Recently, Assad Bashar’s heart must have collapsed.

In just a few days, the anti-government armed forces operated fiercely in the northwest region, first capturing Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and then taking over the central town of Hama without stopping.

You can see from the map that below Hama city is Homs, which is only over 150 kilometers away from Damascus and is also the last line of defense of the Syrian government.

If they are breached again, Bashar and his relatives and friends will really have to run towards Moscow.

The fall of Hama is probably a signal of the collapse of the Syrian government.

01

If we want to clarify the collapse of the Syrian government, we cannot avoid Bashar al Assad’s failed economic reforms.

Syria is a small place, but it sticks in the throat of Eurasia. It has always been the front line of religious PK and power struggle. After the First World War, it was taken over by the French and won independence only in 1946.

So Syria has a congenital flaw – it has a small population but numerous ethnic and religious factions. After independence, it did not have a strong central government and has always been a fragmented country. Coupled with collusion with foreign forces, the level of chaos is no less than that of several neighboring countries.

In the 24 years since independence, Syria has experienced a total of 21 coups, averaging 0.87 per year.

Bashar’s father – Hafez Assad also came to power through a military coup, and later served five consecutive terms as president, ruling for 30 years until his death in office in 2000.

The Assad family belongs to the Alawite sect and is a branch of the Shia sect, which has a population of only 12% in Syria and is a completely niche group.

Hafez was able to stand firm because he knew how to focus on the ideological work of the masses. He is the only candidate for the Syrian presidency, with a support rate consistently above 99%.

Secondly, Hafez tightly embraced the Soviet Union. After the Third Middle East War in 1967, the Soviet Union began to manage the Middle East and provided military assistance to Egypt and Syria. Later, Egypt and the Soviet Union fell out, and Syria became the only bridgehead for the Soviet Union in the Middle East.

So Hafez almost goes to Moscow every year to give a government work report, and the domestic economy is also based on the Soviet Union’s planned economy model. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the Soviet Union was so weak that it could no longer afford to neglect costs like before, and Syria’s economy began to have problems.

Especially in 1986, with the sharp drop in international oil prices and Syria’s foreign exchange earnings plummeting, Hafez had to bow to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and accept a small reform, resulting in a significant increase in agriculture and oil production, which ultimately saved the life of the Assad regime.

In 2000, Hafez died, but the game of power did not end. He passed the presidency to his son Assad Bashar.

But in reality, Bashar was not the first in line successor. He originally studied medicine in England and only wanted to become an ophthalmologist. However, the Crown Prince (Bashar’s elder brother) died in an accident, so he put down his surgical knife and began to live a life of licking blood on the blade.

Before Bashar al Assad came to power, Syria’s planned economy model had reached a dead end and could not continue playing. At that time, the economic growth rate was only 1% -2%, and the per capita GDP was about $1200, which was less than 1/4 of the average level in the Middle East.

So as soon as Bashar came to power, he launched a vigorous economic reform plan, saying that he wanted to get rid of his father’s planned economy burden, open up the market, encourage the private economy, attract foreign investment, and build domestic livelihood projects.

Obviously, Bashar has studied our reform experience, and even before taking over, he was sent by Hafez to Paris to manage the family’s finances. He is not a second-generation vegetable chicken who knows nothing.

Bashar’s thinking is not wrong, but the problem is that he has too little experience in operation, and there are big problems in the specific implementation stage.

Everyone should know that the success of our reform and opening-up is due to the relatively stable fundamentals and gradual opening up of the market. At the same time, we have achieved a balance in the distribution of interests between local and central governments. The central government can collect money from wealthy areas and then supplement economically underdeveloped areas.

But Syria is completely another matter.

Firstly, in the process of promoting the privatization of state-owned enterprises, the Syrian government has almost no market supervision mechanism, resulting in the transfer of profitable industries to a few powerful individuals at extremely low costs. For example, Syria’s largest telecommunications company, Syriatel, was acquired at a low price by his cousin Rimi Mahlouf.

