World News: Damascus, the New Gordian knot

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Tuesday, 11 March 2025 10:36

Written by Olivier Longhi

After the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s Syria, the momentary hope was a democratic regime would arise from the rubble and usher the nation into a new era, unfortunately, the recent atrocities have signaled this is not the case.

The clashes and savage executions of which the Alawite community is the victim, and which have bloodied Syria foreshadow a civil war with multiple consequences of regional scope.

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Was this to be expected? The most pessimistic will affirm it, the others will remain, at the very least, doubtful. But it now appears that the bloody and blind vendetta that is falling in Syria on the Alawite populations, former supporters, affirmed or not, of the Al-Assad clan, prefigures the contours of a civil war to come.

While the HTS movement, now in power, defends itself by wanting to give guarantees of democratic openness to the international community, it seems that the massacres that have taken place in recent days are only at their beginning. Because it will be difficult to arrest fighters and others hunted by the former regime for not wanting to take revenge on those who, although factually innocent, embody the suffering that former dictator Bashar al-Assad, and before him his father, inflicted on them.

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Wildlife and Tensions

At the same time, it will also be very complicated to separate the wheat from the chaff, namely that in this mass of men and women anxious to fight, a fauna of unscrupulous men will merrily merge, agitated by various considerations that this bloody fury will be able to feed.

From one war to another, Syria has been plunged since 2011 into chaos that will not find its epilogue with the arrival of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Syria's new strongman, presented as moderate and appeased. Here again, the most pessimistic will put forward the idea that this government is ultimately only a transitional organization, one more in a country that has known others and will certainly know others.

But the question that emerges is how to sustainably ease the tensions of a nation that is nevertheless central to the Middle East, with a strong influence and strategic position? The response is intended to be global because the Middle East, an open-air powder keg, even more so after the arrival of Donald Trump as President of the United States, calls for a global solution and not a fragmented one.

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Vassalisation and Warmongering

Lebanon, a border country, so vulnerable and so porous to external influences, must stabilize its political situation so that it no longer suffers from a form of vassalisation by Syria and Israel. The latter, embarked on an endless war against Hamas, a war that is more of a private military operation wanted and maintained by Benjamin Netanyahu, will have to conclude a lasting peace without delay, before HTS, a radical Islamist movement, comes, at least feeds the idea, to help Hamas militants battered by Hebrew warmongering.

In the end, this civil war that is coming, and which will also end up gradually restricting individual freedoms, including those of women, is in no way anecdotal or to be classified as yet another distant confrontation. In a world that is now intrinsically linked, where alliances are formed and distorted, Syria poses as a new Gordian knot.

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Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently a professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist and recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, was a press and publishing consultant, and was a communications consultant.