Shocking Fall of Assad Regime Assessed as Syria Enters Unrest

At first, “there were no more than 15 or 20 doctors and nurses” at the hospital, but after a few more days “work returned to normal”, he said.

Aaron Zelin from the Washington Institute said it seemed the rebels had been able to scale up their institutions “quickly, with civilians already taking control of governance days after its military apparatus took” Aleppo city.

“The model built in northwest Syria will be carbon-copied to the new ‘liberated areas’,” he told AFP.

But services and bread are not the only things people need after years of war have devastated the country’s economy and infrastructure.

“We have water and electricity but we are facing a very difficult financial crisis — all the young people are unemployed,” said Nour Shamani, 52.

“Nobody has any money,” said the mother of three.

Message from Aram I

On December 3, Catholicos of the Great See of Cilicia Aram I issued a message to the Armenian residents of Aleppo. The message said, in page, “From the Motherland of Antelias, we will welcome the beloved children of our people of Aleppo with warm fatherly love. Aleppo is in trouble again. In the course of the past decades, this historic city of the coexistence of cultures, religions and nations in the Middle East has experienced the severe consequences of all the troubles.

“Aleppo has always been a central presence on the main page of the history of the Armenian people, in an economic, cultural, religious and national sense.

“Leaders, teachers, intellectuals, clergymen and public figures, from Lebanon to Yerevan, from European ports to the shores of the Atlantic, have their deep roots in Aleppo.

“Today, the Armenians of Aleppo are not alone. We are all on the path of prayer, love and solidarity. Aleppo is not past for our people, with its important achievements and key role. Aleppo will always remain present and also in the future,” he said.

Calm in Aleppo

An Armenian member of parliament in Syria, Maria Gabrielian, said in an interview that the situation in Aleppo remains largely the same and efforts are being made to lead a normal life in the city.

“A while ago, they [the Islamic insurgents who toppled the regime] appointed a transitional prime minister to form a government,” she noted.

“This is probably the first step toward establishing a legitimate government. It was a very positive development that the current administration continued to govern during the transitional period. Therefore, this was a good step to ensure the smooth and legitimate transfer of state structures and infrastructure, which also instilled some confidence.
Today, a transitional body has already been created, or, in my opinion, it is called the Motherland Salvation Body,” said Gabrielyan.

The editor of the Armenian-language newspaper Kantsasar Zarmig Boghigian said in an interview concurred that Aleppo appeared calm. “It is quiet, calm, there are no militants, nor are there any sounds of gunfire,” she said in an interview.

“In general, it is a state of waiting. We are waiting to see how the interim government will be formed so that law and order will be established in the city and people’s concerns will be resolved. You know, the government is not formed yet, people are careful not to create insecurity in the country. Normal life has not yet returned; people do not go to work, but there is no concern about food, goods, etc.,” said Boghigian.

She mentioned that the new governors are meeting with the constituents, the church and community leaders and say: “Don’t be afraid, we have nothing to do with the people, the minorities can carry out their national intra-religious activities freely, we will preserve the rights of the national minorities, the social mosaic of Syria.”

“The embassies are closed in Damascus; the Armenian embassy operates from Beirut,” she added.

And when asked if she believes the Armenians in Syria will be able to continue to live under the new authorities and will not leave the country, Boghigian responded: “Yes. I believe they will continue to live [in Syria] because the Armenian community has tried to cooperate with various authorities over the years. The main thing for Armenians is the stability of the Syrian state, the preservation of the state.”

Israel, US and Turkey Launch Strikes in Syria

Bombing raids hit sites across Syria as regional actors in the Middle East scrambled to defend their interests in the country after the sudden fall of its president, Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow.

As rebels led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) freed regime prisoners, including from the notorious Sednaya jail – often referred to as the “human slaughterhouse” – Israel, Turkey and the US carried out military action as Assad’s former backers in Russia and Iran also engaged in efforts to shape a future Syria.

With events moving at an often dizzying pace, the rebels who toppled Assad announced on Telegram that they were issuing a general amnesty for regime military conscripts, as former Syrian prime minister Mohammed al-Jalali told al-Arabiya television he had agreed to hand over power to the rebel “salvation government”.

The US has struck targets associated with Islamic State in central Syria, while Turkey has attacked US-backed Kurdish forces. A deal for the Kurdish forces to withdraw from the northern city of Manbij was reportedly struck on Monday after an advance by Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.

Israel also confirmed that it had sent forces into the buffer zone beyond the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and into former Syrian military positions on Mount Hermon in what it described as a “temporary measure.”