Secondly, the privatization operation in Syria was too radical, with a large number of state-owned enterprise employees forced to be laid off, and the unemployment rate once reached a terrifying 20%. There were about 700000 households in the country without income, and even those who had jobs had nearly 70% of their monthly income less than $100, which was calculated at the exchange rate at that time, equivalent to more than 600 yuan.

From 2006 to 2010, Syria experienced a series of historic droughts, resulting in reduced food production and unemployment of farmers. About 1.5 million people lost their income due to the drought and had to go to the cities to make a living. However, there were also few job opportunities in the cities, so they could only live in slums and become marginalized, living a more desperate and miserable life than in rural areas.

More importantly, Bashar completely ignored the domestic fundamentals when pursuing a free market economy.

It should be noted that Syria is a country highly divided by ethnic and religious factions, with Bashar’s government and army mainly controlled by Alawites, while the majority Sunni population has always been at the bottom of society.

Bashar’s reforms achieved good results in the early stages, but resources became more concentrated, not only failing to benefit Sunni areas, but also exacerbating their poverty and unemployment problems.

In this way, laid-off workers have encountered unemployed farmers again, and society has reached the edge of a volcano.

02

The Arab Spring broke out in 2011 and soon arrived in Syria.

At first, only some people took to the streets to protest against government corruption and high unemployment, but the Bashar government directly sent troops to suppress them. With a combination of punches, the protesters were not suppressed, but were completely provoked. As a result, the parade turned into a conflict, which escalated into armed confrontation.

In the second half of 2012, the United States and Türkiye began to intervene in the Syrian civil war. They not only delivered weapons, ammunition and logistics supplies to the rebels, but also set up military training camps in Türkiye and Jordan. The rebels also changed their fighting pattern from a hard front to a guerrilla attack in the mountains. The two sides spent two years in this way, and no one could eat anyone.

In 2013, the situation began to be chaotic. ISIS, which grew up in the border areas of Iraq, saw that both government forces and rebels were a bit weak, so they ran into Syria under the banner of maintaining tradition and quickly filled the vacuum left by the Bashar al Assad government.

At its peak, this group of B-type terrorists occupied nearly 80% of Syria’s territory and even announced the establishment of a so-called ‘Islamic State’.

It was also with the addition of ISIS that Bashar was forced into a corner and ultimately had to request Putin’s intervention. A political struggle that was originally domestic has instantly turned into a proxy war for the international community.

Russia’s support for Bashar is to maintain its last foothold in the Middle East;

The United States supports the opposition, ostensibly to overthrow authoritarian regimes, but in reality, it wants to weaken the power of Russia and Iran.

Türkiye is looking at Kurds, Iran is looking at Israel, and even Saudi Arabia and Qatar are involved. The biggest financiers behind ISIS are actually these two goods.

Although ISIS was later disbanded by the international coalition, its remnants and fundamentalist ideology remain active in some parts of Syria, so the war cannot be completely quelled.

In the more than ten years of civil war, although the Bashar regime is still struggling to survive, the country’s economy has completely collapsed.

Before the outbreak of the civil war, the population of Syria was approximately 22 million.

After the outbreak of civil war, more than 6.8 million people left Syria and went to Lebanon, Jordan, Türkiye and even European countries farther away. Especially for those who have received good education and run faster than ordinary people, Syria used to have over 30000 doctors, but now only about 10000 remain, and they are still concentrated in a few big cities.

Those who cannot escape either become refugees or homeless, coupled with over 500000 deaths in the war, the young labor force in this country has been basically emptied.

A byproduct of war is the widespread rise of the black market.

In Syria, almost everything can be found on the black market, such as food, medicine, fuel, and even people. The prices of these goods are outrageously high, and ordinary people simply cannot afford them.

Before the civil war, the price of one kilogram of bread was only 50 Syrian pounds, but in 2021, the official price of bread soared to 2000 pounds, and the black market price was even higher.

