With the Fall of the Syrian Govt, India Has Lost a Key Partner in West Asia

Turkey's growing influence in Syria following the regime change will not bode well for India.

Syrian citizens wave the revolutionary flag and shout slogans as they celebrate during the second day of the takeover by insurgents in Damascus on Monday, 9 December. 

(Photo: PTI)

Tomes will be written about it, and many postmortems will be conducted to understand what exactly happened in Syria between 27 November and 8 December. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad just folded up and collapsed like a pack of cards.

Syrian rebel groups backed by Turkey and led by the militant Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) simply waltzed into Damascus with city after city – Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Damascus – falling to its onslaught. Troops of the Syrian Arab Army either fled their posts or simply gave in. Assad fled with his family to Moscow where they have been given asylum on "humanitarian grounds".

After the 2011 Civil War, it seemed that the worst was over. Except for parts in the northwest, controlled by Syrian rebel groups, it seemed that 2019 onwards, the Assad regime had begun consolidating its hold over 70 percent of Syria after more than a decade of brutal fighting with different opposition factions, many of them affiliated to Al-Qaeda, including the HTS.

However, with Russian intervention in Syria from 2015, and military and financial support by Iran and Iran-backed Hezbollah, the ISIS and its caliphate were routed, forcing it to seek refuge in Afghanistan.

What Caused a Rethink on Ties with Assad-Ruled Syria? 

Last year, the League of Arab States admitted Syria back into its fold, following its suspension more than 12 years ago after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War.

Since at least 2019, Arab states had begun dealing with the situation pragmatically, reaching out to Syria by reopening their embassies and deriving commercial gains through investment in the country’s reconstruction projects. While Oman continued to maintain ties with Syria, Abu Dhabi reopened its Damascus embassy in 2018.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Jordan – that had allied themselves with anti-Assad groups in the initial years of the Syrian Civil War – changed tack and once again reimbursed Assad.

The actual establishment of an ISIS caliphate, almost on the borders of the oil rich Sheikhdoms, the different dangers spilling over from that war as well as the Arab Spring, refugee crisis, drug smuggling, human trafficking, lawlessness, and terrorism from a regime change in Libya, the rise and spread of the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideology in the region, the attacks within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE by ISIS – all caused a rethink on ties with Syria. Added to it was the diminished US role that further acted as a catalyst for their reconciliation with the Assad government.

In November 2021, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Damascus, and in 2022, Assad made his historic trip to the UAE – his very first to an Arab country since the outbreak of the Syrian war.

Last year, Assad even travelled to and was warmly welcomed in Saudi Arabia to attend the Arab League Summit after his country’s reinstatement within the league. As the then UAE Minister Anwar Gargash had explained, an Arab role in Syria had become necessary to combat the growing influence of Turkey and Iran.

All of these gains now seemed to have been reversed. Russia, busy with Ukraine, and Iran weakened by Israel, refused to intervene, citing that Assad had made his own decisions without paying heed to his allies. As if in a rerun of Afghanistan in August 2021, militant groups led by a former Al-Qaeda militant Abu Mohammad Al Jolani, who has a $10 million dollar bounty on his head, took charge.

As had happened with the Taliban in the run up to the organisation's deal with the then Donald Trump administration in 2020, sections of the international media had started whitewashing the HTS as having mutated from a terrorist organisation to a moderate political force.

Jolani, in his first address after the fall of Damascus, for which he chose the Ummayad Mosque as the venue, reached out to the country’s many minorities – the Alawites, the largest among them to which the Assad family belonged, the Christians, the Druze, the Shiites, Ismailis, et al. But he also proclaimed the capture of Syria and collapse of the Assad regime as a victory "for Islam" and not "for Syria".

Both the earlier version of the HTS, the Al Nusra Front, and Jolani himself had earlier said that they wanted Islamic rule for Syria. Whatever the faults of the Assad regime had been, both he and his father Hafez al-Assad had kept Syria secular and plural. No one knows what will happen now. The rebels have freed hundreds of prisoners, many of them with links to Al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

Assad's main allies Russia and Iran have had to retreat from Syria. Israel and Turkey clearly have the upper hand. Israel has pushed into and occupied parts of the demilitarised buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights to prevent the spillover of any possible chaos into its territory. The Joe Biden administration has been bombing ISIS strongholds and monitoring Syrian weapons depot, while US President-elect Donald Trump has already announced that it is not America's war.

What Does the Assad Govt's Fall Mean for India? 

Afghanistan should serve as an example. India had poured in $2 billion in aid into the country only to wrap things up as the Taliban took over Kabul.

With Syria, India had continued to maintain ties with the country's government right through the civil war, refusing to break diplomatic relations. The Assad government had been supportive of India on the Kashmir issue – and there had been no bilateral irritants between the two countries.

India has been sending humanitarian and other aid to Syria, has hosted Syrian government officials, and has called for lifting of western sanctions from the country. When things stabilised after the civil war, India sent back its ambassador there and reopened its diplomatic mission.

Over the past few years, numerous Syrians have come to India for capacity building under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme. During the horrific earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey last year, India rushed humanitarian and medical aid there, becoming one of the first non-Arab countries to do so.

The situation now is very fluid. India will carefully be monitoring the situation, and it is expected that its response will be a carefully calibrated one.

The Ministry of External Affairs has issued a statement in support of a "peaceful and inclusive Syrian-led political process respecting the interests and aspirations of all sections of Syrian society" and has called on all parties to "work towards preserving the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria".

Syria is a key state in the region. Turkish ascendancy there, if it materialises, does not bode well for India.

Not only does India have a difficult neighbourhood on its west, now its eastern borders have thrown it a challenge too. Apart from humanitarian aid, it is best for India to suspend all activities there now, including the ITEC programmes, till things become clearer.

At the same time, India should engage with like-minded countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE – who, too, would not wish to see the emergence of a radicalised Syria or the ascendancy of Turkey there, and to see that Syria's territorial integrity is maintained and not violated by any power seeking to exploit the vacuum created by the war.

(Aditi Bhaduri is a journalist and political analyst. She tweets @aditijan. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)