It said it would continue with airstrikes on former regime sites associated with missiles and chemical weapons, with airstrikes reported on Monday evening at an air defense installation near the port of Latakia.

The UN security council was due to meet later on Monday, December 9, to discuss the Syrian crisis in a closed session and at Russia’s request. The strikes reflect the perilous path forward for Syria as it transitions from five decades of brutal rule by the Assad family.

With sharply competing agendas, Turkey and Israel have already laid out what they say are their red lines regarding Syria, with Turkey saying it would not accept the Kurdish PKK or Islamic State benefiting from the new situation, even as it promised to help Syrian migrants in Turkey, which hosts 3 million refugees, to return.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, however insisted that Turkey has no interest in expanding its reach into Syria, despite its backing of the Syrian rebels.

“Turkey has no eye on the territory of any other country,” said Erdoğan. “The only aim for our cross-border operations is to save our homeland from the terrorist attacks,” he added, referring to raids targeting the Kurdish-led YPG, based in northeastern Syria.

Turkey’s foreign minister and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, also discussed the transition and rebuilding in Syria on Monday, a Turkish foreign ministry source said, as hundreds of Syrian refugees had gathered at two border crossings in southern Turkey hoping to return home.

For its part, justifying Israel’s latest strikes on sites in Syria, Gideon Saar, the country’s foreign minister, said it struck suspected chemical weapons sites and long-range rockets in Syria in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile actors.

Saar said on Monday, December 9, that “the only interest we have is the security of Israel and its citizens.”

Iran, which backed Assad in the country’s brutal civil war in order to preserve its land corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon, also indicated that it had quickly opened a direct line of communication with the rebels who ousted Assad, in an attempt to “prevent a hostile trajectory” between the countries.

Hours after Assad’s fall on Sunday morning, Iran said it expected relations with Damascus to continue based on the two countries’ “far-sighted and wise approach” and called for the establishment of an inclusive government representing all segments of Syrian society.

And in its own warning, the Russian news agency Interfax, citing a lawmaker, said Moscow would respond harshly to any attack on its military bases in Syria.

Armenian Embassy Staff Evacuated

Armenia evacuated its embassy from Damascus as Islamist-led rebels entered the Syrian capital and overthrew the country’s long-time President Bashar al-Assad at the weekend.

“Due to the security situation in Syria, the diplomatic staff of the Armenian Embassy in Damascus will temporarily continue its work from Beirut,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Sunday, December 8.

Armenia also effectively shut down its consulate in Aleppo shortly before the northern Syrian city fell late last month to the rebels led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist

militant group. Both diplomatic missions had functioned throughout the Syrian civil war.

An estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenians lived in the Middle Eastern country when the war broke out in 2011. The once thriving community is believed to have shrunk by more than half since then. Thousands of its members took refuge in Armenia over a decade ago.

Armenia’s Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs said on December 5 that the “first group” of Syrian Armenians that managed to flee Aleppo is due to be flown to Yerevan from Damascus on December 14. The Armenian Foreign Ministry statement indicated, however, that the flight has been cancelled. It said that there is no “safe possibility” of evacuating Syrian Armenians at the moment.

Meanwhile, the spiritual leadership of the local Armenian community urged its members to stay “discreet and cautious” in the current circumstances and leave their homes “only if necessary.” It also said that the community will continue to strive for Syria’s territorial integrity and welfare and assist in its “reconstruction efforts.”

There are widespread concerns in Armenia about the security of the community and the uncertain future facing it after the rebel takeover.

“The situation is calm right now. It was much worse yesterday and the day before,” Hagop Khajarian, an ethnic Armenian resident of Damascus, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday.

“But things are uncertain and we don’t know how this will end,” he said.

Khajarian said that although no Armenian is known to have been hurt in recent days, many community members plan to leave Syria.

“Everyone I have spoken to has the following plan: when things calm down and there is an opportunity, they will think about getting out,” added the man.

HTS is a US- and EU-designated terrorist organization. In recent years, the group severed ties with Al-Qaeda and sought to remake itself as a pragmatic alternative to the Syrian government.

But concerns remain over its alleged rights abuses and ties to terrorist groups. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the HTS leader, has sought to reassure Shi’ite Alawites and other Syrian minorities, including Christians, that he will not discriminate against them.

Turkey’s support for the rebels is another source of Armenian fears. Before its lighting offensive that toppled Assad’s regime, HTS controlled much of Syria’s northern Idlib province where Ankara reportedly recruited thousands of mercenaries and sent them to fight on Azerbaijan’s side in the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

(This story was compiled using material from Agence France Presse, news.am, Armenpress, The Guardian, Azatutyun and Public Radio of Armenia.)