Some families have to sell underage girls to human traffickers in exchange for essential goods, who then resell them to Middle Eastern tycoons or wealthy locals.

Another issue is the extreme shortage of drugs.

Before the civil war, Syria was one of the major pharmaceutical producing countries in the Middle East, with a self-sufficiency rate of up to 90%. But after more than a decade of fighting, the pharmaceutical factories have been reduced to ruins, and the supply chain has been completely disrupted. Nowadays, Syria’s drugs rely almost entirely on smuggling, and the prices of antibiotics on the black market are basically thousands of dollars.

This also means that once an ordinary person falls ill, they can only endure or wait for death.

Some friends may ask, during these years when the war has ceased, hasn’t the Syrian government come out to regulate?

I really don’t care!

In the past, the Syrian government army was still a relatively unified force, but as soon as the war broke out, it split into countless small factions with a similar appearance to our Beiyang warlords. Although the military leaders also participated in the war, their core purpose was to fish in troubled waters and gain more benefits.

Everyone should know that the black market is similar to open robbery, and it is not something that can be sustained by any social leader. In fact, in many government controlled areas, the military holds the distribution rights of food and fuel.

For example, in some suburbs of Damascus, the military sends soldiers to the market every week to collect “stall fees”, and vendors who want to obtain supplies must first pay a large sum of money to the military.

Of course, this phenomenon occurs not only in government controlled areas, but also in territories occupied by rebel forces. The civil war only suffered the people, while Bashar’s circle of friends not only suffered no losses, but also earned a lot through smuggling, corruption, and controlling the black market.

Let’s take Syria’s largest oligarch, Bashar’s cousin Rimi For Mahlouf, during the reform, he accumulated huge wealth by controlling Syria’s telecommunications industry and retail market. During the civil war, his family monopolized resources and sold aid supplies at high prices on the black market.

And Bashar’s brother Maher Assad, who holds the elite 4th Armored Division in Syria, has been controlling the border ports of Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq for years, imposing taxes on incoming and outgoing goods, and seeking profits.

It can be said that the Bashar al Assad government has deteriorated to the point where it cannot be further deteriorated, just like the situation when Chiang Kai shek took the pill. The military leaders and the powerful are making money, and most ordinary people are not on their side.

03

So it’s not difficult to understand why the Syrian government army lost the northern town of Aleppo in just three days and Hama city in less than a week.

You should know that Hama is located in central Syria and is an important gateway to Damascus, as well as a key hub for government forces to control the central region. Losing Hama means that the Bashar regime is on the brink of collapse.

The Syrian civil war has entered its thirteenth year, and the situation has undergone fundamental changes.

The rebels are becoming more and more brave as they fight, while the morale of the government army is low and their combat effectiveness is seriously declining. Next, we need to see if Holmes can hold on? If it fails, Syria will definitely undergo a major change.

The last question is, why did the rebel army, which was still hiding in the mountains two years ago, suddenly mutate? What geopolitical games are involved behind this?

First of all, we need to be clear that the Bashar regime’s ability to persist for so long mainly relies on the Russian air force and the ground forces of Iran and Hezbollah.

In 2015, the Russian Air Force led Shia militias with sparks and lightning, directly pushing rebels and Kurds into the mountains. But since the outbreak of the Russo Ukrainian War, Russia’s military support for Syria has significantly decreased, and many elite troops and advanced equipment have been transferred to the Ukrainian battlefield. Today, Syria only has a few thousand troops left, and airstrikes have become very scattered.

Iran is now in dire straits, and the leadership of Hezbollah has been collectively taken away by Israel, so they cannot provide any decent military support to Bashar.

Moreover, the Syrian government army is becoming increasingly specialized, relying solely on foreign aid and privileges to make a living. Its combat effectiveness is not lacking, but it can also be ignored.

