Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the terrorist derivative of al-Qaeda/al-Nusra, may have seized control of Damascus and Syria’s major cities but is being challenged by other centers of power both inside and outside the country. Syria’s regional neighbors, who want a piece of Syrian territory, include its erstwhile ally Turkey, the United States, Israel, and Iran. Domestic opposition to the new regime includes several small Islamist groups, Kurdish democratic elements, and ethnic Druze minorities, as well as former Assad regime Alawite clusters mostly in western Syria.
Turkey, a principal supporter of HTS in its successful overthrow of the Assad dynasty, has occupied portions of northern Syria, which abut ethnic Kurd villages in Syria. Turkish troops have, in the past, targeted Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) encampments in both Syria and Iraq. The PKK wants independence for Turkey’s sizeable minority of Kurds or at the least autonomy from Ankara. It is uncertain how Syria’s new regime in Damascus ultimately will view Turkish incursions on Syrian territory.
Syrian national sovereignty is also being challenged by the presence of about 2,000 U.S. troops that occupy several encampments in northeast Syria within the country’s Kurdish zone. These troops protect remnants of the pro-U.S. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose forces safeguard prisons that detain thousands of Islamic State (ISIS) prisoners.
Israel also stands in the way of HTS control of all of Syria as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are now occupying territory beyond the UN-administered buffer zone in the Golan Heights region. Jerusalem is unlikely to withdraw IDF troops as it provides Israel with strategic territorial high ground within about 20 kilometers from the Syrian capital of Damascus. Syria’s new leader might have difficulty digesting the Israeli seizure of what was the rump portion of the Golan Heights, still part of Syrian territory, as he was born in the Golan region.
Iran’s Shia theocratic regime is likely to continue to assist the remnants of pro-Tehran Syrian elements. It is Iran upon which the former Assad dictatorship was sustained in power. Iran sees the Sunni HTS regime in Damascus as an enemy. This is especially obvious after the new Syrian administration of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, aka Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, appointed Sunni extremist Abdul Rahman Fattahi as his liaison to the Islamic Republic. Fattahi fled Iran for Syria in 2014, where he moved to Idlib Province, which was the center of fierce Sunni opposition to the Assad regime. In Idlib, Fattahi founded the anti-Iranian “Movement of the Sunni Migrants from Iran.” Iranian security forces will closely monitor any attempts by the HTS and Fattahi to destabilize Sunni Iranian territories in Iran’s Sunni-majority Baluchistan Province in eastern Iran.
Domestic opposition to the HTS regime in Damascus consists of ethnic, religious, and political minorities. Reports of atrocities against elements of Syria’s population that were supportive or not sufficiently in opposition to the former Assad regime are proliferating.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported numerous public murders of Alawite victims. There are also numerous reports of protests by pro-democracy demonstrators. Occasionally, denunciations by non-HTS members of the anti-Assad coalition led to the temporary dismissal of certain regime appointees due to their extremist actions. One such incident includes the removal of HTS Minister of Justice Shahdi al-Waisi, an appointee who sanctioned the execution of women for non-Islamic activities. Another example is the temporary firing of Anas Khattab, a universally-known terrorist who also was subsequently reappointed as the HTS intelligence chief. There is a high likelihood that eventually, Alawite and Christian Syrian minorities will seek asylum either in Israel or internally in Kurd-occupied territories within a balkanized Syria.
Syria’s Kurds, who view Turkey’s critical support for the HTS-dominated government as primarily motivated by Ankara’s animosity toward them, will likely seek autonomy within Syria. They certainly will be reluctant to surrender their current control of oil wells in northeast Syria to the central government.
Syria’s Druze population, anxious about Jolani’s promise of transforming the once secular society into a Sunni Sharia society, has already announced its opposition to HTS control. The Druze-majority territory of southwest Syria, the province of Suwayda, has signaled its willingness to declare a sanctuary autonomy with adjacent Israel.
The HTS regime might also be challenged by other Islamist extremists, many of whom are foreign in origin. Their passage into Syria was facilitated by Turkey’s willful negligence to monitor its southern border as long as these trespassers were sent to fight against the Assad dynasty. The HTS military leader, now the regime’s Minister of Defense Murhaf Abu Qasra, is attempting to integrate these foreign-born terrorists into a new national Syrian Army, in part to control them. These terrorists might become an unexpected and powerful opposition to HTS control.
This kaleidoscope of foreign and domestic enemies might serve the designs by some of the regime’s foreign adversaries to regain influence, like Iran, or attempt to maintain influence, like Turkey. Fortuitously, there is still time for the Free World to help divert the new Syria from becoming a formidable terrorist sanctuary.
