for most Syrians, all but a privileged few, had severely deteriorated.

Bashar al-Assad was called “the hope” in Syria even before he became president in 2000, as many in and outside of the country were hoping he would be a breath of fresh air. Early in his time in power this hope seemed to be confirmed when he enacted some policies and gave indications that he might reform the stultifying Syrian political system. But that quickly gave way to business as usual in Syria. Syrians hoped he would change the system, but he assimilated into it—and the system changed him. In the end, Syrians lost all hope, even among many of his supporters.

They were not going to fight to protect a rusting, decaying, old car. Anything would be better than this. There will be no more missed opportunities for Assad.