The major defeat of the Syrian government army was partly due to economic difficulties that prevented it from supporting a large number of troops. The government had to carry out professionalization reforms in June 2024 and dismiss a large number of veteran soldiers who had experienced many battles.

On the other hand, in order to consolidate his regime, Bashar had to allow the military leaders to dominate the local economy and even collude with the black market. Although it could stabilize the fundamentals in a short period of time, it turned the military into a loose interest group.

There are rumors that it is the radical disarmament reform that has touched the interests of the military leaders, so the government army’s imminent collapse is a disguised pressure on Assad.

Of course, there is also the issue of the treatment of frontline soldiers, such as the outdated equipment of new recruits who still carry old Soviet era weapons, and even the most basic wages and supplies are often delayed, while their commanders are busy frantically making money in the rear.

So in the Battle of Hama, the government army even experienced situations of whole camps surrendering and running away in various ways. This state of complete collapse is probably beyond the rescue of the Iranian Russian coalition.

On the other hand, on the rebel side, after experiencing a long period of defeat and division, not only did they receive more external assistance, but they also successfully completed internal integration between factions.

In the early days, there were numerous rebel factions, just like a fierce battle between the five major sects at Guangming Peak, which looked fierce but could not be unified in command.

But in recent years, the rebel alliance led by the Sham Liberation Organization (HTS) has undergone strong internal integration, merging some small-scale anti-government armed groups and greatly enhancing its combat effectiveness.

In the Battle of Hama, the rebels launched a multi line attack, not only accurately striking the government army’s defense line tactically, but also successfully controlling logistical supplies, demonstrating strong collaborative combat capabilities.

In addition, Türkiye is the biggest backer of the rebels.

Sudan has provided comprehensive support to the rebel forces in northern Syria, including providing weapons and equipment, tactical training, and even directly dispatching military advisors to command the battle.

According to foreign media reports, just a few days before the Hama campaign, the rebels received a batch of anti tank missiles and UAVs provided by Türkiye, which played a decisive role in the battlefield.

However, everyone should note that the main goal of Egypt’s Sultan is not to overthrow the Bashar regime, but to allow the rebels to restrain the government army, so that he can freely attack the Kurdish people in northern Syria.

But no one expected that the Syrian government army was too reckless, losing two important cities in succession and showing signs of complete collapse.

So the major powers can’t sit still anymore, and the next thing is probably a rotation of various forces.

There are many analyses online that suggest the Syrian civil unrest is a US military operation that diversifies Russia’s presence in Ukraine.

There are reasons, but they may not be all.

Everyone should know that although the United States has been sending money and weapons to the rebel forces in the north, their goal is not to engage in a proxy war with Russia in Syria, but to weaken the resistance arc and prepare for the next step against Iran.

And Saudi Arabia’s actions are much more rogue. Although they have reconciled with Iran, they are still funding Sunni anti-government armed groups through various channels in order to prevent Syria from completely falling into the hands of the Shia alliance.

There may be several possible scenarios for the future direction of Syria:

First, Putin and Egypt and Sudan reached a compromise, using the area controlled by the Bashar government as a bargaining chip. Russia still retains a certain military presence, while Türkiye completely controls the northern region of Syria.

Second, if the rebels continue to gain support from Türkiye and push southward, then Russia will divide its forces in Syria, the United States and Saudi Arabia will also increase their support, and Syria will fall into a situation of long-term division.

Thirdly, if Russia and Iran do not intervene in Syria, the Bashar government will gradually lose control over the core region due to financial bankruptcy and military collapse, ultimately leading to complete destruction.

Overall, the Bashar regime has deteriorated to the point where it cannot afford to deteriorate any further, and even if it manages to withstand the rebels this time, it will be difficult to maintain long-term rule in the future.

The fall of Hama is not only a failure in a battle, but also a microcosm of the overall stalemate of the Bashar regime.

It can be foreseen that Syria will continue to be in chaos, and regardless of the outcome of the war, it will not be the ordinary people of Syria who will win.