In Matthew 12:43-45 Jesus tells how a demon is expelled only to be replaced by seven new demons. Is this Syria’s fate?
The Assad regime, father, and son, across 54 years, murdered, tortured, and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of their victims. And that was before the 2011 uprising and civil war, itself killing hundreds of thousands more. They governed under the Baathist ideology to which Saddam Hussein, whose victims exceeded the Assads, adhered.
Thousands of Assad’s prisoners are now emerging from dungeons, some not having seen daylight in years or decades.
Of course, the Assads, who besides tormenting their people, also massively stole from them, as longtime despots nearly always do. The just discovered presidential fleet of luxury vehicles was extensive, including a Cadillac Escalade. Perhaps the footage should appear in a Cadillac commercial: Buy American! Apparently, the Assad family is now in the capital of their Russian patrons. Fortunately for Putin, Assad will be a cheap date. He has many bank accounts of looted funds that will sustain him indefinitely.
The Assads, who enjoyed some very brief friendly moments with America in the early and mid-1970s, have nearly always aligned with Russia and the Soviet Union. They also relied on Iran’s mullahs, especially with the 2011 revolution, after which Assad joined Hezbollah as Iran’s virtual proxy. Both Iran and Russia poured tens of billions into Assad’s crumbling regime, for which they now have nothing to show.
Under the Assads, Syria was an enemy to America, to Israel, and to the West. Syria was a prison, impoverished, fearful, and, for the last 13 years, racked by endless civil war leaving the country split into fiefdoms. There seems to be in Syria widespread relief over Assad’s overthrow and the end, mostly, to the worst of the civil war, though skirmishes among factions presumably will continue.
The main insurgency overthrowing Assad, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is Islamist but so far has mostly signaled it will not try to impose strict Islamist rule. They are smart to seek international legitimacy and support. But as they solidify power they could of course swiftly change. Pessimism about the Mideast is usually justified.
There have always been some who argued for Western tolerance if not support for the Assads because they were ostensibly “protecting” the Christians and offered a “secular” alternative to Islamist rule. The Assads governed under an Arab nationalist ideology, and they belonged to the Alawite minority sect, which many Muslims do not accept as legitimately Islamic. So, the Assads, even while depending on Iran’s mullahs, governed against Islamism, which they feared. Christians were tolerated unless they challenged the regime, in which case they were repressed like anyone else. I have personally heard some Syrian Christians describe Assad, whom they have met, as a “nice” man. He was in fact a murderer, tyrant, and thief. But it’s human nature to imagine the best of whatever person or force we see as a guard against more malevolent forces.
In the end, the Assads were not good for Syria’s Christians. They were maybe ten percent of Syria before the civil war, and now they are maybe two percent. That war was generated by Assad’s ineptitude, intolerance, cruelty, and refusal to compromise. There are now consequently maybe over 600,000 dead Syrians. As a percentage of the population, that’s equivalent to about 9 million Americans. Millions more fled Syria, politically disrupting much of Europe and fueling the far right, especially in Germany. Turkey alone has perhaps three million Syrian refugees, whose presence partly motivated Turkey’s backing for HTS’s successful overthrow of Assad.
There are some who want to blame the West for undermining Assad, paving the way for Islamist rule. But Assad’s disastrous rule ensured his own ruin. He was both wicked and incompetent. And for now, his overthrow is a strategic gain for the West, America, and Israel. It’s a huge defeat for Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah. Maybe Lebanon can now regain sovereignty against Hezbollah. Israel now seems to have the upper hand against Iran. Putin boasted of Russian power in Syria, which has imploded. It’s the biggest defeat for Russia in the Mideast since Anwar Sadat expelled the Soviets from Egypt fifty years ago.
Now there is a potential opportunity for wider Mideast stability. The Russia-Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis is broken. Turkey is the main patron of HTS. Erdogan for all his terrible faults is preferable to Iran as a powerbroker. We can hope HTS is more pragmatic than theocratic.
Of course, Syria could face entirely new calamities, more warfare, more despotism, more refugees. We do not yet know. But where there is opportunity there is hope. When prisoners unjustly imprisoned are freed, we should rejoice. Assad’s stunning and quick overthrow recalls another miraculous Christmas overthrow, in 1989, when the similarly brutal and seemingly unassailable Ceausescus were suddenly overthrown and executed in Romania. Christmas reminds us of hope. But it never promises comfort.
Seven demons may yet plague Syria, replacing the demon of Assad. Or Syria might, in God’s own time, slowly recover from its decades of nightmares, and emerge into a relative stability. Christians there, and hopefully around the world, will pray it is so.