The victorious Syrian rebel leader now in control of Damascus has already learned a key lesson in history. After his forces swept into the capital, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, head of the Islamic militant group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), might have been expected to lay waste to all the institutions which had helped to keep the repressive Assad dynasty in power for fifty-three years, but instead he chose pragmatism. He announced he would do business with the Syrian government and wanted civil service staff to stay in their jobs to keep the country functioning.
This doesn’t make al-Jolani or Ahmed al-Sharaa as he now wants to be called (his real name rather than his nom de guerre), a Kissinger-style diplomat whom the world can embrace as a long-awaited savior. However, he only had to look back twenty-one years to see what the Americans did when the US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, to know what to avoid at all costs.
Against the advice of the CIA and the US military who warned of dire consequences, the so-called “viceroy” of Iraq, Paul Bremer, a Pentagon official delegated by then-president George W. Bush to administer Iraq during a transitional period, announced a wholesale de-Ba’athification program.
Anyone associated with Saddam’s regime as a senior member of the ruling Ba’ath party was fired. That effectively meant the entire civil service was dismantled. The officials were sent home without jobs. The Iraqi army was also scrapped. Saddam soldiers with their guns went awol, by order. As a result, there was a gigantic vacuum. Bremer had no experience of Iraq, but he had the impossible task of building a new civil service and army from scratch.
It was a grave error which led to an embittered Iraqi army, thousands of disillusioned government employees, and, worst of all, to an anti-West insurgency that lasted for eight years out of which rose the Islamic State and its self-styled caliphate across great swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Eight days before the US led a coalition of forces across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq on March 20, 2003, the general in charge of 26,000 troops of the 1st UK Armoured Division envisaged a very different scenario. Speaking at his desert divisional headquarters north of the Mutla Ridge mountain range close to the border with Iraq, Major General Robin Brims, told me he hoped that Iraqi soldiers unwilling to fight should join the coalition against Saddam.
“I wouldn’t expect them to march north with us [to Baghdad] but they could just go to their barracks and wait there,” he said. “After the war, Iraq will still need armed forces and they will have a role to play in securing their country’s future.”
It was a visionary moment in the lead-up to what was to be a swift victory for the coalition, but followed by political decisions which condemned Iraq to years of torment and destruction and tens of thousands of civilian deaths.
Today in Damascus, there will be many civil servants who served in President Bashar al-Assad’s regime who will be afraid to return to their posts. Al-Jolani, the HTS leader, has declared he will issue a list of military and security officials who will be charged with war crimes. But this is actually in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254, adopted on December 18, 2015, which laid down a roadmap for Syria’s political transition. It included accountability for atrocities committed by the Assad regime.
While the search for Assad’s henchmen continues (similar to the US hunt for Saddam’s main acolytes), it seems the hope of those now in charge in Damascus is for all civil servants to return to duty to help keep the administration of government running smoothly while the potentially dangerous and unpredictable transition period is orchestrated.
It will also be a period in which other nations in the Arab and western world, as well as Israel, will rapidly have to grasp what could be a pivotal opportunity to influence the way forward in Syria and also to take advantage of the impact the dramatic change in Damascus could have on the whole of the Middle East and on Russia and Iran, Assad’s principal backers.
If al-Jolani sticks to his promise and encourages the Syrian institutions to return to normal working routines, the new government in Damascus will have at least a chance of bringing some stability to the parts of the country where Assad formerly had control.
Provided pragmatism wins and ideology is kept contained, the lessons of the past, notably in Iraq and Libya, will guide the new Syrian leaders, as the rest of the world comes to terms with the downfall of Assad.